“Did you happen to remember why you were there?” Sigrid asked coldly.
Eberstadt virtuously produced Thorvaldsen’s typed and signed statement. “He had a stenographer come up to his suite and went through the whole evening again, but it doesn’t add doodly to what he told you Thursday night.”
He read from Thorvaldsen’s statement, “ ‘Dr. Shambley implied that it could be to my benefit if I met with him again that night at the Erich Breul House. I assumed he meant to offer me the private opportunity to add something choice to my art collection. As I have occasionally bought works of art under similar circumstances, this did not strike me as an unusual request. I cannot say positively that this is what he meant. I saw no such piece of art that night, nor did I see Dr. Shambley. I went in through the unlocked front door, waited in the library for approximately one hour, and left at midnight without seeing or speaking to anyone.
Sigrid had listened silently with her elbows and forearms folded flatly on the desk.
“When we first got there,” said Albee, “we talked with Thorvaldsen’s secretary, a Miss Kristensen. She gave us the name of a security guard who was on outside duty Wednesday night, Leon Washington. She says Washington saw Thorvaldsen enter his office building around ten-thirty and then leave again about fifteen minutes later.”
“Convenient,” Sigrid said.
Elaine Albee shrugged. “Who knows? We stopped by his place on our way back here and woke him up. He wasn’t happy about telling us, but he says he’d stashed a coffee thermos in an empty warehouse across the street and was taking an unauthorized coffee break-”
“Coffee, my ass,” Eberstadt interjected.
“-so he saw Thorvaldsen but Thorvaldsen didn’t see him. And yeah, he may be lying, but he seemed too worried about the possibility of losing his job to be acting.”
Matt Eberstadt nodded. “He said Miss Kristensen promised she wouldn’t let it get back to Thorvaldsen and that’s all he really seemed to care about.”
Bernie Peters sighed. “If the guard’s telling the truth, that definitely puts Thorvaldsen out.”
“Whether or not he’s lying, it’s still hard to put Thorvaldsen there.” Sigrid leaned back in her chair with her left knee braced against the edge of the desk. “Francesca Leeds said she left him between ten and ten-fifteen; Evans and Grant said they found Shambley’s body between ten-fifteen and ten-thirty. Even if he had the full half hour to get back there from the restaurant four blocks away, get inside, kill Shambley and then leave by the basement door, it’d be awfully tight.”
“And why would he hang around there for another hour and a half?” asked Elaine Albee.
“Looking for the picture Shambley promised him?” Lowry guessed.
“With Grant and Evans running all over the place?”
“Up and down the back stairs,” Lowry reminded her. “They never said they were in the main rooms.”
Despite Lowry’s reservations, the others were willing to strike the Danish ship owner from their dwindling list.
“Reinicke, Munson, Kohn, Beardsley and Peake,” said Lowry. “I move to strike Reinicke, too. I can’t see him tying the dog up somewhere while he goes in and bops Shambley over the head just because the guy sneered at his taste in art. He didn’t seem to be that thin-skinned.”
Sigrid listened with only half an ear as they bounced theories off each other. “That’s probably all it really was,” she told them.
“Ma’am?” said Eberstadt.
“What Lowry said about a bop over the head. A simple whack with a weighted cane that happened to be handy. One blow, not a shower of them. If Shambley’s skull had been half as thick as his skin, he might not have suffered anything other than a simple concussion.”
“Unpremeditated,” mused Albee.
“He was at the party for less than an hour,” Sigrid said, “but in those few minutes, he insulted Reinicke and Thorvaldsen and half threatened Kohn and Peake with public disgrace. He didn’t seem to care what he said; but at a party, of course, he could get away with it. Although,” she added, “Thorvaldsen almost threw a punch at him.”
“So,” Peters said, “if he mouthed off to the wrong person-”
“Bop!” Lowry grinned.
“If we eliminate Reinicke,” said Sigrid, “I could see Benjamin Peake or Hester Kohn flying off the handle. And even Mrs. Beardsley or Jacob Munson might be pushed. But why then and there?”
They didn’t see her point.
“Look,” she said. “Assume that Shambley says something that so enrages or scares the killer that he or she grabs up the cane and starts after him. At that point, Shambley’s already passed through the door under the main staircase and started down the basement stairs when the blow lands on his head. Why? His study was in the attic. Elliott Buntrock went through the paintings stored down there and he’s certain that none of them are worth much more than the canvas they’re painted on. So why was Shambley going to the basement?”
“Oh, crap!” said Albee. “You don’t think it’s simple B and E, do you? That he left the door open for Thorvaldsen and a burglar came in? In that case, he could have been trying to get help.”
“Great,” Peters groaned. “So instead of four suspects, you just widened the field to half a million.”
“I don’t know.” Eberstadt shook his head. “I’ve got a gut feeling about those two kids down there-Rick Evans and Pascal Grant. You sure that janitor’s not stringing you along with that innocent look, Lainey?”
“And what about that empty glove case in Shambley’s briefcase?” asked Lowry. “That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?”
In a half-empty coffee shop on Fourth Avenue, Pascal Grant savored a forkful of fruitcake and drank from his glass of milk as he listened to Rick Evans talk about Louisiana.
“You’d love it out there in the country, Pasc. No subways or drug pushers every ten feet, no crowds of people hassling you all the time. We could go camping and fishing back in the swamps.”
“Yeah, but Rick-” He carefully speared two green cherries and a piece of citron with his fork and ate them one by one.
Christmas carols drifted down from a speaker high on the wall overhead.
“Is it money? You don’t need much in Louisiana,” Rick said earnestly.
“Yeah, but you’ll be taking pictures. What’ll I do?”
“You’ll help me. Or you can do what you do here. In my town, people are always griping because they can’t find anybody to do chores or odd jobs. You can be a gardener. Work outdoors all day long if that’s what you want.”
“I’d like that,” Pascal said, smiling at Rick across the scarred Formica table.
“Great!” said Rick. “Then you’ll come with me next Saturday? The day after Christmas?”
Pascal’s smile faded and his fork explored a raisin. “Mrs. Beardsley won’t like it.”
“Mrs. Beardsley doesn’t own you, Pasc. You own yourself. Just like I own myself.”
“But you’re not a dummy,” Pascal blurted, his blue eyes miserable. “People may not like me in your town. Your mother won’t like me.”
“Sure she will. And you’ll like her. I called her last night and told her all about you and she said I could bring anybody home I wanted to. And besides, as soon as we’re earning enough money, we could move into a place of our own. Maybe even out in the middle of nowhere where nobody’ll bother us and you can play your jazz tapes as loud as you want.”
The thought of open country was bewildering to someone who’d only known the city, but Pascal had never had a friend like this, someone who did not merely put up with him but actually seemed to like him unconditionally and as he was. The lure of that friendship and the fear of losing it were irresistible and outweighed any nebulous fears about Louisiana ’s alien landscape.
Pascal put out his hand and shyly touched Rick’s. “Okay,” he said.