Corpus Christmas

Up on the third floor, they carried him across the wide hall to the foot of the uncarpeted steps and Rick tried to arrange those limbs into a natural-looking sprawl.

When they were finished, they lowered the dumbwaiter and, as a precaution, Rick stopped it at the butler’s pantry beside the dining room.

Back in the basement, they were left with a patch of sticky blood on the tiles where Shambley’s head had lain. They swabbed up the worst with the blue rag rug since it already had blood smears on it. While Pascal got a mop and scrubbed away the rest of the blood, Rick bundled up the rug, stashed it in one of the storage rooms, then returned to Pascal’s room to finish dressing.

“Aren’t you going to stay?” asked Pascal. His large blue eyes were frightened.

“Listen, Pasc,” Rick said seriously. “If you want to let’s stay friends, you have to do exactly what I tell you, okay?”

“Okay.”

It took almost a half-hour before Rick was certain the janitor had their story straight: they had gone to a movie, come back and listened to jazz for a while, then Rick had gone home at nine and Pascal had fallen asleep without remembering to set the burglar alarm.

“I could set it now,” Pascal said.

“Better not,” Rick said. “Otherwise they’ll ask you if you checked to make sure Dr. Shambley was gone.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You didn’t see Dr. Shambley.”

“I didn’t,” Pascal agreed. “Not till-”

“Not at all,” Rick reminded him. “You didn’t see him since before the party, okay?”

“Okay. ” Pascal looked up at his friend trustingly. “I wish you could sleep over, Rick.”

“Another time,” he said and clasped Pascal’s shoulder as he stood. “I promise.”

At the spiderweb door beneath the main stoop, he drew on his gloves, pulled his collar snugly around his neck, and stepped out into the freezing night as Pascal locked the door behind him.

Shortly after eleven, Rick let himself into the apartment on the upper West Side. His grandfather usually went to bed early, but he was a light sleeper. Tonight, a muffled snore was all Rick heard as he crept past Jacob Munson’s closed door and gained the sanctuary of his own room. He expected to lie awake reliving the horror of the evening; yet no sooner did his head touch the pillow than he was instantly and deeply asleep.

Mrs. Beardsley awoke near midnight with a painful leg cramp. Groaning, she pushed aside the covers and made herself stand up and walk around the room until the spasms passed. Her bedroom faced Sussex Square and, though she told herself it was childish, she lingered at the window to watch the tall spruce tree turn off its lights. The automatic timer was set for midnight, and there was something magical about catching the precise moment.

There! The trees blaze of colored lights vanished, leaving only the old-fashioned gaslights to illumine the square. Pleased, she started to turn from the window when a movement diagonally across the park caught her eye. Someone was coming down the front steps of the Breul House. She strained to see.

Dr. Shambley?

No, Dr. Shambley was shorter than she and this man-if it were a man-was taller.

The figure came down the steps, head hunched into the turned-up collar of the topcoat, and hurried along the brick walk. At the corner, the figure became recognizable as he passed beneath the electric streetlight there, turned west at the corner, and disappeared from her view.

Now why, wondered Mrs. Beardsley, had Mr. Thorvaldsen come back to the Breul House so late at night?

Sigrid turned in the night and found her bed empty. “Nauman?”

The room was quite dark but there was a movement by the door. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What time is it?”

“Not quite five. Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

She raised herself on one elbow and looked at the luminous clock dial in disbelief. “Five! Why are you up so early?”

“I couldn’t sleep and there’re things I need to do.”

He came and sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her into his arms. She smoothed back his hair and felt the rough stubble along his chin line. “Come back to bed.”

He kissed her then, a yearning, tender kiss that transcended carnal desire, and tucked the blanket around her body. “I’ll call you tonight.”

Too sleepy to argue, she snuggled deeper into the covers.

Zurich

My dearest husband,

Mama’s health is so much improved this week that I begin to think I may soon be released from sickroom duty and may truly begin to plan our return. You will be surprised at how our son has grown since you last saw him in April. He all but tops my shoulder now.

In these three short months, his German has become quite fluent. He has made great friends with Papa’s friend, Herrn Witt, one of the directors of the new art museum, and a visit to that magnificent institution is his dearest treat. Herr Witt asked him how he came by such a fine eye for art at so early an age and young Erich replied, “Es kommt von meinem Papa!”

I will always regret, mein Lieber, that God in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to bless us with a dozen children, yet I can never give thanks enough for the angel-child He did lend us…

Letter from Sophie Fürst Breul to Erich Breul Sr., dated 6.20.1899. (From the Erich Breul House Collection)

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.