Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  She tugged open a heavy steel door and they were suddenly and mercifully out of the biting wind and into the silence of a glass-enclosed promenade. Through another door and this time they entered true warmth. Sigrid pushed back the hood of her coat and felt her face begin to thaw.

  They were inside a spacious lobby decorated in tones of peach, melon, and sunshine yellow, but Sigrid was given no time to play tourist. Already, Miss Kristensen was halfway across the wide expanse of floral carpeting, heading for a bank of elevators. Sigrid almost expected to see her pull out a large turnip watch and murmur something about being late. She lengthened her own stride and caught up with the other woman just as the elevator arrived.

  Instead of descending to the depths of the ship, or wherever they kept generators—Sigrid was weak on engineering details—the elevator rose. Soon she was once more following Miss Kristensen through a maze of confusing twists and turns, then down a wide, paneled hall carpeted in rich patterns of luscious tropical colors.

  Abruptly, Miss Kristensen opened the door of a luxurious room with a sweeping view of the river. “Mr. Thorvaldsen’s suite,” she murmured. “If you’ll wait here, Lieutenant Harald, he’ll join you shortly.” She flicked on a soft light over a fully equipped bar that gleamed and sparkled with chrome and crystal and cut-glass decanters like a tiny, perfect jewel box. “May I get you something to drink while you wait?”

  “No, thank you,” said Sigrid. “Then I’ll say godnat.” Wrapping her furs tighter around her small form, the secretary hurried away.

  Sigrid was drawn to the bank of windows at the end of the room where a wide couch had been built into the curve of the window. Upholstered in buttery soft leather of a tawny topaz color, it invited one to curl up and enjoy the view. She slipped off her coat and rested her strong chin on the back of the couch to stare through the glass.

  The 180-degree night view was breathtaking. Across the water, a huge neon coffee cup dripped its good-to-the-last drop in front of New Jersey’s lights; on the near shore, the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan became towering tiers of cubed light; while upriver, the George Washington Bridge spanned the two shores with graceful, glittering loops.

  The city’s stately nighttime beauty, coupled with the ship’s warmth and quiet, made Sigrid relax. It had been a long day and as the moments passed, relaxation turned to increasing lethargy. Just as she was beginning to think she ought to take a turn about the deck to wake herself up, the door opened and Søren Thorvaldsen entered.

  He was casually dressed in dark wool slacks and a white hand-knit fisherman’s sweater that had a fresh smear of grease on the left cuff, and he was followed by a waiter whose tray held a silver thermos jug of steaming hot drink and plates of cheese and crackers and smoked fish.

  “Can’t offer you much,” Thorvaldsen said as the waiter spread the food on the blond oak table before her, then left. “The kitchen staff’s off duty until tomorrow morning.”

  “This wasn’t necessary,” Sigrid told him, but she was suddenly conscious of hunger and took the plate he offered with no further protest.

  The hot drinks were Tom and Jerries, not a concoction Sigrid cared for, although she could appreciate how fitting it was for the cold night and for the yuletide season.

  “Glaedelig ful,” said Thorvaldsen, lifting his glass toward her.

  “Skål,” she replied.

  The spicy hot rum slid down easily and began to create its own inner warmth.

  “I didn’t realize you were such a hands-on shipowner,” Sigrid said, watching Thorvaldsen dab with a linen napkin at the grease on his sweater. There was an unpretentious, raw vitality about the man that kept one subliminally reminded of the working-class roots even when he wasn’t boasting of them.

  “That generator could wind up costing me an extra eighteen hundred unnecessary meals if we’re a half day late leaving port,” the Dane said with a shrug. He finished his drink and poured another from the thermos. “Plus the extra time and labor to serve and clean up afterwards.”

  Sigrid cut herself a wedge of soft Havarti and spread it on a slice of dark bread. “All because it leaves in the evening instead of noon?”

  “Everything that happens aboard ship, every detail, has a price tag. Leaving a half day late could mean getting into Bermuda long after lunch instead of well before. This is a very competitive business. Something goes over cost, it comes out of profits. When that happens, I want to know why.”

  The serious lines in his open rugged face crinkled as he grinned and added, “Eighteen hundred lunches would just about buy one Oscar Nauman painting.”

  Sigrid followed his eyes to a picture on the far wall, in a place of honor beyond the bar. Its colors and rhythms were arresting: very manly, very—now that she looked at it— Nauman. She was surprised to realize that she could recognize the painting as indisputably his. It was a large abstract in those topaz and rust tones that she now identified with Francesca Leeds.

  In fact this whole room with its blond oak, its amber and russet-colored couches and chairs, its gold chrome and its touches of burnt orange might have been designed as a setting for Francesca Leeds.

  “Which came first?” she asked, curious. “The picture or the decor?”

  “The picture, of course,” he answered, apparently surprised that she would need to ask.

  Sigrid gave an inward sigh. It was awkward to be the only person in Nauman’s world who wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about his work. She didn’t wonder that this self-made millionaire could respond so directly to the strength of Nauman’s art. Intellectually, she, too, could appreciate the games Nauman played with color and mathematics, with subtle rhythms and thematic variations; and she wished she liked it more. But it was just too abstract to move her emotionally, unlike the old German painters whom she loved for their spare asceticism and because they were rooted in the particular.

  “—and perhaps it appeals to me precisely because I have spent so many years in hard serious work, but there’s always Nauman’s playful quality,” Thorvaldsen was saying.

  Wasn’t there just, Sigrid thought wryly, momentarily diverted from Thorvaldsen’s enthusiasm by certain memories of Nauman’s playfulness.

  “—an artist of his own time and one who isn’t afraid to leave the loose ends. The high purpose of art is to remind us that something is always left undone—to remind us that it’s not human to expect too much from method and plan. Only third-rate artists paint perfect pictures. Real life isn’t tidy,” said Thorvaldsen. “Look at this ship—all a fantasy!”

  Thorvaldsen tilted the nearly empty thermos jug inquiringly. “More?”

  Sigrid shook her head and covered the top of her glass with her hand. “No.”

  She pulled a notepad from the outer pocket of her coat and placed it on the table. “You do realize this isn’t a social visit?”

  “Too bad.” His voice was slightly slurred, but his eyes were wary.

  He seemed to be drinking quite a lot, Sigrid noted. That was the trouble with mixing alcohol with eggs and spices. Those hot Tom and Jerries were like eggnog: if one hadn’t eaten, it was too easy to treat them like food instead of drink.

  Sigrid patted her other coat pockets and finally the pockets of her dark blue jacket and gray slacks without finding a pen.

  Smiling, Thorvaldsen handed her his, a slim gold-filled object. His fingers brushed hers and lingered a moment before he released the pen.

  Deliberately? “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I gather you’d already heard about Dr. Roger Shambley when I called before.”

  “Yes. Someone told Francesca and she telephoned me.” Thorvaldsen buttered a cracker, added a morsel of smoked fish, and popped the whole thing in his mouth.

  “How long had you known Dr. Shambley?”

  The shipowner swallowed. “I didn’t. Heard his name, of course, and knew he was an art historian writing a book, but that’s all.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Thorvaldsen gave a s
hort explosive laugh and spoke a couple of one-syllable words in Danish that need no translation. “You were there, frøken Harald. You heard him threaten me.”

  “Yes. What did he mean?”

  The big Dane shrugged. “Who knows what small men dream?”

  “You weren’t afraid of his threat?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Would you describe, please, what happened at the Breul house after Nauman and I left?” asked Sigrid.

  “After you and Nauman left, it became boring.” Thorvaldsen leaned back in a creamy leather chair with his left ankle resting on his right knee and his brawny hands clasping his left shin. “I spoke with that curator chap, Buntrock, for a few minutes. Very knowledgeable about Nauman’s work. Then I left with Lady Francesca Leeds. About eight-thirty, I think.”

  “Shambley didn’t reappear?”

  “He did not.”

  “And then?”

  “And then?” he mimicked. “You wish to know what happened after we left the Breul House?”

  “You had words with Dr. Shambley, laid hands on him, almost hit him,” Sigrid said calmly. “A few hours later, he was dead. You may not want to answer without a lawyer—”

  “Lawyers!” Thorvaldsen snorted scornfully. “—but I have to ask you to account for those hours up until, say, one A.M.”

  “Eight-thirty till one A.M.,” he repeated slowly. “Yes.”

  “We had dinner reservations at Le Petit Coq,” he said, naming an expensive French restaurant a few blocks west of Sussex Square. “After that I put Francesca into a taxi for the Maintenon and came back to my office to work.”

  His blue eyes were sardonic. “You have a most unprofessional look on your face, frøken Harald. You are surprised to hear that she went back to her hotel alone?”

  “Not at all,” Sigrid lied. “You and Lady Francesca parted at what time?”

  “Ten-fifteen, ten-thirty. I didn’t look at my watch.”

  “And then?”

  “I worked until midnight, went to my apartment on the top floor, had a drink, and went to bed. Alone.”

  “Is there anyone who can confirm that? Miss Kristensen, perhaps?”

  “Not even Miss Kristensen is that dedicated.”

  “What about a night watchman or a cleaning person?” He shook his head and his fair hair was like old mellow gold in the lamplight of this golden stateroom. “Sorry. There’s only my word.”

  “Your word?” Her eyes were skeptical chips of gray slate as she lifted them to his.

  “You’re an odd woman,” he said, standing abruptly. He stretched out his hand to her. “Come, please.”

  Puzzled, Sigrid stood up.

  He pointed toward the glass.

  Out in the channel, a tugboat moved slowly past the Sea Dancer. Car lights passed in an intermittent stream along the expressway, and high above the Palisades could be seen the red and green flashes of airplane lights.

  “In the glass,” Thorvaldsen murmured and Sigrid saw themselves reflected as in a dark mirror.

  “It did not surprise me that Oscar had taken Francesca,” he said thickly. “But you—!”

  He tried to pull her to him. “Mr. Thorvaldsen—”

  “Oscar Nauman is a man of fire. You can’t be as cold as you look.”

  He put his arms around her as if to kiss her. “Are you crazy? Stop it!” she cried and, when he didn’t release her, kicked him in the shins. Hard.

  As Thorvaldsen tightened his hold, Sigrid’s police training shifted into automatic. She abruptly relaxed, leaned into him, and a moment later, sent the Dane crashing to the floor.

  Instinctively, her hand went to the handle of the .38 holstered in a shoulder harness beneath her jacket as she waited to see how Thorvaldsen would react.

  At that moment a voice behind her said, “Is this a private game or can anybody play?”

  Sigrid released the gun handle, took a deep breath, and slowly turned. “Hello, Lady Francesca.”

  Francesca Leeds closed the door behind her and looked from Sigrid, breathing hard in the middle of the room, to Søren Thorvaldsen, now sitting on the floor and rubbing his left eye where it had banged against the low table. Her smile was tentative as she said, “I’m sure there’s some perfectly rational explanation for what’s happened here.”

  “Not really,” said Sigrid. “Mr. Thorvaldsen was a bit uncertain about a woman’s ability to defend herself and I’m afraid he goaded me into a demonstration. Quite unprofessional of me. I apologize, Mr. Thorvaldsen.”

  She had expected him to be sullen. Instead, he came to his feet with an easy smile and a shrug.

  “No apologies, frøken Harald. You showed me what I wished to know.” He greeted the elegant redhead with a kiss on her cool cheek. “You see, Lsøde ven? I’m still an Ålborg roughneck.”

  Not fully convinced, but willing to let it pass, Francesca threw her mink coat over a nearby chair, added her gloves to the heap, and headed for the bar. “I feel as if I’m two drinks behind. Fix anyone else something?”

  “Not for me,” Sigrid murmured. “Just an ice cube,” Thorvaldsen said ruefully, as his fingers examined the lump swelling beneath his eye. “You come in time to rescue me, Francesca. I’m being grilled about Dr. Shambley.”

  Francesca paused with a decanter of Irish whiskey in her graceful hands. “Should I be leaving then, Sigrid?”

  “Why?” asked Thorvaldsen.

  Sigrid stood. “Perhaps it would be better if you both came to my office tomorrow and made formal statements.”

  “Me?” Francesca seemed surprised. “Why on earth would you need a statement from me? I barely knew the man.”

  “But you have a key to the Breul House, don’t you?” asked Sigrid.

  “Well, yes, but— Oh, don’t be daft, Sigrid! He was a grotty little man but you can’t think I went back there last night and sneaked in and killed him?”

  “Can you tell me where you were between eight-thirty and one A.M.?” Sigrid asked bluntly.

  “To be sure, I can,” she said in her Celtic lilt. She brought Thorvaldsen an ice cube wrapped in a napkin and sat down with her drink at the other end of the couch from Sigrid. “Søren and I finished dinner shortly before ten, then I took a cab to the Maintenon. Some friends of mine were just going into the lounge when I got in around ten-thirty—George and Bitsy Laufermann—and they insisted that I join them. We stayed for the midnight show. I’ll give you their phone number, if you wish, and you can also ask the maître d’. He’ll tell you I was there.”

  Sigrid jotted down the names and numbers, then asked, “What about your key to the Breul House? Do you carry it with you?”

  “On my key ring, yes,” said Francesca. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to see it.”

  She moved so beautifully, Sigrid thought, watching as the other woman crossed to her fur coat. Tonight she wore a dark brown taffeta dress edged with a stiff, narrow self-ruffle at the neck and wrists, shot with gold threads that gleamed with every swing of the skirt. Her lustrous hair fell in copper tangles about the perfect oval of her face.

  Even as Sigrid went through the formalities of this interview with one level of her mind, another level cataloged Francesca’s almost flawless beauty. Thorvaldsen’s advances had been clumsy and insulting and she should have decked him harder, but she could almost sympathize with his basic confusion. How could Oscar Nauman possibly be attracted to her when he’d had one of the most beautiful women in New York?

  Last night she had meant it when she told Nauman she wasn’t jealous of the women he’d known before her. Tonight, on this ship, she found herself wondering who had initiated their split—Francesca or Nauman?

  Francesca Leeds dug into one of the deep pockets and came out with a handful of keys. She detached one and handed it to Sigrid. It was tagged EBH.

  “I’d like to keep this for now,” Sigrid said, wrapping it in a clean sheet of notepaper. She quickly wrote out a receipt for it. “One more question: do you know why Roger Shambley was
killed?”

  The copper-haired woman resumed her place on the couch and her brown eyes regarded Sigrid humorously. “Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut?”

  Sigrid looked up inquiringly.

  Francesca shrugged. “I only know what I’ve heard.”

  “Which is—?”

  “Word around art circles is that Roger Shambley liked to know things. He listened and he heard and he was a bloody genius with insinuations. People often thought he knew more than he did, but by the time they realized he didn’t, it was too late because they’d already let too much slip.” She looked into her glass and laughed. “Does that make any sense?”

  “He was a røven af fjerde division,” Thorvaldsen growled, the ice cube still held to his eye.

  “That, too, if it means what I think it does,” Francesca nodded. “He liked to know unpleasant things about you and then rub your nose in it.” She tilted her glass to her lips and drank the rest of her undiluted whiskey. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  More specific, she would not be; so Sigrid turned her gaze back to the man, who had taken Francesca’s glass over to the bar for a refill. “Would you prefer to finish your statement down at headquarters tomorrow, Mr. Thorvaldsen?”

  “I thought I had finished already,” he said, pouring Irish whiskey into two glasses.

  Sigrid flipped back several pages in her notebook. “You told me you worked until midnight and then went to bed.”

  “Ja.”

  “Yet we have a witness who saw you at the Breul House at midnight.”

  That finally got under the shell of amused condescension that he’d adopted since Francesca’s arrival.

  His blue eyes narrowed. “He must be mistaken.”

  “No,” she answered flatly.

  Francesca looked up at him as he returned with her new drink.

  “Søren?”

  He ignored her. “And if I say he lies, it is my word against his. Then what happens?”

  “Then your people here will be questioned. No matter what you think, if you returned after midnight, someone will have seen you. Lady Francesca’s key to the Breul House will be analyzed. If the lab finds any waxy or soapy residue, that might indicate that it’d been duplicated without her knowledge. We would probably look more closely into your activities, see if Roger Shambley had learned something interesting about you—how you acquired all the pieces in your art collection, for instance. And then—”