Corpus Christmas

From the way Peake glossed over certain details, Sigrid gathered that there had also been allegations of impropriety concerning other, lesser pictures which had been deaccessioned and sold through private galleries, but nothing quite as spectacular as the Zurbaráns.

Once more Sigrid remembered Shambley’s cock-of-the-walk attitude Wednesday night, the electricity in his big homely face, the pointed look he had given Peake when he learned that she was a police officer.

“Robbery, may one hope?” he’d asked. “How appropriate.” He had also informed her that publicity came in many forms.

Publicity, Sigrid wondered, or notoriety?

Her flint gray eyes rested on Benjamin Peake as she considered what he’d just told them about the Friedinger in the light of Shambley’s insinuations.

Peake stirred uneasily behind his gleaming desk, unable to meet her gaze, and Lowry, who’d endured that unblinking basilisk stare more than once himself, felt a small twinge of sympathy for the man.

At last Sigrid dropped her eyes and turned through her notebook for yesterday’s interviews. “We’ve been told that you and Miss Kohn had a later confrontation with Dr. Shambley in the library, a confrontation overheard by Mr. Munson.”

“Our conversation was hardly a confrontation,” Peake protested with a nervous laugh. “It was only artsy hypothetical cocktail-party nonsense.”

“What was his hypothesis?” asked Sigrid.

“I’m afraid I really don’t remember.”

Sigrid let it pass for the moment. “You stated that you left here Wednesday night around eight-forty?”

“That’s correct,” Peake said, relaxing a little. “Mrs. B- that is, Mrs. Beardsley-volunteered to stay and lock up after the caterers had gone. There was no need for both of us to stay.”

“Where was Dr. Shambley when you left?”

The director shrugged. “So far as I knew, in the attic.”

“Alive and unharmed?”

Peake looked at her sharply. “Certainly! That’s right, isn’t it? I mean, he died much later in the evening, didn’t he?” He appealed to Jim Lowry for confirmation.

“The medical examiner’s office says sometime between eight and eleven-fifteen,” Lowry told him.

“Well, there you are,” Peake told Sigrid. “You saw him go upstairs around eight, didn’t you?”

“He could have come down again before you left,” she said mildly.

“Ask Mrs. Beardsley. She’ll tell you.”

Sigrid nodded. “What did you do after you left here?”

“Went home,” he said promptly. “It’d been a long day.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

Peake hesitated. “No.” He started to amplify and then stopped himself. “No,” he repeated.

Before Sigrid or Jim Lowry could push him further on that point, there was a brisk knock on the office door and Mrs. Beardsley opened it without waiting for a reply.

“Dr. Peake!‘ she exclaimed, her long face full of self-important concern.”Lieutenant Harald! Someone’s stolen Mr. Breul’s gold-handled walking stick!”

Oblivious to the stares and speculations of curious docents, the tall ma

“Who saw it last?” Sigrid asked.

Four other docents had gathered and they murmured together uncertainly, but Mrs. Beardsley said firmly, “I definitely remember that I brushed a piece of lint from the collar of his overcoat on Wednesday night and straightened his stick at the same time.”

“When Wednesday night?”

“Shortly before the party began. You know how one will look around one’s house to make certain everything’s in proper order before one’s guests arrive?”

Her unconscious choice of words revealed her deep involvement in the place, thought Sigrid. She recalled glancing at the two ma

“Call Guidry and see if the ma

Peake looked blank. “It was black, I believe, and had a solid gold knob.”

“And was about so long,” said Mrs. Beardsley, stretching out her plump hand a few feet from the floor.

“Would you like to read how it’s listed on the inventory?” asked Miss Ruffton, efficient as ever.

She handed Sigrid a stapled sheaf of papers labeled Second Floor. A subdivision under Bedroom & Dressing Room-Erich Breul, Sr. was Wardrobe-Accessories, and Miss Ruffton pointed to a numbered entry: “2.3.126. Man’s ebony stick. 95 cm., two threaded knobs: (a) gold plate over solid brass, acanthus design; (b) carved ivory ball.”

As Sigrid read the description aloud, Mrs. Beardsley said, “So that’s what that ivory thing is! I didn’t realize one could change the knobs. How clever.”

“Gold plated?” Peake sounded personally affronted.

Sigrid was silent, thinking of ebony’s strength and hardness. And when weighted with a solid brass knob at one end? Until they learned otherwise, Erich Breul’s missing walking stick sounded like a perfect candidate for the rod that had smashed Roger Shambley’s thin skull.

Lowry hung up the telephone on Hope Ruffton’s desk and reported, “Guidry says she’ll have to make a blowup to be sure, but she doesn’t think the cane’s in any of the pictures and she’s got a long shot of this hall and doorway.”

After telling the staff members that they were free to continue with their normal routine for the moment, Sigrid walked with Lowry over to the Christmas tree where they could confer unheard. The gas logs wouldn’t be lit until just before the students from Raleigh were due to arrive, so the hearth was dark and cheerless. Someone had already plugged in the tree, however, and a hundred or more tiny electric candles sparkled in the vaulted marble hall.

“I suppose it would be too much to hope that the search team found a blood-smeared walking stick yesterday?” Sigrid asked, bending for a closer look at one of Sophie Breul’s glass angels.

“ ’Fraid so,” Lowry said glumly. “They noticed smears on that softball bat in Grant’s room, but I didn’t hear anything about a cane.”

Sigrid turned to cast a speculative glance at the ma

The scene was so vivid in her mind that she could almost see it.

The only thing she couldn’t see was who had actually wielded the stick.

“Albee helped search,” Sigrid remembered. She glanced at her watch. “What’s keeping her upstairs? Go check, Lowry. I’m going to take another look at that basement.”

As Sigrid crossed the large basement kitchen, she heard noises floating down the passageway beyond. She had thought that Pascal Grant was still up in the attic, so who-? She paused to listen and the odd sound defined itself as a whistle that rose and soared above muffled thumps even as she listened, a bouncy and rather familiar tune. As she turned a corner and saw light spilling from a doorway, she recognized Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.”

With catlike tread, she stole to the door and there was Elliott Buntrock, his lips pursed in music as he slid one picture after another from a large wooden storage rack, removed its brown paper covering for a quick examination, then carelessly recovered it.