May 6, 1901, from Wm. Fenton & Co.,
Agents for Genevieve Carlton:
“Maeve’s Gallop”…$200.
Frame… 12.50
$212.50
July 22, 1901, from Atwater & Sons:
Babbage engr., “ Running Sea ”…$22.
Frame… 6.
$28.
Miscellaneous bills and memoranda. (From the Erich Breul House Collection)
IV
Benjamin Peake arrived at the Erich Breul House shortly after ten to find his office invaded by Roger Shambley, Ph.D., scholar, newest trustee, and all-around bastard.
Shambley was shorter than his own five eleven by a good six inches and ugly as a mud fence with a dark, shaggy head that was two sizes too large for his small, stooped figure. As far as Benjamin Peake was concerned, expensive hairstyling and custom-tailored clothes were probably what kept children from throwing rocks whenever Shambley passed them in the street.
“Can I help you with something?” Peake asked sarcastically as Shambley ignored his arrival and continued to paw through the filing cabinets at the end of his long L-shaped office. He had to stand on tiptoe to read the files at the back of the top drawer.
“I doubt it.” Shambley paused beside the open drawer and made a show of checking his watch against the clock over the director’s beautiful mahogany desk. “I’ve only been here two weeks to your two years but I probably know more about what’s in these files than you do.”
“Now let me think,” Peake responded urbanely as he hung his topcoat in a concealed closet and smoothed his brown hair. “I believe it was William Buckley who spoke of the scholar-squirrel mentality, busily gathering every little stray nut that’s fallen from the tree of knowledge.”
“Actually, it was Gore Vidal,” said Shambley, “but don’t let facts spoil your pleasure in someone else’s well- turned phrases. I’m sure Buckley’s said something equally clever about academic endeavor.”
Annoyed, Benjamin Peake retreated through an inner door that led to the butler’s pantry.
Hope Ruffton was pouring herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee and she greeted him with a pleasant smile.
When Peake took over the directorship and was introduced to her two years ago, he’d returned that first smile with condescending friendliness. “Hope, isn’t it?”
“Only if it’s Ben,” she’d replied with equally friendly condescension.
“Oh. Well. Excuse
“Miss will do,” she’d said pleasantly.
If he’d had the authority and if old Jacob Munson hadn’t been standing by, twinkling and beaming at them like some sort of Munchkin matchmaker, Peake would have fired her then and there.
He still did not completely understand how foolish that would have been although there were times when he uneasily suspected it. But he did soon realize that professionalism was more than semantics to Miss Ruffton. She had ignored his sulks and, with cool efficiency and tact, had deflected him from stupid blunders as he settled into the directorship. The irony of being trained for his position by a nominal subordinate went right over Peake’s head and Hope Ruffton was too subtle by far to let him see her own amusement.
These days, with Roger Shambley poking his nose into every cranny and making veiled allusions to certain lapses of competence, Miss Ruffton’s efficiency gave Peake a sort of Dutch courage. He might not always have a clear grasp of details, but Miss Ruffton did; and without articulating it, not even to himself, Peake trusted her not to let him make a total ass of himself in front of Shambley.
So he smiled at her gratefully, accepted the coffee she poured for him, and said, “You look like a Christmas card this morning.”
A Victorian card, he would have added, straightening his own red-and-green striped tie, except that he was afraid she might tartly remind him that most Victorian cards pictured only blond, blue-eyed Caucasian maidens. Her white silk blouse was tucked into a flowing skirt of dark green wool and it featured a high tight collar and cuffs, all daintily edged in lace. Her thick black hair was brushed into a smooth chignon and tied with a red grosgrain ribbon that echoed a red belt at her waist and clear red nails on her small brown fingers. She wore a simple gold locket and her drop earrings were old-fashioned garnets set in gold filigree that caught the light as she returned Peake’s greeting.
“Too bad about the MacAndrews Foundation,” she said.
“They turned us down
Miss Ruffton nodded, her dark eyes sympathetic. “I left the letter on your desk.”
“Oh well,” he said, trying to make the best of it, “we weren’t really counting on their support.”
She gazed into her coffee cup with detachment. There was no way to break bad news gently. “But we
His thinly handsome face grew anxious. “They’ve withdrawn their annual donation?”
“Cut it,” she said succinctly. “By a third. With a hint that it may be cut by another third next year.”
“Oh, God!” Peake moaned, pacing back and forth from his office door on one side of the room to the dining room door on the fer side. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned altruism?”
“At least the projection figures look good on the Friends membership drive,” she said, but Peake refused to be comforted.
“Penny-ante. We’ve got to find a way to raise more real money or the Erich Breul House
He started back to his office and hesitated, remembering that Shambley was probably still there.
“What is Dr. Shambley really looking for?” asked Miss Ruffton, with that uncanny knack she had of reading his thoughts.
“God knows,” he muttered drearily. “Fresh material for his new book on late nineteenth-century American artists, I suppose.” And then, although Peake seldom consciously picked up on Miss Ruffton’s subtle inflections, her last words sank in and triggered an automatic alert. “What did you mean ‘really’?”
“We’ve allowed other historians access to the Breul papers,” she said slowly. “Dr. Kimmelshue always granted permission. And not just artists or art historians. We’ve had antique dealers, students of interior design-”
“Well?” Peake asked impatiently.
Miss Ruffton looked at him coldly. “Perhaps it was only my imagination,” she said and turned away.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Please go on.”
But already she had opened the door to the service hall beneath the main stairs, the quickest route to her own desk, and she did not look back.
“
“Listen, Shambley,” he said to the historian’s slender back, “what are you really looking for?”
“
“You’ve spent the last few days quartering this house like a bird dog,” said Peake, abruptly realizing that this was true. “All the Breul papers are up in the attic. What do you expect to find in old Kimmelshue’s files?”
“Merely fulfilling my duties as a trustee,” Shambley said smoothly. “Familiarizing myself with past routine. And
