Corpus Christmas

VII

Thursday, December 17

Sigrid had dropped Albee’s sequin top at a dry cleaners near headquarters and waited to have the claim ticket stamped paid, so she was a few minutes late for work. Jim Lowry, Matt Eberstadt, and Elaine Albee were already in the staff room with coffee and doughnuts and the morning papers. Sigrid had tucked the costume jewelry into a small plastic bag and she handed it and the ticket to the young blonde with a quiet, “Thanks again, Albee. And thank Quarante for me, too.”

Any other woman in the department and Elaine Albee would have asked how the evening went. With the lieutenant, discretion was always the better part of valor, so she smiled and said, “Any time, Lieutenant,” and went back to reading aloud the Daily News follow-up story on the “Babies in the Attic Case,” as it called the discovery of the infant remains found in that East Village row house.

They had reprinted earlier pictures, including one of Detectives Harald and Lowry as police officers who appealed to the public for any information about former occupants from forty years earlier.

“ ‘Baby-killer still stalking East Village?’ ” read Albee. “ ‘Area residents mum.’ ”

“Are area residents mum?” Sigrid asked, taking the last glazed doughnut in the box.

Matt Eberstadt regarded the empty box with mild sorrow. Now in his late forties with a wiry, iron gray hairline that had receded to the top of his head, he’d been put on a strict diet by his wife Frances-“You’ll lose six more pounds before Christmas or no strudel for you this year,” she’d threatened-but his heart wasn’t in it.

“The problem may be finding any longtime residents, talky or mum,” Lowry said pessimistically. “So far, the canvass hasn’t turned up anybody earlier than 1954. I think Bernie’s over checking records this morning.”

Eberstadt shifted his girth in the chair and slipped his thumb into his waistband. Not as snug as last month, but not nearly loose enough to satisfy Frances. He met Lieutenant Harald’s gaze and hastily reported, “Those fingerprints we found on the newspaper have been on the wire almost a week. Nothing so far.”

“And I don’t suppose Cohen has anything more for us yet?” Sigrid asked. “No? Okay, on to other matters.”

The next twenty minutes were devoted to cases still pending, then Albee and Lowry settled into paperwork while Eberstadt went off to review his testimony for a court hearing.

Bernie Peters returned with some names he’d dug out of public records. Now that his infant son was finally sleeping through the nights, he seemed to have more energy for work again.

“That block was mostly Polish and Ukrainian in the thirties,” he said. “Still is, to some extent.”

By cross-referencing real estate and tax records, he’d learned that the house was sold in 1934 to a Gregor Jurczyk, who’d converted it to an eight-unit tenement. Old telephone directories turned up a single telephone listed in Jurczyk’s name, at that address, until he died in 1963 and left the house to his sisters, Angelika Jurczyk and Barbara Jurczyk Zajdowicz. Even after his death, the telephone continued to be listed in his name until 1971, which would lead one to believe at least one of his sisters was still in residence there until the property was sold to a developer who went bankrupt in 1972, at which time the house was taken over by a bank.

“And after that I didn’t bother,” said Peters. “I called a friend of mine in Vital Records. Angelika Jurczyk died in 1970, age sixty-seven. No death record for Barbara Zajdowicz.”

Sigrid jotted the figures down on her pad. “That would have made her forty-four in 1947 when the last infant was put in that trunk. Any idea of the age of her sister?”

Before Peters could answer, they were abruptly interrupted. A patrol officer in Sussex Square had requested the assistance of investigators at the Erich Breul House where a dead male had been discovered.

“Where?” Sigrid asked, startled.

“ Sussex Square,” Elaine Albee repeated. “Wasn’t that where you were last night?”

Patrol cars had driven up onto the bricked walk around Sussex Square and eight or ten uniformed officers clogged the doorway when Sigrid arrived with her team.

“Too many unnecessary personnel,” Sigrid said crisply, as they entered the vaulted marble hall. “Clear them out, Cluett.”

Detective Third Grade Michael Cluett was an old-timer from Brooklyn who’d been wished on her by Captain McKinnon. He didn’t seem to resent taking orders from a woman, but he was too close to retirement to worry about impressing anyone. His only ambition seemed to be finishing out his forty years on the force without screwing up. He hitched his belt up around a belly that sagged worse than Eberstadt’s and moved off to carry out the lieutenant’s instructions.

Dr. Benjamin Peake was speaking to a uniformed officer at the rear of the hall and his handsome face grew bewildered at the sight of Sigrid.

“Miss Harald!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid we’re closed-”

“Lieutenant Harald,” she said, pointing to her badge. She was almost as surprised to see him. They’d been told only that a man had been found dead under suspicious circumstances at the Breul House, not who the man was, and for no good reason she’d halfway expected it to be Peake. “Who-?” she asked him.

“Dr. Shambley. A dreadful accident. Dreadful. Fell down the attic stairs. I’ll show you, ” Peake said.

“That won’t be necessary,” Sigrid told him.

Elaine Albee was beside her as she started up the wide marble staircase. “This is one of the places I keep meaning to come see,” said the younger woman. She noticed the rich details of the dress worn by the female dummy on the landing. “How did Breul make his money? Railroads? Oil?”

“Canal barges, I think,” Sigrid said, threading her way past the uniformed officers who loitered in the second-floor hallway frankly sight-seeing at the moment. She could only hope they’d had the sense to keep their feet out the actual crime scene.

“That’s nice stained glass,” Albee said, pausing beneath the oval Tiffany window where spring flowers blossomed on this December day.

Tiffany glass seldom appealed to Sigrid and she didn’t break her stride as she continued up the last flight of steps to the third floor.

“Through there, Lieutenant,” said a patrol officer, who was posted to limit access to the rear half of the third floor.

They passed through the frosted glass doors which were blocked open and at the end of the hall found Officer Paula Guidry already photographing the body, which lay sprawled on the bare floor at the base of some steep wooden steps. A frosted glass window high in the rear wall flooded the area with cold north light.

Across the wide landing, a mannequin dressed in the long bib apron and starched white cap of an old-fashioned maid smiled at them serenely.

Sigrid was glad to see that the end of the hall was roped off and that everyone seemed to be respecting the integrity of the crime scene. “Who was responding officer?” she asked.

A uniformed patrolman in his late twenties stepped forward. “Officer Dan Monte, ma’am.”

Without being asked, he flipped open his notebook and described how he’d been dispatched to number 7 Sussex Square in response to a call placed by a Miss Hope Ruffton, the secretary here.

“This place opens at ten a.m. and a Mrs. Eloise Beardsley- I think she’s a volunteer-came upstairs at approximately ten forty-five and discovered the body lying face down just as you see it. She said she tried to find a pulse, then realized the individual was dead.”

Officer Monte had arrived at 10:57, observed certain inconsistencies, and immediately requested investigators.

“What inconsistencies?” asked Jim Lowry.

“Not enough blood,” the patrol officer replied succinctly. “You can see from here-the back of his head’s pretty messed up and blood’s clotted in his hair, but it didn’t run down his face and there’s none on the floor beside his head. The stairs are bare wood and I guess he could have hit his head on one of the sharp edges coming down, but again, no blood.”

Sigrid watched as Guidry indicated she’d taken enough pictures of the body and its immediate surroundings. While the photographer waited for someone from the medical examiner’s office to turn it over, the crime scene unit began processing the area around the body.

“Who was in the house when you arrived?” Sigrid asked.

“Just the secretary, the Beardsley woman, the live-in janitor, and the director,” answered Monte. “They’re all downstairs. The ambulance crew got here at eleven oh-two and confirmed death.”

For a moment, Sigrid almost forgot and looked around for Tillie, the officer on whom she most relied, the one who usually acted as her recorder and could be trusted to note every minute detail.

Unfortunately, Detective Tildon was still recovering from the bomb blast that had nearly killed him in October. He was home from the hospital now and healing nicely, but was not expected back at work till next month. Mick Cluett was certainly no substitute and Albee was already catching her share on other cases. Sigrid told Lowry he’d won recorder’s job and the younger man gave a mock groan as he continued to measure distances for sketching the scene.

Bernie Peters, directing the application of fingerprint powder on the stair rail, grinned in sympathy.

Cohen arrived from the medical examiner’s office and greeted her sardonically. “We gotta quit meeting like this, Lieutenant.”

A few minutes later, he’d agreed with Officer Monte’s suspicions. “Lividity’s not much help if he was moved within a half-hour of death, but that wound bled like hell and there ought to be a puddle under his head. He didn’t die face down though. And see this?”

Cohen pulled back the collar of Shambley’s shirt and Sigrid saw that a thin trickle of blood had run down inside to his back.

She nodded thoughtfully. “So he was upright when he received the wound?”

Cohen shrugged. “He did most of his bleeding while lying supine; but yeah, I’d guess the blow came while he was sitting or standing.”

“He didn’t hurt himself in a fall?”

“Maybe. But I can’t see him standing up again after getting this wound, so how’d blood run straight down his neck?”

They would keep it in mind, Sigrid told him as Guidry photographed the stain.

The dumbwaiter shaft had been discovered and a good set of prints were found on the enamelled wood molding that framed the hinged doors. Officer Monte had managed to keep everyone off the back stairs, so Albee started down to determine the dumbwaiter’s current location, being careful to keep to the center of the treads and on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

Cohen finished his preliminary examination and stripped off thin latex gloves as he stood. “Funny-looking guy, isn’t he? Little Ed with the big head. Something odd about that head.”

“Besides its size?” asked Lowry, who had chalked an outline of the body’s position before Cohen began.

“Not our old friend the blunt instrument?” queried Bernie Peters.

“I’ll let you know after I’ve taken a look at that wound in the lab,” Cohen told them.

Guidry stepped back in for more pictures now that Cohen had turned the body face up.

“Want to estimate a time of death?” Sigrid asked.

Cohen shrugged. “Rigor’s complete, but there’s still a little body warmth, so we’re talking maybe twelve to fifteen hours, no more than sixteen hours max.”

They looked at their watches. Between 7:15 and 11:15, always taking into account that the temperature in this hallway may have been measurably higher or lower than it was now, or that the dead man had some physical quirk that would quicken or retard rigor mortis.

“I saw him alive between eight and eight-thirty last night,” Sigrid said.

Bernie Peters shot Lowry a telling glance. The lieutenant had a reputation for coldness, but she hadn’t turned a hair upon seeing the body. Even Cohen looked at her curiously. “Friend of yours?”

“No,” she answered distantly. “There was a party here last night and he came, too. We met briefly and he left early. Or rather he went upstairs early. I believe he was doing research on some papers in the attic.”

Elaine Albee reappeared on the back stairs. “The dumbwaiter’s on the first floor,” she reported, slightly out of breath. “And there looks like a smear of blood inside.”

“Probably turn out to be roast beef,” Cohen grinned. “You guys ready for me to take him?”

Sigrid queried her people. Guidry was satisfied with the number of photographs she’d taken and Lowry and Peters had just finished with their inventory of Roger Shambley’s pockets, so everyone stood back as Cohen’s assistants lifted the body onto a collapsible gurney, covered it, and strapped it down. Rigor mortis made for a bulky shape and Sigrid was not the only one reminded of a grotesque and badly wrapped Christmas package.

“By the way, Lieutenant-” Cohen paused before following the body downstairs. “You’ll get my official report late this afternoon, but I can put it in an eyedropper right now: On the bones last week, you can forget about actual age, sex, race-hell! I couldn’t even swear they aren’t monkey bones. All I can say is that they’re consistent with what you’d find if a newborn baby was wrapped in newspapers and stuck in a trunk for thirty years, give or take a week.”

“What about the mummified one?” Sigrid asked.

“Caucasian girl,” he replied promptly. “And before you ask, yeah, she was born alive. I found lint in her breathing passages. Looks like she no sooner got herself born than she got herself smothered.”

With a laconic “Ciao for now, amici,” he trailed after the gurney, never realizing that he’d allowed Roger Shambley one final exit in Italian.

With the body removed from the landing, Sigrid went up the steep attic stairs to examine the makeshift office Roger Shambley had created amid file cabinets and storage boxes. Later, someone would go through the papers and folders so neatly stacked upon his work tables, but for now she simply wished to sit in the art historian’s chair and try to get a better feel for the man she’d met so briefly last night, some sense of why he’d died.

The tabletop directly in front of his chair was bare, so she assumed he’d probably finished work for the night and cleared away his papers. Into one of those folders, perhaps. Or into his briefcase, which still sat beside the chair. A methodical man?

She rather thought there had been method in Shambley’s calculated insults last night-to that trustee, Mr. Reinicke, to Søren Thorvaldsen and, by extension, to Nauman and Francesca Leeds-but she’d observed him too briefly to understand the motive for his rudeness. There had been a certain electricity in his manner, though; as if he were so wired about something that he hardly knew or cared what he was saying.

Or to whom.

Power, Sigrid thought. Shambley had acted like someone who’d just won a lottery or inherited a throne and suddenly felt free to ride roughshod over everyone else.

“Lieutenant?” Jim Lowry’s voice at the attic door drew her back to the present. “We think we’ve found where he died.”

They went down the narrow back stairs, past the butler’s pantry on the first floor where Officer Guidry had photographed the dumbwaiter before the crime scene technicians took a sample of its stains for the lab, and from the butler’s pantry, on down the broader, more commodious stairway to the basement.

As they descended, Sigrid noted and carefully sidestepped three chalk-circled spots.

At the foot of the steps, a portable floodlamp lit up the area and made it quite apparent that the floor there had been recently-and inexpertly-mopped. They could clearly see a circular spot where dried streaks of water left dull swirls upon the shiny dark tiles.

“Bonded commercial cleaners come in every Monday,” said Elaine Albee as they watched a technician fill small glass vials with samples of a brown sticky substance he’d scraped from the joints between the tiles. “According to the woman who found the body, the cleaners bring their own equipment and part of their routine is to wax and buff the floors down here.”

A mop, still damp, had been found in the scullery, she told Sigrid. It, too, would be taken to the lab for analysis.

“And the blood on the stairs themselves?” Sigrid asked, referring to those chalk circles.

“Couple of small splashes up on the tenth and eleventh treads; a bigger one down here on the third,” said Bernie Peters. “Nothing on the upper landing and, from the shape of the drops, he was moving down at the time.”

It was consistent with what Cohen had told them. Until they uncovered data to disprove it, their working theory would be that Shambley had started down the basement steps when he was struck a tremendous blow on the head from behind. He had fallen here, bled copiously, then his body had been hauled up to the third floor soon afterwards.

“Why not leave him here in the basement where he fell?” Sigrid wondered aloud.

“The perpetrator wanted him found quickly?” speculated Lowry.

“Maybe he didn’t want him found quickly,” Albee countered. “There’s a live-in janitor who has a room down here. Maybe the perp wanted time to get away and set up an alibi before the janitor stumbled over him.”

“Or maybe it was an individual that just didn’t want us taking too close a look at the basement,” suggested Peters.

“In which case,” said Sigrid.

The others tried not to groan as they looked across the crowded Victorian kitchen to the warren of storage rooms beyond.

“There’s still a bunch of uniforms wandering around upstairs,” Mick Cluett reminded her.

“Might as well put them to use,” Sigrid agreed. “And start a canvass of the square, anyone seen entering or leaving these premises last night. In the meantime, Lowry, you and I will begin with the staff.”

They commandeered the stately, book-lined library for questioning their witnesses and lunchtime came and went before the two police detectives had heard all that the Breul House staff were prepared to tell them.

With commendable initiative, the secretary, Hope Ruffton, had typed up a guest list from the previous evening, complete with addresses, which helped them track departures. Sigrid knew that the three trustees and their respective spouses had left shortly after eight, and that she and Nauman left at 8:20. After that, as best the others could reconstruct, the curator, Elliott Buntrock, said good-night at 8:30, followed soon by Søren Thorvaldsen and Lady Francesca Leeds, Hope Ruffton, Hester Kohn and Jacob Munson, in that order.

Hope Ruffton had been collected by three friends for a musical comedy playing up in Harlem and she supplied the detectives with a separate list of her friends’ names and addresses.

Benjamin Peake declared that he’d planned to wait until the caterer’s men had gone, but Mrs. Beardsley, the senior docent, had volunteered to stay in the director’s place since she had only to walk across the square after she’d locked up.

“Mr. Peake left about eight-forty,” Mrs. Beardsley told them. “The caterers were finished shortly before nine; then I double-checked to make sure no candles were still burning, turned out the lights, and went home shortly after nine.”

“All the lights?” Sigrid asked. “What about Dr. Shambley?”

“I refer, of course, to the main lights,” Mrs. Beardsley replied, sitting so erectly in the maroon leather wing chair that Sigrid was reminded of one of Grandmother Lattimore’s favorite dicta: a lady’s spine never touches the back of her chair. “The security lights are on an automatic timer and they provide enough illumination for finding one’s way through the house.”

“And you didn’t see Dr. Shambley after the party last night?”

“No. Dr. Shambley often worked late,” said the docent with a slight air of disapproval.

“What about the janitor?”

“Pascal Grant had permission to attend a movie. I assume he hadn’t yet returned by the time I left.”

“Permission?”

“When you speak to Pascal, Lieutenant Harald, I think it will be evident why we give him more guidance and direction than an ordinary worker. This is his first job since he left the shelter and I do hope you’ll be patient with him. He’s really quite capable within clearly defined limits. You’ll see.”

“So as for as you know, Dr.Shambley was alone in the house when you left?”

“Y-es,” she said, but something unspoken lingered indecisively on her face.

Pressed, Mrs. Beardsley described how she’d awakened at midnight and seen Mr. Thorvaldsen descending the front steps of the Breul House.

Sigrid went to the library window and asked Mrs. Beardsley to point out her house across the square. It was a windy gray day and the reporters who crowded around below to question the police guard outside had bright pink cheeks and blown hair. “You’re positive it was Thorvaldsen?”

“Absolutely,” the lady said firmly. “He’s quite tall and when he passed under a streetlight at the corner, I saw his fair hair.”

On his identity, Mrs. Beardsley could not be budged, although she was quick to admit that she hadn’t actually seen the Dane exit from the house. “I thought perhaps he might have returned for something he lost or else forgot and left behind.”

“Who has keys to this place?” asked Lowry from his place at the end of a polished wooden library table.

“All the trustees have keys.” Mrs. Beardsley patted her purse with a proprietary air. “I, too, of course, as senior docent.”

Seated across the table from her, Sigrid looked at the growing list of names on her notepad. “Thorvaldsen, as well?”

“Oh, no, he’s not a trustee. But Lady Francesca might since she’s going to be in and out a lot if Mr. Nauman’s retrospective takes place.” She gave Sigrid a friendly social smile and began to describe how surprised everyone was to discover that last night’s Miss Harald was today’s Lieutenant Harald.

Jim Lowry was diverted by these clues to the lieutenant’s off-duty life. Odd to be taking down her testimony as background for a case. Oscar Nauman’s name rang a vague bell, but he couldn’t quite recall why. Besides, wasn’t she supposed to be living with an oddball writer named Roman Tramegra? Maybe Lainey would know.

The lieutenant’s cold gaze fell on him and he started guiltily. “Um-keys,” he croaked. “Who else has them? The janitor?”

“Oh yes. Not to the main door, but to an outside door in the basement.” The gray-haired woman hesitated. “And Miss Ruffton and Dr. Peake, of course.”

“Of course.”

Miss Ruffton shared with them her impression that Dr. Shambley had been up to something besides pure disinterested research, but did not suggest what that something might be.

Dr. Peake grew defensive, mistook their questions for innuendoes, and wound up revealing more animosity toward Dr. Shambley than he’d intended.

“A busybody and a snoop,” declared Peake. “With delusions of mental superiority and the reverse snobbism of the proletariat.”

“Really?” Sigrid asked, not having heard that epithet since her college days.

“Proletarian roots compounded by his shortness,” Peake theorized. “He always insulted his superiors.”

Sigrid thought of last night. “At the party, he was rude to Mr. Reinicke, Mr. Thorvaldsen, and Professor Nauman.”

“Well, there you are. ” Peake nodded. “They’re all much taller.”

When it was his turn to be questioned, Pascal Grant sat in one of the heavy library chairs with his ankles crossed like a schoolboy and kept his head down when spoken to. The janitor was so uncommunicative that Sigrid at first wondered if the young man fully understood what had happened to Dr. Shambley, and she and Lowry found themselves phrasing their questions in words of one syllable.

“I didn’t see Dr. Shambley at all last night,” he said, looking up through thick golden lashes as he answered. “Rick and me, we went to the movie.”

“Rick?”

“Rick’s my friend,” Grant said softly.

“What time did you get back here?” asked Lowry.

“I don’t know. We listened to tapes, Rick and me. Then Rick went home and I went to bed. I didn’t hear anything.”

Sigrid looked up from her notes. “Your friend Rick was here?”

“He went home,” said Grant, darting quick glances at both of them. “He didn’t hear anything either.”

“Does your friend Rick have a last name?”

Pascal Grant concentrated a moment and then his face lit up with a beautiful smile. “Evans. His name is Rick Evans. He’s Mr. Munson’s grandson.”

They could extract no further information. The young handyman continued to insist he and Evans had neither seen, heard, nor spoken to Roger Shambley the previous evening.

Unfortunately for him, Bernie Peters came up just then to announce that their search had turned up a bloody scatter rug hidden behind some boxes in one of the storerooms, and that a softball bat found beside Pascal Grant’s bed seemed to have a suspicious stain at the business end.

“Is that how you killed him?” Sigrid asked gently.

Young Grant shook his head and tears pooled in his blue eyes. “No, I didn’t. We didn’t see him. We didn’t do it.”

Feeling rather like the schoolyard bully, Sigrid sighed. “Take him back to headquarters for further questioning,” she told Peters. “And have Rick Evans picked up, too.”

Mrs. Beardsley was so outraged by Pascal Grant’s removal to headquarters that Sigrid was not overly surprised to reach her office and find the woman had gotten there before her. Nor to see that she had brought along her own lawyer, a thin dry man with tonsured hair and an ascetic manner. Harvey Pruitt might be more at home dealing with wills and deeds and other civil matters, but for Mrs. Gawthrop Wallace Beardsley’s sake, he seemed prepared to represent Pascal Grant should the young janitor be detained on criminal charges.

Rick Evans had been located at the Kohn and Munson Gallery, and an equally protective Hester Kohn had accompanied him downtown. Three minutes after their arrival, they were joined by the gallery’s attorney, a tall, brown-haired woman in what looked like Eskimo mukluks, a deerskin parka lined with fur, and gold-rimmed granny glasses. Ms. Caryn DiFranco.

The two lawyers immediately went into a huddle, then requested and were given a private room in which to confer with their respective clients.

It was long past lunchtime, so Sigrid and her team took advantage of the lull to send down for sandwiches. Mick Cluett had been sent off to check Shambley’s apartment and to notify his next of kin; but Eberstadt, back from court, joined them with an enormous corned beef on rye.

“If Frances could see that,” said Bernie Peters, shaking his head.

“Salads are for summertime,” Eberstadt said defensively. “In December, a man needs something that’ll stick to his ribs.”

“Just what you need.” Elaine Albee grinned. “More meat on those puny ribs.”

Eberstadt laughed and as they ate, the others filled him in on Roger Shambley’s death amid such Victorian surroundings.

They had taken a set of elimination prints from staff members at the house. “Just eyeballing it, I’d say the Grant kid’s the one who left prints on the dumbwaiter,” said Peters.

“You should see his bedroom down there in that basement,” Jim Lowry told Eberstadt. “Looks like a Chinese whorehouse-red velvet and gold satin, snaky lights, and art posters or calendar pictures on every square inch of wall space.”

“Calendar pictures?” Eberstadt leered. “Art posters?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Albee told him. She reached across the table to commandeer his kosher dill pickle. “He’s talking abstract art, not Playboy art.”

“Yeah, it’s funny,” said Peters. “You’d think a guy like him-not too swift on the uptake-would have pictures that looked like real things.”

“Probably sees enough of those upstairs,” said Albee. Between crunches of Eberstadt’s pickle, she described for him the tiers of gilt-framed pictures that lined the walls of the main galleries at the Erich Breul House.

Matt Eberstadt savored the last morsel of corned beef and licked his fingertips. “ Frances keeps saying we ought to go tour the place. She likes old things,” he said, wiping his hands on a less than clean handkerchief.

“Like you?” gibed Peters.

Sigrid ate her own tuna sandwich swiftly and quietly, with one eye on some paperwork and only half an ear for their give and take. Casual camaraderie had never been easy for her, although now that Nauman had entered her life, she found these unofficial sessions a little easier than before.

She skimmed through one report a second time, then passed it down the table to Bernie Peters. “The neighborhood canvass turned up someone who remembers the Jurczyks.”

The others looked at her blankly, trying to place the name.

“Oh, yeah,” said Peters. “Those baby bones.”

He read the highlights of the report aloud. “Mrs. Pauline Jaworski remembers the Jurczyk sisters from her childhood in the fifties. Thinks her mother may still be in touch with Barbara Zaidowicz. Mother’s name, Mrs. Dorota Palka. Currently resides at Lantana Walk Nursing Home up in Queens.”

Elaine Albee’s head came up. She had briefly worked undercover there back in the spring. “Lantana Walk? Queens? I thought they put that place out of business last spring.”

“The director testified against his partners and got off with a suspended sentence and a hefty fine,” said Sigrid, who had followed the situation and been disappointed by its outcome.

As they wadded up foam cups and paper napkins from their impromptu lunch, word came that Pascal Grant and Richard Evans were ready to make their statements. Sigrid checked her watch. “Lowry, I want you and Albee to sit in on this, too. Peters, see if you can get a statement from that Palka woman.”

“Just how I wanted to spend the afternoon,” Bernie Peters grumbled to Eberstadt when the other three had gone. “Freezing my ass off on the F train to Queens.”

“Better than surveillance,” replied his partner, who had done his share of sitting in cold cars on icy winter streets.

Flanked by their lawyers, Pascal Grant and Rick Evans each appeared very young and very intimidated when they entered the interrogation room; but once all the legal formalities and stipulations were out of the way, their statements were quite straightforward.

They were questioned separately and then together. The second time around, Rick Evans did all the talking at first, in a soft voice full of southern inflections. Sigrid listened without questions as he described again the noises they had heard the night before, his impression that someone had left through the basement door, Pascal Grant’s discovery of the body, and his own decision to move it to the third floor using the dumbwaiter.

When he finished, Sigrid said, “Do you have anything to add to that, Mr. Grant?”

Looking like a frightened Raphael angel, Pascal Grant darted a quick glance at her through thick sandy-blond lashes, then bit his lip and shook his head.

“You didn’t set the burglar alarm, therefore anyone who had a key could have walked in without your knowing. Is that right?”

He nodded without lifting his eyes.

“What if that person didn’t have a key?”

Puzzled, Pascal Grant looked at her. “He couldn’t come in?” he guessed.

“No,” Sigrid said patiently. “I meant what would happen if someone rang the bell? Would you hear?”

“Oh. Yes,” he nodded vigorously. “It’s right over the door in my room. Makes a real loud noise even if my tapes are on.” He hesitated. “Or did you mean the bell board in the kitchen? It’s nice. The bells jingle and a little flag comes up to show which one it is. Mrs. Sophie had a bell and Mr. Erich and-”

“No, I meant the doorbells,” Sigrid said, interrupting his enthusiastic description of how Victorian employers had once summoned their servants to particular rooms of the house.

“The doorbells ring in the office and they buzz in my room,” said Pascal Grant. “A big buzz means it’s the upstairs door and a sort of littler one means it’s the spiderweb door.”

“And did you hear either buzzer last night?”

Pascal shook his head.

“You’re sure of that?”

He nodded solemnly.

The two youths described how they had returned to the Breul House from an early showing of Round Midnight, entered through the basement door, and headed straight to Pascal Grant’s room without going upstairs and without seeing anyone.

“So you were in your bedroom listening to jazz tapes,” Sigrid said, “and you heard someone outside. What time was this?”

Pascal’s smooth brow furrowed in concentration. “Around ten-fifteen, I think. Maybe ten-thirty.”

“Yet you didn’t go out to investigate?”

“I thought it was Dr. Shambley,” Pascal said slowly.

“Did Dr. Shambley often come down to the basement that late?”

“He was everywhere.”

“Did you like Dr. Shambley?”

“No,” said the golden-haired janitor before his lawyer could stop him.

“My client’s personal feelings toward the deceased had nothing to do with his death,” said Harvey Pruitt.

“Then you won’t mind if he tells us why he disliked Dr. Shambley?” Sigrid asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that at this time,” Mr. Pruitt said austerely.

“Very well. What about others at the house, Mr. Grant? Who else didn’t like Dr. Shambley?”

“Mrs. Beardsley didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Pruitt started to object, then sat back.

“I don’t know,” said Grant. “She said he got her place or something.”

Sigrid looked at the lawyer, but Pruitt shook his head. “This is sheer hearsay, you realize?”

“Of course.”

She turned to Rick Evans. “You said you had an impression that someone else was there in the passageway when you came out of the bedroom. Who did you think it was?”

Rick shook his head. “I didn’t think. I just heard-like footsteps or something. And then I felt a draft from the open door and heard it close.”

“Did you go down and look through the door window?” asked Lowry.

“I didn’t see anyone,” Evans said.

They asked Pascal Grant to explain once more why there was blood on his softball bat if he hadn’t hit Shambley with it.

“I didn’t!” Pascal said.

“He’s telling the pure truth,” said Rick in his soft Southern voice. “I was the one carrying that bat. The whole time. I didn’t want to touch Dr. Shambley at first. I thought he was dead. He looked dead and I just sort of poked him to make sure he really was.”

The weakest part of their story was the reason they gave for moving the body and not calling the police. No matter how many times the police detectives returned to that point, the story remained that they were afraid to have Shambley’s body found so close to Pascal Grant’s door. Period.

While Jim Lowry and Elaine Albee pressed the two youths for stronger reasons, Sigrid leaned back in her chair trying to decide whether or not to charge one or the other or both with the murder. They’d had a weapon, an opportunity, and probably a motive if that lawyer’s reluctance to let Grant discuss his distaste for Shambley meant anything.

On the other hand, Grant said he hadn’t heard a doorbell, yet that Beardsley woman claimed she’d seen Thorvaldsen there at midnight.

And what was Rick Evans holding back? That he and Grant were sleeping together. Was that all?

She was almost grateful when a uniformed officer opened the door, peered in, and signaled that she had an important phone call.

“Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant,” he said when she came out into the hall and closed the door to the interrogation room, “but Dr. Cohen said you’d probably want to know right away.”

The assistant medical examiner was as laid-back over the telephone as in person. “You know that softball bat you people just sent over? Forget it. Too big. You’re looking for a rod, not a club.”

“A rod?” Sigrid was surprised. “With a wound that messy?”

“I told you there was something odd about that head.”

Cohen reminded her. “He had a big skull, but it was paper thin. Want the Latin for it?”

“Put it in your report,” she said. “What do you mean by a rod? Like a curtain rod?”

“One of those solid brass ones, maybe. Or a broom handle.”

“What about that mop handle?”

“Not thin enough. We’re talking something no thicker than my thumb. A cane, maybe, or a poker or the handle of an umbrella even. Anyhow, as thin as his skull was, it wouldn’t have taken much force whatever they used.”

Back in the interrogation room, Sigrid told the two lawyers that as soon as a statement could be typed up and signed, their clients would be free to leave.

Rick Evans gave an involuntary sigh of relief and smiled at Pascal Grant. His smile faded though when she added, “Of course, there will probably be further questions in the next few days, so we expect you not to leave town.”

“I won’t,” Pascal Grant said earnestly.

“No easy solutions,” Sigrid told Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry when Grant and Evans had signed their statements and departed. The younger officers were disappointed to learn that the blow which killed Shambley could have been delivered by either a man or a woman, or possibly even a determined child.

“Did any of those people last night carry a walking stick?” asked Albee.

“Not that I noticed,” said Sigrid. “The wife of one of the trustees, Mrs. Reinicke, walked with a slight limp, but I didn’t see her with a cane.” She described the animosity she’d witnessed between Shambley and Reinicke, then checked the time. “I’ll take Thorvaldsen and Lady Francesca Leeds; you two can split the trustees-the Reinickes, the David Hymans and Mr. and Mrs. Herzog.”

Sigrid’s voice was cool and her face perfectly serious as she told Lowry, “Mrs. Herzog was a Babcock, you know.”

“Huh?” said Lowry.

Later, he and Albee stood on a chilly IRT platform, surrounded by Christmas shoppers with brightly wrapped packages, and debated whether or not the lieutenant’s last remark was meant to be humorous.

As the Lexington Avenue train squealed to a stop, they decided it probably wasn’t.

In a cab headed uptown, Hester Kohn and Caryn DiFranco discussed the pros and cons of contact lenses while Rick Evans sat sandwiched between them on the rear seat with his feet drawn up on the transmission hump.

The furry hood of Ms. DiFranco’s parka brushed Rick’s nose as the lawyer leaned over for a closer look at the lenses in Hester Kohn’s eyes.

“I just can’t wear mine,” she sighed. “I looked absolutely gorgeous in them, but I can’t see a damn thing. Besides, I’ve decided glasses are who I am. People expect me to look like this. I expect me to look like this.”

The round gold frames of her granny glasses had slipped down on her little button nose and she pushed them up in a delicate gesture.

“I know what you mean,” said Hester Kohn. “I wore glasses for almost twenty-five years. They were such a part of me I felt naked the first few times I went out without them.”

Caryn DiFranco peered into Rick’s brown eyes. “Do you wear contacts, Rick?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Omigod! That makes me sound like I’m eighty years old.”

Rick flushed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting people don’t say that up here.”

“It’s okay, kid. You’ll be as rude as the rest of as soon enough.” She caught a glimpse of passing street signs and tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Let me out at Macy’s, okay?”

The driver grunted.

“I’ve got to buy and mail presents to half of Michigan,” she complained to Hester Kohn. “Be grateful you’re Jewish.”

“I frequently am,” Hester said dryly.

As the taxi double-parked in a no-parking zone and Caryn DiFranco opened her door, Hester added, “Thanks for coming down, Caryn.”

“Don’t thank me. You’ll get the bill. Speaking of which, do we bill that MCP partner of yours or the gallery?”

“The gallery.”

“Right. Stay out of mischief, Rick, and don’t talk to any strange cops.”

“Thanks, Miss DiFranco,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, slammed the door and disappeared among the crowds of Christmas shoppers.

The cold air that rushed in when Caryn DiFranco got out had briefly dispersed Hester Kohn’s gardenia perfume, but as the cab swerved back into the flow of traffic, the sweet scent again filled the space between them even though Rick had moved to the far side of the seat. For him, it was a disorienting smell, one connected with hot drowsy summer days, swinging on the porch of his mother’s house, a porch surrounded by those glossy bushes heavy with waxy white blossoms. Somehow it seemed all wrong to be smelling his mother’s gardenias here in this New York City taxicab on a cold December afternoon. Especially with the new associations the heavy scent of gardenias now held.

Dusk was falling and rush hour had begun in earnest. All lanes were clogged at Forty-second Street.

Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, another snarl in front of Radio City Music Hall.

Hester Kohn smoothed her dark hair and loosened the top button of her red wool coat. “Want to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

“Nothing. ” Without a camera to shield himself from her quizzical face, he unconsciously sank deeper into his corner and kept his eyes on the neon-lit stores and buildings they were now creeping past.

A complex blend of affection and irritation and a few stray tendrils of pity as well swept over Hester as she remembered Rick’s first few weeks at the gallery.

Her own virginity had been lost so long ago that she had forgotten what terrors true sexual innocence could hold. Despite their age difference, she had dazzled him, made him want her, made him helpless to resist; yet, until they were well into the act, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that it might be his first time. In that moment she had become tender and sentimental and had almost broken it off because she suddenly found herself panged by a conscience she didn’t know she still possessed.

If I’d known, I would have made it more beautiful, she thought.

Too late. Already the sweet liquids of youth were spilling from his touchingly inept body.

With those first hot rushes of manhood, another boy might have become immediately cocky and boastful, a royal nuisance. Instead, Rick came to each subsequent session reluctantly and seemed miserable and guilty afterwards.

As he was now, in this overheated cab. It wasn’t only his involvement in Roger Shambley’s death that made him shrink into that corner, yet Hester knew that if she removed her glove and touched his bare, chapped hand with hers, he would be unable to resist. She considered testing her power, but they were now too close to the gallery.

Instead, she sank back into her own corner and wondered if young Rick had, after all, seen or done more last night than he was willing to admit.

Over in Queens, an artificial Christmas tree decorated the main lobby of the Lantana Walk Nursing Home and an electric menorah stood on the reception desk with two bulbs lit for this second day of Hanukkah. As Detective Bernie Peters soon discovered, he had arrived at the most restless hour of the day for ambulatory residents, and Mrs. Palka was not in her room.

“The dinner shift is promptly at five,” explained the new resident director, “but they begin gathering outside the door by four o’clock. No doubt that’s where we’ll find Mrs. Palka.”

They walked through halls wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass each other, into a lounge decorated with more symbols of Hanukkah and Christmas. There they found a querulous elderly woman with thick glasses and a hearing aid struggling to understand what she could expect for dinner as her incurably cheerful friend read the menu aloud.

“Roast ham?” she sniffed. “We had ham for supper last night and dry, stringy fodder it was, too, with a smidgen of honey glaze or pineapple.”

“Lamb!” her friend enunciated loudly. “Roast lamb, Maureen. And you know perfectly well the doctor said you can’t have sweet things.”

“Wheat beans? What’re wheat beans? Do speak up, Dora.”

“There she is,” said the director, gesturing toward the cheerful little dumpling of a woman, who leaned heavily upon her aluminum walker and watched their approach with lively curiosity.

The director introduced Detective Peters to Mrs. Palka, pointed them to a quiet corner of the lounge, and expertly vectored Mrs. Palka’s hard-of-hearing friend toward another group of residents waiting for their dinner.

“My daughter told me someone from the police might be up,” beamed Mrs. Palka. She lowered herself painfully into a chair, refusing Peters’s help. “I had a hip replacement two years ago,” she explained. “Eighty per cent who get it can go dancing in six months. I’m part of the twenty per cent who have to hang up their dancing shoes.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernie Peters said awkwardly. The infirmities of age made him uncomfortable. Even though he knew intellectually that everyone grows old, he was still young enough to believe he would somehow be exempted:

Mrs. Palka patted his hand. “Don’t be sorry. I danced plenty in my lifetime, believe me.” She sat erectly in her chair and cocked her small white head. “So! Dead babies in Gregor Jurczyk’s attic. Whose babies were they?”

“Well, that’s what we were hoping you could tell me, Mrs. Palka. Your daughter thought you were friendly with the Jurczyk family and might remember some of the people who lived in that house.”

“Pauline says between 1935 and 1947. That right?”

“Those were the dates on the newspapers we found them wrapped in,” Peters nodded.

“Now let me think. The Depression was going strong then and then came the war. They couldn’t have been Barbara’s. She was very good, very religious and would never. Besides, she and Karol-that was her husband, lovely man- they couldn’t have babies. And Angelika was a businesswoman, worked as a secretary in one of those big-shot investment places on Wall Street. She never married, so it couldn’t have been her. There was a Mr. and Mrs. Rospochowski, but they had a new baby almost every year. When did she have time to slip in four more? Now there was a pretty little red-headed thing. What was her name? Anna? Anya?

“Ah, but what am I talking?” Mrs. Palka shook her head ruefully at what she considered a failing memory. “That one didn’t come till after the war started.”

“What about Mr. Jurczyk? Was he married?”

“Not that one. Too interested in the almighty dollar to spend a penny on a wife.”

The dining room opened and residents began a modest surge through the doors. The smell of roast meat and steamed broccoli spread through the lounge and stirred those still seated to action. Even Mrs. Palka began to move her walker into a ready position.

“But really, Barbara’s the one who could tell you better about the people who lived there,” she said. She took a slip of paper with a Staten Island address from the pocket of her pink cardigan and gave it to Peters. “If she’ll talk to you. We used to call each other up on the phone at least once a month, but she’s gone downhill so much this year. Last time I talked to her-back in August that must have been-I don’t believe she knew who I was. But then she is eighty-seven, four years older than me.”

Getting up from a chair seemed almost as painful to Mrs. Palka as sitting down, but as she regained her feet and had her walker pointed toward the dining room, her querulous friend impatiently called to her, “Hurry up, Dora! Loretta says we’re having colicky moose for dessert.”

A ridiculous mental image filled Peters’s head, and plump little Mrs. Palka, her wrinkled face aglow with laughter, winked at him with such insouciant charm that he found himself laughing, too.

“That Maureen! She knows perfectly well that Loretta said chocolate mousse.”

The Hymans lived on Central Park South, but the Herzogs and the Reinickes lived within three blocks of each other in the East Sixties, so Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry decided to interview them first.

Lydia Babcock Herzog was tall and gaunt in a high-necked tunic and slacks of ivory wool. The young policewoman admired her dramatic gold necklace, her diamond earrings, her beautifully furnished drawing room with its miniature gold Christmas tree set upon an intricately carved ebony stand, even her tall and dignified husband; but as far as Elaine was concerned, that old adage, “You can never be too rich or too thin,” was only half right. Mrs. Herzog would have to gain ten pounds just to qualify for anorectic, never mind too thin.

Mr. Herzog was quietly handsome, like a fair-haired English film star of the forties, refined and reserved. He offered Jim and Elaine drinks and, when they refused, continued with the one he’d begun before they arrived.

Mrs. Herzog’s drink remained untouched on the low table before her. She sat on a sofa of pale blue brocade, inclined her head graciously, and repeated how shocked they had been to learn of Dr. Shambley’s untimely death. How utterly shocked, in feet.

Jim Lowry rather doubted that. Mrs. Herzog seemed too detached to have ever been shocked by anything, but he nodded. “We understand that he hadn’t been there very long?”

“He was appointed at our semiannual meeting in September,” said Mrs. Herzog. “Jacob Munson put his name forward. I wasn’t quite sure he was right for the Breul House-he was on sabbatical from the New York Center for the Fine Arts, you see-but Jacob assured us his academic credentials were impeccable and we did lack a scholar on the board. ” She watched her husband refill his martini glass from a silver shaker on the antique Chinese sideboard. “I suppose we shall have to find ourselves another scholar.”

“This time from the Institute of Fine Arts,” her husband murmured as he sat down again in a pale blue chair by the sideboard.

“Yes.” She lifted her own drink from the gleaming teak table and held the long-stemmed crystal cocktail glass with skeletal fingers while she stared at the small white object awash in clear liquid.

A Gibson, Elaine decided. Martinis had olives, Gibsons had pearl onions.

Of course.

Onions also had fewer calories than olives. Not that it actually mattered.

Without touching the glass to her lips, Mrs. Herzog returned it to the table.

“Were you aware of any animosity between Dr. Shambley and anyone else at the Breul House?” asked Jim Lowry.

“We hardly knew him, Detective Lowry. Marie Reinicke arranged a luncheon at the house for everyone to meet him, early last month. He was quite witty that day. A bit too witty for my taste, but then perhaps I-”

She hesitated as her husband stood and casually poured himself another drink, then looked at her inquiringly. “Another for you, my dear?”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “I still seem to have some.”

“We were told that he was witty at Mr. Reinicke’s expense last night,” said Elaine Albee.

“Precisely my point. Winston was devastated when he had to part with his Van Gogh drawing, and for that odious little man to make light of it-!”

Her voice lost its detachment and Mr. Herzog completed the thought for her in a dignified tone. “He was no gentleman.”

“Was Mr. Reinicke angry last night?” asked Lowry.

“Winston Reinicke is a gentleman,” said Mrs. Herzog. “If you’re really asking if he remained behind last night and exacted revenge for Dr. Shambley’s insults, he did not. The four of us left Erich Breul House together shortly after eight and shared a car uptown. We dropped the Reinickes at their own door well before eight-thirty.”

“Are you quite sure I can’t fix someone a drink?” Mr. Herzog asked courteously.

When they regained the street some twenty-seven floors below, Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry unconsciously paused to draw in several deep breaths of frigid night air.

Lowry laughed when he realized what they were doing. “That’s how it must feel in a submarine or a spaceship,” he said. “Every crack hermetically sealed and all the air recycled over and over until there’s no oxygen left in it.”

Rush hour traffic was still building and streams of headlights could be seen all the way down Park Avenue. The Reinickes lived in a building that fronted the park and as she and Jim walked over to Fifth, Elaine said, “Before we do the Hymans, let’s stop in at F.A.O. Schwartz if we finish up with the Reinickes in time. I need to see some kids talking to Santa soon or I’m going to lose all my Christmas spirit.”

The Reinicke apartment rose high above Central Park. The living room was furnished with an eclectic mix of beautiful antiques, modern couches, small collectibles and a large, bushy Scotch pine squashed into a corner window; its colored lights overlay the lights of the park and were reflected back into the room. Despite the clutter, the place seemed warm and cozy after the airless precision of the Herzog’s’ home.

Mrs. Reinicke was a vivacious blonde of late middle-age and seemed totally unselfconscious about her limp.

“Polio,” she said cheerfully when she noticed Jim Lowry’s surreptitious glance at her rolling gait. “Jonas Salk was eight years too late with his vaccine for me. Even so, I was lucky. My baby sister died.”

She tilted her blond head to them. “So much anxiety now with AIDS but we’ve forgotten the sheer terror of the polio epidemics, haven’t we? I do hope there’s a heaven. Dr. Salk and his colleagues so deserve one.”

Winston Reinicke, bluff and hearty, patted her hand tenderly. “So they do, my love, so they do.”

“Forgive my asking,” said Elaine, “but do you ever use a cane?”

“Oh, no. Not for me. I tried once but such a nuisance you wouldn’t believe! Getting in and out of cabs, and they always slide off your chair and trip up the waiters. I have an Irish shepherd’s crook for tramping around our country place, but here in the city I simply can’t be bothered. Winston, do fix these two young people something to drink.”

She waved aside their demurrals. “It doesn’t have to be alcoholic. We have juice, Perrier, or-I know! In honor of the season, what about some eggnog without the nog or mulled apple cider?”

The detectives had not wanted to accept drinks from the Herzog’s, but somehow it seemed all right from the Reinickes and soon they were sipping hot cider, warmed inside and out by the spicy bouquet of cloves and cinnamon.

“I grew up on an apple farm in Pennsylvania,” Lowry said contentedly, “and this smells like Christmas at home.”

Both Reinickes looked as if they’d much rather discuss apple farms or Christmas customs or even Lowry’s mother’s recipe for mulled cider than Roger Shambley; but it was clear that someone had already given them all the news about the art historian’s death. Once the initial awkwardness wore off, they freely answered questions about the previous evening as if the detectives were there solely to gather background material. Neither seemed to realize that Mr. Reinicke might be a suspect.

“It was an informal sort of get-together,” explained Marie Reinicke. “Four or five of the trustees and their spouses, some art people, people from the Breul House. Organized by Lady Francesca Leeds with, I suppose, Mr. Thorvaldsen picking up the tab?” She looked doubtfully at her husband.

“Quite right, quite right,” agreed Mr. Reinicke. “All their idea, and a tax write-off to boot, so it’s only right, eh? Our funds are too low for impromptu parties, I’m afraid. And don’t forget Oscar Nauman.”

“Of course, ‘ Mrs. Reinicke nodded briskly. ”He was the whole point of the party. You’ve been told that though?”

“He’s a painter-going to exhibit some of his pictures there, isn’t he?” Lowry asked hesitantly. “And that’s supposed to help bring in more money?”

“And publicity.” Mrs. Reinicke cocked her blond head at Lowry’s uncertainty and charitably elucidated, “Yes, you might say Oscar Nauman’s a painter. Like Donald Trump’s a carpenter or Pavarotti sings a little. Nauman’s never had a summary exhibition and to have his first at the Erich Breul House-! There’ll be lines all around Sussex Square.”

Jim and Elaine exchanged glances. Neither had realized that Lieutenant Harald was involved with someone of that stature.

“And the Kohn woman, Jacob Munson’s colleague at the gallery,” said Mr. Reinicke, who was still reconstructing last night’s party, “and that quiet young woman with those extraordinary gray eyes. She came with Nauman. Did you meet her, Marie? A Miss Harald. Tall woman. Didn’t say much, but had a nice smile.”

“He never listens to a thing I tell him,” Mrs. Reinicke confided to Elaine and Jim. “Now, Winston, don’t you remember when Hope Ruffton called to tell us about Dr. Shambley? She said that the police officer in charge of the investigation turned out to be the same woman who was there last night with Oscar Nauman.”

“Eh?” Mr. Reinicke drew himself up and looked at Lowry and Albee with the first signs of suspicion. “Well, then. You must already know everything that happened, eh?”

“Not really,” Elaine Albee said smoothly. “Lieutenant Harald was there as a guest, like everyone else, and she was only one person. She couldn’t have seen everything Dr. Shambley did.”

“But she did hear his exchange with me, eh?” He glowered down at her.

“Now, Winston-”

“She said he seemed like a very rude man,” Elaine answered diplomatically.

Mr. Reinicke flexed the tension from his shoulders and smoothed the lapels of his tweed jacket. It was like watching a farm dog lower its hackles and become good ol’ Shep again, thought Lowry.

“Dr. Shambley was rude to you last night?” asked Mrs. Reinicke. “You didn’t tell me, Winston.”

“No need, my dear, no need at all,” he said gruffly. “He’d heard about our Van Gogh and it amused him.”

“Amused him?” Mrs. Reinicke began to grow indignant.

“And then he had the unmitigated gall to suggest I could upgrade my collection with a Norman Rockwell or a Pierson Sharpe.”

“My dear!”

“Sharpe?” asked Jim Lowry, who rather liked Norman Rockwell’s down-to-earth pictures and didn’t see where the insult lay in Shambley’s remarks.

“He’s the man who draws those kids with the big sad eyes,” Elaine told him. “The one my sister-in-law likes so much.”

Lowry knew what Lainey thought of her sister-in-law’s taste and began to understand the Reinickes’ annoyance.

“No wonder you and Cheevy were gone so long last night,” said Mrs. Reinicke sympathetically.

“You went out again last night?” asked Elaine.

“Needed a good long tramp,” Winston Reinicke nodded. “Walked around the edge of the park to Columbus Circle, then up to Lincoln Center and back down Broadway to Times Square. Don’t mind admitting the fellow got to me. Nobody likes to admit he’s failed.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Winston!” Mrs. Reinicke stood, plucked her husband’s empty glass from his hand and stumped over to their liquor cabinet to pour him a fresh drink. “You had a temporary setback. And you were hardly alone. I never liked that Van Gogh anyhow.”

“Well, I did!” he said testily, waving away the drink she offered him.

Mrs. Reinicke evidently knew her husband’s moods quite well, for she continued to hold out the glass until he sighed and took it.

“Suppose that lieutenant woman wants to know what it was all about,” he told Lowry and Albee. “Black Monday. Took a real bath on the Street. Overextended. More than I could raise to cover all my margin calls. Elliott Buntrock’d had his eye on my Van Gogh for years and he offered to help liquidate some of my collection in a hurry if I’d give him first shot at that drawing. Didn’t try to fudge the prices either. Damned decent of him. Might’ve gotten a bit more if I’d put them up for a proper auction; but if I could’ve waited for an auction, wouldn’t have had to sell out in the first place, eh?”

“And now you can have the fun of building a new collection,” Marie Reinicke observed indulgently.

“Not the same,” said her husband, taking another swallow of his drink. “Not as much fun having people to dinner any more either.”

“It was a very gloomy drawing,” Mrs. Reinicke told the young officers. “But some people were impressed to learn they were dining in the same room with a Van Gogh and Winston loved to show it off. Personally, I miss the Cassatt pastel more and no one ever paid it a shred of attention.”

“After Dr. Shambley’s remarks, though, it’s certainly understandable that you’d want to walk off some steam,” said Elaine Albee.

It all sounded very much like a tempest in a teapot to Jim Lowry, but he knew that murders were committed every day for even sillier reasons. It was lucky that Mr. Reinicke had an alibi.

“Did your friend come home with you?” he asked.

Mr. Reinicke looked blank. “Friend?”

Elaine realized that Jim was trying to avoid raising Mr. Reinicke’s ire again. “You said that you and a Mr.-Cheever, was it?-took a long walk together,” she said helpfully. “If you could give us his full name and address-”

“Cheevy?”

Mrs. Reinicke lay back in her chair and whooped with laughter. “Mr. Cheevy!”

“Cheevy’s our dog,” chuckled Mr. Reinicke, his good spirits partially restored. “A King Charles spaniel out of Scorned Lady of Winterset, so we had to name him Cheevy. First name,”-he chuckled some more-“Miniver, of course.”

Mrs. Reinicke took pity on the detectives’ puzzled looks. “From the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem,” she smiled. “You know: ‘Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn’?”

Elaine looked at Jim, then sighed and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reinicke, but we have to ask you exactly what time you left this apartment, when you returned and if you met anyone you recognized during that time?”

Traffic was beginning to thin out, and as they walked down Fifth Avenue to see if the famous toy store were keeping late Christmas hours, a sharp arctic wind swept across the park. With mittened hands, Elaine pulled her woolly blue knitted hat further down over her face and turned up her collar till only her eyes and her pink-tipped nose could be seen.

Jim Lowry had not worn a hat or cap since he was twelve and still under parental control, but he turned up his own collar and wrapped his wool scarf tighter so that his ears were somewhat protected. His breath blew out in white clouds before him as he said gloomily, “I don’t think Lieutenant Harald’s going to accept the testimony of a King Charles spaniel.”

Elaine pulled him to a stop. “Look down there,” she said, gesturing with her head. “Cohen said a rod or a stick, right? Do you suppose Mr. Reinicke has one?”

On the sidewalk a few yards ahead of them, a man was cleaning up after his poodle with a device that looked something like a long-handled dustpan.

Jim began to laugh. “You gotta promise I can be there when you ask the lieutenant if Shambley could have bought it with a pooper-scooper.”

With a fuzzy hat pulled down over her ears and a long fur coat that swathed her tiny body like a djellaba, Søren Thorvaldsen’s middle-aged secretary tripped up the gangplank and across the wide deck as if the frigid gusts whipping off the Hudson River were nothing more than spring zephyrs.

Probably one of those dauntless Nordic types that went from steaming saunas to splashing among ice floes, thought Sigrid as she shivered along behind in a utilitarian coat and hood of heavy black wool that had weathered nine winters. The usual river traffic seemed to be out on the choppy water tonight, but the wind made her eyes so teary that she could only distinguish blurred lights in the darkness.

When she called earlier to set up this meeting, Sigrid hadn’t expected it would take a half-mile hike to find Thorvaldsen. But she’d arrived at his office overlooking the river to find a Danish pixie who, after a quick telephone conversation conducted in Danish, had immediately encased herself in an envelope of fur and led Sigrid through a maze of hallways and elevators and eventually across a bone-numbing expanse of windswept pier and up onto the deck of his cruise ship, the Sea Dancer.

“She’s supposed to sail Saturday at noon,” explained the pixie, a Miss Kristensen. Even in high-heeled leather boots, the woman barely came up to Sigrid’s shoulder and her words were almost blown away as she trotted along ahead of the tall police officer. “-partial loss of power in one of the main generators.”

She tugged open a heavy steel door and they were suddenly and mercifully out of the biting wind and into the silence of a glass-enclosed promenade. Through another door and this time they entered true warmth. Sigrid pushed back the hood of her coat and felt her face begin to thaw.

They were inside a spacious lobby decorated in tones of peach, melon and sunshine yellow, but Sigrid was given no time to play tourist. Already, Miss Kristensen was halfway across the wide expanse of floral carpeting, heading for a bank of elevators. Sigrid almost expected to see her pull out a large turnip watch and murmur something about being late. She lengthened her own stride and caught up with the other woman just as the elevator arrived.

Instead of descending to the depths of the ship, or wherever they kept generators»-Sigrid was weak on engineering details-the elevator rose. Soon she was once more following Miss Kristensen through a maze of confusing twists and turns, then down a wide, paneled hall carpeted in rich patterns of luscious tropical colors.

Abruptly, Miss Kristensen opened the door of a luxurious room with a sweeping view of the river. “Mr. Thorvaldsen’s suite,” she murmured. “If you’ll wait here, Lieutenant Harald, he’ll join you shortly.” She flicked on a soft light over a fully equipped bar that gleamed and sparkled with chrome and crystal and cut-glass decanters like a tiny, perfect jewel box. “May I get you something to drink while you wait?”

“No, thank you,” said Sigrid.

“Then I’ll say godnat. ” Wrapping her furs tighter around her small form, the secretary hurried away.

Sigrid was drawn to the bank of windows at the end of the room where a wide couch had been built into the curve of the window. Upholstered in buttery soft leather of a tawny topaz color, it invited one to curl up and enjoy the view. She slipped off her coat and rested her strong chin on the back of the couch to stare through the glass.

The 180-degree night view was breathtaking. Across the water, a huge neon coffee cup dripped its good-to-the-last-drop in front of New Jersey’s lights; on the near shore, the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan became towering tiers of cubed light; while upriver, the George Washington Bridge spanned the two shores with graceful, glittering loops.

The city’s stately nighttime beauty, coupled with the ship’s warmth and quiet, made Sigrid relax. It had been a long day and as the moments passed, relaxation turned to increasing lethargy. Just as she was beginning to think she ought to take a turn about the deck to wake herself up, the door opened and Søren Thorvaldsen entered.

He was casually dressed in dark wool slacks and a white hand-knit fisherman’s sweater that had a fresh smear of grease on the left cuff, and he was followed by a waiter whose tray held a silver thermos jug of steaming hot drink and plates of cheese and crackers and smoked fish.

“Can’t offer you much,” Thorvaldsen said as the waiter spread the food on the blond oak table before her, then left. “The kitchen staff’s off duty until tomorrow morning.”

“This wasn’t necessary,” Sigrid told him, but she was suddenly conscious of hunger and took the plate he offered with no further protest.

The hot drinks were Tom and Jerries, not a concoction Sigrid cared for, although she could appreciate how fitting it was for the cold night and for the yuletide season.

“Glaedelig jul,” said Thorvaldsen, lifting his glass toward her.

“Skål,” she replied.

The spicy hot rum slid down easily and began to create its own inner warmth.

“I didn’t realize you were such a hands-on shipowner,” Sigrid said, watching Thorvaldsen dab with a linen napkin at the grease on his sweater. There was an unpretentious, raw vitality about the man that kept one subliminally reminded of the working-class roots even when he wasn’t boasting of them.

“That generator could wind up costing me an extra eighteen hundred unnecessary meals if we’re a half day late leaving port,” the Dane said with a shrug. He finished his drink and poured another from the thermos. “Plus the extra time and labor to serve and clean up afterwards.”

Sigrid cut herself a wedge of soft Havarti and spread it on a slice of dark bread. “All because it leaves in the evening instead of noon?”

“Everything that happens aboard ship, every detail, has a price tag. Leaving a half day late could mean getting into Bermuda long after lunch instead of well before. This is a very competitive business. Something goes over cost, it comes out of profits. When that happens, I want to know why.”

The serious lines in his open rugged face crinkled as he grinned and added, “Eighteen hundred lunches would just about buy one Oscar Nauman painting.”

Sigrid followed his eyes to a picture on the far wall, in a place of honor beyond the bar. Its colors and rhythms were arresting: very manly, very-now that she looked at it- Nauman. She was surprised to realize that she could recognize the painting as indisputably his. It was a large abstract in those topaz and rust tones that she now identified with Francesca Leeds.

In fact this whole room with its blond oak, its amber and russet-colored couches and chairs, its gold chrome and its touches of burnt orange might have been designed as a setting for Francesca Leeds.

“Which came first?” she asked, curious. “The picture or the decor?”

“The picture, of course,” he answered, apparently surprised that she would need to ask.

Sigrid gave an inward sigh. It was awkward to be the only person in Nauman’s world who wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about his work. She didn’t wonder that this self-made millionaire could respond so directly to the strength of Nauman’s art. Intellectually, she, too, could appreciate the games Nauman played with color and mathematics, with subtle rhythms and thematic variations; and she wished she liked it more. But it was just too abstract to move her emotionally, unlike the old German painters whom she loved for their spare asceticism and because they were rooted in the particular.

“-and perhaps it appeals to me precisely because I have spent so many years in hard serious work, but there’s always Nauman’s playful quality,” Thorvaldsen was saying.

Wasn’t there just, Sigrid thought wryly, momentarily diverted from Thorvaldsen’s enthusiasm by certain memories of Nauman’s playfulness.

“-an artist of his own time and one who isn’t afraid to leave the loose ends. The high purpose of art is to remind us that something is always left undone-to remind us that it’s not human to expect too much from method and plan. Only third-rate artists paint perfect pictures. Real life isn’t tidy,” said Thorvaldsen. “Look at this ship-all a fantasy!”

Thorvaldsen tilted the nearly empty thermos jug inquiringly. “More?”

Sigrid shook her head and covered the top of her glass with her hand. “No.”

She pulled a notepad from the outer pocket of her coat and placed it on the table. “You do realize this isn’t a social visit?”

“Too bad. ” His voice was slightly slurred, but his eyes were wary.

He seemed to be drinking quite a lot, Sigrid noted. That was the trouble with mixing alcohol with eggs and spices. Those hot Tom and Jerries were like eggnog: if one hadn’t eaten, it was too easy to treat them like food instead of drink.

Sigrid patted her other coat pockets and finally the pockets of her dark blue jacket and gray slacks without finding a pen.

Smiling, Thorvaldsen handed her his, a slim gold-filled object. His fingers brushed hers and lingered a moment before he released the pen.

Deliberately?

“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I gather you’d already heard about Dr. Roger Shambley when I called before.”

“Yes. Someone told Francesca and she telephoned me.” Thorvaldsen buttered a cracker, added a morsel of smoked fish, and popped the whole thing in his mouth.

“How long had you known Dr. Shambley?”

The shipowner swallowed. “I didn’t. Heard his name, of course, and knew he was an art historian writing a book, but that’s all.”

“What did you think of him?”

Thorvaldsen gave a short explosive laugh and spoke a couple of one-syllable words in Danish that need no translation. “You were there, frøken Harald. You heard him threaten me.”

“Yes. What did he mean?”

The big Dane shrugged. “Who knows what small men dream?”

“You weren’t afraid of his threat?”

“Of course not.”

“Would you describe, please, what happened at the Breul house after Nauman and I left?” asked Sigrid.

“After you and Nauman left, it became boring.” Thorvaldsen leaned back in a creamy leather chair with his left ankle resting on his right knee and his brawny hands clasping his left shin. “I spoke with that curator chap, Buntrock, for a few minutes. Very knowledgeable about Nauman’s work. Then I left with Lady Francesca Leeds. About eight-thirty, I think.”

“Shambley didn’t reappear?”

“He did not.”

“And then?”

“And then?” he mimicked. “You wish to know what happened after we left the Breul House?”

“You had words with Dr. Shambley, laid hands on him, almost hit him,” Sigrid said calmly. “A few hours later, he was dead. You may not want to answer without a lawyer-”

“Lawyers!” Thorvaldsen snorted scornfully.

“-but I have to ask you to account for those hours up until, say, one a.m.”

“Eight-thirty till one a.m.,” he repeated slowly.

“Yes.”

“We had dinner reservations at Le Petit Coq,” he said, naming an expensive French restaurant a few blocks west of Sussex Square. “After that I put Francesca into a taxi for the Maintenon and came back to my office to work.”

His blue eyes were sardonic. “You have a most unprofessional look on your face, frøken Harald. You are surprised to hear that she went back to her hotel alone?”

“Not at all,” Sigrid lied. “You and Lady Francesca parted at what time?”

“Ten-fifteen, ten-thirty. I didn’t look at my watch.”

“And then?”

“I worked until midnight, went to my apartment on the top floor, had a drink, and went to bed. Alone.”

“Is there anyone who can confirm that? Miss Kristensen, perhaps?”

“Not even Miss Kristensen is that dedicated.”

“What about a night watchman or a cleaning person?”

He shook his head and his fair hair was like old mellow gold in the lamplight of this golden stateroom. “Sorry. There’s only my word.”

“Your word?” Her eyes were skeptical chips of gray slate as she lifted them to his.

“You’re an odd woman,” he said, standing abruptly. He stretched out his hand to her. “Come, please.”

Puzzled, Sigrid stood up.

He pointed toward the glass.

Out in the channel, a tugboat moved slowly past the Sea Dancer. Car lights passed in an intermittent stream along the expressway, and high above the Palisades could be seen the red and green flashes of airplane lights.

“In the glass,” Thorvaldsen murmured and Sigrid saw themselves reflected as in a dark mirror.

“It did not surprise me that Oscar had taken Francesca,” he said thickly. “But you-!”

He tried to pull her to him.

“Mr. Thorvaldsen-”

“Oscar Nauman is a man of fire. You can’t be as cold as you look.”

He put his arms around her as if to kiss her.

“Are you crazy? Stop it!” she cried and, when he didn’t release her, kicked him in the shins. Hard.

As Thorvaldsen tightened his hold, Sigrid’s police training shifted into automatic. She abruptly relaxed, leaned into him, and a moment later, sent the Dane crashing to the floor.

Instinctively, her hand went to the handle of the.38 holstered in a shoulder harness beneath her jacket as she waited to see how Thorvaldsen would react.

At that moment a voice behind her said, “Is this a private game or can anybody play?”

Sigrid released the gun handle, took a deep breath, and slowly turned. “Hello, Lady Francesca.”

Francesca Leeds closed the door behind her and looked from Sigrid, breathing hard in the middle of the room, to Søren Thorvaldsen, now sitting on the floor and rubbing his left eye where it had banged against the low table. Her smile was tentative as she said, “I’m sure there’s some perfectly rational explanation for what’s happened here.”

“Not really,” said Sigrid. “Mr. Thorvaldsen was a bit uncertain about a woman’s ability to defend herself and I’m afraid he goaded me into a demonstration. Quite unprofessional of me. I apologize, Mr. Thorvaldsen.”

She had expected him to be sullen. Instead, he came to his feet with an easy smile and a shrug.

“No apologies, frøken Harald. You showed me what I wished to know.” He greeted the elegant redhead with a kiss on her cool cheek. “You see, Lsøde ven? I’m still an Ålborg roughneck.”

Not fully convinced, but willing to let it pass, Francesca threw her mink coat over a nearby chair, added her gloves to the heap, and headed for the bar. “I feel as if I’m two drinks behind. Fix anyone else something?”

“Not for me,” Sigrid murmured.

“Just an ice cube,” Thorvaldsen said ruefully, as his fingers examined the lump swelling beneath his eye. “You come in time to rescue me, Francesca. I’m being grilled about Dr. Shambley.”

Francesca paused with a decanter of Irish whiskey in her graceful hands. “Should I be leaving then, Sigrid?”

“Why?” asked Thorvaldsen.

Sigrid stood. “Perhaps it would be better if you both came to my office tomorrow and made formal statements.”

“Me?” Francesca seemed surprised. “Why on earth would you need a statement from me? I barely knew the man.”

“But you have a key to the Breul House, don’t you?” asked Sigrid.

“Well, yes, but- Oh, don’t be daft, Sigrid! He was a grotty little man but you can’t think I went back there last night and sneaked in and killed him?”

“Can you tell me where you were between eight-thirty and one A.M.?” Sigrid asked bluntly.

“To be sure, I can,” she said in her Celtic lilt. She brought Thorvaldsen an ice cube wrapped in a napkin and sat down with her drink at the other end of the couch from Sigrid. “Søren and I finished dinner shortly before ten, then I took a cab to the Maintenon. Some friends of mine were just going into the lounge when I got in around ten-thirty-George and Bitsy Laufermann-and they insisted that I join them. We stayed for the midnight show. I’ll give you their phone number, if you wish, and you can also ask the maître d’. He’ll tell you I was there.”

Sigrid jotted down the names and numbers, then asked, “What about your key to the Breul House? Do you carry it with you?”

“On my key ring, yes,” said Francesca. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to see it.”

She moved so beautifully, Sigrid thought, watching as the other woman crossed to her fur coat. Tonight she wore a dark brown taffeta dress edged with a stiff, narrow self-ruffle at the neck and wrists, shot with gold threads that gleamed with every swing of the skirt. Her lustrous hair fell in copper tangles about the perfect oval of her face.

Even as Sigrid went through the formalities of this interview with one level of her mind, another level catalogued Francesca’s almost flawless beauty. Thorvaldsen’s advances had been clumsy and insulting and she should have decked him harder, but she could almost sympathize with his basic confusion. How could Oscar Nauman possibly be attracted to her when he’d had one of the most beautiful women in New York?

Last night she had meant it when she told Nauman she wasn’t jealous of the women he’d known before her. Tonight, on this ship, she found herself wondering who had initiated their split-Francesca or Nauman?

Francesca Leeds dug into one of the deep pockets and came out with a handful of keys. She detached one and handed it to Sigrid. It was tagged EBH.

“I’d like to keep this for now,” Sigrid said, wrapping it in a clean sheet of notepaper. She quickly wrote out a receipt for it. “One more question: do you know why Roger Shambley was killed?”

The copper-haired woman resumed her place on the couch and her brown eyes regarded Sigrid humorously. “Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut?”

Sigrid looked up inquiringly.

Francesca shrugged. “I only know what I’ve heard.”

“Which is-?”

“Word around art circles is that Roger Shambley liked to know things. He listened and he heard and he was a bloody genius with insinuations. People often thought he knew more than he did, but by the time they realized he didn’t, it was too late because they’d already let too much slip.” She looked into her glass and laughed. “Does that make any sense?”

“He was a røven af fjerde division,” Thorvaldsen growled, the ice cube still held to his eye.

“That, too, if it means what I think it does,” Francesca nodded. “He liked to know unpleasant things about you and then rub your nose in it.” She tilted her glass to her lips and drank the rest of her undiluted whiskey. “Or so I’ve been told.”

More specific, she would not be; so Sigrid turned her gaze back to the man, who had taken Francesca’s glass over to the bar for a refill. “Would you prefer to finish your statement down at headquarters tomorrow, Mr. Thorvaldsen?”

“I thought I had finished already,” he said, pouring Irish whiskey into two glasses.

Sigrid flipped back several pages in her notebook. “You told me you worked until midnight and then went to bed.”

“Ja.”

“Yet we have a witness who saw you at the Breul House at midnight.”

That finally got under the shell of amused condescension which he’d adopted since Francesca’s arrival.

His blue eyes narrowed. “He must be mistaken.”

“No,” she answered flatly.

Francesca looked up at him as he returned with her new drink.

“Søren?”

He ignored her. “And if I say he lies, it is my word against his. Then what happens?”

“Then your people here will be questioned. No matter what you think, if you returned after midnight, someone will have seen you. Lady Francesca’s key to the Breul House will be analyzed. If the lab finds any waxy or soapy residue, that might indicate that it’d been duplicated without her knowledge. We would probably look more closely into your activities, see if Roger Shambley had learned something interesting about you-how you acquired all the pieces in your art collection, for instance. And then-”

“Enough, enough.” He turned to Francesca. “I did not use your key.”

“But you did go back to the Breul House,” Sigrid prodded.

“Ja,” he sighed and walked over to the windows to stare out at the dark river.

Francesca’s eyes met Sigrid’s and both women waited silently.

With his back to them, Thorvaldsen said, “When I returned to my office last night, there was a message on my machine from Dr. Shambley. He apologized for what he’d said about Francesca and Nauman and said he wanted to make it up to me.”

“Is the message still there?” Sigrid asked.

“No, I erased it.” Thorvaldsen sank heavily into the tawny leather chair opposite the low oak-and-glass table, his full glass cradled in those strong hands. The red lump under his eye had begun to turn blue.

“Did he say what he planned to do?”

“Not in so many words. Francesca told you before: he could say one thing, but you knew he meant something else.” He looked at his glass, dien set it on the table without drinking.

“This you must understand, frøken Harald-I did not get here by following every rule.”

He made a sweeping gesture of his hands that encompassed their luxurious surroundings here on the high deck of this ship and, by extension, all that it symbolized. “If I’d done that, I’d still be breaking my back under bales of smoked herring on a dock in Ålborg. Back then, ja, maybe I did sail too close to the wind. But that was then and this is now. Now, my money makes more money. All by itself, and all legal. Now, I want things I never dreamed of when I was a kid in Denmark. Now, I have time to learn what these things mean, and money to pay for them.”

He gestured toward the painting across the room. “Twenty-three years ago, I was walking along a street in København and I saw a picture in the window of a gallery. A little thing, so-” He sketched a small rectangle with his hands, approximately twelve by eighteen inches. “-and it stopped me cold. I didn’t know why, I just knew I had to own it. It took me two years to pay for it. My first Nauman picture. Now I own eleven Naumans and they form the heart of my collection. I’ve collected other artists, of course-two Picassos, a Léger, a wonderful Brancusi sculpture, and a number of works by lesser-known practitioners of what I call ‘cerebral abstraction’.”

Francesca slipped off her brown high-heeled boots and tucked her legs up under her skirt with a rustle of taffeta, but Sigrid remained motionless as Thorvaldsen abruptly reached for his glass.

“And for all these works,” he said, “I have documents, bills of sale, certificates.” He drank deeply. “But every now and then, people come to me with very beautiful, very rare things and they don’t always have documents and I don’t always ask for receipts. Shambley knew this.”

Thorvaldsen gave Francesca a crooked smile. “Or, as you said, min dame, he made me think he knew this.”

“He offered to sell you a stolen painting?” Sigrid asked.

“Not in those words, but yes,” Thorvaldsen admitted. “At the same time, he made me think that if I didn’t come, questions would be raised by others. Just now-”

He broke off and gave a sardonic shrug of his broad shoulders. “Lets say that at this particular moment, I don’t want controversy. Any controversy. Next month, okay. Now, no.”

“So you went to the Breul House?”

“Not immediately. But the more I thought of this other matter, the more I decided I had to go, at least hear what he wanted to say. I walked over to Eleventh Avenue and caught a cab going downtown. Got out near Sussex Square. He said to come in without ringing; the front door would be unlocked.”

“Was it?”

His affirmative grunt was halfway between a ja and a yeah.

“And the time?”

“A few minutes past eleven, I think. The great hall was dim inside. I called his name. No answer. A light was on in the library, so I went in there and sat until I almost fell asleep. Finally, I began to think it was some kind of stupid joke, so I left.”

“What time was that?”

“Midnight.” A more genuine smile flitted across his rugged features. “As I came down the steps, the lights on the Christmas tree in the middle of the park went off.”

Sigrid found it hard to believe that a man like Søren Thorvaldsen would sit meekly in a library and wait almost an hour for someone like Shambley to jerk him around and she said as much.

Thorvaldsen finished off his drink and set the glass on the table between them with a decisive clink. “Think what you like. You wanted my statement. That’s it.”

The lump beneath his eye was nearly purple now and Sigrid saw that he winced when he touched it absentmindedly. It was probably pointless to continue with Thorvaldsen tonight, she thought. Better to wait and get him down to her office when he was less belligerent. Time enough then to ask if he’d had a look around for whatever shady art object Shambley may have planned to sell him.

She slipped on her coat, stowed the pad in one of its pockets, and pulled out her gloves.

“Did you leave a trail of bread crumbs coming in?” Francesca asked.

“No,” Sigrid smiled, “but I think I can find my way out.”

As she said good night and opened the door, Francesca suddenly slid on her boots and said, “Better let me point you toward the nearest gangplank. Back in a minute, Søren.”

They walked down the wide passageway to the elevator. Sigrid said, “Do you suppose the ship’s doctor is on board tonight? Someone ought to take a look at that eye.”

Francesca was amused. “I’m sure Søren’s had worse knocks than that. He made a pass at you, didn’t he?”

“Not exactly.”

They rang for an elevator and Sigrid felt the other woman’s appraising eyes as they waited.

“He’s really not like that,” said Francesca. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’ve been seeing him for two months now and underneath all that diamond-in-the-rough facade, he’s been a perfect gentleman. Too perfect, in some respects.”

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. “In feet,” she added, “I was beginning to wonder if he marched to a different drummer or if I was losing it.”

“You?” Sigrid murmured, feeling like a drab country mouse next to Francesca’s rich shimmer of brown-and-gold taffeta.

As the elevator doors opened for them, Francesca laid her hand on Sigrid’s arm. “Does it make a difference to you, Sigrid? About Oscar and me, I mean? I saw your face last night when you realized what Roger Shambley meant.”

Sigrid was silent. She rather doubted if Francesca Leeds had seen any more in her face than the redhead expected-or wanted?-to see; and she had never felt comfortable exchanging girlish confidences.

Evidently Francesca felt differently. “What Oscar and I had was wonderful while it lasted, but it’s been over for more than a year.”

And what, Sigrid wondered mutely, was the proper response to that? I’m sorry? I’m glad? Were you glad when it ended? Was Nauman?

“Ah! There’s the door I came in,” she said, pulling on her gloves and raising the hood of her coat. “I think I can find my way out from here.”

And beat a coward’s quick exit.

It was after nine when Sigrid got home. She’d stopped off at a bookstore along the way to begin her Christmas shopping. This was a young cousin’s first Christmas and she couldn’t decide whether to get him a traditional Mother Goose or a lavish pop-up book, so she bought both. Baby Lars had been named for her favorite great-uncle, but she couldn’t neglect the other five in Hilda’s brood, especially when one stop could take care of the whole Carmichael family so simply.

She had spent a happy hour browsing through Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Watership Down, Treasure Island and Charlotte’s Web, leafing through dozens more before adding a newly published and beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales for Hilda, who collected them.

A book for Hilda’s husband wasn’t quite as simple. What does one give a CPA who has everything? Impulsively she chose a book on building Chinese kites. A man with six children might find that diverting.

Laden with bundles, she arrived at number 42½, a sturdy green wooden gate set into a high nondescript wall on an equally nondescript street full of rundown buildings at the western edge of Greenwich Village. She unlocked the gate and found Roman Tramegra stringing lights on the dogwood tree that stood in the center of their small garden. He was bundled against the icy December night in a bizarre white ski mask, multicolored scarves, and three layers of sweaters and he greeted her gaily in his deep booming voice as she piled her packages on a stone bench.

“Ah, there you are, dear Sigrid! Had I realized you’d be home so soon, I would have waited. No matter. I shall be the president and you can be the little child that leads us.”

It had been almost a year since this late-blooming flower child, to use Nauman’s phrase, had wandered into her life and, by an odd set of circumstances, wound up sharing with her an apartment he’d acquired through arcane family connections.

Although only a few years older than she, he had adopted an avuncular manner and by now felt free to comment on her clothes, her hair, her makeup, and whether or not she was eating properly and getting enough sleep. He was so easily deflected, however, that Sigrid, by nature a solitary person, found him less of an intrusion than she’d feared. She discovered that she enjoyed coming home to a well-lit apartment full of occasionally entrancing dinner aromas-Roman was an adventurous cook; not all his adventures had a happy ending- and his magpie curiosity and verbal flights of fancy kept her amused more often than not.

He was tall and portly and there was just enough light in their tiny courtyard to make him look like a cross between a Halloween ghost and Frosty the Snowman. The eye and mouth holes of his white ski mask were outlined in black and the dark toggles of his bulky white cardigan marched down his rounded torso like buttons of coal on a tubby snowman as he positioned the last light and held out to Sigrid the plug end of the tree lights and the receptacle end of an extension cord that he’d snaked from the house.

“Everything’s ready,” he caroled. “Come along, my dear. No speeches, though I really should hum something appropriate. What did the Marine Band play the other night when they lit the White House tree?”

In his deep basso profundo, he began to hum the national anthem.

Laughing, Sigrid stepped up to the tree and, in a Monty Python imitation of ribbon-cutting royalty, plugged the two electric cords together and said, “I now declare this Christmas season officially opened.”

A blaze of colorful lights twinkled through the bare twigs of the dogwood.

“God bless us, every one!” said Roman.

Although Mr. Breul never summarily disregarded expert opinion, he had no use for pedantry. Being well-educated and well-informed, he preferred to trust his own eye to pick out the one good thing from a gallery full of old pictures and to leave the bad behind and he had no need to lean upon the advice of others in so doing. So secure was he in his own taste, that he was never disturbed when, as it occasionally happened, an attribution of his purchase was afterward discredited.

“It matters not who actually painted it. The picture still retains the lofty qualities for which I chose it,” he would say as he continued to give it high place within the collection.

Erich Breul-The Man and His Dream, privately published 1924 by The Friends and Trustees of the Erich Breul House