Suddenly the detective’s eyes widened with incredulity. “Of course. She thinks you killed Caudwell. You’re doing the only thing you can to protect her — standing mute. And she’s doing the same thing. What an admirable pair of archaic knights.”
“No!” Max said sharply. “It’s not possible. How could she think such a thing? She carried on so wildly that it was embarrassing to be near her. I didn’t want to see her or talk to her. That’s why I’ve felt so terrible. If only I hadn’t been so obstinate, if only I’d called her Sunday night. How could she think I would kill someone on her behalf when I was so angry with her?”
“Why else isn’t she saying anything to anyone?” Warshawski demanded.
“Shame, maybe,” Max offered. “You didn’t see her on Sunday. I did. That is why I think she killed him, not because some man let her into the building.”
His brown eyes screwed shut at the memory. “I have seen Lotty in the grip of anger many times, more than is pleasant to remember, really. But never, never have I seen her in this kind of — uncontrolled rage. You could not talk to her. It was impossible.”
The detective didn’t respond to that. Instead she said, “Tell me about the statue. I heard a couple of garbled versions from people who were at the party, but I haven’t found anyone yet who was in the study when Caudwell showed it to you. Was it really her grandmother’s, do you think? And how did Caudwell come to have it if it was?”
Max nodded mournfully. “Oh, yes. It was really her family’s, I’m convinced of that. She could not have known in advance about the details, the flaw in the foot, the imperial seal on the bottom. As to how Caudwell got it, I did a little looking into that myself yesterday.
His father was with the Army of Occupation in Germany after the war. A surgeon attached to Patton’s staff. Men in such positions had endless opportunities to acquire artworks after the war.”
V.I. shook her head questioningly.
“You must know something of this, Victoria. Well, maybe not.
You know the Nazis helped themselves liberally to artwork belonging to Jews everywhere they occupied Europe. And not just to Jews — they plundered Eastern Europe on a grand scale. The best guess is that they stole sixteen million pieces — statues, paintings, altarpieces, tapestries, rare books. The list is beyond reckoning, really.”
The detective gave a little gasp. “Sixteen million! You’re joking.”
“Not a joke, Victoria. I wish it were so, but it is not. The U.S. Army of Occupation took charge of as many works of art as they found in the occupied territories. In theory, they were to find the rightful owners and try to restore them. But in practice few pieces were ever traced, and many of them ended up on the black market.
“You only had to say that such-and-such a piece was worth less than five thousand dollars and you were allowed to buy it. For an officer on Patton’s staff, the opportunities for fabulous acquisitions would have been endless. Caudwell said he had the statue authenticated, but of course he never bothered to establish its provenance.
Anyway, how could he?” Max finished bitterly. “Lotty’s family had a deed of gift from the Emperor, but that would have disappeared long since with the dispersal of their possessions.”
“And you really think Lotty would have killed a man just to get this statue back? She couldn’t have expected to keep it. Not if she’d killed someone to get it, I mean.”
“You are so practical, Victoria. You are too analytical, sometimes, to understand why people do what they do. That was not just a statue. True, it is a priceless artwork, but you know Lotty, you know she places no value on such possessions. No, it meant her family to her, her past, her history, everything that the war destroyed forever for her. You must not imagine that because she never discusses such matters that they do not weigh on her.”
V.I. flushed at Max’s accusation. “You should be glad I’m analytical. It convinces me that Lotty is innocent. And whether you believe it or not I’m going to prove it.”
Max lifted his shoulders slightly in a manner wholly European.
“We each support Lotty according to our lights. I saw that she met her bail, and I will see that she gets expert counsel. I am not convinced that she needs you making her innermost secrets public.”
V.I.’s gray eyes turned dark with a sudden flash of temper. “You’re dead wrong about Lotty. I’m sure the memory of the war is a pain that can never be cured, but Lotty lives in the present, she works in hope for the future. The past does not obsess and consume her as, perhaps, it does you.”
Max said nothing. His wide mouth turned in on itself in a narrow line. The detective laid a contrite hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Max. That was below the belt.”
He forced the ghost of a smile to his mouth.
“Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps it’s why I love these ancient things so much. I wish I could believe you about Lotty. Ask me what you want to know. If you promise to leave as soon as I’ve answered and not to bother me again, I’ll answer your questions.”
Max put in a dutiful appearance at the Michigan Avenue Presbyterian Church Monday afternoon for Lewis Caudwell’s funeral. The surgeon’s former wife came, flanked by her children and her husband’s brother Griffen. Even after three decades in America Max found himself puzzled sometimes by the natives’ behavior: since she and Caudwell were divorced, why had his ex-wife draped herself in black? She was even wearing a veiled hat reminiscent of Queen Victoria.
The children behaved in a moderately subdued fashion, but the girl was wearing a white dress shot with black lightning forks which looked as though it belonged at a disco or a resort. Maybe it was her only dress or her only dress with black in it, Max thought, trying hard to look charitably at the blond Amazon — after all, she had been suddenly and horribly orphaned.
Even though she was a stranger both in the city and the church, Deborah had hired one of the church parlors and managed to find someone to cater coffee and light snacks. Max joined the rest of the congregation there after the service.
He felt absurd as he offered condolences to the divorced widow: did she really miss the dead man so much? She accepted his conventional words with graceful melancholy and leaned slightly against her son and daughter. They hovered near her with what struck Max as a stagey solicitude. Seen next to her daughter, Mrs.
Caudwell looked so frail and undernourished that she seemed like a ghost. Or maybe it was just that her children had a hearty vitality that even a funeral couldn’t quench.
Caudwell’s brother Griffen stayed as close to the widow as the children would permit. The man was totally unlike the hearty seadog surgeon. Max thought if he’d met the brothers standing side by side he would never have guessed their relationship. He was tall, like his niece and nephew, but without their robustness. Caudwell had had a thick mop of yellow-white hair; Griffen’s domed head was covered by thin wisps of gray. He seemed weak and nervous, and lacked Caudwell’s outgoing bonhomie; no wonder the surgeon had found it easy to decide the disposition of their father’s estate in his favor. Max wondered what Griffen had gotten in return.
Mrs. Caudwell’s vague, disoriented conversation indicated that she was heavily sedated. That, too, seemed strange. A man she hadn’t lived with for four years and she was so upset at his death that she could only manage the funeral on drugs? Or maybe it was the shame of coming as the divorced woman, not a true widow? But then why come at all?
To his annoyance, Max found himself wishing he could ask Victoria about it. She would have some cynical explanation — Caudwell’s death meant the end of the widow’s alimony and she knew she wasn’t remembered in the will. Or she was having an affair with Griffen and was afraid she would betray herself without tranquilizers. Although it was hard to imagine the uncertain Griffen as the object of a strong passion.