Corpus Christmas

present. Which reminds me: Why are there no current inventory sheets? I find nothing later than 1972.”

“The inventory hasn’t changed enough to justify a new one,” Peake snapped. “All the corrections have been notated on our master copy.”

He strode over to the file cabinet nearest his desk and extracted the inventory folder. “I can have Miss Ruffton make you a copy, if you wish.”

“You checked it thoroughly against the contents of the house when you took over?” asked Shambley.

“Well, no. I saw no need when-”

Shambley cut him off with a sneer. “You know what’s wrong with you, Peake? You’re lazy. Physically and intellectually. That’s why you fouled up at the Friedinger.” His eyes narrowed speculatively in his ugly face. “Or was it solely that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Peake, becoming cautious.

“I think it’s time the board asked for a complete inventory. See if there’s been any ‘unauthorized deaccessioning’ down here.” He closed the file drawers he’d opened earlier and took the inventory folder from Peake’s suddenly nerveless fingers.

“Listen,” Benjamin Peake blustered, “if anything’s missing, you can’t blame me. Everyone knows Dr. Kimmelshue was senile the last three years before he died. Anything could have happened then.”

Roger Shambley turned his huge head and haughtily waved Peake aside. “Permesso,” he said languidly and left the office.

Mrs. Beardsley was becoming heartily sick of Dr. Roger Shambley’s permesso. In a house this size, one would think a body that small could find a clear space in which to pass without shooing people aside as if they were witless flocks of chickens. And she wasn’t taken in by his air of haughty politeness. Mrs. Beardsley knew all there was to know about using manners as a stick to beat those one considered inferior to oneself. Not that she ever did, she told herself.

Well, not without provocation, she amended.

She would admit that she was disappointed when Dr. Shambley received the trusteeship she had sought. She might not have his degrees or his growing reputation as an art scholar, but certainly she knew more about the soul of this house itself than any outsider could hope to. And her income was several times his. She’d checked. Considering the Breul House’s financial difficulties, a trustee willing to give generous support should have counted for something, shouldn’t it? Nevertheless, she had swallowed her disappointment and welcomed him as graciously as possible and what did she get for her graciousness?

Permesso.

Uptown, in the business office of Kohn and Munson Gallery, Hester Kohn listened in growing alarm as Benjamin Peake screamed in her ear about Roger Shambley.

“For God’s sake, Ben, get hold of yourself,” she interrupted crisply. “Have you taken anything from the house?”

“Of course, I haven’t!” he howled.

“Then you’ve nothing to worry about.”

“Yes, I have and you do, too, Hester. You didn’t hear the way he said ‘unauthorized deaccessions.’ That bastard! He picks things out of the air. You know what art historians are like.”

“Give them a flake of blue plaster and they’ll prove a Giotto fresco once covered the wall,” the woman sighed. She looked up as her secretary entered with a letter that required her signature. “Hold on a minute, Ben,” she said and tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear while she signed, then told the secretary, “I want to see those consignment sheets before you call the shippers, and don’t forget to remind Mr. Munson about tomorrow night.”

She waited until the secretary had closed the door behind her, then spoke into the receiver. “There’s no way Roger Shambley will start speculating about what really happened unless you give him that first flake of plaster.”

But for several long minutes after she’d hung up, her hazel eyes were lost in thought as she wondered if she’d made a mistake in encouraging Jacob to sponsor Shambley on the Breul House’s board of trustees. She’d considered it a minor quid pro quo when Shambley approached her about the vacancy in October. She didn’t know how Shambley had heard about her tutorial sessions with young Rick Evans or how he knew she’d prefer Jacob not to learn of them, but smoothing his way onto the board seemed a small price to pay for his silence.

Not that he’d been crass enough to threaten her. Open confrontation was not Shambley’s way. The man was oblique indirection: a lifted eyebrow, a knowing twitch of his lips, a murmured phrase of ironic Italian. His victim’s guilty conscience would do the rest.

Only… had she drastically mistaken which situation Shambley meant her to feel guilty about?

In the office across the hall, Jacob Munson unwrapped a peppermint drop from the bowl on his desk. He had not intended to eavesdrop on the conversation between Benjamin and Hester and had almost announced his presence on their line when something in Benjamin’s voice kept him silent. A lover’s quarrel, he’d thought at first.

When he’d realized last year that Hester and Benjamin were occasional lovers, he’d hoped that it might lead to marriage. Thirty-four, Hester was, and time was running out if she wanted children.

That would have made an appropriate solution to the gallery’s uncertain future-Horace’s daughter and the best friend of Jacob’s only son. To his disappointment though, their relationship had never gotten out of bed. When dressed, they didn’t even seem to like each other most of the time. So what was all this about plaster flakes?

He sighed and absently tucked the cellophane candy wrapper into his pocket. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe blood was best after all. Surely it was not too late to train young Richard to carry on the Munson heritage at Kohn and Munson?

By closing time, Rick Evans had shot the last roll of film that he’d brought with him to the Breul House. He climbed down from Pascal’s tall aluminum stepladder and unplugged the floodlights he’d used to light the plaster moldings on the ceiling of the third floor hallway.

“I guess we’ll call it a day, ” he told Pascal Grant, and began packing up his cases.

Pascal bent to help, his smooth face so near Rick could have touched it with his own. His beautiful eyes met Rick’s trustingly. “Will you need my ladder anymore, Rick?”

“Not for now.”

They collapsed the light stands and carried everything through the frosted glass doors, down to the end of the hall and the mannequin maid, where they loaded it all on the dumbwaiter-easier than carting everything up and down by hand. Together they carried the ladder down the back service steps and unloaded the dumbwaiter down in the basement next to Pascal’s room.

“Want to go get a pizza?” Pascal asked hopefully when they had stowed Rick’s equipment in an empty cabinet. “We can eat it in my room and listen to some more jazz.”

Rick hesitated; then, with a fatalistic que sera sera shrug of his shoulders, he nodded.

“Dr. Shambley?”

The patrician voice floated through the marble hall, startling him as he descended the main staircase, now dimly lit. For a moment, he almost thought he’d been addressed by the elegant female mannequin on the landing. Then he realized it was that Beardsley woman speaking to him from the doorway of the darkened gallery beyond the massive fireplace.

“Cretina!” Roger Shambley mumbled under his breath. He thought everyone had left for the day and that he was alone except for the simple-minded janitor somewhere in the bowels of the house.

Mrs. Beardsley turned off the lights in the cloakroom, leaving only the security lights in the hall, then buttoned her red wool coat and pulled on her gloves. “You won’t forget to let Pascal know when you’re leaving tonight, will you, Dr. Shambley? The burglar alarm wasn’t switched on till almost midnight last night because he thought you were still here.”