Corpus Christmas (11 page)

Which took care of fame.

As for fortune…

Those two Léger canvasses presented interesting possibilities, none of which involved the Breul House. Today, he had gone
to the Museum of Modern Art and bought two Léger posters as nearly like the two on Pascal Grant’s wall in size and composition
as he could manage. He had already stashed them in one of the basement storage rooms. In the next day or so, as soon as he
could substitute them for the real pictures, he would announce his discovery of the Picasso-Braque collage.

There would be such an instant uproar of excitement that even if the janitor noticed the difference between the posters and
the authentic paintings, who would pay him any mind?

No one. He’d be home free with two Légers of his very own. Too bad he couldn’t openly offer them for sale at, say, Sotheby’s.
Auctions always brought the highest prices. But Sotheby’s required a legal history of the artwork it put on the block: documents,
canceled checks, and bills of sale; and the only provenance he could offer would be the 1912 catalog he’d found in Erich Jr.’s
effects.

No, he’d have to find someone with a love of modern art, a streak of larceny, and the resources to indulge expensive tastes.

He looked at his watch. Time to put in an appearance downstairs. He started to put the letters back in his briefcase, then
hesitated. Maybe it would be safer to leave the letters here for now. There were a million hiding places in this cluttered
attic but, as most scholars knew, a misfiled letter is a lost letter.

Shambley opened a drawer marked “Miscellaneous Business Correspondence: 1916/1917” and craftily filed the packet under “August
1916.”

At that moment be felt positively gleeful, as if the ghost of Christmas Present had upended an enormous bag of toys at his
feet. If the attic stairs had possessed a free-standing banister, he would have slid right down it, and it was all he could
do to keep from chortling aloud. He stepped into the servants’ lavatory on the third floor, smoothed his unruly hair, and
put his pugnacious face into a semblance of professorial dignity.

But as he walked downstairs to join the party, it occurred to Roger Shambley that perhaps he wouldn’t have to look very far
for the buyer he needed.

Wednesday Night (continued)

“
S
IGRID HARALD?” ASKED SØREN THORVALDSEN
. “
Er De dansk, frøken Harald?
” “My father’s father was from Denmark,” Sigrid acknowledged, “but I’m afraid I know very few words of Danish.”

And not much more than a few words of party talk either, she thought as she listened to a small white-haired woman quiz Thorvaldsen
about the frivolous names he’d given his cruise ships.

“I think ships deserve more stately names,” said the woman, whose own name Sigrid couldn’t remember. “Something like
Empress of the Sea
or
Queen Margrethe.
”

“But those are for serious ships,” Thorvaldsen answered her playfully. “My ships
are
frivolous, Mrs. Hyman.”

Hyman, Sigrid told herself. Hyman. Wife of David Hyman, trustee. And next to Mrs. Hyman was Mr. Herzog. Albert. Husband of
Lydia Herzog, another trustee, whom she hadn’t yet met but of whom Mrs. Hyman had whispered, “Lydia was a Babcock, you know.”

Sigrid did not know, but had dutifully placed a mental star next to Mrs. Herzog’s name and attached a Babcock in parentheses
since Mrs. Hyman seemed to think it was important. It was the sort of remark that reminded Sigrid of going through reception
lines with her Southern grandmother. If Mrs. Lattimore’s hierarchal memory of bloodlines and obscure degrees of kinship had
ever failed her, Sigrid was unaware of it.

“I shouldn’t have thought you’d find much profit in running Caribbean cruises out of New York,” Mr. Herzog observed.

“Oh, you might be surprised how many people like the extra time in our casino,” Thorvaldsen said with pleasant candor.

With a vague smile as Thorvaldsen elaborated on Caribbean fun ships, Sigrid detached herself from the group standing near
the piano in the drawing room and wandered back to the gallery. So many pictures stacked on the walls like cordwood both fascinated
and repelled her. As did everything else she’d seen of this house so far.

It was too full of
things
. How could anyone relax in a place so visually distracting? Even tonight, with the lights lowered and candles to soften the
impact, the busyness of the decor made her edgy. She tried to imagine the walls stripped of the pictures Erich Breul had collected,
the furniture surfaces cleared of vases, ornaments, and other bibelots. Even so, would these ornate rooms really make an appropriate
exhibition space for Nauman’s abstract pictures?

Evidently she wasn’t the only one who wondered that, for immediately after her arrival, while still talking to Jacob Munson,
whose old-world courtliness had charmed her, a tall storklike man in formal evening clothes strode into the Breul House, spotted
Nauman, and immediately cried, “Oscar! What’s all this crap about a retrospective
here
?”

“Behave yourself, Elliott,” laughed Francesca Leeds, swooping down upon them, “or we shan’t let you play, shall we, Jacob?”

The newcomer murmured appropriately as Sigrid was introduced to him, but his eyes were for Lady Francesca and Oscar Nauman.
Arguably the hottest curator in town, Elliott Buntrock did not recall having met Sigrid at a Piers Leyden opening back in
October. Nor did he seem to consider her someone with whom he need bother tonight.

Which suited Sigrid. As the other four began to discuss the possibilities of an exhibit here at the Breul House, she had followed
the sound of a piano into the drawing room where Mrs. Beardsley had introduced her to Thorvaldsen and some of the trustees
of the Breul House.

And now she had examined all the pictures hung one above the other on the gallery walls and, except for the Winslow Homer
drawings, the only work that really captured her interest was a still life of bread and cheese. It reminded her empty stomach
she’d eaten nothing since a pushcart hot dog around noon. Back at the far end of the drawing room, Thorvaldsen and the Hymans
had been joined by Francesca Leeds and Jacob Munson; a young black woman entered the gallery in animated conversation with
a vivacious middle-aged blond who exhibited a slight limp; and, as Sigrid crossed the great hall at the upper end, she saw
Nauman and Elliott Buntrock walking slowly in her direction.

Both men were tall and lean, but while Nauman looked fit and moved easily, the curator seemed all joints. In his formal black-and-white
evening clothes, he looked like some sort of long-legged water bird, a stilt or a crane, picking his way across a shallow
lake, on the alert for any passing minnows. He had neglected to check his long white evening scarf and it hung down over his
jacket. Occasionally he would forget and gather both ends in a large bony hand and pull his head forward while making sweeping
uncoordinated gestures with his free arm. Nauman had an expression on his face that did not bode well for whatever Elliott
Buntrock was propounding.

Sigrid prudently continued into the dining room.

“You’re too important for this place,” said Buntrock. “A Nauman retrospective’s big business. Where’s your head on this, Oscar?”

“
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?”