Corpus Christmas

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 pla

“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 i

“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 a

“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 ma