The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (30 page)

I also fetched the tape of Corny’s death from an old safe I have here in the house. I wrapped it twice in plastic bags and secured it in a side pocket of the parka.

For a meal I took the remainder of the meat and made myself a big hamburger, which I slathered with mustard and ketchup, put between two pieces of bread, and ate with a beer.

I moved as if in a dream. I laid out my kit — boots and crampons, thermal underwear and socks made of something called polypropylene, the long-handled climbing ax, the wrist compass, my revolver with an extra box of steel-jacketed rounds, the high-energy snacks, a headlamp of the kind miners wear, Gore-Tex overalls and hooded jacket, insulated gloves, and an old hunting knife I received one Christmas as a teenager.

It was late afternoon when I unplugged the phones and set a couple of alarm clocks to ring at two the next morning. I went upstairs, took the morphine pill with a glass of water, and got into bed. To my surprise, in retrospect, I fell asleep not long afterward.

The two clocks brought me up from an energizing nightmare about dogs and darkness. Fully conscious within seconds, I turned off the alarms and went downstairs. I dressed effectively and quickly while the coffee brewed. It was snowing when I opened the door to load the car. It had been snowing for some time, and I wondered if the roads into the mountains would be passable. It didn’t matter. I would get there one way or another.

How warm and comfortable I felt in my mountaineering clothes! How snug the revolver felt just under the jacket, under my arm in its leather holster. I also tucked in the small portable phone Diantha had left on a bureau upstairs. I thought it might come in handy.

I had not counted on a real nor’easter, blowing and snowing like the end of the world. The rented car, wearing snow tires, did very well in the snow. We poked our way out into the ghostly swirl, the streetlights glowing through the moving veils of the storm, the
chunk, chunk
of plows sounding along the bypass.

Nibbling at a snack, sipping coffee from the thermos cup, I got in behind one of those rumbling monsters and let it lay down a swath of sanded salt for me to follow. It all seemed both dreamlike and very real. I was nearly hyperconscious. I knew I could take the interstate to an exit not far from Tinkerton. I would walk from there if I had to!

Surprisingly enough, I was able to drive relatively close to my projected destination. I didn’t do anything theatrical like try to hide the car. I simply found the inlet to a logging road, stopped, backed up, and gave the vehicle enough momentum to plow its way well in off the road.

In the dark and the silent snowfall, I sat in the car, the lamp on my forehead playing a spot of light over the survey map. I estimated I was just short of two miles on the Remsdale Road from
where it crossed Biggins Brook, a tributary to Alkins Creek. The map showed the logging road as a track. If I followed it about a mile and then turned north, it would bring me to the foot of the hill I needed to ascend to get to the back of the house.

Wondering again if I wasn’t demented, I started into the dark along the logging road. The wind blew, and the snow bit into my face. The illumination from my headlamp played feebly but adequately over the terrain ahead. I realized I should have bought a pair of those small snowshoes because in places my boots broke through the crust, and I found myself struggling, floundering, and almost foundering several times. I should also have carried a GPS device. I nearly lost heart several times, my progress seemed so slow even while on the remnant road. How could I surprise anyone if I arrived in full daylight?

I became so warm I had to open my coat. The wind picked up high in the trees, and the snow deepened the farther I penetrated into the wilderness. I stopped to rest several times. I finished the coffee and put the thermos into my backpack. The whirling snow grew so thick at times, I had difficulty keeping on the road. But I kept going. I kept thinking of Diantha. Even if I were to fail, it might be of some comfort to her to know I had tried.

After what I took to be a mile, I turned off the rough road and started through the woods in a northward direction, checking the compass as I went. The going got very difficult indeed. Beneath the newly fallen snow was an older layer, treacherous, holding firm one moment and then letting me fall through to my waist the next. Looking back, I don’t know what possessed me to keep plowing on. The wireless phone in my pocket suddenly seemed like the most important thing I had brought along. It was my out, as they say. I could always call the operator and get through to the SPD and Lieutenant Tracy. Tell him what the situation was and what I was doing.

I kept going. The hill grew increasingly steep. I stopped to strap on the crampons. In places I had to hook the spiked end of the climbing ax on trees ahead of me to pull my way up. Under a rock ledge I hunkered to eat an energy snack and drink from the canteen hanging from my belt. It was already nearly six o’clock, and I knew that, even with the snow and overcast, it would be light by the time I reached the madman’s lair; the advantage of darkness would be gone.

I kept climbing. I felt at times as though I had entered a kind of twilight zone, a realm of unreality in which I was dead and would, with the pain of hope in my heart, spend eternity climbing through snow, wind, and darkness toward an ever-receding destination.

Inwardly, as in a hallucination, I ranted at Freddie Bain and heard his smirking replies. Hitler did not triumph! I shouted at him. Then why, Norman, are we still talking about him? Hitler is dead! Then why, Mr. de Ratour, do we need to keep killing him? Because, you swine, it’s fun. Hitler was a failed artist! Not by twentieth-century standards,
mon vieux
. God is good! God is smiling, my friend, as you fumble toward your doom.

But the wind eased, the snow abated, and the lilac light of dawn filtered through the trees like an ethereal mist. Its subtle splendor would have enchanted me under other circumstances, would have made me ponder the mystery of so much gratuitous beauty, had it not disheartened me as an impediment to my plans. I struggled on, the dawn brightening into day, until I noticed, up ahead, through the trees, a patch of blue sky.

I came out finally onto a clearing, and my heart faltered once more. I could clearly see the twin peaks and the saddleback they formed between them. But they seemed so far away. And the sun shone in full reflected glory. Jays called. Chickadees came down to visit me. I checked to make sure I still had my revolver and continued my grim journey.

It was seven o’clock before I reached the low point between the two modest summits. I tried to keep under cover, but I’m sure anyone on the lookout could have seen me. Exhausted, but with adrenaline pumping through me painfully, I gained the actual ridge and peered down through the trees to the bastion below. It looked well nigh impregnable. Indeed, it appeared like a fortress anchored to the mountainside by the wide bridge, forming the shape of keyhole.

I took out my birding binoculars and swept over the scene several times. The long drive into the place and the walks had been shoveled. It struck me that I could just as well have driven over, parked down the drive, and walked in. Still, it looked peaceful, the narrow mullioned windows glinting and winking, the greenhouse shedding its cover of white so that the blue dazzle of pool water showed through a clear pane. I saw no movement as I panned the scene for several minutes. Then I noticed, looking up at me, as though expecting me, a huge German shepherd. It had come out of a kennel near a door toward the back, where a deck off the lower bridge part led to a path that went along the slope.

I ducked back under cover and took off my knapsack. I would drug the beast using the doctored meat. But first I took out the wireless phone. After a few attempts I got through to the switchboard at the SPD. I gave them the three-letter emergency code for Lieutenant Tracy. They put me through to his home. The connection wasn’t good. I explained to him where I was and what I was doing.

“Norman, stay where you are,” he kept saying. “We’ll handle this from here. Don’t go any farther.”

“You don’t know how insane he is,” I said. “The first sign of a police cruiser and he’ll go berserk.”

“Norman, don’t do it.”

“I’m going in, Lieutenant,” I practically shouted into the receiver as the wind, picking up again in that open space, made a racket around me. “It’s her only chance.”

“Norman …”

But I had clicked it off.

I made the bag of doped hamburger handy, hoisted my knapsack back on, took a deep breath, and started, as furtively as I could, down the steep slope toward the back of the house. I stopped every once in a while to check through my binoculars. The dog clearly knew I was there, but it didn’t bark.
Nice puppy
, I said to it softly,
nice puppy
.

The going was rough, precarious. The wind had scoured the area of fresh snow. Iced-over ledges showed through the sparse vegetation. I must have been no more than a hundred feet from where the dog waited when I lost my footing and took an awful spill. I managed, almost by instinct, to complete a self-arrest using the ice ax. I bruised my arm and scraped my face. I watched helplessly as the bag of meat in its fragile covering slid down the smoothly crusted snow toward the dog.

For a moment I was utterly disheartened. Surely the animal would bark now and give the alarm. Instead, miraculously, it left the small deck and with clumsy determination, made its way up to where the meat had snagged on a bush poking through the snow. I watched with bated breath as it nosed the pack, pawed at it, and finally freed the hamburger from the plastic bag. It wolfed the meat down in a matter of seconds.

It didn’t take long to have an effect. The dog looked up to where I crouched, turned, and started back toward the house, its footing unsteady. Not far from the deck it stopped, sat down, and then lay down. I reached it not long afterward. I think it was dead. But I had no time for regrets about a dog, whatever its innocence. My blood pounded so fiercely I could scarcely think.
As stealthily as I could, I made my way to the deck where the dog had its kennel.

A formidable oaken door, studded and barred like those of a medieval keep, led into the house from the deck. For a handle it had a great wrought-iron ring. As quietly as I could, I twisted the ring, felt it give and click. With an ominous creak, the door swung open. I found myself in a dark passage, the darker for my pupils being contracted against the sunstruck snow. I paused a moment. A kind of pantry, curved with the exterior of the building, led off to the right into what I presumed was the kitchen. A bathroom opened to the left. I could see light coming from under the door ahead of me.

I did not have the presence of mind to take out my revolver. I did not have the presence of mind to skirt around the main part of the house through the kitchen. I simply went ahead and started to push open the door in front of me.

It was opened for me with a sudden jerk. I was taken roughly by the arm from the side and propelled into the center of the vast circular space I remembered, as in a nightmare, from my previous visit. Over against the fireplace, on the raised stone area, seated like some kind of petty potentate, was Manfred Bannerhoff, aka Freddie Bain. Near him on the couch sat Diantha, her face drawn and worried.

“Welcome, welcome, Mr. de Ratour. You’re just in time for breakfast. We’ve been expecting you, haven’t we, Diantha. That’s okay, Fang, you can let him go. He’s not going to do anything.”

“Norman!” Diantha cried, rising as though from a deathbed trance.

“Diantha.” I started toward her.

“Stay where you are, both of you, unless …”

I stopped. It wasn’t only the mesmeric powers in his striking
eyes. Fang, whom I recognized as the delivery boy from the Jade Stalk, and two well-muscled young men hovered in the background.

Bain pointed to a large television screen next to the fireplace. “We have been enjoying the show, Norman. A jolly good show.” He flicked at a remote control. A moment later I appeared on the screen, emerging from the woods above the building. “Such a hero. Such a fool.” I was looking down with my binoculars. “We’ve all had a great laugh, Norman. There you are. Now we can’t see you. You must be behind the rock, getting ready for your assault.” I watched, glanced over to Diantha.
Are you all right?
I mouthed silently. She nodded. I turned back to the monitor. At least they hadn’t seen me making the phone call.

“Now here’s the best part,” my awful host announced. On the screen I was trying to get down the steep, windblown slope of iced-over snow. Suddenly, I fall and tumble over several times before I stop myself. The view cuts to a wide angle, and the dog can be seen making its way up to the doctored meat. “Poor Mitzi,” Freddie Bain said. “What did you put in the meat, Norman?”

“Morphine,” I said.

Bain laughed his mean laugh. “She overdosed, like so many of my good friends.” Then his laugh died to a snarl. He came toward me. “Mitzi was my friend. She took good care of me. You killed her. And I’m going to kill you, old man, with my bare hands. But first, did you bring the tape?”

“I have it.”

“Give it to me.”

“I will leave it in the foyer as Diantha and I leave.”

Madness showed in his face. “You old fool! You give it now or … I will kill both of you with my bare hands.” He laughed. “Or should we inject them with enough of our new potion and let them go at it in the cage, eh, Fang?”

Fang, who had moved away from me, gave a sycophantic laugh along with the other two.

As much to stall for time, I said, “Is that what you did with Ossmann and Woodley?”

“I’m afraid so. Professor Ossmann proved uncooperative in the end.”

“So you’re the one behind the whole deadly business?”

“Business is right.” He smiled wickedly. “When I see a business opportunity, I take it.”

“From whom did you take it?”

“Oh, from poor Ossmann, of course. But he, I’m sure, took it from someone else. Now, give me the tape …”

“What do you plan to do with the … potion?”