Corpus Christmas

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Sunday, December 20

Conscience, duty and sheer willpower kept Sigrid from burying her groggy head back under the pillow when her alarm clock went off ninety minutes early the next morning. Getting up at any hour was always a chore, but she had promised Roman that if he’d leave the mess, she would help him clean up before she went to work; so she dragged herself out of bed and into the shower.

After so much wassail the night before, Roman had professed himself uninterested in doing anything other than putting away the leftovers and trundling off to his bed in what had once been the maid’s quarters beyond the kitchen.

Ten minutes in the shower restored the outer woman and Sigrid headed toward the kitchen to see what hot black coffee could do for the i

Roman had cleared himself space on the green-and-white tiled counter and was seated there with newspapers and coffee. His miniature countertop television was tuned to the morning news.

“There’s your friend,” he said, pouring her a cup of coffee by way of greeting.

She paused to watch Søren Thorvaldsen arrive in handcuffs at the federal courthouse. A moment later, cameras pa

When the program moved on to another story, Roman clicked it off and rose with a sigh. “How art the mighty fallen,” he said portentously. “I’ll begin on the dishes if you’ll bring in the rest.”

“Deal,” she said and carried a large tray out to the living room for the demitasse cups and saucers that had accompanied Roman’s bûche de Noël. Christmas trees with their lights extinguished always looked vaguely forlorn to Sigrid. There was something sad about shimmering tinsel when it reflected only cold winter daylight.

Two trips with the tray cleared out most of the disorder and five minutes with the vacuum took care of cracker crumbs, stray tinsel, and a crushed glass ball. Afterwards, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and began to dry the pots and pans while Roman continued to wash by hand the things he couldn’t fit into the dishwasher.

An unquenchable optimist, he a

“In fact,” he said, scouring vigorously with steel wool, “I finished the first chapter yesterday morning. Now if I were to average three pages a day, I could be finished by Easter.”

“Three months?” Sigrid asked dubiously. “I thought a book took at least a year.”

“That’s for serious writers,” he told her.

“And you’re not?”

“My dear, I’m forty-three years old. I have a certain flair for the English language, a certain facility, but depth? I fear not.”

He rinsed a copper saucepot and handed it to her. “Writers with something profound to say write poetry, writers with something serious to say write novels, but writers with nothing to say write genre fiction. I shall become a mystery writer.”

He handed her another wet pot. “Don’t look so sad. I shall try to be a very good mystery writer.”

Sigrid smiled. “Tell me about your plot.”

“Actually, I don’t have one yet,” he confessed. “That’s the one drawback. I don’t want to write suspense or thrillers or, God forbid, one of those dreary down-these-mean-streets-a-man-must-go sort of social tracts. No, I want to write classic whodunits, elegantly contrived puzzles, and for that you need a cast of several characters who all have equally good motives to kill the same person. But that’s almost impossible anymore. I’ve been doing some research and there are no good motives left.”

“No good motives for murder?” Sigrid snorted. “Roman, I’m a homicide detective. Believe me, people kill for a thousand different reasons.”

“And most of your cases, dear child, are open-and-shut, no? Domestic violence. The husband enraged at his wife’s nagging; the wife who simply refuses to be battered any more; addicts killing for drug money. I’ve been so disappointed to see how really ordinary most of your work has been. Oh, I won’t say you haven’t occasionally had interesting puzzles, but usually, it’s for money or power, is it not?”

He finished with the pots and pans and began to wipe down the stove and surrounding countertops.

“Well, yes,” Sigrid admitted. “But-”

“And most of the time, as soon as you find one person with a solid motive, that’s the killer, isn’t it?”

“So what’s your definition of a good motive?” she asked, nettled.

“One that would work for more than two or three people,” he said promptly. “Like your babies in the attic in last night’s Post. Even though that was a dreadful picture of you, the story itself would make a smashing murder mystery. Just think: everyone co

Roman paused with the wet dishcloth in his hands. “Illegitimacy used to be such a wonderful reason for murder! Along with miscegenation and incest. Nowadays, if it’s not drugs or mere lust, it’s for something as pointless and bizarre as a parking place or a pair of designer sunglasses.

“People used to kill for noble reasons-for revenge or honor or to usurp a throne. Today, everyone lets it ‘all hang out.’ ” His lip curled around the phrase disdainfully. “You can’t build a believable mystery around simple scandal for its own sake anymore. Can you imagine trying to write A Scandal in Bohemia today? Instead of hiring Sherlock Holmes to retrieve that picture of himself with Irene Adler, the king would probably be trying to peddle the negatives to The National Enquirer.”

Sigrid laughed. “And would probably be turned down because both parties in the picture were fully clothed.”

As she dressed for work, Sigrid thought about the remaining suspects in Roger Shambley’s death in light of Roman’s insistence that most contemporary homicides were committed for gain. She had to admit that Shambley’s shadowy threats carried little weight in today’s tolerant atmosphere. And yet…

She brushed her hair, put on lipstick and eyeshadow, and even rooted out a red-and-gold silk scarf to add color to her charcoal gray suit, but all the time, her mind kept switching back and forth between Matt Eberstadt’s reservations about Rick Evans and Pascal Grant, and her own unanswered question of why Shambley had been killed on the basement steps.

She put on the shoulder holster she’d begun using when her wounded arm made a purse impractical back in October; and her subconscious threw up something that she’d overlooked till then: what had Rick Evans done in those few minutes between the time he left Pascal Grant’s room and the time young Grant met him over Roger Shambley’s body?

The more she thought of it, the surer she became. She glanced at her clock. Still a little early but Albee was usually an early bird, thought Sigrid, and began punching in numbers on her phone.

Elaine Albee answered on the second ring. She sounded a little dubious when Sigrid outlined her theory, but she procured the address Sigrid wanted.