Cautiously, because this was the first mention she’d heard of the skeleton in Peake’s closet, Sigrid said, “It would help us clarify things if we had your side of what actually did happen at the Friedinger.”
Giving his side took Benjamin Peake almost fifteen minutes, an intense quarter hour in which he used nearly every technical and aesthetic art term Sigrid had ever heard in order to rationalize his actions. When he ran out of breath, she mentally translated his account into layman’s terms for her own benefit.
According to Peake, the Friedinger had been presented with an opportunity to acquire an important Ingres. In order to finance the purchase, it was decided to sell (in museum talk “deaccession”) some of the lesser pictures, including two cataloged “ School of Zurbarán.” Consequently, the pictures were sent to auction and sold, and a month or so later, the new owner jubilantly announced that his hunch had paid off: exhaustive scientific and aesthetic analysis conclusively proved that the pictures were not merely “ School of Zurbarán ” but authentic works by Zurbarán himself.
In view of the soaring values for that artist’s work after the Met’s splashy Zurbarán show, the two pictures were now worth more than the Ingres they were sold to help purchase.
Peake’s immediate superior was technically responsible for approving the deaccessioning of any of the Friedinger’s holdings, so public ridicule fell heaviest on him; but since the action had been based on Dr. Benjamin Peake’s supposedly expert recommendation, Peake’s resignation was also accepted. Very unfair, Peake claimed, since he was pressured from above to find things to sell and had relied on the advice of subordinates who claimed to know more about the Spanish master than he had.
From the way Peake glossed over certain details, Sigrid gathered that there had also been allegations of impropriety concerning other, lesser pictures which had been deaccessioned and sold through private galleries, but nothing quite as spectacular as the Zurbaráns.
Once more Sigrid remembered Shambley’s cock-of-the-walk attitude Wednesday night, the electricity in his big homely face, the pointed look he had given Peake when he learned that she was a police officer.
“Robbery, may one hope?” he’d asked. “How appropriate.” He had also informed her that publicity came in many forms.
Publicity, Sigrid wondered, or notoriety?
Her flint gray eyes rested on Benjamin Peake as she considered what he’d just told them about the Friedinger in the light of Shambley’s insinuations.
Peake stirred uneasily behind his gleaming desk, unable to meet her gaze, and Lowry, who’d endured that unblinking basilisk stare more than once himself, felt a small twinge of sympathy for the man.
At last Sigrid dropped her eyes and turned through her notebook for yesterday’s interviews. “We’ve been told that you and Miss Kohn had a later confrontation with Dr. Shambley in the library, a confrontation overheard by Mr. Munson.”
“Our conversation was hardly a confrontation,” Peake protested with a nervous laugh. “It was only artsy hypothetical cocktail-party nonsense.”
“What was his hypothesis?” asked Sigrid.
“I’m afraid I really don’t remember.”
Sigrid let it pass for the moment. “You stated that you left here Wednesday night around eight-forty?”
“That’s correct,” Peake said, relaxing a little. “Mrs. B- that is, Mrs. Beardsley-volunteered to stay and lock up after the caterers had gone. There was no need for both of us to stay.”
“Where was Dr. Shambley when you left?”
The director shrugged. “So far as I knew, in the attic.”
“Alive and unharmed?”
Peake looked at her sharply. “Certainly! That’s right, isn’t it? I mean, he died much later in the evening, didn’t he?” He appealed to Jim Lowry for confirmation.
“The medical examiner’s office says sometime between eight and eleven-fifteen,” Lowry told him.
“Well, there you are,” Peake told Sigrid. “You saw him go upstairs around eight, didn’t you?”
“He could have come down again before you left,” she said mildly.
“Ask Mrs. Beardsley. She’ll tell you.”
Sigrid nodded. “What did you do after you left here?”
“Went home,” he said promptly. “It’d been a long day.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
Peake hesitated. “No.” He started to amplify and then stopped himself. “No,” he repeated.
Before Sigrid or Jim Lowry could push him further on that point, there was a brisk knock on the office door and Mrs. Beardsley opened it without waiting for a reply.
“Dr. Peake!‘ she exclaimed, her long face full of self-important concern.”Lieutenant Harald! Someone’s stolen Mr. Breul’s gold-handled walking stick!”
Oblivious to the stares and speculations of curious docents, the tall mannequin stood as serenely as ever in the well of the curving marble balustrade, his face turned toward the female figure on the landing above his head. He still wore a gray pearl stickpin in his tie, but there was no longer a cane in his gloved hand.
“Who saw it last?” Sigrid asked.
Four other docents had gathered and they murmured together uncertainly, but Mrs. Beardsley said firmly, “I definitely remember that I brushed a piece of lint from the collar of his overcoat on Wednesday night and straightened his stick at the same time.”
“When Wednesday night?”
“Shortly before the party began. You know how one will look around one’s house to make certain everything’s in proper order before one’s guests arrive?”
Her unconscious choice of words revealed her deep involvement in the place, thought Sigrid. She recalled glancing at the two mannequins during the party and again yesterday, but she couldn’t have sworn to the presence of a walking stick. She glanced at Jim Lowry, who shook his head.
“Call Guidry and see if the mannequin’s in any of the pictures she took of the hall yesterday,” Sigrid directed. Then, turning back to Mrs. Beardsley and Dr. Peake, she said, “Describe the cane, please.”
Peake looked blank. “It was black, I believe, and had a solid gold knob.”
“And was about so long,” said Mrs. Beardsley, stretching out her plump hand a few feet from the floor.
“Would you like to read how it’s listed on the inventory?” asked Miss Ruffton, efficient as ever.
She handed Sigrid a stapled sheaf of papers labeled Second Floor. A subdivision under Bedroom & Dressing Room-Erich Breul, Sr. was Wardrobe-Accessories, and Miss Ruffton pointed to a numbered entry: “2.3.126. Man’s ebony stick. 95 cm., two threaded knobs: (a) gold plate over solid brass, acanthus design; (b) carved ivory ball.”
As Sigrid read the description aloud, Mrs. Beardsley said, “So that’s what that ivory thing is! I didn’t realize one could change the knobs. How clever.”
“Gold plated?” Peake sounded personally affronted.
Sigrid was silent, thinking of ebony’s strength and hardness. And when weighted with a solid brass knob at one end? Until they learned otherwise, Erich Breul’s missing walking stick sounded like a perfect candidate for the rod that had smashed Roger Shambley’s thin skull.
Lowry hung up the telephone on Hope Ruffton’s desk and reported, “Guidry says she’ll have to make a blowup to be sure, but she doesn’t think the cane’s in any of the pictures and she’s got a long shot of this hall and doorway.”