Corpus Christmas (7 page)

He hadn’t done a figurative portrait in years, not since his student days, probably, but there was something about her eyes,
the line of her long neck, the angularity of the way she sat that intrigued him. If he could catch her on paper—

Sigrid glanced up. Nauman’s eyes were a clear deep blue and the intelligence which usually blazed there had become remote
and fathomless. She moved uneasily and saw the remoteness disappear as his eyes softened.

“What did Francesca Leeds mean when she said a retrospective isn’t a ninth symphony?” she asked, abandoning her puzzle.

Nauman closed the notebook before she could become self-conscious and began to relight his pipe. “It’s something that seemed
to start with the composer Gustav Mahler.”

He looked down at the elaborately carved pipe in his hand as if he’d never before seen it. Today’s was shaped like a dragon’s
head and fragrant smoke curled from the bowl.

“Mahler noticed that Beethoven and Bruckner had both died after composing ninth symphonies, so he decided nine was a jinx.
Tried to cheat—
Das Lied von der Erde
after his eighth. Said it wasn’t a symphony—was, though. Decided he was being silly, wrote his ninth. Died before he finished
tenth. Dvorák and Vaughan Williams, too.”

“But surely that’s a coincidence?” From the way Nauman’s speech had suddenly become telegraphic, Sigrid knew he was absorbed
by parallel lines of thought. “By the time a composer reaches his ninth symphony, wouldn’t he be old and near the end of his
life anyhow?”

“Like an artist with a retrospective,” Nauman said bleakly.

“Then you
are
superstitious?” “And you’re avoiding the issue. I’ll be sixty goddamned years old next July, old enough to be your—”

“How many symphonies did Mozart compose?” she interrupted.

“Hell, I don’t know. Forty or fifty.” “And he was thirty-five when he died. How many retrospectives do you think Picasso had
before he kicked off at the tender age of—what was it? Ninety? Ninety-one?”

“Okay, okay.” Nauman smiled, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll do it.”

“Only if you want to,” Sigrid murmured demurely, and suddenly they were no longer talking about art exhibits.

Tuesday, December 15

B
ENJAMIN
P
EAKE ARRIVED AT THE ERICH BREUL
House shortly after ten to find his office invaded by Roger Shambley, Ph.D., scholar, newest trustee, and all-around bastard.

Shambley was shorter than his own five eleven by a good six inches and ugly as a mud fence with a dark, shaggy head that was
two sizes too large for his small, stooped figure. As far as Benjamin Peake was concerned, expensive hairstyling and custom-tailored
clothes were probably what kept children from throwing rocks whenever Shambley passed them in the street.

“Can I help you with something?” Peake asked sarcastically as Shambley ignored his arrival and continued to paw through the
filing cabinets at the end of his long L-shaped office. He had to stand on tiptoe to read the files at the back of the top
drawer.

“I doubt it.” Shambley paused beside the open drawer and made a show of checking his watch against the clock over the director’s
beautiful mahogany desk. “I’ve only been here two weeks to your two years but I probably know more about what’s in these files
than you do.”

“Now let me think,” Peake responded urbanely as he hung his topcoat in a concealed closet and smoothed his brown hair. “I
believe it was William Buckley who spoke of the scholar-squirrel mentality, busily gathering every little stray nut that’s
fallen from the tree of knowledge.”

“Actually, it was Gore Vidal,” said Shambley, “but don’t let facts spoil your pleasure in someone else’s well-turned phrases.
I’m sure Buckley’s said something equally clever about academic endeavor.”

Annoyed, Benjamin Peake retreated through an inner door that led to the butler’s pantry.

Hope Ruffton was pouring herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee and she greeted him with a pleasant smile.

When Peake took over the directorship and was introduced to her two years ago, he’d returned that first smile with condescending
friendliness. “Hope, isn’t it?”

“Only if it’s Ben,” she’d replied with equally friendly condescension.

“Oh. Well. Excuse
me
, Ms. Ruffton.” “Miss will do,” she’d said pleasantly.

If he’d had the authority and if old Jacob Munson hadn’t been standing by, twinkling and beaming at them like some sort of
Munchkin matchmaker, Peake would have fired her then and there.

He still did not completely understand how foolish that would have been although there were times when he uneasily suspected
it. But he did soon realize that professionalism was more than semantics to Miss Ruffton. She had ignored his sulks and, with
cool efficiency and tact, had deflected him from stupid blunders as he settled into the directorship. The irony of being trained
for his position by a nominal subordinate went right over Peake’s head and Hope Ruffton was too subtle by far to let him see
her own amusement.

These days, with Roger Shambley poking his nose into every cranny and making veiled allusions to certain lapses of competence,
Miss Ruffton’s efficiency gave Peake a sort of Dutch courage. He might not always have a clear grasp of details, but Miss
Ruffton did; and without articulating it, not even to himself, Peake trusted her not to let him make a total ass of himself
in front of Shambley.

So he smiled at her gratefully, accepted the coffee she poured for him, and said, “You look like a Christmas card this morning.”

A Victorian card, he would have added, straightening his own red-and-green striped tie, except that he was afraid she might
tartly remind him that most Victorian cards pictured only blond, blue-eyed Caucasian maidens. Her white silk blouse was tucked
into a flowing skirt of dark green wool and it featured a high tight collar and cuffs, all daintily edged in lace. Her thick
black hair was brushed into a smooth chignon and tied with a red grosgrain ribbon that echoed a red belt at her waist and
clear red nails on her small brown fingers. She wore a simple gold locket and her drop earrings were old-fashioned garnets
set in gold filigree that caught the light as she returned Peake’s greeting.

“Too bad about the MacAndrews Foundation,” she said. “They turned us down
again?
”

Miss Ruffton nodded, her dark eyes sympathetic. “I left the letter on your desk.”

“Oh well,” he said, trying to make the best of it, “we weren’t really counting on their support.”

She gazed into her coffee cup with detachment. There was no way to break bad news gently. “But we
were
counting on Tybault Industries.”

His thinly handsome face grew anxious. “They’ve withdrawn their annual donation?”

“Cut it,” she said succinctly. “By a third. With a hint that it may be cut by another third next year.”

“Oh, God!” Peake moaned, pacing back and forth from his office door on one side of the room to the dining room door on the
far side. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned altruism?”

“At least the projection figures look good on the Friends membership drive,” she said, but Peake refused to be comforted.

“Penny-ante. We’ve got to find a way to raise more real money or the Erich Breul House is going right down the slop chute,”
he predicted gloomily.

He started back to his office and hesitated, remembering that Shambley was probably still there.

“What is Dr. Shambley really looking for?” asked Miss Ruffton, with that uncanny knack she had of reading his thoughts.

“God knows,” he muttered drearily. “Fresh material for his new book on late nineteenth-century American artists, I suppose.”
And then, although Peake seldom consciously picked up on Miss Ruffton’s subtle inflections, her last words sank in and triggered
an automatic alert. “What did you mean ‘really’?”

“We’ve allowed other historians access to the Breul papers,” she said slowly. “Dr. Kimmelshue always granted permission. And
not just artists or art historians. We’ve had antique dealers, students of interior design—”

“Well?” Peake asked impatiently.

Miss Ruffton looked at him coldly. “Perhaps it was only my imagination,” she said and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Please go on.”

But already she had opened the door to the service hall beneath the main stairs, the quickest route to her own desk, and she
did not look back.

“
Merde!
” Peake muttered beneath his breath and charged back into his office.

“Listen, Shambley,” he said to the historian’s slender back, “what are you really looking for?”

“
Mi scusi?
” Whenever he wished to insult, obfuscate, or stall until he’d chosen his next words, Roger Shambley always affected Italian.
He lifted his oversized shaggy head from a low file drawer. “Why should you think I’m looking for something special?”

“You’ve spent the last few days quartering this house like a bird dog,” said Peake, abruptly realizing that this was true.
“All the Breul papers are up in the attic. What do you expect to find in old Kimmelshue’s files?”

“Merely fulfilling my duties as a trustee,” Shambley said smoothly. “Familiarizing myself with past routine. And present.
Which reminds me: Why are there no current inventory sheets? I find nothing later than 1972.”

“The inventory hasn’t changed enough to justify a new one,” Peake snapped. “All the corrections have been notated on our master
copy.”

He strode over to the file cabinet nearest his desk and extracted the inventory folder. “I can have Miss Ruffton make you
a copy, if you wish.”

“You checked it thoroughly against the contents of the house when you took over?” asked Shambley.

“Well, no. I saw no need when—”

Shambley cut him off with a sneer. “You know what’s wrong with you, Peake? You’re lazy. Physically and intellectually. That’s
why you fouled up at the Friedinger.” His eyes narrowed speculatively in his ugly face. “Or was it solely that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Peake, becoming cautious.

“I think it’s time the board asked for a complete inventory. See if there’s been any ‘unauthorized deaccessioning’ down here.”
He closed the file drawers he’d opened earlier and took the inventory folder from Peake’s suddenly nerveless fingers.

“Listen,” Benjamin Peake blustered, “if anything’s missing, you can’t blame me. Everyone knows Dr. Kimmelshue was senile the
last three years before he died. Anything could have happened then.”

Roger Shambley turned his huge head and haughtily waved Peake aside. “
Permésso
,” he said languidly and left the office.

Mrs. Beardsley was becoming heartily sick of Dr. Roger Shambley’s
permésso
. In a house this size, one would think a body that small could find a clear space in which to pass without shooing people
aside as if they were witless flocks of chickens. And she wasn’t taken in by his air of haughty politeness. Mrs. Beardsley
knew all there was to know about using manners as a stick to beat those one considered inferior to oneself. Not that she ever
did, she told herself.

Well, not without provocation, she amended.

She would admit that she was disappointed when Dr. Shambley received the trusteeship she had sought. She might not have his
degrees or his growing reputation as an art scholar, but certainly she knew more about the soul of this house itself than
any outsider could hope to. And her income was several times his. She’d checked. Considering the Breul House’s financial difficulties,
a trustee willing to give generous support should have counted for something, shouldn’t it? Nevertheless, she had swallowed
her disappointment and welcomed him as graciously as possible and what did she get for her graciousness?

Permésso.

* * *

Uptown, in the business office of Kohn and Munson Gallery, Hester Kohn listened in growing alarm as Benjamin Peake screamed
in her ear about Roger Shambley.

“For God’s sake, Ben, get hold of yourself,” she interrupted crisply. “
Have
you taken anything from the house?”

“Of course, I haven’t!” he howled. “Then you’ve nothing to worry about.” “Yes, I have and you do, too, Hester. You didn’t
hear the way he said ‘unauthorized deaccessions.’ That bastard! He picks things out of the air. You know what art historians
are like.”

“Give them a flake of blue plaster and they’ll prove a Giotto fresco once covered the wall,” the woman sighed. She looked
up as her secretary entered with a letter that required her signature. “Hold on a minute, Ben,” she said and tucked the phone
between her shoulder and ear while she signed, then told the secretary, “I want to see those consignment sheets before you
call the shippers, and don’t forget to remind Mr. Munson about tomorrow night.”