Now she crossed the wide room, passing by the defeated dancer, to knock at the red door. After a full minute the door opened, but only a crack.
“Yes?” said the old woman facing her. Madame Burnstien was small and slight, hardly threatening. Her white hair was captured in a bun, and every bit of skin was a crisscross of lines. The only hand visible through the crack of the door was a cluster of arthritic knots wrapped round the cane.
“I’m Mallory. I have an appointment with you?”
“You are Rabbi Kaplan’s young friend?”
Mallory couldn’t immediately place the woman’s accent, but then Anna Kaplan had said that Madame Burnstien hailed from too many countries to call one of them home. In youth, she had danced for the whole earth. Mallory could not believe this crone had ever been young.
“Rabbi Kaplan said you would see me.”
“I said I would look at you, and I have. You’re a beautiful child, but you are too tall. Go away now.”
The door began to close. Mallory shot one running shoe into the space between the door and its frame. The old woman smiled wickedly and showed Mallory her cane, lifting it in the crack-width of the door to display the carved wolf’s head and its fangs.
“Move your foot, my dear, or you’ll never dance again.”
The cane was rising for a strike.
“Madame Burnstien, you only think I won’t deck you.”
The old eyes widened and gleamed. The smile disappeared and her brows rushed together in an angry scowl as the cane lowered slowly. There was exaggerated petulance in her cracking voice. “I like determination, child, but you waste my time. You are still too tall.”
“Everybody’s a critic.” Mallory showed her the gold shield and ID. “I want to talk to you about Aubry Gilette.”
“I have had many students. Aubry was a thousand dancers ago. What do you expect me to remember of one girl?”
“Oh, I think you remember her better than most. Don’t make me show you the autopsy photo. You’re old. It’d probably kill you.”
“Dream on, child.” The wicked smile was back, and the door was opening.
Madame’s office was generous in size, and showed Charles Butler’s penchant for antiques. The light of the corner window washed over an ancient ornate desk piled high with large paperbound books, sheets of archaic penmanship and notes of music. All but one brocade chair was filled with costumes. Every bit of the far wall bore an autographed photo, or a drawing of a dancer in motion. The only respite from the dance was a small painting behind the desk, a still life of flowers. Mallory had attended Barnard College long enough to recognize a Monet. She knew this must be the real article, for she had already learned that the old woman was death on second-best. Her eye moved on to a larger canvas hanging on the next wall, and this she recognized as Sabra’s, even though there was no signature.
“So Madame Burnstien, you knew Aubry’s mother well?”
“Very good, my dear. That’s a portrait of Aubry.”
There was someone dancing in the painting. Although the subject was abstracted, there was a figure there, ephemeral, shimmering, flying over a wide space. Action strokes gave it life, and the space surrounding it pulsed with color. Fuchsia juxtaposed with brilliant greens and vied for the foreground to create a depth of field that confounded all laws defining the flat planes of canvases. Flourishes and dabs of paint had the rhythm and the punctuation of music. Mallory turned away with the afterimage of a full ballet and even its score.
“Do you know what happened to Sabra?”
The old woman sat down and averted her eyes. “Has there been an accident?” One gnarled hand went to her breast.
“Not that I know of. She disappeared years ago. Do you know where she went after she left the asylum?”
“No.”
This was the simple truth. There was no pause, no telling sign of a new furrow in the old woman’s face, or a nervous shift in her body. And there was no hint of a question or a surprise in her eyes. So she was close enough to the family to have known about Sabra’s asylum years.
“You were at the funeral. I saw you in the old photographs. What was Sabra like that day? Was she already crazy?”
The old woman shook her head. Frowning, she waved her hand as if to chase away the words. Mallory came closer and leaned down to meet Madame’s eyes. “Maybe I should have asked if you’d seen Sabra recently.”
Madame Burnstien said nothing. But that was something. There was no convenient, polite lie to fill the gap. This woman might be capable of deception, but the outright lie was not Madame’s style. So Sabra was alive. She backed off now, to give the woman space.
“All right, then tell me about Aubry and the artist she died with. Was Peter Ariel really her boyfriend? Or was there someone else?”
“She had no lovers.”
“She was a very attractive woman, and these days, twenty is old for a virgin.”
“The world changed, the ballet did not. It’s a grueling, demanding profession. Aubry had great ambition. She had no time for friends or lovers. This is what she loved.” Madame Burnstien pointed to a large photograph of a dancer’s ruined feet, half-healed sores and open wounds, all the punishment of the cruel shoes. “When Aubry was not performing in her ballet company, she was here, taking classes. The classes never end, you know, not for your entire life span as a ballerina.”
“She had some connection to that gallery she died in. There was something going on in her life. She could have been meeting her boyfriend in the hours after the lessons and performances.”
“No, she couldn’t!” The cane beat the floor with a thud and left a round impression in the rug. There were many such impressions about the room.
“You can’t know that, not for sure.” Mallory leaned back against the red door. “You weren’t with her every minute.” Her words were taunting, to lead the old woman into the fray. She had learned a great deal from the rabbi. “You were only her teacher. She could have had a hundred boyfriends.”
And now the old woman sat up a little straighter, head lifting, rising to the bait. “Aubry could not have been carrying on an affair, not without my knowing. Dancing takes tremendous strength, great care with one’s health. I myself was overtrained. My arthritis began when I was only a little older than Aubry. A dancer needs rest above all things. Aubry retired as early as her evening performances would permit, and she was here every morning taking class. There were no late-hour bruises to her eyes. Aubry only danced!” Lower and less emphatic now, “She never had a life.”
Mallory folded her arms in the skeptic’s pose which the rabbi used when he thought she might be lying.
Madame Burnstien rose from her chair. The pain of movement was concealed well, but not completely. There was evidence enough for Mallory to know the arthritis had taken over the entire body of this former prima ballerina.
The old woman stood by the window, her back turned to Mallory when she spoke. “You saw all the children downstairs? Out of the hundred, perhaps one will make it, perhaps not. And all the children who are not chosen- I like to think they have escaped.”
Mallory moved behind her, coming upon her so quietly that the old woman started at her first words. “According to the newspapers, Aubry and the artist had an affair. An art critic named Andrew Bliss said-”
“A pack of lies.”
“People who knew them both were quoted-”
“All lies!”
“Or maybe you’re lying to me now.” But she knew that Madame Burnstien was not. When the old woman spoke next there was no confrontation, no defense, only the simple facts of Aubry’s time on earth.
“She only danced. She never really lived. And then she died.”
“More blackmail, Mallory?” Edward Slope made two notations on a chart and set it down on the table by the gutted male cadaver and former taxpayer. “What do you want now, the pink slip on my car?”