Corpus Christmas

“Four it is. See you.”

“Ta.”

She replaced the receiver and tilted her head so that the thick coppery hair fell away from her face as she slipped the stud of her earring through the lobe again.

The nice thing about parting amicably with someone, she thought, was the free and easy friendship that often continued afterwards. The rotten thing was when the parting was more amicable on his part than yours. And the rottenest thing of all was feeling jealous of your replacement when you knew that if you both walked into a room together, nine out of ten wouldn’t notice her.

Except that the tenth man would be Oscar.

The interview with Jacob Munson was as difficult as Hester Kohn had predicted.

It began awkwardly when Sigrid, trailed by Jim Lowry, walked down the hall to Munson’s open door and found Nauman there, too, just hanging up the phone on Munson’s desk. At least Nauman hadn’t said anything flippant when she introduced Lowry, and Lowry gave no sign that the artist’s name had special curiosity value for him. But when Nauman heaved his tall frame up from the chair, Munson had underlined the personal aspects of the case by insisting that Oscar should stay.

“You und Miss Harald, you have no secrets.”

“Just the same, I’ll wait outside,” Nauman said and took himself off.

Munson sat behind his cluttered desk looking like an elderly elf who’d just learned that Santa’s workshop was jobbing out its toy production to Korea. He went through the motions of hospitality halfheartedly, offering them drinks, which they refused, and peppermints, which Lowry accepted.

“Wow!” he breathed as the pungent minty oils peppered his tastebuds.

Normally, Jacob Munson would have beamed and offered to share the name of the candy company who imported these particular mints, but not today.

His answers to their questions were monosyllabic. Yes, he and Hester had left the party together. Yes, Hester had gotten out near the Waldorf and he’d gone on home alone. No, there was no one to say what time he’d arrived at his upper West Side apartment, nor could he say when his grandson had come home, as he’d already gone to sleep.

“Besides,” he added, twisting the thin strands of his gray beard, “you know where my grandson was and what he was doing.”

“Yes,” Sigrid said wryly, thinking how busy Rick Evans and Pascal Grant must have been hauling Shambley’s body all over the Breul House.

Munson adamantly refused to discuss what he’d heard Shambley say to Benjamin Peake or Hester Kohn. “You must ask them,” he said, drawing his small frame up with Prussian militancy.

“Miss Kohn has told us about the forgery,” Sigrid said.

She had thought it was impossible for his stiff shoulders to become more rigid. She was wrong.

“Then you know all there is to know,” he said. “I will not discuss this further without my lawyer.”

And from that position, he would not budge.

Nauman was still waiting out in the main part of the gallery when they emerged from Munson’s office, and he looked up expectantly.

Sigrid glanced at her watch, saw it was almost five-thirty, and sent Lowry to the phone to check in.

“Ready to call it a day?” Nauman asked.

“Unless something’s come up,” she said.

They watched while Lowry spoke to headquarters on the receptionist’s telephone.

“Nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow,” he reported.

As she dismissed him, she caught the look of hesitation on his face. “Something, Lowry?”

“Just that-well, ma’am, Eberstadt and Peters have checked out all the stories we’ve been given.”

“Yes?”

Her gray eyes were like granite and Jim Lowry lost his nerve. Let someone else ask her, he decided.

“Nothing, ma’am. See you tomorrow?”

“What was that about?” asked Nauman, watching the younger man step out into the cold night air and pull his collar up to his ears.

“I think he wanted to ask if you had a proper alibi.” She smiled as she put on her heavy coat and gloves.

“Me?”

“I suppose I’ll have to go on record tomorrow and tell them that all your movements are accounted for.”

“All my movements?” he laughed.

“Well,” she emended. “Enough of them anyhow.”

They browsed through a few stores along Fifth Avenue, not really intent on Christmas shopping, but open to felicitous suggestions. Sigrid bought a new camera case for her mother. A

A cutlery store reminded her that Roman Tramegra had recently grumbled about his need for proper boning knives. She found a set with wicked-looking thin blades.

Nauman saw a delicate cloiso

By seven their arms were laden with packages, so they walked to the garage west of Fifth Avenue, dumped everything into Nauman’s bright yellow sports car, and drove down to the Village for an early di

Over their wine, Nauman brought up Shambley’s death and Jacob Munson’s reaction. “He told me everything,” he said.

Sigrid held up a warning hand. “Nauman, wait. You do understand that anything you tell me-”

“-can and will be used against me?”

“Yes.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“I know he’s your friend,” Sigrid said. “And he seemed like a nice old man Wednesday night, but he wasn’t very cooperative today.”

“You might be uncooperative, too, if you were eighty-two years old and just found out that your only grandson’s gay and your business partner’s a partner in murder.”

“What?”

In short terse sentences, Nauman repeated the things Munson had said at lunch.

“He doesn’t have trouble hearing, does he?” Sigrid asked.

“No, why?”

“I just wonder if he misheard what Shambley actually said. Hester Kohn didn’t pass forged paintings; she forged Munson’s name on an inflated appraisal so someone could get a big tax write-off for a charitable donation.”

Sigrid swirled the red wine in her glass thoughtfully. “Or at least that’s what she told me this afternoon.”

As the waiter brought their check, she glanced at him in sudden mischief. “By the way, Nauman, what are fungible formulations?”

“Oh, God!” he groaned. “Buntrock’s been at you, hasn’t he?”

She smiled.

“Elliott’s all right as far as this new breed of helden-curators goes,” Nauman warned, “but aesthetic sensibility is only a meager compensation for the lost wonder of i

In his office at the Erich Breul House, Benjamin Peake sat in the deepest concentration he’d attained since assuming the directorship. Shambley’s Léger poster had touched off such an unlikely train of speculation. All the same…

He found one of the house’s brochures and sca

Yes, there it was. Erich Breul’s life laid out from birth to death. And there was Erich Jr.’s birth in 1890, his graduation from Harvard in 1911, his departure for Europe in the fall, and his fatal accident in 1912.

Peake turned to the section on Erich Jr., but it was sketchy and, except when describing the youth’s Christmas visit with his Fürst relatives in Zurich, lacked necessary details. He had arrived in Paris in September of 1912 and died in mid-November.