Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  “Enough, enough.” He turned to Francesca. “I did not use your key.”

  “But you did go back to the Breul House,” Sigrid prodded.

  “Ja,” he sighed and walked over to the windows to stare out at the dark river.

  Francesca’s eyes met Sigrid’s and both women waited silently.

  With his back to them, Thorvaldsen said, “When I returned to my office last night, there was a message on my machine from Dr. Shambley. He apologized for what he’d said about Francesca and Nauman and said he wanted to make it up to me.”

  “Is the message still there?” Sigrid asked. “No, I erased it.” Thorvaldsen sank heavily into the tawny leather chair opposite the low oak-and-glass table, his full glass cradled in those strong hands. The red lump under his eye had begun to turn blue.

  “Did he say what he planned to do?”

  “Not in so many words. Francesca told you before: he could say one thing, but you knew he meant something else.” He looked at his glass, then set it on the table without drinking.

  “This you must understand, frøken Harald—I did not get here by following every rule.”

  He made a sweeping gesture of his hands that encompassed their luxurious surroundings here on the high deck of this ship and, by extension, all that it symbolized. “If I’d done that, I’d still be breaking my back under bales of smoked herring on a dock in Ålborg. Back then, ja, maybe I did sail too close to the wind. But that was then and this is now. Now, my money makes more money. All by itself and all legal. Now, I want things I never dreamed of when I was a kid in Denmark. Now, I have time to learn what these things mean, and money to pay for them.”

  He gestured toward the painting across the room. “Twenty-three years ago, I was walking along a street in København and I saw a picture in the window of a gallery. A little thing, so”—he sketched a small rectangle with his hands, approximately twelve by eighteen inches—“and it stopped me cold. I didn’t know why, I just knew I had to own it. It took me two years to pay for it. My first Nauman picture. Now I own eleven Naumans and they form the heart of my collection. I’ve collected other artists, of course—two Picassos, a Léger, a wonderful Brancusi sculpture, and a number of works by lesser-known practitioners of what I call ‘cerebral abstraction.’”

  Francesca slipped off her brown high-heeled boots and tucked her legs up under her skirt with a rustle of taffeta, but Sigrid remained motionless as Thorvaldsen abruptly reached for his glass.

  “And for all these works,” he said, “I have documents, bills of sale, certificates.” He drank deeply. “But every now and then, people come to me with very beautiful, very rare things and they don’t always have documents and I don’t always ask for receipts. Shambley knew this.”

  Thorvaldsen gave Francesca a crooked smile. “Or, as you said, min dame, he made me think he knew this.”

  “He offered to sell you a stolen painting?” Sigrid asked. “Not in those words, but yes,” Thorvaldsen admitted.

  “At the same time, he made me think that if I didn’t come, questions would be raised by others. Just now—”

  He broke off and gave a sardonic shrug of his broad shoulders. “Let’s say that at this particular moment, I don’t want controversy. Any controversy. Next month, okay. Now, no.”

  “So you went to the Breul House?”

  “Not immediately. But the more I thought of this other matter, the more I decided I had to go, at least hear what he wanted to say. I walked over to Eleventh Avenue and caught a cab going downtown. Got out near Sussex Square. He said to come in without ringing; the front door would be unlocked.”

  “Was it?”

  His affirmative grunt was halfway between a ja and a yeah.

  “And the time?”

  “A few minutes past eleven, I think. The great hall was dim inside. I called his name. No answer. A light was on in the library, so I went in there and sat until I almost fell asleep. Finally, I began to think it was some kind of stupid joke, so I left.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Midnight.” A more genuine smile flitted across his rugged features. “As I came down the steps, the lights on the Christmas tree in the middle of the park went off.”

  Sigrid found it hard to believe that a man like Søren Thorvaldsen would sit meekly in a library and wait almost an hour for someone like Shambley to jerk him around and she said as much.

  Thorvaldsen finished off his drink and set the glass on the table between them with a decisive clink. “Think what you like. You wanted my statement. That’s it.”

  The lump beneath his eye was nearly purple now and Sigrid saw that he winced when he touched it absentmindedly. It was probably pointless to continue with Thorvaldsen tonight, she thought. Better to wait and get him down to her office when he was less belligerent. Time enough then to ask if he’d had a look around for whatever shady art object Shambley may have planned to sell him.

  She slipped on her coat, stowed the pad in one of its pockets, and pulled out her gloves.

  “Did you leave a trail of bread crumbs coming in?” Francesca asked.

  “No,” Sigrid smiled, “but I think I can find my way out.” As she said good night and opened the door, Francesca suddenly slid on her boots and said, “Better let me point you toward the nearest gangplank. Back in a minute, Søren.”

  They walked down the wide passageway to the elevator. Sigrid said, “Do you suppose the ship’s doctor is on board tonight? Someone ought to take a look at that eye.”

  Francesca was amused. “I’m sure Søren’s had worse knocks than that. He made a pass at you, didn’t he?”

  “Not exactly.”

  They rang for an elevator and Sigrid felt the other woman’s appraising eyes as they waited.

  “He’s really not like that,” said Francesca. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’ve been seeing him for two months now and underneath all that diamond-in-the-rough facade, he’s been a perfect gentleman. Too perfect, in some respects.”

  The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. “In fact,” she added, “I was beginning to wonder if he marched to a different drummer or if I was losing it.”

  “You?” Sigrid murmured, feeling like a drab country mouse next to Francesca’s rich shimmer of brown-and-gold taffeta.

  As the elevator doors opened for them, Francesca laid her hand on Sigrid’s arm. “Does it make a difference to you, Sigrid? About Oscar and me, I mean? I saw your face last night when you realized what Roger Shambley meant.”

  Sigrid was silent. She rather doubted if Francesca Leeds had seen any more in her face than the redhead expected— or wanted?—to see; and she had never felt comfortable exchanging girlish confidences.

  Evidently Francesca felt differently. “What Oscar and I had was wonderful while it lasted, but it’s been over for more than a year.”

  And what, Sigrid wondered mutely, was the proper response to that? I’m sorry? I’m glad? Were you glad when it ended? Was Nauman?

  “Ah! There’s the door I came in,” she said, pulling on her gloves and raising the hood of her coat. “I think I can find my way out from here.”

  And beat a coward’s quick exit.

  It was after nine when Sigrid got home. She’d stopped off at a bookstore along the way to begin her Christmas shopping. This was a young cousin’s first Christmas and she couldn’t decide whether to get him a traditional Mother Goose or a lavish pop-up book, so she bought both. Baby Lars had been named for her favorite great-uncle, but she couldn’t neglect the other five in Hilda’s brood, especially when one stop could take care of the whole Carmichael family so simply.

  She had spent a happy hour browsing through Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Watership Down, Treasure Island, and Charlotte’s Web, leafing through dozens more before adding a newly published and beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales for Hilda, who collected them.

  A book for Hilda’s husband wasn’t quite as simple. What does one give a CPA who has everything? Imp
ulsively she chose a book on building Chinese kites. A man with six children might find that diverting.

  Laden with bundles, she arrived at number 42 1/2, a sturdy green wooden gate set into a high nondescript wall on an equally nondescript street full of rundown buildings at the western edge of Greenwich Village. She unlocked the gate and found Roman Tramegra stringing lights on the dogwood tree that stood in the center of their small garden. He was bundled against the icy December night in a bizarre white ski mask, multicolored scarves, and three layers of sweaters and he greeted her gaily in his deep booming voice as she piled her packages on a stone bench.

  “Ah, there you are, dear Sigrid! Had I realized you’d be home so soon, I would have waited. No matter. I shall be the president and you can be the little child that leads us.”

  It had been almost a year since this late-blooming flower child, to use Nauman’s phrase, had wandered into her life and, by an odd set of circumstances, wound up sharing with her an apartment he’d acquired through arcane family connections.

  Although only a few years older than she, he had adopted an avuncular manner and by now felt free to comment on her clothes, her hair, her makeup, and whether or not she was eating properly and getting enough sleep. He was so easily deflected, however, that Sigrid, by nature a solitary person, found him less of an intrusion than she’d feared. She discovered that she enjoyed coming home to a well-lit apartment full of occasionally entrancing dinner aromas—Roman was an adventurous cook; not all his adventures had a happy ending—and his magpie curiosity and verbal flights of fancy kept her amused more often than not.

  He was tall and portly and there was just enough light in their tiny courtyard to make him look like a cross between a Halloween ghost and Frosty the Snowman. The eye and mouth holes of his white ski mask were outlined in black and the dark toggles of his bulky white cardigan marched down his rounded torso like buttons of coal on a tubby snowman as be positioned the last light and held out to Sigrid the plug end of the tree lights and the receptacle end of an extension cord that he’d snaked from the house.

  “Everything’s ready,” he caroled. “Come along, my dear. No speeches, though I really should hum something appropriate. What did the Marine Band play the other night when they lit the White House tree?”

  In his deep basso profundo, he began to hum the national anthem.

  Laughing, Sigrid stepped up to the tree and, in a Monty Python imitation of ribbon-cutting royalty, plugged the two electric cords together and said, “I now declare this Christmas season officially opened.”

  A blaze of colorful lights twinkled through the bare twigs of the dogwood.

  “God bless us, every one!” said Roman.

  Although Mr. Breul never summarily disregarded expert opinion, he had no use for pedantry. Being well-educated and well-informed, he preferred to trust his own eye to pick out the one good thing from a gallery full of old pictures and to leave the bad behind and he had no need to lean upon the advice of others in so doing. So secure was he in his own taste, that he was never disturbed when, as it occasionally happened, an attribution of his purchase was afterward discredited.

  “It matters not who actually painted it. The picture still retains the lofty qualities for which I chose it,” he would say as he continued to give it high place within the collection.

  ERICH BREUL—THE MAN AND HIS DREAM, PRIVATELY

  PUBLISHED 1924 BY THE FRIENDS AND TRUSTEES OF

  THE ERICH BREUL HOUSE

  VIII

  Friday, December 18

  SIGRID MOVED THE MORNING SESSION BRISKLY through the usual update on current cases. Matt Eberstadt brushed powdered sugar from his dark green shirt and maroon tie and reported a conviction in the drug-related homicide trial that finally went to the jury yesterday. “They were only out twenty minutes.”

  The neighborhood canvass around the house that held those infant remains had turned up no one else who could remember the Jurczyks or their tenants from the thirties, but Bernie Peters had already been on the phone to the nursing home in Staten Island, where a staff doctor confirmed Mrs. Palka’s fears about her former East Village friend.

  “Mrs. Barbara Jurczyk Zajdowicz has had a series of small strokes this past year,” Peters said as he tore open a packet of dry creamer and added it to his coffee. “She’s in a wheelchair now and the doctor says some days she’s cogent, most days she’s not. He suggests that we try her immediately after Saturday morning confession.”

  “Who’s her next of kin?” asked Sigrid. “None listed.”

  “Who pays the bills then?”

  “I talked to an individual in their business office, and the way it works is that she paid into something like an annuity when she first went there back in 1971. Probably what she got for the house. On top of that, she signed over her husband’s pension and social security and they’re supposed to take care of her as long as she lives.”

  Elaine Albee shivered and pushed aside her jelly doughnut. She hated the whole idea of growing old, especially here in New York City, and tried not to think about it any more than she could help. It kept getting shoved in her face, though: bag ladies homeless on every street corner; women who once ran but now hobbled down subway platforms, fearfully clutching their lumpy shopping bags as they moved arthritically through doors that closed too fast; women like Barbara Zajdowicz, who’d outlived brothers and sisters and husbands and were now warehoused in nursing homes with no one to watchdog their interests or—

  Lieutenant Harald’s cool voice cut across her private nightmare. “Are you with us, Albee?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Your interview with the Reinickes,” the lieutenant prodded.

  Feeling like a third-grade schoolkid caught goofing off by a strict teacher, a likeness subliminally underlined by the lieutenant’s no-nonsense gray pantsuit and severe white blouse, Albee sat up straight and summarized what she and Lowry had learned from Winston and Marie Reinicke.

  “So there’s no alibi for Reinicke but his wife doesn’t use a cane either,” she finished, wadding up the scrap of paper Jim Lowry had slipped her under the table with P—S??!! scrawled on it in bold block letters.

  “We did pick up something from the Hymans, though,” said Lowry.

  After looking at kids who were looking at toys in F.A.O. Schwarz, he and Lainy’d swung west to the Hymans’ terraced apartment on Central Park South. David and Linda Hyman appeared to be in their midsixties. Mr. Hyman still looked like the rabbinical student he’d once been before he became an economist. His thick and curly beard was more pepper than salt and his dark eyes flashed with intensity as he spoke. A faint rusty glow through her soft white hair hinted that Mrs. Hyman had been a strawberry blonde in her youth. She was small and quiet, but her face had held an amused intelligence as her husband described the things they’d noticed last night.

  “They said they saw Shambley come out of the library with a cat-that-ate-the-canary look on his face last night,” Lowry reported. “He’d been in there with the director, what’s his name? Peake? And the Kohn woman. The Hymans didn’t hear what was said between them, but evidently old Jacob Munson came in on the tail end of the conversation and didn’t much care for what he heard because he told Hyman that maybe he’d made a mistake when he recommended Shambley as a trustee last fall.”

  “After the Hymans left the Breul House, they went on to a dinner party in Brooklyn Heights so it looks like they’re out of it,” said Elaine Albee. “And Mrs. Herzog didn’t like the way Shambley was riding Reinicke Wednesday night, but she and her husband alibi each other and their maid confirms it.”

  Sigrid reported the salient points of her interview with Søren Thorvaldsen and Lady Francesca Leeds and there was a brief discussion of how Thorvaldsen’s movements fit into the timetable they were beginning to assemble.

  Gray-haired Mick Cluett shifted his bulk in a squeaky swivel chair and phlegmatically reported that the Sussex Square canvass had drawn a blank. No convenient nosy neighbor w
ith an insatiable curiosity about the comings and goings of the Breul House.

  He had, however, found an address book in Roger Shambley’s upper West Side apartment, which had helped him locate a brother in Michigan who would be flying in tonight. A cursory examination of the apartment revealed nothing unusual to Cluett’s experienced eyes.

  “Looked like standard stuff to me,” he said. “Small one-bedroom apartment, nothing too fancy, but good stuff, you know? Lots of books and papers, nice pictures on the walls. The brother said he’d let us know if he finds anything odd when he goes through the stuff.”

  They batted it around some more, then Sigrid laid out the day’s assignments: in addition to ongoing cases, there were alibis that needed checking, interviews still to come, a murder weapon yet to be discovered, and that interesting possibility that Shambley might have brokered art works of questionable provenance.

  Someone with a knowledge of art had been specialed in from another division to go through the papers Shambley had left behind in the Breul House attic, and Eberstadt and Peters were given the task of backtracking on Shambley’s last few days as well as taking a quick poll of how his colleagues at the New York Center for the Fine Arts had felt about him.

  Leaving Mick Cluett with a stack of paperwork, Sigrid left with Albee and Lowry to do another sweep through the Erich Breul House.

  Elliott Buntrock leaned on a chair beside the desk like a great blue heron with a potential mullet in view and cocked his head at Miss Ruffton, who was a peppermint cane this morning in red wool suit and white sweater.

  “Looking for something?” he asked. “Looking for what, for God’s sake? And how would he know if he’d found it, as much stuff as this house has crammed into it?”