“No,” Briskie said, “it didn’t work out that way. The way it was…”
He had been in the rear of the studio, looking for the picture —“There’s a hell of a lot of them, racked all over the place”—and had just found it when he heard a key in the lock of the front door.
He was out of sight, behind a rack of paintings. He stayed out of sight and listened, and heard the door open. Then he had heard somebody—woman but he had not recognized the voice—call out something like, “Are you here, Shack?” and then the click of a woman’s heels on the wooden floor. It had sounded to him as if she walked over to Jones’s body.
“Then after maybe a minute she began to scream bloody murder,” Briskie said.
He had looked around the rack and seen Myra Dedek. She was standing a few feet from the door, and looking across the room at the body and screaming. Then she had turned and gone back through the doorway to the corridor outside and she had kept on screaming.
And Maxwell Briskie had decided it was a good time to get out of there. The screaming would bring somebody and somebody would call the police.
“And I,” Briskie said, “would have a good deal of explaining to do. People who find bodies do, from all I’ve heard.”
He was doing a good deal of explaining now, Shapiro thought. Of course, he had had time to work out an explanation. It might well be that. Now that, because Dorian Weigand had recognized the face of a painted woman from a newspaper photograph, the Briskies had been brought into it.
“So,” Briskie said, “I went down the fire escape.”
“You didn’t try to take the painting with you? The one it was so important for you and Mrs. Briskie to have?”
“No. All right, I thought of trying it. But the picture’s too damned big, Lieutenant. And—all right, I’m not. I’ll say it before you do.”
Shapiro had not planned to say it.
He said, “By the way, Mr. Briskie. Jones wore a beard until lately, didn’t he?”
“Very thick,” Briskie said. “Very curly. Reddish. A beard you couldn’t miss. Very special beard.”
“Happen to know when he shaved it off? And why?”
“When he got back from Spain, I guess. Two or three weeks ago. I’ve no idea why. He’d worn it ever since I knew him. Before a lot of young squirts went in for beards. Maybe he decided it didn’t make him stand out any more. He liked to stand out, Shack did.”
Briskie sat, evidently waiting for more questions.
“All right, Mr. Briskie,” Shapiro said. “A good idea of yours to come in.”
“I can go along? No material witness bit?”
“If you don’t go too far,” Nathan Shapiro told the lithe, quick little man, and watched Maxwell Briskie go.
X
Myra dedek had been certain that the painting in the Bryant & Washburn gallery was not by Shackleford Jones. She had been certain of this before she telephoned Oscar Bracken. But she had not seen the picture. She had seen only a hurried sketch meant to suggest the composition. She had, and that was really all it came to, taken the word of a man named Oscar —
For a moment, Dorian, sitting in a taxicab that edged down Fifth Avenue, dodging buses which unpredictably turned from curbs into traffic, could not at first remember the last name of the man named Oscar, who had confirmed what Myra Dedek was already so sure of. Then it came back to her—Bracken. When she did remember it, it seemed to her that she remembered from a longer time before, not merely from Myra’s mention of it minutes ago in her office. A name she ought to know? From …
Of course. From the time she had been in a show at the Dedek Galleries. A man named Bracken had been around, as part of the gallery staff. Probably she had met him, been introduced to him. She could not, however, remember what he looked like. The tall man who had measured a seascape for a potential customer? The one she had thought looked vaguely like a maitre d’ in a restaurant to which she and Bill sometimes went? It was all most fuzzy.
“This will do,” Dorian told the cabdriver when they were a block from the Bryant & Washburn building, and seemed likely to remain there indefinitely. She had to repeat what she said more loudly; the cabdriver was evidently deaf. She paid and got out of the cab, and walked the block.
As she went into the store, she was mildly irked with herself. There was no reason to think that Myra Dedek had been wrong about the painting and she herself right. (But Myra had not seen it.) There was no reason to think that Bracken had lied about it. If he had a Shack Jones up for sale he would certainly not deny it. I’m not an expert, Dorian told herself. Merely, in this field, a buff. After looking at so many of Shack’s paintings I’ve probably begun to see them everywhere.
At this hour, I’ll never get a taxi home. Bill may, for once, get home early—get home to an empty apartment.
What it comes to, Dorian thought, is that I’m merely being stubborn about a hunch. Oscar Bracken is an experienced and honest man; Myra Dedek is an expert and knowledgeable dealer. I’m only a buff with a tattered hunch. I’ll look at a cityscape again and satisfy myself. And then start a fruitless search for a taxicab.
But when she went into Bryant & Washburn’s she walked its extensive first floor—where a few customers hesitated and tired saleswomen were as patient as a long day had left them—to the executive elevators. One of them was still running. It took her to the eighth floor.
Ursula Fields’s secretary had lowered her typewriter into her desk and was putting her gloves on, having just replenished her lipstick. Mrs. Fields had gone for the day. She had gone for the weekend. If Mrs. Weigand would like to make an appointment for Monday?
Mrs. Weigand would not. She went down a corridor to the smaller office of Nancy Sperling, art director. Nancy’s receptionist had gone. Nancy herself had not. She was standing in the doorway of her office and talking to a much taller and very thin young woman and shaking her head as she talked. To Dorian she said, “Hello, dear. You remember Rachel Farmer from the old days? When she used to pose for Billy?”
Billy—Billy Weston—had done photographs for Bryant & Washburn before the advertising department abandoned the representational as too much so.
Dorian said, “Of course,” which was the easier of two answers. (The other would have been, “Not at all.”) “Good afternoon, Miss Farmer.”
Rachel Farmer said, “Hello,” as if she did not mean it. She said to Nancy Sperling, “Then I’ve wasted my time?” and Nancy said, “I’m afraid so, dear. I don’t know how the rumor got started.”
Rachel Farmer said, “Damn,” and strode past Dorian and out of the office.
“She heard somewhere we were looking for photographer’s models,” Nancy said. “Wanted to get in on the ground floor. Don’t tell me you’ve done the buyer and the pants already.”
“Haven’t touched them,” Dorian said. “The man who heads up the art gallery here. Man named Oscar Bracken. Do you know him?”
“To speak to. Why? Don’t tell me you’re going to sell pictures to Bryant and Washburn?”
Dorian was not. She had had a look through the gallery and wondered about the man who ran it. It sounded thin to her own ears and, from Nancy Sperling’s smile and slightly lifted shoulders, she thought it sounded so to Nancy. But Nancy was tolerant of those who worked with pencils and with brushes. In her job she needed to be.
“Specifically?” Nancy said.
“Is he good? I mean, does he know about paintings? Or is there a buying department which decided what goes into the gallery?”
As far as Nancy Sperling knew, the gallery was Oscar Bracken’s. As long as it showed a profit, of course. As to his being good at it—“All employees of Bryant and Washburn are certified, dear. By Personnel.”
Dorian said, “Give, Nancy.”
Nancy Sperling had, she said, nothing to give. Not really. Oscar Bracken was tall and dark-haired and, at a guess, somewhere in his forties. He had, she thought, been head—he was called “curator”—of the art gallery since Bryant & Was
hburn had decided to give art a fling. Which was about two years ago. She had heard somewhere that, before he was hired by the store, he had worked in a gallery. Fifty-seventh Street place. Or Madison Avenue. Presumably, Personnel had been convinced that he knew his job. “Which is, primarily, to buy pictures for about half what he thinks they can be sold for. To people who think living-room walls look bare without pictures on them.”
“Presumably,” Dorian said, “he knows about pictures. Enough, anyway. And about painters? Which ones have caught on with the critics? And with the museums? Which ones haven’t?”
“I don’t suppose,” Nancy Sperling said, “that Bryant and Washburn competes much with the Museum of Modern Art. Or the Metropolitan. What is all this, Dorian? No—wait. Don’t tell me. A painter named Shackleford something is shot in his studio, apparently a suicide. A woman named Dorian Weigand is the wife of a policeman. What are you, dear? A member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the New York Police Department?”
“I’m curious about something,” Dorian said. “That’s all it is, really.”
Nancy Sperling said, “Hm-m-m.” Then she said, “You know what they used to say about you when you were here? With the best of envy. That you moved like a cat. Don’t let your curiosity carry you too far, darling. Anyway, until you’ve done the buyer and the pants.”
“Promised,” Dorian said.
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help about Mr. Bracken. Personnel could, if it wanted to. But Personnel will be gone for the day. For the weekend, probably. If you like—” She gestured toward the telephone on her receptionist’s desk, a desk obviously closed for the weekend, like Personnel. And as she gestured, she looked at the watch on her wrist.
“Oh,” Dorian said, “I’m going, dear.”
She went. She went down on the escalator to the furniture department and through it, in a course now familiar, to the art gallery. It still was open. There were even several people in it. And one of them was the rather dumpy little woman from Emporia, Kansas.
Mrs. Isabelle Jones was looking at pictures—moving along one of the walls and looking at each of the canvases hung on it. She leaned close to the pictures and looked at them carefully. After she had looked, she wrote briefly in a notebook.
Dorian watched her for a moment, puzzled. Titles of pictures. Why? She seemed …
Mrs. Jones held her hands apart at the width of a picture and then at the distance of its depth. She looked at the space between her hands with both—of course, with both measurements. She made notes in her little book. She leaned closer to a picture and Dorian realized she was not looking at the picture as picture. She was looking at the price tag.
Prices and measurements. How much art was going at per square foot. Mrs. Jones was comparison shopping. If a picture measuring two feet by four is offered at two hundred and seventy-five dollars, the—approximately acres of, Dorian thought —canvases in the studio in Little Great Smith Street could be measured. Eight square feet—two hundred and seventy-five dollars. Eighty, therefore, two thousand seven hundred and fifty. Mrs. Jones was, potentially, taking inventory.
Mrs. Jones measured and noted the price of another picture. She was very intent.
Dorian went along the other wall to look, once more and more carefully, at a painting of a soaring city; to look, very carefully indeed, at the signature which she had—assuming the honesty and competence of a man named Oscar Bracken—mistakenly thought that of Shackleford Jones, deceased.
The picture called “Cityscape” was not on the wall. Where Dorian was certain it had been, there was a larger canvas; a portrait of, presumably, an ancestor. Female. The subject had worn an evening dress and rested the fingers of her left hand delicately on a table. The table looked very like a table. The fingers did not look too much like fingers. Hands are, for a good many, hard to draw.
For an instant, Dorian’s own fingers itched for a familiar pencil. Or for a brush. A quick line here and another there. Professionals are easily tempted toward revision, whether it is their concern or not.
So the painting, which wasn’t a Shack, but by someone named Shayburn, was no longer available to be looked at carefully, so that an unsupported hunch would quit rustling in a mind.
A tall man with his back to her was standing in front of the painting titled “Foster, Missouri” and for a moment she thought that the man was Oscar Bracken. But he turned his head a little and, seeing his profile, she realized he was not Bracken. Bracken had probably gone for the weekend, too.
She looked around the room and saw a door with a plaque on it—Oscar Bracken, Curator. The door was closed. There would be no harm in knocking on it. There would be no harm in asking the whereabouts of a picture called “Cityscape,” and sounding, as much as possible, like a possible customer.
She crossed to the door and was about to knock when she heard voices from behind it. Mr. Bracken was still there, presumably. He was not alone, but talking to someone. He was answered, the words indecipherable. Another man. A real customer, probably. A painter with a picture to sell, possibly. A conference to break in on?
She hesitated, and as she did so there was movement beyond the door and then the door was pushed open. As it opened, but only partly, it opened toward Dorian, so that she was behind it. Oscar Bracken poked his head out and said, pitching his voice across the room, “Be with you in just a moment, Mr. Osgood.”
The tall man who had been appraising the picture titled “Foster, Missouri,” waved a casual hand in response.
Bracken drew back into his office and closed the door.
Osgood? Jeremiah Osgood, art dealer? Contemplating a purchase from the art gallery of Bryant & Washburn? At first it seemed unlikely. After a moment it seemed quite possible. The store galleries did, sometimes, buy the early work of painters who might, later, turn out to be successful—men and women worthy of the attention of the owners of galleries like Jeremiah Osgood, Inc. Or, for that matter, Myra Dedek, not “Inc.” Mr. Osgood might be scouting.
The door of Oscar Bracken, Curator, opened again, this time more widely. Again Dorian was behind it when it was open.
The man who came out of it was not Bracken, but Weldon Williams. He did not stop to look at pictures, or at anybody else in the room—not at Isabelle Jones, still noting down prices and estimating measurements; not at Osgood. He walked across the room like a man in a hurry, and out of it.
He had left the office door open behind him and Bracken came out and walked across the room to stand by Osgood. Osgood pointed at “Foster, Missouri.” He said, “The young man can paint, Oscar. Happen to have any more of his around?”
“We discover them; Jeremiah Osgood, Inc., steals them,” Bracken said. But he was cheerful about it. “Yes, we have one or two others. Yes, he can paint. I suppose now you want his address? And telephone number?”
“Certainly,” Jeremiah Osgood said. “If he has more, and they’re as good as this, I might talk to him about a show.”
Bracken shrugged his shoulders.
“We won’t stand in his way,” he said. “I’ll go …”
He turned with that and then, for the first time apparently, saw Dorian Weigand.
“I’ll see you get his address,” he told Osgood. “Get it in the mail Monday.”
“Appreciate it,” Osgood said and looked again at “Foster, Missouri” and nodded his head. Then he went toward the doorway leading out of the gallery.
And Mrs. Isabelle Jones put her notebook in her handbag and went after him. She went, Dorian thought, as if she planned to catch up with him.
“Can I help you?” Oscar Bracken said to Dorian, in the tone of an attentive salesman to a possible customer. But he looked at the watch on his wrist. “Or would you like to look around?”
“I was in earlier,” Dorian said. “There was one painting over there.” She gestured the direction. “Quite large. What is called modern, I think. A painting called ‘Cityscape.’ My husband and I are just furnishing a new apartment and there’s a wall s
pace it would fit on. At first I thought the price was too high but I talked to my husband and—”
She stopped because Oscar Bracken was sadly shaking his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really very sorry, madame. The picture you’re talking about has been sold, I’m afraid. If it’s a matter of dimensions, we have a number of excellent pictures …”
This time it was Dorian who shook her head.
“The colors would have been so right in the room,” she said, and put—hoped she put—disappointment in her voice. “And it was—I don’t know how to put it. Exciting? Of course, I don’t know anything about art, really.”
He said, “Appreciation of art is subjective, Mrs.—” He stopped there, but Dorian was almost sure that a name was in his mind, and that it was the correct name. So the charade she was acting out was a little absurd. But she had started it. “I’m very sorry,” Bracken added. “Actually, it had already been sold when you saw it earlier, I’m afraid. We just hadn’t gotten around to taking it down.”
Dorian said “tchk,” or thereabouts, remaining the housewife with a blank wall in a new apartment.
“Have you anything similar by the same artist?” she asked Bracken. “Something about the same size? I’m afraid I didn’t notice the artist’s name.”
“Shayburn,” Bracken said. “Alan Shayburn. No, I’m afraid we haven’t, Mrs. … madame.”
“If he has a studio in New York,” Dorian said, “perhaps I could see him and—or isn’t that the way it’s done, Mr. —?” She made something of a point in looking at the door with a name on it. She said, “Bracken.”
“He hasn’t. Here or anywhere, I’m sorry to say,” Bracken said. “The painting you liked was done two or three years ago. He moved to Arizona. For his health. He died there about a year ago.”
“How sad,” Dorian said. “He painted well, didn’t he? I’d—I guess I’d set my heart on that picture. And my husband said I should go ahead and buy it. He’s very generous about things like that. But fifteen hundred dollars seemed rather a lot. Most of the pictures you have are a good deal less expensive, aren’t they? Was Mr. Shayburn a famous artist? Like the one I read about in the paper this morning? Because he’d killed himself.”
Murder For Art’s Sake Page 12