An Artful Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  A watercolorist of modest accomplishment and a League alumnus himself, Klonis had served as the Board of Control’s treasurer during the Depression, when he was instrumental in saving the school from falling off a financial cliff. His reward was to be elected president in 1937 and director in 1946, after which his fiscal prudence and the advent of the G.I. Bill’s education stipends ushered in a period of prosperity. Soon two-thirds of the students were veterans, and the number of instructors tripled. Twenty years later, the League was welcoming a new wave of ex-servicemen and -women.

  Klonis’s devotion to the place was total and all-consuming, which explains why he was still in his office at six fifty when a breathless Chris Gray, having sprinted down five flights, entered at a run and blurted out the news that Thomas Hart Benton was lying dead in Studio Nine.

  * * *

  As he met the police in the lobby, Klonis struggled to maintain a businesslike demeanor. Always impeccably groomed, a suit-and-tie island surrounded by a sea of bohemian informality, his dependable equilibrium had been seriously compromised by Chris’s report. This was the first time in the League’s history that a death had occurred under its stately mansard roof. Nervously, he motioned Kaminsky into the office where he could have a private word. Clearly flustered—wringing his hands, eyes darting this way and that—he explained the circumstances as Chris had relayed them, and told Kaminsky that the monitor had locked the studio door behind him so nothing would be disturbed.

  Chris had stationed himself at the elevators and turned away Breinin’s students, telling them only that class was canceled but they could squeeze into the Laning anatomy class on the first floor if they wanted to stay. Breinin himself wasn’t due for at least another half hour, so Chris figured he could head him off before he got upstairs. Once Kaminsky was apprised of the situation, his men took charge of crowd control, and Chris was ordered to accompany them to the scene. Klonis volunteered to go along, which Kaminsky approved.

  A uniformed officer was stationed at the elevators, denying access to all the upper floors, which meant dealing with a dozen canceled classes and scores of irate students. Another officer emptied Laning’s studio, and two more were dispatched to check the other three floors and dismiss anyone they found there, so the school was shuttered for the night.

  Only one of the two elevators went to the top floor. When Kaminsky and his party reached 5, they found a few students who had come up from the cafeteria, which had closed at seven, and were waiting to be admitted. They were surprised to find the studio locked, since people could usually come and go freely, and were even more surprised when the elevator door opened and a trio of uniformed police officers accompanied Klonis, Chris, and two strangers—one carrying a medical bag and the other a camera—into the narrow hallway.

  “Stand back, please,” ordered Kaminsky, politely but firmly. “Tonight’s class is canceled, and the building is closed. Officer Jenkins will take you to the exit.” Jenkins herded the disgruntled students to the elevator, bundled them inside, pressed 1, and escorted them down. The other cop was stationed outside the studio door.

  When the hall was clear, Kaminsky signaled Chris to open the studio. Benton lay where Chris had found him, with the tablecloth pulled away to reveal the body.

  “Did you touch anything other than the cloth?” Kaminsky asked.

  “Well,” said Chris, concentrating on remembering his movements, “I touched the doorknob and light switch, but I never got to any of the chores. I must have put my hand on the model stand when I bent over to check Mr. Benton’s pulse—oh, of course, I touched his throat, like this.” He put two fingers under his jaw. “I guess I shouldn’t have disturbed the body.”

  “That’s fine, son. You didn’t know just by looking at him that he was dead. Mr. Klonis told us you realized he wasn’t asleep, so you’d want to know if maybe he was just unconscious. Could have had a stroke or a heart attack and needed a doctor. What he needs now is a thorough examination by the doc here,” said Kaminsky as he gestured to his medical technician.

  First the photographer took shots of the scene from various angles. Then the medic began to examine the corpse. He pressed his hand to the neck, and observed that the skin was cool but pliant, indicating recent death. Curled in on himself, Benton looked as if he had suffered a paralyzing cramp or seizure. But he was not gripping the tablecloth, so he had not wrapped it around himself. Someone else must have done that. But why conceal him if he had died of natural causes? Why not just call for help, as Chris had done?

  The answer became evident when the medic turned the body on its back and laid it out. Embedded in Benton’s chest, up to the hilt, was a knife with an ornate grip and pommel that Chris recognized from the prop cabinet. It was a nineteenth-century Russian dagger, intricately decorated with cloisonné enamel, which featured prominently in Breinin’s still life arrangements. It added an exotic note to the standard fruit-bowl tableau and challenged his students’ ability to render detail. But it was a valuable artifact, and, whenever it was used, Breinin always locked it securely in the cabinet at the end of class.

  The medic motioned to the photographer. “Get a close shot of this, will you, Jim? There’s something pinned under the crossguard. See if you can get a detail or two before I remove the weapon.” Several pictures were duly taken while the medic made some observations.

  “The knife was inserted under the rib cage, just to the left of the sternum,” he said. “The blow was clearly aimed at the heart. I’d say the victim died within moments of being struck. Almost all the bleeding is internal, so I believe he was lying still when the knife went in. In fact I think he may have been unconscious. The autopsy should tell us, but it looks to me like he was knocked out first, then stabbed. The killer had plenty of time to find just the right spot. And something was attached to the knife blade beforehand. That takes planning. Looks like a picture of some kind. Let’s find out.” He reached for the exposed grip.

  “I think I need to sit down,” said Klonis, groping for a stool. Chris was also looking a bit green around the gills, so Kaminsky suggested that they both wait in the hall with the uniformed officer until the body was ready for removal. They gladly agreed.

  Using the tips of his gloved fingers, the medic eased the dagger out of Benton’s chest. It came away easily, revealing a double-sided blade about six inches long and about an inch wide.

  “Charming little pig-sticker,” remarked Kaminsky dryly. “What’s that piece of paper on it?”

  The blade had been neatly inserted through the center of a picture postcard. It showed the stylized figure of a Native American warrior attacking a white mother and child, with a battle between a colonial invader and Indians taking place in the background. The medic carefully removed it from the knife, which he put into a clear plastic evidence bag. He also bagged the postcard and handed it to Kaminsky, who frowned and grunted at it before flipping it over.

  The back was smeared with blood, but the information on it was legible. Kaminsky squinted as he read the fine print. The Whitney Museum of American Art had published the card, and the image was identified as a 1925 painting by Thomas Hart Benton—a panel from the American Historical Epic series, one of his proposed mural projects that never came to fruition.

  The title of this panel was Retribution.

  * * *

  Kaminsky left the medic to his work and stepped into the hall, where Klonis and Chris stood opposite the elevator. What might have been the scene of an accident or natural death was now clearly a crime scene, so he ordered the uniformed cop to go downstairs and radio for someone to bring over a fingerprinting kit. He told Chris that he’d be required to go with them to the station and give a formal statement, then he asked, “How did you recognize the dead man?”

  “He’s a well-known artist—that is, I mean, he was,” Chris stammered. “He used to teach here, but he left New York years ago. He’s back in town for a big show o
f his work at the Whitney, and he’s been hanging around the League for the past few weeks.”

  “So he was not on the faculty?”

  “Not for some thirty years,” said Klonis. “He taught painting here when I was a student in the late ’20s and early ’30s. He took a year off for a mural job in Chicago, then quit for good in ’35. Hadn’t been back since, until last month, when he started dropping by almost every day, often for lunch, and sometimes in the evening as well.”

  “How many people knew he was here?” Kaminsky asked Klonis.

  “Tonight, you mean? Or in general?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, I don’t know about tonight specifically, but anyone who was in the building when he was around would have been aware of his presence. He was a forceful character. What I mean is, he tended to, shall we say, announce himself loudly, and he often dropped into classes uninvited. He might offer advice or give an impromptu critique, that sort of thing.”

  “Did the teachers resent that?”

  Klonis realized that was a leading question. “I doubt Mr. Benton would have disturbed any class enough to cause resentment. Our classes are not formally structured,” he explained. “Some meet every day in the morning, afternoon, or evening, others are held once or twice a week. The instructors are not always present. They may give a talk or demonstration and then leave the students to work on their own, or they may come in part way through the session and give critiques, then leave.”

  “You know what I’m getting at, Mr. Klonis,” said Kaminsky. “The man was murdered in this building, and I need to determine if anyone here would have a motive to kill him. Were there rivalries, jealousies, or other friction with him that you’re aware of?”

  “As you see,” Klonis replied, “Benton was a small man, but he had an oversized personality that tended to antagonize people. I’m sure any number of our faculty and students would have preferred that he left them alone, but I’m not aware of any outright animosity toward him. He’d been out of the New York art world for many years, and the Whitney show was his chance to revitalize his career. He wanted everyone to know that he was still important. I’m sure they realized he was just showing off.”

  Chris, on the other hand, was well aware that Benton had made at least one serious enemy at the League—one with intimate knowledge of the building and keys to many of its doors.

  Seventeen

  The elevator door opened to admit the fingerprint man with his kit, accompanied by an orderly from the medical examiner’s office, who rolled a folding gurney into the studio. Behind them, an officer steered an irate Raymond Breinin toward Kaminsky. Wearing a broad-brimmed fedora, a red velvet jacket, a colorful paisley ascot, and a scowl as dark as his jet-black hair, the agitated artist demanded to know why he was being barred from his classroom. Gesturing dismissively at the officer, he complained, “This pitiful excuse for Cossack tells me nothing!”

  Kaminsky scowled back at him and bristled. “Who the hell are you?”

  Klonis made the introductions, giving both men time to dial down the temperature, while he explained to Breinin what had apparently occurred.

  “You joke!” blurted an astonished Breinin. “So little man’s big mouth is now silent. There will be few tears, I fancy. I will shed none.”

  This remark alerted Kaminsky. “You were not a fan of Mr. Benton’s, then?”

  Disregarding the consequences, Breinin began to elaborate on his grievances against the late artist, which dated back three decades.

  In 1934, he said, he was living in Chicago, where his family had emigrated from Russia after the revolution. With the economy in the dumps, there were few prospects for young artists—he had just turned twenty-five, and was not long out of art school—but the New Deal had come to the rescue. The Public Works of Art Project, a federal government employment program, hired him to paint a mural in the library of the Skokie School in Winnetka.

  Inspired by the Mexican muralists and flush with youthful enthusiasm, he chose the idealistic theme, Give Us the Unity of Men and We Shall Build a New World. At the north end of the forty-foot composition, which pictured cooperative industrial and agricultural labor, was a section called The Unity of the Races, showing three men embracing—described by Breinin as a Caucasian worker in overalls flanked by a Negro and an Oriental. The subject matter, which had been approved by the school board and the art project staff, reflected the Roosevelt administration’s aim of commissioning optimistic public artworks to counter the national malaise. The program also kept artists off the relief rolls by giving them something productive to do.

  Breinin’s work was almost finished when Thomas Hart Benton showed up at the Skokie School. Thanks to the nationwide publicity generated by his latest mural, a sweeping historical panorama for the State of Indiana pavilion at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, where he was holding court, he was the most famous artist in the country. Thinking his populist views would make him sympathetic, and willing to lend his endorsement to the cause, the regional art project administration invited him on a tour of the public works they were sponsoring.

  Benton took one look at Breinin’s mural and pronounced it aesthetically derivative and politically socialistic, suggesting that the Russian-born artist was foisting Communist propaganda on innocent schoolchildren. As he was later told, Benton turned the school board against the painting. What they had once considered uplifting and inspirational was now deemed “sinister and threatening.” No sooner had it been unveiled than it was whitewashed.

  “Thanks to Benton, my mural was destroyed,” fumed Breinin, still boiling mad more than thirty years later. “Where is body? I want to spit on it!”

  “Now take it easy, Mr. Breinin,” cautioned Kaminsky. “Your attitude does you no credit, and in fact it puts you in a bad light. Even more so, considering the murder weapon. It was your fancy knife that did him in.”

  “Splendid!” thundered Breinin. “Kinzhal is perfect weapon for revenge.”

  Kaminsky was taken aback by the man’s attitude, which seemed almost deliberately self-incriminating. But Breinin continued, “I regret that I did not strike blow.”

  “Are you saying you would have killed him if given the opportunity?”

  “Perhaps. I have murder in my heart for him since many years. When he invade my class last week I throw him out. Tell him to go back to devil, where he come from.”

  At that moment the studio door opened and the orderly, followed by the medic, wheeled out the gurney bearing Benton’s corpse. Kaminsky herded Breinin off to the side hallway, effectively blocking him while the gurney was maneuvered through the narrow passage and into the elevator. A stream of Russian invective followed it and continued even after the door closed and the car began to descend.

  Kaminsky then turned his attention to the artist. “I’ll need you to account for your whereabouts this evening, Mr. Breinin, so I’ll oblige you to come with me to the station and make a formal statement. Mr. Gray here, who found the body, will come along as well.”

  “Will it take long?’ asked Chris. “Normally I’d be home by ten thirty, quarter to eleven, and my wife will be worried if I’m any later than that.”

  Kaminsky understood, but given the circumstances Chris had to be considered a suspect. He might have killed Benton, then made up the story about stumbling across the body. He certainly couldn’t be ruled out at this early stage.

  “Where do you live, son?” he asked. Chris told him they had an apartment at 49 Morton Street in the Village. “I think we can get you down there in plenty of time. If there’s a delay you can call your wife from the station.”

  “And me?” growled Breinin. “I have wife, too, and daughter. On Bethune Street, number Thirty-One. When do I go to them?”

  “You’ll be free to go as soon as we have your statement,” Kaminsky told him. “The more cooperative you are, the sooner it will be.�
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  * * *

  As the party headed through the lobby to the waiting squad cars, Klonis took Kaminsky aside.

  “I hope the school can reopen tomorrow,” he said anxiously. The experience had shaken him badly, and he would have liked nothing better than to go home to a double whiskey and spend the next day in bed. But his responsibility to his faculty and students far outweighed personal considerations.

  Kaminsky appreciated his position. “I see no reason why not. Of course the top floor will be closed. You’ll have to cancel the classes in that room or find another place for them. Officer Gomez will remain there until I send a relief, and the room will have a police guard until further notice. No one is to enter it until the investigation is complete. I hope that’s clearly understood.”

  Klonis was thinking of the students who had belongings in the lockers and paintings in progress stored in the racks. He debated asking Kaminsky for permission to clear those things from the studio, but realized it wouldn’t be possible. Studio Nine was now a crime scene, and everything in it was potentially evidence.

  There was another practical matter to be dealt with.

  “We need to notify Mr. Benton’s next of kin,” said Kaminsky. “Do you have that information?”

  “Yes, I can help you with that,” replied Klonis. “Come into my office, please.” He led the inspector through a glass-paneled door, behind the registration counter, past the secretary’s desk and into a cluttered sanctum lined with bookshelves. The director’s desk was tucked into a corner. The remaining space was almost completely filled by a long rectangular table at which the monthly Board of Control meetings were held.

  Motioning Kaminsky to a heavy oak chair opposite his desk, Klonis took his seat and located a pad and pencil. He wrote out the information as he spoke.

  “Benton’s next of kin will be his wife, Rita. They’re staying at the St. Regis. They have two grown children, young Tom and Jessie, but they’re not with them. Benton is—I beg your pardon, was—here for his Whitney Museum retrospective exhibition, which opened on October twelfth, and what was to have been his reinstatement ceremony at the American Academy of Arts and Letters next week. I daresay that will become a memorial tribute. Lloyd Goodrich, the Whitney’s director, and George Kennan, the Academy’s president, should be contacted. I can give you their numbers, or if you prefer I’ll speak to them. I know them both personally.”