Free The Murder in the Museum of Man by Alfred Alcorn

frankly, were the Director and the Board of Governors operating as they have in the past, i.e., responsive to my occasional and, I like to think, pertinent memoranda, this never would have happened.
    I have tried, through indirect means, to alert the Council of Curators about what the diorama will mean to opportunities for them to mount exhibitions in their own specialties. But except for Baldwin Jones, who, as a curatorial assistant, takes care of the African Collections, no one has heeded my warnings. And Baldwin’s acknowledgment sounded more like his usual politeness than any voicing of real concern. The curators, of course, want to cultivate their own little gardens, restoring, preserving, labeling, and researching the artifacts of their specialties. I can understand, sympathize with, and even envy them their narrow passions. I would no doubt be the same. But the very magic that enchants them is something that should be shared with the world. That is why museums are places for the public to visit. That is why, ultimately, the curators are curating what they curate.
    Of course, the moment the diorama is installed they will start complaining bitterly that they no longer have space for the special exhibitions they are so reluctant to mount in the first place. And when the time comes for the Curatorial Ball, they will all be wondering aloud why it has to be held in some drab rented hall with no Herman to play Santa Claus. It’s not the same, they will say, as they lift their champagne glasses and grouse to one another about the lack of planning and administration at the museum. And they will be right.
    Be that as it may, Malachy Morin must also share some of the blame for allowing the Oversight Committee into the museum. It is another instance when he should have stepped in on behalf of the MOM, but I think he sees little or no difference between the MOM and Wainscott. I have heard, in fact, that he is bent onbecoming a university vice president. (I must say I took some low pleasure in the look on his face after Lieutenant Tracy got finished with him last week.)
    But then, I do not pretend to understand Mr. Morin in the least. Yesterday when I was in his office, having been summoned there on one pretext or another, he began to regale a friend of his from Wainscott Administration with a story about the Queen of England being on the BBC radio show
Twenty Questions
. I remember listening to it myself, years ago, on the wireless I had in my digs at Jesus. As everyone knows, the audience on this program is given the answer to the question, which in this case, according to Mr. Morin, was “blackcock.” The contestant, of course, has twenty questions to ask of a panel of three judges in order to ascertain the answer. All of this Mr. Morin explained to his friend and to me, as I was standing there, with a hilarity I could not in the least fathom. According to his account of the broadcast, the first question the Queen put to the panel was “Can you eat it?” Now that struck me as a perfectly reasonable question, but it was one which had Mr. Morin and his friend, through a kind of contagion, nearly inarticulate with laughter. So much so that the former, his whole bulk quivering and shaking, could scarcely tell the rest of the story, in which the three judges, after a brief conference, answered yes. Her Majesty quickly asked, “Is it blackcock?” getting the answer with only two questions.
    I told them both that I failed to see the humor. In fact, I said, the Queen has no doubt had numerous opportunities to eat blackcock as the bird is surely found at Balmoral, where the royal family goes to shoot. And blackcock is, I added, a considerable if somewhat gamy delicacy. I informed them that it’s also quite a stunning bird, and there is a marvelous Audubon painting of a covey, which hangs, the painting that is, I believe, in a Harvard library. Well, by then they were both nearly weeping with a laughter of the silly schoolboy kind.