They carried it upstairs and asked Dr. Peake if he or Miss Ruffton could speculate why Shambley should buy two identical Léger posters and stash them in the basement.
“Beats me,” Peaks said, lounging indolently in a chair beside Hope Ruffton’s desk. “Léger’s too modern. Clean out of Shambley’s period. Most of his work was done in the thirties and forties. He died in the midfifties, if I’m not mistaken.”
His secretary was equally puzzled. “This looks familiar though. Now where have I seen-?”
The young janitor passed near by on his way down to the basement and he gave them a shy smile as he skirted the mannequin dressed like Erich Breul.
“Just a minute, Grant,” Dr. Peake said. “These detectives found some posters Dr. Shambley left in the basement. Do you know anything about them?”
Pascal Grant looked at the cubist poster and his face lit up. “I have pictures like that in my room.”
“What?” exclaimed Peake, coming erect in his chair.
“That’s where I saw it,” said Hope Ruffton. “Those posters Dr. Kimmelshue had. The ones you told Pascal he could put up.”
“Oh,” said Peake. “Those.”
He sank back lazily into the chair again. “For a minute there-” He smiled to himself at the absurdity of what he’d almost thought for a minute.
“Want to see them?” Pascal Grant asked the detectives. Golden curls spilled over his fair brow and he brushed them back as he looked up at Eberstadt with a friendly air.
“Naw, that’s okay,” said Peters.
He and Eberstadt started toward the front door. “We’ve still got a couple of alibis to check. Drop you somewhere, Lainey?”
“No, thanks,” she said, remembering Mrs. Beardsley’s explanation of Grant’s unease with Shambley. “One thing though-when you were checking out Shambley’s background, did anybody happen to mention if he was gay?”
“No,” Eberstadt said slowly, “but when we asked if he was living with anybody… remember, Bern?”
“Yeah. They said no. That Shambley couldn’t decide if he was AC or DC, so he wound up being no-C.”
“Interesting,” Albee said. “I’ll hang on to the poster and bring it back to the office later. The lieutenant’ll probably want to see it.”
By the time Matt Eberstadt and Bernie Peters reached the sidewalk, Elaine Albee was already halfway down the basement steps to talk with Pascal Grant again.
“I suppose I may as well tell you,” said Hester Kohn. “If I don’t, Jacob will.”
She led them to the small sitting room she’d created around the window corner of the large office that had once belonged to her father, and Sigrid and Jim Lowry were invited to take the blue-and-turquoise chairs opposite her plum-colored love seat. The upholstery seemed impregnated with her gardenia perfume, which, coupled with a pair of highly chromatic red and orange abstract pictures on dark green walls, gave the office a sensual, subtropical atmosphere.
She loosened her pink jacket button by button and a languid smile touched her lips when she saw how Lowry’s eyes followed her fingers.
As an interested spectator, Sigrid usually enjoyed watching other women operate, but it was almost three and she didn’t feel like wasting more time. “What would Mr. Munson tell us?” she asked crisply.
“That he didn’t drop me at my apartment near Lincoln Center Wednesday night,” Hester replied. “I met Ben Peake after the party. We talked about an hour, then I went home. Alone. And before you ask, no, I can’t prove it.”
“You’d just seen Dr. Peake,” said Sigrid. “Why did you meet again so quickly?”
“There were private things we needed to discuss.”
“Things Shambley had brought up in the library?” Sigrid asked.
“Ben told you about that?”
“He gave us his version-” Sigrid said carefully.
Hester Kohn interrupted with a ladylike snort and ran her fingers through her short black hair. “I’ll bet he did!”
“-and no doubt, Mr. Munson will have his own version of what he overheard Shambley say,” Sigrid finished smoothly.
The seductive languor disappeared from Hester Kohn’s body and she became wary and all business. “There’s no need to question Jacob about this.”
“No?”
“No.” She cast a speculative woman-to-woman look at Sigrid. “Oscar and Jacob have been friends for as long as I can remember. Even since I was a little girl. Oscar could tell you how much this gallery means to Jacob.”
Her words contained a not-too-subtle threat, which Sigrid coldly ignored. “And not to you, too?”
“Of course to me,” she answered impatiently. “But it’s different for Jacob. He’s old-world with a capital O and that means things like honor and mano. It’s going to kill him to admit there’s ever been anything a little under-the-table with the gallery, but to admit it to a woman-!”
Her hazel eyes slid over Jim Lowry’s muscular body. “He might talk to you,” she told him.
“He’s chauvinistic?” asked Sigrid.
“He’s a gentleman,” Hester Kohn corrected with a grimace. “That means women are ladies. You charm ladies, you marry them, you have sons with them, but you don’t take them too seriously or admit them to power. Look around the gallery, Lieutenant Harald: We represent two female artists. And both of them are dead.
“Jacob used to think that Paul and I would marry and Paul would run the business. Then when Paul died, and it was too late to rope in Suzanne or Marta, he half adopted Ben Peake and tried to make him marry me. Thank God, my father had a different attitude about daughters.”
Bright spots of angry red flamed in her cheeks. “Every time I really think about it, I feel like screaming. Men made the tax laws, Ben Peake and his friend came up with the figures, and all I did was sign the appraisal, but who does Jacob blame the most? Three guesses.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Kohn,” said Jim Lowry, “but I don’t understand. Tax laws? Appraisal?”
“It’s absolutely routine,” she said defensively. “Anyhow, half the galleries in the country are doing it, too.”
Abruptly, it dawned on her that neither detective knew what she was talking about. “I thought you said Ben told you.”
“I said he gave us his version,” Sigrid reminded her. “And we still have to hear Mr. Munson’s.”
With an angry sigh, Hester Kohn sank back into the cushions of the plum love seat. “This happened a couple of years ago while Ben was still at the Friedinger. One of the patrons there was in serious need of a large tax write-off. Basically, the way it works is that a donor gives a nonprofit institution a work of art. An independent appraiser estimates how much the work is worth and the donor then lists that figure in his tax returns as a charitable donation.”
“The appraiser-you, in fact-inflates the figure?” Sigrid asked.
Hester Kohn nodded.
“But why would the institution that’s getting the artwork go along with that?” asked Lowry.
“What do they care?” Her voice was cynical. “They’re getting a donation they otherwise wouldn’t and next time, it might be a really important gift. Besides, if they decide to deaccess, it’s usually worth at least half the appraised price.”
Sigrid looked at her inquiringly. “Only in this particular case-”
“In this particular case, it was worth about a quarter of what Jacob Munson said it was worth.”
“You signed his name to an appraisal statement?” asked Lowry.
“He’s the judge of artistic merit in this firm,” Hester Kohn said with bitterness. “I’m just the business and financial side. My signature wouldn’t have sufficed. See, Jacob isn’t asked to appraise things very often because everyone in the business knows he’s so goddamned straight-arrow. He might come down on the high side, but his figures are usually within two or three thousand of the true value. The tax people know this, too, and they haven’t bothered to question him in years.”