by FRANCES
She went to the long sofa which faced the fireplace and sat on it and put her handbag on the coffee table in front of it. Shapiro went over and stood in front of her and watched her open the bag. He could look down into it; could watch her fingers move certainly for what she wanted. There was not any jumble in the handbag. She did not need to paw through it, stir anxiously through it, as women usually stir through handbags. Her fingers went at once to a pocket in the bag and came out with a folded sheet of paper.
Not as naive as she had pretended, Shapiro thought. She had come prepared. She handed him the sheet of paper and he unfolded it. Very neatly typed, the passage he read was. Electric typewriter. He read:
“I hereby authorize Mrs. Myra Dedek, of—East Seventy-ninth Street, New York City, in the event of my death, to sell such paintings of mine as may be necessary to realize a sum sufficient to reimburse her for cash advances she has made to me over past years. After she has recovered the amount due her, I authorize her to continue the sale and, after deducting her customary percentage, to pay the residue to my estate.”
It was signed “Shackleford Jones,” and the signature had been notarized. The notarization was dated three years ago the previous November.
When he had finished reading, she held a hand out and said, “Satisfied?” But he did not put the again folded paper into the hand held out for it. He gave it to Cook to read. When Cook had read it, he looked at Shapiro and raised his eyebrows.
“Give Mrs. Dedek a receipt for it,” Shapiro told him.
Myra Dedek pushed herself violently from the sofa. She said, “You can’t do that! You haven’t any right to. My lawyer—”
“You’ll get it back,” Shapiro said. “See your lawyer by all means, Mrs. Dedek. I’ll sign the receipt, Tony.”
Tony Cook tore out of his notebook a sheet on which he had written, “Received from Mrs. Myra Dedek a notarized document purporting to be an authorization to sell paintings by Shackleford Jones, dec.” He dated it. Nathan Shapiro signed it. He gave it to the trim dark-haired woman and for a moment he thought she was going to tear it up. But she put it in her handbag. She said, “You’ll be sorry about this, Lieutenant.”
Shapiro thought that quite possible, but did not say so. He might well be exceeding his authority, which was to clean up odds and ends after a suicide. If, of course, this was suicide. Murder would make it quite another matter.
“The advances he mentions,” Shapiro said. “Want to tell me about those, Mrs. Dedek?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Shapiro answered, first, with a sigh. Then he said, “No, you don’t have to tell me anything. That’s quite right. You and Mr. Williams can go any time you like. Without taking any pictures with you.”
“If I—”
“No. You still can’t take the pictures. Not now. With this—” he waggled the authorization Cook had given back to him and then put it in a jacket pocket—“you’ll probably get them. But you’ll have to do it legally. You did advance Mr. Jones money?”
“For years. There’s not really a secret about it. A good many dealers …”
All at once, she was willing to talk. It was possible, Shapiro thought, that she had come prepared to talk, if she needed to.
A good many dealers advanced money to painters who, they thought, might eventually sell, on the reasonable assumption that a promising painter will be more productive if he doesn’t starve to death. It was a gamble, obviously. As often as not it was a losing gamble. Sometimes it paid off.
“It’s all a gamble,” she said. “We set up a gallery and that costs money. We keep it running. Pay the rent. We show paintings and sell them and get our percentage. If we sell them.”
“You sold Jones’s paintings?”
“Some of them. Five years ago it looked as if he was a comer. Recently—” She spread her hands to finish the sentence.
“Not so good?”
“Not at the ridiculous prices he set on things. Anyway—”
This time she shrugged her shoulders. Shapiro waited.
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About the Authors
Frances and Richard Lockridge were some of the most popular names in mystery during the forties and fifties. Having written numerous novels and stories, the husband-and-wife team was most famous for their Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries. What started in 1936 as a series of stories written for the New Yorker turned into twenty-six novels, including adaptions for Broadway, film, television, and radio. The Lockridges continued writing together until Frances’s death in 1963, after which Richard discontinued the Mr. and Mrs. North series and wrote other works until his own death in 1982.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1961 by Frances and Richard Lockridge
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5075-3
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THE NATHAN SHAPIRO MYSTERIES
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