Corpus Christmas

by Margaret Maron

  “If I do it—” Nauman began mildly. “You’re doing it!” the curator interrupted. “And high time, too.”

  “—it’ll be for Jacob.” “Loyalty. How touching. But why here? With your reputation and my connections, we could easily have the Whitney. Or what about a triple header? Any three galleries you name, any part of the city. Uptown, downtown, Soho, the Village—you say it, you’ve got it. But for the love of God, Montresor, not here.”

  “Nobody’s threatening to wall you up with a cask of Amontillado,” Nauman grinned. “You don’t have to get involved. It was Francesca’s idea; I told her you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Francesca Leeds is the only one with any sense on this whole damn project. Of course I’m interested.”

  The art world was always a little crazy but Elliott Buntrock was beginning to feel as if he were caught in a comic opera version of “This Is the House that Jack Built.” Francesca Leeds’ wealthy shipowner wanted to sponsor a Nauman retrospective. Everyone knew Nauman refused to have one. Somehow Francesca had known that Munson was Nauman’s Achilles’ heel, so she’d gone looking for Munson’s, and, of all the absurd people in the world, wouldn’t you know it’d turn out to be that goof-up Benjamin Peake?

  Buntrock wasn’t quite sure why Peake’s well-being was important to old Jacob Munson. Francesca thought it had something to do with Munson’s only son who’d been killed years ago.

  Anyhow, there they were: Peake’s career was wobbling again, so once Jacob Munson was persuaded that a Nauman show would shore it up, he’d put the screws to Nauman, who was evidently unwilling to refuse his old friend.

  Exasperated, Buntrock pulled harder on his silk scarf, which only hunched his angled head forward and increased his resemblance to a reluctant stork being pulled along to his doom. Only a fool would turn down the chance to curate a major Nauman exhibition, but here?

  They had entered the gallery. It was the first time Buntrock had ever been here and he just stood shaking his head from side to side. “The most important abstract painter of our time in a shrine to nineteenth-century kitsch? You’re crazy, Oscar.”

  Until their conversation, Nauman had not made up his mind but now the trendy curator’s patent dismay roused the imp of perversion that lurked in his soul.

  “The Breul House or no house, Buntrock. Take it or leave it.”

  “Done!” Elliott Buntrock groaned, already hearing the disbelieving jeers that would rise from his compatriots in the art world when they learned what he’d agreed to. He looked down the long space beyond the archway, to the drawing room, where the others were gathered around the piano. “Shall we tell them the wedding’s on?”

  “Be my guest,” said Oscar. “I want another drink.”

  In the dining room, a waiter had taken Sigrid’s empty glass, and promptly returned with a full one.

  At the buffet table were a gray-haired man and woman who both smiled as she approached. “The pâté’s good,” said the man, gesturing to the platter with a hearty friendliness.

  “So are the crab puffs,” said the woman, who was so painfully gaunt beneath her diamonds and pearls that Sigrid couldn’t believe anything more caloric than lettuce and water ever passed her lips.

  Another couple at the end of the table broke apart from what seemed like an intense conversation. The dark-haired woman wore a vivid red-and-purple dress with panache and she turned with an equally vivid smile on her attractive face. “Miss Harald? I’m Hester Kohn, Jacob’s partner. Have you met Benjamin Peake? He’s director of the Breul House.”

  “So pleased,” the director murmured and took her hand and looked into her eyes as if he’d waited all his life to meet her.

  Unfortunately for the effect, he immediately turned that same look upon the thin woman beside them, “Mrs. Herzog! Have you met Miss Harald, Oscar Nauman’s friend? Miss Harald, Mrs. Herzog. And this is Mr. Reinicke. They’re two of our most dedicated trustees, Miss Harald.”

  “Winston Reinicke,” said the man. “Great admirer of Nauman’s work. Fine painter. Fine.”

  “Thank you,” Sigrid replied inanely as the man pumped her hand.

  Mrs. Herzog continued to smile graciously, but Sigrid suddenly felt herself inventoried, cataloged and ready to be shelved. Mrs. Herzog (“She was a Babcock, you know”) was not deceived by gold sequins and costume jewelry. “We at the Breul House would feel so honored if an artist of Oscar Nauman’s standing should come to us.”

  “Is it quite settled then?” asked a languid voice behind them.

  A man approached from the stairs beyond the arched doorway. Sigrid noted that he was several inches shorter than she with a slender, almost childlike body, and the head of someone much bigger. His thatched brown hair grew low on his forehead, almost meeting his thick shaggy eyebrows, and as he crossed to join them by the table, he carried his chin thrust upward at such an angle that Sigrid was reminded of a haughty ape.

  “He hasn’t definitely committed himself,” said Benjamin Peake, “but Hester thinks Jacob may persuade him tonight. Perhaps Miss Harald knows?”

  The newcomer looked at her curiously as Sigrid disavowed any insider knowledge of Oscar Nauman’s ultimate decision.

  “We haven’t met,” he said, offering her his hand. Its smallness and delicacy was surprising after the visual impact of his massive head, but the lack of physical vigor made the limpness of his clasp almost an insult. “I’m Roger Shambley.”

  “Dr. Shambley’s our newest trustee, Miss Harald,” boomed Mr. Reinicke. “A fine scholar. He’s going to put the Breul collection on the map, eh, Dr. Shambley?”

  For a moment, Shambley’s ugly face was lit by sly glee. “You could say that,” he drawled. “Yes, you could definitely say that.”

  Winston Reinicke beamed at him. “Spoken with the enthusiasm of a real scholar! A catalogue raisonné of the whole collection, eh?” His vigorous arm gesture took in all the pictures that lined this room as thickly as in the gallery across the hall.

  “Not exactly,” Shambley corrected him disdainfully. “My new book will merely cite some of these works as examples of general currents in the late nineteenth century. And it will probably sell fewer than five thousand copies nation-wide, Reinicke, hardly enough to start a stampede for the Erich Breul House.”

  “Of course, of course,” Winston Reinicke said heartily. “Still, one never knows what will further the cause, eh? Something for everyone.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Shambley, “I’m told that Rockwells and Sharpes are rising in value. Have you considered them for your empty spaces?”

  Sigrid sensed a sudden intake of silence around the buffet, almost as if everyone had stopped breathing.

  Then Reinicke said, “Lydia, my dear, shall we take Albert and Marie some of these crab puffs? They must think we’ve gotten lost, eh?”

  Murmuring polite phrases, the older couple arranged several hors d’oeuvres upon a plate and departed.

  “Still pulling wings off flies, Roger?” Hester Kohn’s tone was light but there was a wary look in her hazel eyes.

  Shambley ignored the other woman’s gibe. “Are you in the art world, too, Miss Harald?”

  “No.” “Miss Harald’s a police officer,” Hester Kohn told him. Shambley looked at Sigrid with the most animation he’d shown yet. “How appropriate. Robbery, may one hope?”

  “No,” Sigrid replied, wondering why Shambley had glanced so pointedly at Benjamin Peake. “If you don’t expect your book to sell many copies, Dr. Shambley, what are you planning for the Breul House?”

  “Publicity comes in many forms, Miss Harald,” he said. And with a languid wave of his small hand, he parted a space between Sigrid and Hester Kohn. “Permésso,” he said and drifted toward the door.

  Hester Kohn exchanged a glance with Benjamin Peake, then flashed her professional smile at Sigrid. “Would you excuse us, please, Miss Harald?”

  Sigrid barely had time to nod before the two followed Shambley from the room.

&nb
sp; At the end of the table, a waiter lifted the lid on the silver chafing dish.

  “Swedish meatballs?” he asked.

  Sigrid nodded hungrily.

  Jacob Munson hesitated in the doorway of the drawing room. Only a moment before he’d seen Hester out here in the hall, a flash of purple and red followed by Benjamin, and he had thought it would be pleasant to tell them of Buntrock’s announcement. But when he reached the hall, there was no sign of them. He crossed the hall, peering into the cloakrooms, and finally heard voices from the library—Benjamin’s voice raw with anger, Hester’s intense and cold, and another voice that held a lazy sneer. He listened a moment and realized the third voice belonged to Dr. Roger Shambley.

  “Was ist los?” he asked, peering around a bookcase at the three who stood there glaring at each other. In his agitation, he realized he’d spoken in German. “What’s going on?” he repeated in English. “Hester? Ben?”

  “A hypothetical question,” Shambley said smoothly. “To which they gave a hypothetical answer. Scusatemi, per favore.” He smiled and walked past Munson into the great marble hall.

  Before the inner woman was completely satisfied, Sigrid was joined by Nauman.

  “Worked through lunch again, hmm?” he asked, eyeing her plate of appetizers.

  “Have a stuffed mushroom,” she advised. “I think they just came out of the oven.”

  “You’ll spoil your appetite.”

  “Never.”

  He laughed. “You must be the only woman in the western world who doesn’t worry about her figure.”

  A lot he knew, she thought, watching Francesca Leeds across the room on Søren Thorvaldsen’s arm. Now there was a figure worth worrying about. There was no envy as she noted the way Lady Francesca’s copper hair fell in artful tangles around her lovely face, the way the silky gold fabric enhanced her perfect figure. Yet, Sigrid did find herself wondering again why Francesca Leeds seemed so familiar, almost as if they’d met in another life or something.

  There was a pleased expression on Thorvaldsen’s rugged face and Francesca was smiling.

  “Elliott said you’ve agreed, Oscar. That’s grand of you.” With a graceful gesture, she laid her cool fingers on his neck and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek.

  “How pretty!” said Roger Shambley, who had approached unnoticed. “Portrait of the artist with harem?”

  Thorvaldsen frowned. “That’s a tasteless remark, sir.” “Unlike your taste?” drawled Shambley. “But then you and Oscar Nauman have identical tastes, don’t you?”

  His eyes glittered beneath his heavy brows as they swept Francesca’s body with an insulting deliberation that was like a physical pawing. Thorvaldsen’s brawny hand shot out and grasped Shambley by the lapels and for a moment they could see the brawling stevedore he’d once been as his right hand drew back in a fist. Sigrid started forward, but Nauman had already caught his arm before it could throw the punch.

  Immediately, Thorvaldsen released Shambley with a muttered apology.

  Shambley straightened and drew himself up arrogantly. “I think you will pay for that,” he told Thorvaldsen, then turned from the room and walked up the wide marble staircase.

  The restaurant was intimate and candlelit, but dinner had become strained.

  “Will you stop projecting your guilt feelings onto me?” Sigrid said tightly. “For the third time, I’m not angry and I am not jealous.”

  Her fork clattered sharply against her plate as she put it down and reached for her wine glass.

  Nauman pushed a broiled scallop around his plate moodily, wishing all the hurtful words to come were already said so that he could touch her hand or make her gray eyes dance with laughter again.

  “If you’d just let me explain—” “Damn it, Nauman, there’s nothing to explain.” Her gold-colored earrings swung back and forth with each word. “There can’t be many sixty-year-old virgins walking the land and what you did before we met is none of my business. Aren’t you going to eat your scallops?”

  He handed them over. He didn’t know which annoyed him more: that she’d thrown his age in his face or that she could still be hungry after realizing he and Francesca had been lovers.

  “You really don’t give a damn, do you?” he asked disconsolately.

  “It’s illogical to be jealous about things that were over and done with before I knew you,” she said, transferring his scallops to her plate. “I just mind that I was so stupid.”

  “Stupid?” he asked hopefully. “Stupid. I knew she seemed familiar, but I thought it was my imagination. And all the time, there was that portrait of her in your apartment.”

  He paused in the act of signaling their waiter. “Portrait? I’ve never done a portrait of Francesca.”

  “Of course you have. It’s hanging over that Spanish chest next to your door. I know it’s not a literal representation, but still—”

  Nauman shook his head and his white hair gleamed in the candlelight. “That painting is a purely abstract construction generated from sets of inverse Cassinian ovals. That’s all there is to it.”

  “It’s also—” She fell silent as their waiter approached. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  Nauman handed him their empty wine bottle. “Another one of these, please.”

  “It’s also a portrait of Francesca Leeds,” Sigrid said as the waiter left them. “The way her hair falls away from her face when she tilts her head back and laughs. All that orange and gold and brown. And those big canvasses in your studio up in Connecticut—the ones you said you painted year before last—most of those use the same colors, too. Francesca’s colors.”

  He started to deny it, then looked at Sigrid with perplexed admiration. “I’ll be damned, Siga. You’re right.”

  Nauman never tried to analyze why he painted as he did. Let others theorize after the fact; when things were working, he only knew that they felt right. Nevertheless, it was interesting to catch his subconscious off guard. He had enjoyed Francesca, her beauty, her sophistication, her body. But she was more uptown than he, more interested in the right social circles. It had exasperated her that he wouldn’t capitalize on his fame, so they had parted as amicably as they’d begun and he hadn’t realized that she’d affected his palette.

  Now he remembered that violent purple-and-black study Francesca had pulled from the back of his storage racks up in Connecticut last weekend. He fingered his left ear unconsciously. Blacks and purples that sloped into somber browns.

  Lila.

  His mind shied at the thought of Lila, locked away all these years; and he willed himself to consider instead the vivid, almost garish colors he’d used during those exuberant postwar years with Susan; or those serene pastels that had echoed Cassandra’s quiet blond loveliness. Odd that he hadn’t seen—hadn’t let himself see?

  Four women. All different.

  And what would Sigrid bring? “Don’t!” she said sharply, and gold sequins shimmered like moonbeams on water as she flinched from his gaze.

  “What?” he asked, bewildered. “You look at me sometimes as if I’m a—I don’t know. As if I were a thing, not a person.”

  The waiter arrived with more wine, filled their glasses, and departed.

  Nauman lifted his glass in tribute. “Oh no, my dear. Never that,” he said, and was glad to realize that their fight seemed to have ended before it ever began.

  A clock was chiming nine-thirty when Roger Shambley came downstairs to use the telephone on Hope Ruffton’s desk. The caterers had long since gone and the rooms were dark and silent. He called information for the number he wanted, dialed and, when an answering machine beeped at the other end of the wire, spoke the cryptic words he’d rehearsed, then hung up.

  He crossed the echoing hall to unlock the front door and as he returned, a figure appeared in the doorway of the darkened library.

  “Gesù e Maria!” he exclaimed. “You startled me. I thought you left hours ago.”

  In the warm snug hobbit-hole room,
the last tape had come to an end and Rick Evans was enjoying the comfortable silence when he suddenly stiffened like a burrowing animal that hears the dogs above him.

  “What’s wrong, Rick?” Pascal Grant asked sleepily. “Sh! I thought I heard a noise out there.”

  Pascal raised himself to a kneeling position beside Rick. The only light in the room was a small amber lamp shaped like an owl near the door and both held their breath, listening. Rick looked around for a weapon of some sort. “You have a stick or something, Pasc?”

  “Like my softball bat? Sure.”

  Rick slipped off the mattress and pulled on his trousers. “Where is it?”

  “Behind that chair.” Then realizing what Evans meant to do, Pascal Grant clutched at his leg. “No, Rick. Don’t go out there. Please!” His voice grew louder as he became more agitated. “I don’t like Dr. Shambley. He scares me.”

  Of course, Rick thought, Shambley. That dirty little coward. What gives him the right to sneak around down here? Was he hoping to find Pasc alone? He thinks he knows what Pasc and I are, but we know what he is and he’s not going to wreck things.

  With angry, confused thoughts running through his head, Rick grasped the bat, unlocked the door, and stepped out into the kitchenette.

  “Who’s there?” he called, suddenly caught by conflicting emotions.

  * * *

  In the dim warmth behind the half-closed door, Pascal Grant huddled uneasily on the bed, wishing Rick would come back and lock the door and they could talk some more and listen to the old Louis Armstrong tape Rick had brought and forget about Dr. Shambley. Before yesterday was bad enough, Pascal thought unhappily, but ever since last night when he put his hand on my face— And today, he keeps looking at me and he makes me feel dirty, like Mr. Gere at the training center—

  Pascal shivered and tried not to think of Mr. Gere and what Mr. Gere had wanted him to do.

  There was a thump and clatter out in the main kitchen and Pascal sprang from the bed and ran to the door. “Rick?”