Corpus Christmas

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

“Too bad about the MacAndrews Foundation,” she said.

“They turned us down again?”

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

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

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

His thinly handsome face grew anxious. “They’ve withdrawn their a

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

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

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

“Pe

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

“What is Dr. Shambley really looking for?” asked Miss Ruffton, with that unca

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

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

“Well?” Peake asked impatiently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, no. I saw no need when-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, not without provocation, she amended.

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

Permésso.

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

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

“Of course, I haven’t!” he howled.

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about.”

“Yes, I have and you do, too, Hester. You didn’t hear the way he said ‘unauthorized deaccessions.’ That bastard! He picks things out of the air. You know what art historians are like.”

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

She waited until the secretary had closed the door behind her, then spoke into the receiver. “There’s no way Roger Shambley will start speculating about what really happened unless you give him that first flake of plaster.”

But for several long minutes after she’d hung up, her hazel eyes were lost in thought as she wondered if she’d made a mistake in encouraging Jacob to sponsor Shambley on the Breul House’s board of trustees. She’d considered it a minor quid pro quo when Shambley approached her about the vacancy in October. She didn’t know how Shambley had heard about her tutorial sessions with young Rick Evans or how he knew she’d prefer Jacob not to learn of them, but smoothing his way onto the board seemed a small price to pay for his silence.