The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man by Alfred Alcorn Read Free Book Online

bright slabs of autumn light visible in the distance, she broke down and cried and cried in my arms. Then, composing herself, she said she had known about it for some time. Nothing specific, but something going fundamentally wrong. She said it had kindled within her a latent faith, “not so much in a personal God, Norman, but in life itself.”
    What could I say? Words of comfort failed me. Because there really were none. Reassurances? Of what?
We’ll make your death a nice one, Elsbeth, the best money can buy
. Emotions, like words, can seem like clichés. I am devastated, of course, when I am not being incredulous. Life is a habit, after all, and it’s always a shock when death, that lurking, monstrous joker, reaches out his inevitable hand.
    And what do you do when you have news like this? I feel constrained to call up friends and invite them over for a drink. For a lot of drinks. But we have no ritual response for such announcements. The prognostication of death is, culturally speaking, a recent phenomenon. But surely, we need the comfort of family and friends at these moments, more perhaps than when the body is already cold.
    I did call Diantha and Winslow Jr., Elsbeth’s daughter and son. Diantha, who has been estranged from Elsbeth for more than a year — some dispute over a boyfriend — broke down and wept. “Let me speak to Mommy,” she kept saying. I put Elsbeth on and tiptoed away, leaving them to a tearful, long-distance reconciliation.
    Win Jr., a businessman very much like his late father, took the news very much in stride. He consulted his calendar and said hewould fly in from New York this coming Sunday. He had been able, just, it seems, to fit his mother into his schedule.
    I also called our good friends Izzy and Lotte Landes. They dropped by in the afternoon “for a drink and a good weep.” Lotte, who has become a good friend of Elsbeth’s over the last couple of years, ran her through a gamut of lifesaving drills. Yes, Berns was a good GP, but Keller Infirmary wasn’t called “Killer Infirmary” for nothing. They knew a specialist in Chicago who had come up with an aggressive new therapy that showed lots of promise.
    Elsbeth shook her head. “I’m not up for some kind of high-tech torture.” But she calmed and comforted them as well. Was her resignation, I wondered, her way of reassuring the rest of us?
    Korky Kummerbund came over right away, bringing a big bouquet of lilies. He wept and figuratively, anyway, banged the walls. He is quite literally a sweet man, gay, but not in the least fussy about it. He’s of the opinion that people of his predilections should stay in their closets, but make them much bigger, with porches and mountain views, and invite in special friends.
    The Reverend Alfie Lopes, Wainscott Minister and Plumtree Professor of Morals (They’ve dropped the “Christian,” I’ve noticed, in the name of fair play. As long as they don’t drop the “Morals,” I shan’t complain.), said he would come to see both Elsbeth and me whenever we wanted him. I said why not simply come over for dinner and a chat. We made a date. As the years go by, I have come to appreciate Alfie more and more. He refers to himself as an Afro-Saxon and is not shy about being proud of both traditions.
    Elsbeth’s plight has certainly put matters in perspective for me. I can care for and think of nothing else. Everything else pales to insignificance. Let killers roam the Genetics Lab. Let Wainscott have the museum. Let war begin and the glaciers return. Idon’t care. I want my Elsbeth restored to her old vibrant self. I feel cursed. It seems I no sooner have Elsbeth in my life, have scarcely sat down at life’s feast, when it is all going to be taken away from me. Perhaps I am being selfish in this. I know Elsbeth is the one who must suffer and die in the prime of her life. But I would change with her, take her place, in a moment. Only the result would be the same. My life would be over.

7
    It