Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  This time, Nauman’s smile was for her. “Come and meet Francesca,” he said.

  The visitor wore brown corduroy knickers crammed inside knee-length high-heeled brown boots and a loose pullover knitted in tones of russet and amber. Windswept auburn hair tangled itself around her fair face and her classic features appeared almost flawless as she put down the painting she’d been inspecting and came to Sigrid with her hand outstretched.

  “I’m Francesca Leeds, and I’m so pleased to meet you at last,” she said with a smile in her warm Irish voice. “Oscar’s told me all about you.”

  “Has he?” Sigrid mumbled. “Have I?” asked Nauman, frowning at a picture Lady Francesca had unearthed from earlier years.

  “Well, somebody did, acushla. If not you, perhaps Hester Kohn or Doris Quinn.” She turned back to Sigrid. “Anyhow, I know you’re a police officer in the city. A detective, right?”

  Sigrid nodded. “And I’m an old friend of Oscar’s come to talk him into saving one of New York’s landmarks. You must help me persuade him.”

  There was something curiously familiar about the woman but Sigrid couldn’t quite decide why. As Francesca Leeds described the Breul House’s near destitution and the benefits an Oscar Nauman retrospective could provide, Sigrid had an opportunity to study her features more closely.

  The bright glare of snowlight was not kind to the woman’s skin. It washed out the golden tones and made her seem too pale. It also revealed tiny lines around her eyes and nose so that Sigrid revised her estimate of age upward. Instead of thirty, Francesca Leeds was probably closer to forty. Nevertheless, she remained a stunning creature with the sort of poised assurance that often destroyed Sigrid’s.

  Not this time, she told herself, making a conscious effort not to tighten up. But it was difficult. Despite the other woman’s friendly smile and easy conversation, Sigrid knew that, she, too, was being studied and cataloged. She should have been used to it by now. Most of Nauman’s friends fell into two camps: those who were amused by their relationship and those who were patently puzzled. Very few accepted her without question.

  Lady Francesca appeared to have both amusement and curiosity well in hand and seemed bent on making Sigrid her ally as she pulled a small picture down from one of the racks.

  “Think of it, Sigrid: Would you not love to see Oscar’s whole career in one well-chosen show?”

  “Pinned to the wall like a bunch of dead butterflies?” Nauman asked sardonically. “Forget it. Anyhow, you’re talking to the wrong person. She doesn’t like my work.”

  Francesca Leeds started to laugh, realized Oscar wasn’t entirely joking, and looked at the thin brunette with fresh interest. “Really?”

  Sigrid shrugged as she studied the small purple-and-black abstract Francesca had held out to her. “He exaggerates.”

  The implication not lost upon her ladyship, who knew something must exist before it can be exaggerated. How perfectly ironic that Oscar should be snared by someone indifferent to his artistic achievements, someone who could see him as a fallible man standing unclothed in fame and accomplishment. Francesca deliberately turned her mind away from the memory of Oscar’s lean hard frame unclothed in anything, but there was veiled mirth in her brown eyes as she delicately probed, “Then your interests will be lying in music or literature, rather than the visual?”

  “She’s visual,” Oscar said.

  His rangy body continued to lounge in the deep chair, but his tone was sharper than necessary, defensive even?

  Still holding the small oil from one of Oscar’s middle periods, Sigrid glanced from one to the other, aware of a sudden tension in the air. She handed the violent abstract back to Francesca Leeds. “Even if I don’t completely understand them, I do like some of Nauman’s pictures.”

  Oscar abruptly leaned forward to poke the fire and add another log to the blaze. “Ask her anything about the late Gothic, though.”

  “Late Gothic? You mean Dürer? Baldung? Holbein?” “And Lucas Cranach,” Sigrid nodded. “Mabuse, too. And earlier, Jan van Eyck, of course.”

  “Ah,” said Francesca, enlightened now. “The Flemish. Precision. Order.” She waved her hand to encompass Oscar’s cluttered studio, the vibrant abstractions, the large canvases slashed with color and free-flowing lines. “Anarchy repels you?”

  “I am a police officer,” Sigrid said lightly. “And I do know enough about modern art to know there’s structure lurking in there somewhere.”

  Oscar laughed and stood up. “Stay for lunch, Francesca? I’m making my famous coq au vin.”

  Francesca Leeds pushed back the heavy auburn hair from her face and turned her wrist to consult the small gold watch. “Can’t, acushla. My hosts are expecting me back with their vehicle.”

  She smiled up at him as she reached for her brown suede jacket. “I’m not giving up, though. A retrospective’s nothing like a ninth symphony, Oscar, and the Breul House really does need you.”

  She turned to Sigrid, who echoed the formulas of “so nice to meet you; perhaps we’ll see each other again,” and both were pleased to realize the formalities weren’t totally insincere.

  Exchanging comments on road conditions, icy patches, and the infrequency of snowplows through these back roads, Oscar and Sigrid followed Francesca out onto the deck. Oscar had cleared it earlier, as well as the steps leading down to the drive; but except for Francesca’s single line of boot prints curving up from a borrowed van parked beside the road, the crusted snow around the house was unbroken.

  “Driving’s not bad,” said Francesca. “The van has chains and four-wheel drive.”

  Even with all identifying landmarks blanketed by the snow, she seemed to know exactly how the drive curved, and walked confidently out to the van without tripping or putting a foot wrong. It was something Sigrid noted without actually considering as Francesca waved good-bye and called back, “At least you didn’t say no.”

  “No!” Oscar grinned. “Too late,” she laughed and drove away in a flurry of snow.

  Circling his studio to the rear deck, Oscar thoughtfully contemplated the ravine, where snow lay deep and crisp beneath pines and hardwoods so thickly branched that winter sunlight barely penetrated.

  “The surface is too soft for conventional sleds,” he observed.

  Over the years, various visiting children had left plastic sliding sheets behind in the garage, and Oscar had discovered them while searching for a snow shovel.

  His assertion that their appetites needed building sounded ridiculous to Sigrid, even as Nauman bundled her into a jacket and boots. Minutes later, she found herself alone upon a sheet of plastic, careening downhill on her stomach, half terrified and wholly exhilarated.

  It was like being eight years old again—pushing off, oaring herself along with mittened hands, that slow gathering of speed, crashing through ice-coated grasses, dodging tree roots and low-lying branches, a belly-dropping sense of doom as she crested a small ridge and became briefly airborne before thudding back to cushioned earth again. Another straight shoot down the hillside and she hurtled toward a creek bank lined with dormant blackberry bushes and huge granite boulders, trying to judge exactly when she should come down hard with a braking foot to land in a laughing, tangled heap beside her companion.

  Delighted by the sheer physicality of the experience, Sigrid unhooked her leg from Nauman’s elbow and kissed him exuberantly.

  By their fourth trip down, Oscar had a long briar scratch across his forehead and Sigrid had jammed her right index finger. Climbing back to the top of the ravine each time left them winded, wet, and red-cheeked, yet both were somehow reluctant to end this brief return to childhood pleasures and go inside.

  On the other hand, warmth and the expectation of good food did offer certain inducements. Not to mention the adult pleasures of stripping off their wet clothes and rediscovering other physical joys.

  “What are you smiling about?” Nauman asked suspiciously.

  “I was thinking about raw clams on
the half-shell.” “You want to eat first?” “No.” Her slender fingers touched the red scratch on his head, caressed his left ear, then slipped to his bare shoulder. “I was remembering my cousin Carl. One of my Southern cousins. He bought a cottage down on Harker’s Island and it took him more than ten years before he’d even taste a raw clam. He’s been trying to make up for lost time ever since.”

  “I don’t know that I like being compared to raw clams,” Nauman grumbled.

  “But they’re so delicious,” she murmured wickedly, running her hand down his muscular flank.

  * * *

  Lunch was just as leisurely, and afterwards, Sigrid curled up in one of the large chairs before the fire in Nauman’s studio and opened the Times to the puzzle page. The large crossword appeared to contain a humorous yuletide limerick, and she became so absorbed in penning in the answers that she didn’t notice when Nauman, perched on a tall stool at his drawing table, began to sketch her, his pencil moving rapidly across the pages of his notebook.

  He hadn’t done a figurative portrait in years, not since his student days, probably, but there was something about her eyes, the line of her long neck, the angularity of the way she sat that intrigued him. If he could catch her on paper—

  Sigrid glanced up. Nauman’s eyes were a clear deep blue and the intelligence which usually blazed there had become remote and fathomless. She moved uneasily and saw the remoteness disappear as his eyes softened.

  “What did Francesca Leeds mean when she said a retrospective isn’t a ninth symphony?” she asked, abandoning her puzzle.

  Nauman closed the notebook before she could become self-conscious and began to relight his pipe. “It’s something that seemed to start with the composer Gustav Mahler.”

  He looked down at the elaborately carved pipe in his hand as if he’d never before seen it. Today’s was shaped like a dragon’s head and fragrant smoke curled from the bowl.

  “Mahler noticed that Beethoven and Bruckner had both died after composing ninth symphonies, so he decided nine was a jinx. Tried to cheat—Das Lied von der Erde after his eighth. Said it wasn’t a symphony—was, though. Decided he was being silly, wrote his ninth. Died before he finished tenth. Dvorák and Vaughan Williams, too.”

  “But surely that’s a coincidence?” From the way Nauman’s speech had suddenly become telegraphic, Sigrid knew he was absorbed by parallel lines of thought. “By the time a composer reaches his ninth symphony, wouldn’t he be old and near the end of his life anyhow?”

  “Like an artist with a retrospective,” Nauman said bleakly.

  “Then you are superstitious?” “And you’re avoiding the issue. I’ll be sixty goddamned years old next July, old enough to be your—”

  “How many symphonies did Mozart compose?” she interrupted.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Forty or fifty.” “And he was thirty-five when he died. How many retrospectives do you think Picasso had before he kicked off at the tender age of—what was it? Ninety? Ninety-one?”

  “Okay, okay.” Nauman smiled, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll do it.”

  “Only if you want to,” Sigrid murmured demurely, and suddenly they were no longer talking about art exhibits.

  BURRIS BROTHERS, DRY GOODS

  806 Broadway

  To Acct. of: Mr. Erich Breul Aug. 25th, 1900

  7 Sussex Square

  New York City

  Parasol, blue silk $1.25

  Hamburg edging, 2” wide

  20 yds. @ $0.06 per yd 1.20

  2 silk glove cases @ $0.55 ea 1.10

  Linen napkins,

  3 doz. @ $0.50 per doz 1.50

  $5.05

  “We allow 3 per cent. discount for cash.”

  _________________

  May 6, 1901, from Wm. Fenton & Co.,

  Agents for Genevieve Carlton:

  “Maeve’s Gallop” $200.

  Frame 12.50

  $212.50

  July 22, 1901, from Atwater & Sons:

  Babbage engr., “Running Sea” $22.

  Frame 6.

  $28.

  _________________

  MISCELLANEOUS BILLS AND MEMORANDA.

  (From the Erich Breul House Collection)

  IV

  Tuesday, December 15

  BENJAMIN PEAKE ARRIVED AT THE ERICH BREUL House shortly after ten to find his office invaded by Roger Shambley, Ph.D., scholar, newest trustee, and all-around bastard.

  Shambley was shorter than his own five eleven by a good six inches and ugly as a mud fence with a dark, shaggy head that was two sizes too large for his small, stooped figure. As far as Benjamin Peake was concerned, expensive hairstyling and custom-tailored clothes were probably what kept children from throwing rocks whenever Shambley passed them in the street.

  “Can I help you with something?” Peake asked sarcastically as Shambley ignored his arrival and continued to paw through the filing cabinets at the end of his long L-shaped office. He had to stand on tiptoe to read the files at the back of the top drawer.

  “I doubt it.” Shambley paused beside the open drawer and made a show of checking his watch against the clock over the director’s beautiful mahogany desk. “I’ve only been here two weeks to your two years but I probably know more about what’s in these files than you do.”

  “Now let me think,” Peake responded urbanely as he hung his topcoat in a concealed closet and smoothed his brown hair. “I believe it was William Buckley who spoke of the scholar-squirrel mentality, busily gathering every little stray nut that’s fallen from the tree of knowledge.”

  “Actually, it was Gore Vidal,” said Shambley, “but don’t let facts spoil your pleasure in someone else’s well-turned phrases. I’m sure Buckley’s said something equally clever about academic endeavor.”

  Annoyed, Benjamin Peake retreated through an inner door that led to the butler’s pantry.

  Hope Ruffton was pouring herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee and she greeted him with a pleasant smile.

  When Peake took over the directorship and was introduced to her two years ago, he’d returned that first smile with condescending friendliness. “Hope, isn’t it?”

  “Only if it’s Ben,” she’d replied with equally friendly condescension.

  “Oh. Well. Excuse me, Ms. Ruffton.” “Miss will do,” she’d said pleasantly.

  If he’d had the authority and if old Jacob Munson hadn’t been standing by, twinkling and beaming at them like some sort of Munchkin matchmaker, Peake would have fired her then and there.

  He still did not completely understand how foolish that would have been although there were times when he uneasily suspected it. But he did soon realize that professionalism was more than semantics to Miss Ruffton. She had ignored his sulks and, with cool efficiency and tact, had deflected him from stupid blunders as he settled into the directorship. The irony of being trained for his position by a nominal subordinate went right over Peake’s head and Hope Ruffton was too subtle by far to let him see her own amusement.

  These days, with Roger Shambley poking his nose into every cranny and making veiled allusions to certain lapses of competence, Miss Ruffton’s efficiency gave Peake a sort of Dutch courage. He might not always have a clear grasp of details, but Miss Ruffton did; and without articulating it, not even to himself, Peake trusted her not to let him make a total ass of himself in front of Shambley.

  So he smiled at her gratefully, accepted the coffee she poured for him, and said, “You look like a Christmas card this morning.”

  A Victorian card, he would have added, straightening his own red-and-green striped tie, except that he was afraid she might tartly remind him that most Victorian cards pictured only blond, blue-eyed Caucasian maidens. Her white silk blouse was tucked into a flowing skirt of dark green wool and it featured a high tight collar and cuffs, all daintily edged in lace. Her thick black hair was brushed into a smooth chignon and tied with a red grosgrain ribbon that echoed a red belt at her waist and clear red nails on her sma
ll brown fingers. She wore a simple gold locket and her drop earrings were old-fashioned garnets set in gold filigree that caught the light as she returned Peake’s greeting.

  “Too bad about the MacAndrews Foundation,” she said. “They turned us down again?”

  Miss Ruffton nodded, her dark eyes sympathetic. “I left the letter on your desk.”

  “Oh well,” he said, trying to make the best of it, “we weren’t really counting on their support.”

  She gazed into her coffee cup with detachment. There was no way to break bad news gently. “But we were counting on Tybault Industries.”

  His thinly handsome face grew anxious. “They’ve withdrawn their annual donation?”

  “Cut it,” she said succinctly. “By a third. With a hint that it may be cut by another third next year.”

  “Oh, God!” Peake moaned, pacing back and forth from his office door on one side of the room to the dining room door on the far side. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned altruism?”

  “At least the projection figures look good on the Friends membership drive,” she said, but Peake refused to be comforted.

  “Penny-ante. We’ve got to find a way to raise more real money or the Erich Breul House is going right down the slop chute,” he predicted gloomily.

  He started back to his office and hesitated, remembering that Shambley was probably still there.

  “What is Dr. Shambley really looking for?” asked Miss Ruffton, with that uncanny knack she had of reading his thoughts.

  “God knows,” he muttered drearily. “Fresh material for his new book on late nineteenth-century American artists, I suppose.” And then, although Peake seldom consciously picked up on Miss Ruffton’s subtle inflections, her last words sank in and triggered an automatic alert. “What did you mean ‘really’?”

  “We’ve allowed other historians access to the Breul papers,” she said slowly. “Dr. Kimmelshue always granted permission. And not just artists or art historians. We’ve had antique dealers, students of interior design—”