He opened the kitchen door and looked out. The night was crisp, and the neighborhood smells were made more pungent by the cold. Carbon monoxide hung in the air, and oily rags had been burned at the comer garage. Down below him was the patio, a dark hole, its high brick walls cutting off any light from distant streetlamps.
Qwilleran turned on the exterior light, which cast a weak yellow glow on the fire escape, and thought, What does that guy have against using a little extra electricity? He remembered seeing a flashlight in the broom closet, and he went to get it - an efficient, long-handled, well, balanced, powerful, chrome-plated beauty. Everything Mountclemens owned was well designed: knives, pots and pans, even the flashlight. It threw a strong beam on the walls and floor of the empty patio, on the ponderous wooden gate, on the wooden fire escape. Patches of frozen slush clung to the steps, and Qwilleran decided to postpone further investigation until daylight. Tomorrow he might even take Koko down there for a romp.
That evening he went to dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, and the brown, eyed waitress reminded him of Zoe. He went home and played Sparrow with Koko, and the cat's movements reminded him of the missing ballet dancer. He lighted the gas logs in the fireplace and scanned the secondhand book on economics that he had bought at the Press Club; the statistics reminded him of Nine Oh Two Four Six Eight Three - or was it Five?
... On Sunday he went to visit Nino.
The artist's studio-home in an alley garage was as dismal as it sounded. A former occupant had left the building coated with grease, to which was added the blight of Nino's collection of junk.
Having knocked and received no answer, Qwilleran walked into the agglomeration of joyless castoffs. There were old tires, bushels of broken glass, chunks of uprooted concrete sidewalk, tin cans of every size, and dispossessed doors and windows. He made note of a baby carriage without wheels, a store window mannequin with arms and head missing, a kitchen sink painted bright orange inside and out, an iron gate covered with rust, and a wooden bedstead in the depressing modernistic design of the 1930's.
A heater suspended from the ceiling belched warm fumes in Qwilleran's face, while the cold drafts at ankle level were paralyzing. Also suspended from the ceiling by a rope was a crystal chandelier of incredible beauty.
Then Qwilleran saw the artist at work. On a platform at the rear stood a monstrous Thing made of wooden oddments, ostrich plumes, and bits of shiny tin. Nino was at, fixing two baby carriage wheels to the monster's head.
He gave the wheels a twirl and stood back, and the spinning spokes, glinting under a spotlight, became malevolent eyes.
"Good afternoon," said Qwilleran. "I'm a friend of Zoe Lambreth. You must be Nino."
The sculptor appeared to be in a trance, his face illumined with the thrill of creation. His shirt and trousers were stiff with paint and grease, his beard needed trimming, and his hair had not recently known a comb. In spite of it all, he was a good, looking brute - with classic features and an enviable physique. He looked at Qwilleran without seeing him, then admiringly he turned back to the Thing with spinning eyes.
"Have you given it a title?" asked the newsman.
"'Thirty,six,'" said Nino, and he put his face in his hands and cried.
Qwilleran waited sympathetically until the artist had recovered and then said, "How do you create these works of art? What is your procedure?"
"I live them," said Nino. "Thirty-six is what I am, I was, and I will be. Yesterday is gone, and who cares? If I set fire to this studio, I live - in every leaping flame, flash, flare, floriferous flourish."
"Do you have your materials insured?" "If I do, I do. If I don't, I don't. It's all relative. Man loves, hates, cries, plays, but what can an artist do? BOOM! That's the way it goes. A world beyond a world beyond a world beyond a world."
"A cosmic concept," Qwilleran agreed, "but do people really understand your ideas?"
"They wear out their brains trying, but I know, and you know, and we all know - what do we know? Nothing!"
Nino was edging closer to the newsman in his enthusiasm for this conversation, and Qwilleran backed away discreetly. He said, "Nino, you appear to be a pessimist, but doesn't your success at the Lambreth Gallery help to give you an affirmative attitude toward life?"
"Warm, wanton, wary, weak woman! I talk to her. She talks to me. We communicate."
"Did you know her husband is dead? Murdered!"
"We are all dead," said Nino. "Dead as doorknobs... Doorknobs!" he shouted and plunged into a mountain of junk in desperate search.
"Thank you for letting me see your studio," said Qwilleran, and he started toward the door. As he passed a littered shelf, a gleam of gold signaled to him, and he called back over his shoulder, "Here's a doorknob, if that's what you're hunting for."
There were two doorknobs on the shelf, and they looked like pure gold. With them were other pieces of bright metal, as well as some startling pieces of carved ivory and jade, but Qwilleran did not stop to examine them. The fumes from the heater had made his head throb, and he was making a dash for the fresh air. He wanted to go home and spend a sane, sensible, sanitary Sunday with Koko. He was becoming attached to that cat, he told himself, and he would be sorry when Mountclemens returned. He wondered if Koko really liked the cultural climate upstairs. Were the pleasures of reading headlines and sniffing old masters preferable to an exhilarating game of Sparrow? After four days of play, the score was 471 for the cat, 409 for the man.
When Qwilleran arrived home, anticipating a friendly, furry, frolicsome fuss at the door, he was disappointed. Koko was not waiting for him. He went upstairs to Mountclemens' apartment and found the door closed. He heard music within. He knocked.
There was a delay before Mountclemens, wearing a dressing gown, answered the knock.
"I see you're home," said Qwilleran. "Just wanted to be sure the cat was getting his supper."
"He has finished the entr‚e," said Mountclemens, "and is now relishing a poached egg yolk as a savory. Thank you for taking care of him. He looks well and happy."
"We had some good times together," said Qwilleran. "We played games."
"Indeed! I have often wished he would learn mahjongg."
"Did you hear the bad news about the Lambreth Gallery?"
"If they had a fire, they deserve it," said the critic. "That loft building is a tinderbox."
"Not a fire. A murder."
"Indeed!"
"Earl Lambreth," said Qwilleran. "His wife found him dead in his office last Wednesday night. He had been stabbed."
"How untidy!" Mountclemens' voice sounded bored - or tired - and he stepped back as if preparing to close the door.
"The police have no suspects," Qwilleran went on. "Do you have any theories?"
Curtly Mountclemens said, "I am in the process of unpacking. And I am about to bathe. There is nothing further from my mind than the identity of Earl Lambreth's murderer." His tone terminated the conversation.
Qwilleran accepted the dismissal and went downstairs, pulling at his moustache and reflecting that Mountclemens had a talent for being obnoxious when it suited his whim.
Down the street at a third, rate restaurant he later scowled at a plate of meatballs, picked at a limp salad, and contemplated a cup of hot water in which floated a tea bag. Added to his irritation with his landlord was a nagging disappointment; Koko had not come to the door to greet him. He returned home unsatisfied and disgruntled.
Qwilleran was about to unlock the vestibule door when a scent of lime peel came through the keyhole, and I he was not surprised to find Mountclemens in the entrance hall.
"Oh, there you are!" said the critic amiably. "I had just come downstairs to invite you for a cup of Lapsang Souchong and some dessert. Rather laboriously I transported home a Dobos torte from a very fine Viennese bakery in New York."
The sun broke through Qwilleran's clouds, and he followed the velvet jacket and Italian pumps upstairs.
Mountclemens poured tea and described current exhibitions in New York, while Qwilleran let rich buttery chocolate melt slowly on his tongue.
"And now let us hear the gruesome details," said the critic. "I assume they are gruesome. I heard nothing about the murder in New York, where art dealers are more or less expendable.... Forgive me if I sit at my desk and open mail while you talk."
Mountclemens faced a stack of large and small envelopes and wrappered publications. Placing each envelope facedown on the desk, he rested his right hand on it, while his left hand wielded the paper knife and extracted the contents, most of which he dropped contemptuously in the wastebasket.
Qwilleran recounted the details of Lambreth's murder briefly, as it had appeared in the newspaper. "That's the story," he said. "Any guesses as to motive?"
"Personally," said Mountclemens, "I have never been able to appreciate murder for revenge. I find murder for personal gain infinitely more appealing. But what anyone could possibly gain by dispatching Earl Lambreth to the hereafter is beyond my comprehension."
"He had quite a few enemies, I understand."
"All art dealers and all art critics have enemies!" Mountclemens gave an envelope a particularly vicious rip. "The first one who comes to mind, in this case, is that indescribable Bolton woman."
"What did the lady welder have against Lambreth?"
"He robbed her of a $50,000 commission - or so she says."
"The outdoor sculpture for the shopping center?"
"Actually Lambreth did the innocent public a favor by convincing the architects to commission another sculptor. Welded metal is a fad. If we are fortunate, it will soon die - put to death by practitioners like the Bolton creature."
Qwilleran said, "Someone suggested I write a human, interest story about her."
"By all means, interview the woman," said Mountclemens, "if only for your own education. Wear tennis shoes. If she stages one of her insane tantrums, you may have to sprint for your life or dodge metal ingots."
"She sounds like a good murder suspect."
"She has the motive and the temperament. But she did not commit the crime, I can assure you. She would be in, capable of doing anything successfully - especially murder, which requires a certain amount of finesse."
Qwilleran lingered over the last few bittersweet crumbs of torte, and then he said, "I've also been wondering about the junk sculptor they call Nino. Know anything about him?"
"Brilliant, odoriferous, and harmless," said Mountclemens. "Next suspect?"
"Someone has suggested it was a family affair."
"Mrs. Lambreth has too much taste to indulge in anything as vulgar as a stabbing. A shooting, perhaps, but not a stabbing. A shooting with a dainty little cloisonn‚ pistol - or whatever women carry in those cavernous hand, bags. I have always had the impression those handbags were stuffed with wet diapers. But surely there would be room to accommodate a dainty little pistol in cloisonn‚ or tortoise shell inlaid with German silver - "
Qwilleran said, "Have you ever seen the portrait she painted of her husband? It's as lifelike as a photograph and not very complimentary."
"I thank the fates I have been spared that experience.... No, Mr. Qwilleran, I am afraid your murderer was no artist. The textural experience of plunging a cutting tool into flesh would be extremely repugnant to a painter. A sculptor would have a greater feeling for anatomy, but he would vent his hostilities in a manner more acceptable to society - by mauling clay, chiseling stone, or torturing metal. So you might better search for an irate customer, a desperate competitor, a psychotic art-lover, or a rejected mistress."
"All of the vandalized art depicted the female figure," said Qwilleran.
R-r-rip went the letter knife. "A nice sense of discipline," said the critic. "I begin to suspect a jealous mistress."
"Did you ever have reason to suspect Earl Lambreth of unethical business dealings?"
"My dear man," said Mountclemens, "any good art dealer has the qualifications to make an outstanding jewel thief. Earl Lambreth chose to divert his talents into more orthodox channels, but beyond that I am not in a position to say. You newspapermen are all alike. Once you get your teeth into a piece of news, you must worry it to death.... Another cup of tea?"
The critic poured from the silver teapot and then returned to the attack on his mail. "Here is an invitation that might interest you," he said. "Have you ever been unfortunate enough to attend a Happening ?" He tossed a magenta-colored announcement card to Qwilleran.
"No. What's a Happening?"
"An evening of utter boredom, perpetrated by artists and inflicted on a public that is gullible enough to pay ad, mission. However, the invitation will admit you without charge, and you might find it a subject for a column. You might even be mildly amused. I advise you to wear old clothes."
