Corpus Christmas

The two youths halted at the sight of him. Pascal Grant’s laughter died and he lowered his head fearfully as they waited for the trustee to speak.

“A party?” Shambley asked. He’d meant to sound friendly, but it came out a sneer and for some reason, Munson’s grandson flushed.

Instantly, Shambley knew why and was swept with a jealousy which he could hardly conceal. Deliberately, he walked over to Grant, put out his small hand, and lifted that soft round chin, but the handyman trembled and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Take your nasty hand off him!” Rick Evans snarled, stepping toward him.

“Or you’ll what?” asked Shambley. “Give me a proper thrashing?”

Without waiting for an answer, he released Grant and waved them both aside. “I’ll let myself out this way. Buona sera. Enjoy your”-he let his voice turn lewd-“pizza. Or whatever.”

As he passed through the shadowed passage to the front door, he almost forgot his first discoveries in the contemplation of this last: old Jacob Munson’s grandson a femminella. Well, well, well.

Back in the warm security of his nest-like room, Pascal Grant rubbed his chin where Roger Shambley had touched him. “I don’t like him, Rick.”

“I don’t either,” Rick Evans said and his soft Louisiana voice was grim.

On any clear winter night, Soren Thorvaldsen could look upriver from his desk and see the distant George Washington Bridge strung across the Hudson like a Victorian dowager’s diamond necklace, but it was not half so beautiful to him as the cruise ship docked almost directly below his office window. The Sea Dancer was lit from stem to stern by her own glittering lights and she would sail on Saturday with eighteen hundred winter-weary customers.

A soft trill drew him from the window back to his desk where a winking button on his telephone console signaled a call on his private line.

“Thorvaldsen here.”

“Velkommen hjem, Thorvaldsen.” A gurgle of Irish laughter warmed her golden voice as Lady Francesca Leeds stumbled over the word for home.

Her attempts at Danish amused him. “I tried to call you from the airport,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. “I’m sorry. I was tied up with a client tonight.”

He looked at his watch. Nearly ten. “Is it too late for a nightcap?”

“I’m afraid so,” she murmured regretfully. “But I have good news for you.”

“Oscar Nauman’s agreed?”

“Not exactly. But he hasn’t said no, either, and this is the closest anyone’s come yet. I’ve arranged a small cocktail party tomorrow evening at the Erich Breul House. Jacob Munson’s going to bring Nauman to look at the space. You’ll come?”

“Helt sikkert!” he assured her happily.

Her voice turned teasingly miffed. “I think you’d rather see Oscar Nauman than me.”

He laughed as she said godnat and hung up, but her teasing held a shadow of truth. Francesca Leeds excited him more than any woman in years. It wasn’t solely because she so outranked him in birth, although bedding a woman out of his class had always been an aphrodisiac. It was her special blend of sophistication and earthiness that was so irresistible to the self-made Dane, who had learned to hold his own in the drawing room without ever quite forgetting what went on out in the kitchen. She was capricious enough to keep him off balance, uncertain of victory.

Yet past successes, spiced with a tinge of cynicism, let him savor the chase. For the first time, he enjoyed prolonging the preliminaries. Inevitably, she must surely come to his bed.

In the meantime, Oscar Nauman was even less predictable and Thorvaldsen looked forward to meeting the artist whose pictures had given him so much pleasure, pictures that were as much a reward for his years of hard work as sex with a beautiful woman.

“A party?” Sigrid asked, dismayed. “I’m no good at parties, Nauman. You should know that by now.”

“I want you to meet Munson. You don’t have to dress up. Besides,” he reminded her, “you’re the one who thinks I ought to have this retrospective, so you might as well come along and see the place. Meet me there at seven and we’ll have dinner afterwards.”

Remembering that her housemate had mentioned something about a pickled boar’s head in honor of the season, Sigrid decided that a party was probably the lesser of tomorrow’s two evils.

“… so there we were-my machine smashed at the bottom of the tree, Chou-Chew hurling simian curses from the top, while I lay trampled beneath the paws of a monstrous dog who determined that my battered body should provide a footstool to raise himself closer to my hysterical pet.

Fortunately, help was immediately at hand. The brute’s master pulled him from me with apologies which owed as much to the Spanish language as to the French.”

Letter from Erich Breul Jr., dated 8.30.1912 (From the Erich Breul House Collection)

V

Wednesday, December 16

The caterers arrived at the Erich Breul House shortly after six, and Mrs. Beardsley, delegated by Lady Francesca Leeds, was there to direct them through the door under the main stairs and into the butler’s pantry.

In the dining room, the formal table was relieved of its extra leaves and draped in dark red linen with green plaid runners. The caterers had brought their own silver-plated canape trays and their own chafing dish for the hot hors d’oeuvres, but the dozen or so sterling candelabra that would soon light the long room with tall white tapers belonged to the house.

An arrangement of cedar, red-berried holly, and shiny magnolia leaves had been delivered earlier, and as Mrs. Beardsley centered it between the candles, Pascal Grant paused with table leaves in his arms. “Do you want me to do anything else, Mrs. Beardsley? Bring up some more chairs?”

She glanced about the room. Sophie Breul’s Sheraton dining table could be expanded to seat forty, but twenty chairs were its normal complement and Lady Francesca had said tonight’s party was to be quite small.

“Just three or four of the trustees, Dr. Peake and his secretary, the art people, Mr. Thorvaldsen, and of course you, Mrs. Beardsley. When Oscar Nauman asks about the history of the Breul House, we must have someone who can tell him.”

Mrs. Beardsley had known she was being buttered, but that didn’t diminish her pleasure. It was such smooth butter. Now she smiled at Pascal Grant. “I think we have enough chairs for anyone who might wish to sit. You go ahead to your movie, Pascal, and you needn’t worry about coming up later. We’ll put everything back as it was first thing tomorrow. Just don’t forget the alarm when you come back tonight.”

“I won’t, Mrs. Beardsley. Good night, Mrs. Beardsley.”

“Good night, dear,” she said absently, giving the room a final check.

Everything seemed quite under control. Gas logs blazed upon the open hearth next to the glittering Christmas tree and together, they lent the great marble hall an almost Dickensian warmth and cheer. Paneled pocket doors between the drawing room and gallery to the left of the hall had been pushed back to form one long open room and a hired pianist was familiarizing himself with the baby grand at the street end of the drawing room. The caterers had set up their bar in the pantry, appetizing odors were coming from the oven, and Miss Ruffton had returned from the cloakroom wearing a red skirt shot through with gold threads, a gold ribbon in her hair, and a party smile on her face. Even Dr. Peake had changed his tie before drifting in to lift the domed lid of the largest silver chafing dish and sample a hot savory.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” he said, licking his fingers like a mischievous boy.