Along the way people get shot, mugged (in the courtyard between the wings of the National Gallery of Art), stabbed frontally and bashed in the head. Truman's cast of characters includes art dealers, scholars, collectors, patrons and curators. Lewis Tunney, the night's keynote speaker, topples over the railing, Thomas Jefferson's sword sticking in his back. When Vice President William Oxenhauer looks up, the body of his good friend, Dr. As guests, drinks in hand, mill about the Foucault pendulum, making small wagers on how long it will take before the pendulum strikes down the next red marker, drops of blood fall onto the compass rose from the floor above. Imagine a black-tie party at the National Museum of American History in honor of the opening of a new exhibit, the guests including the Vice President and his wife. First there was "Murder in the White House" (a building in which she knew all the nooks and crannies better than most), then "Murder on Capitol Hill," "Murder in the Supreme Court"-and now "Murder in the Smithsonian." From reading Margaret Truman, one would gather that the cleaning people in Washington spend much of their time washing blood from the floors of our most noted public buildings.
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