Whenever Sigrid tried to picture living in close communion with someone, imagination failed her. She had read widely, of course, but she had no firsthand knowledge of how married people behaved when alone. Her father was a vivid memory; laughter; being swung up on his shoulders; the smell of his freshly shaven face; standing at the window to wave goodbye to him in his blue uniform-all this she remembered. But she'd been much too young to evaluate his relationship with her mother before he was killed; and Anne had never remarried, so Sigrid had nothing tangible to build on.
Of all her married cousins, north and south of the Mason-Dixon line only three or four had made it through to a fifth wedding anniversary. Yes, her career had brought plenty of opportunity to see the mechanics of marriages in all strata of society, but she realized that police work presented a lopsided-and unrealistically grim-view of life and marriage.
Whatever the status of Quinn's marriage, Sigrid wasn't to hear Mrs. Quinn's version that night. As she reached for the bell, the heavy oak door suddenly swung open, spilling light across the threshold, and
Oscar Nauman's tall frame filled the doorway.
Behind him stretched a hallway paneled in gleaming walnut. An intricate Tiffany lamp stood upon a richly carved chest beneath the wainscot of a wide staircase, and muted Oriental rugs softened the marble tiles. In this traditional setting the large canvases that adorned the wall looked like so many garish comic-book illustrations to Sigrid's untrained eyes, and seemed to strike a jarring note.
"Come to question the grieving widow?" asked Nauman sardonically when he had recognized her.
"Yes. Is she in?"
Nauman leaned against the door frame to consider her question. His face was shadowed, but light gleamed through his white hair and haloed his head in silver.
"Technically she's in; metaphysically she's out," he said at last.
"The technical side will be sufficient," she said coldly and started to pass him.
She was blocked by a surprisingly strong arm, and his keen blue eyes were amused at her sudden irritation. Sigrid glared back at him, and he dropped his arm to herald her entrance with a sweeping flourish of his tall lean body.
"Up the stairs and first door to your left," he called after her. "Don't say you weren't warned."
Unreasonably annoyed, Sigrid strode up the steps, her back rigid. She was conscious of Nauman's mocking eyes following her progress. At the top of the landing a concealed spotlight illuminated a small canvas chastely framed by unadorned wooden strips. At first glance it seemed to be nothing but a matte black square; not even a brush stroke disturbed its smooth surface, and its pointlessness fueled her annoyance.
As a child, she had been dutifully marched around the city's great museums, shifting from one leg to other as her mother lectured on the aesthetic quality of one interminable picture after another. Only the portraits had held her attention, and she particularly like the drawings and illuminated manuscripts at the Morgan Library. Still lifes and landscapes, if not too fulsome, had also been acceptable. But whenever Anne tried to interest her in nonrepresentational art, she had resisted fiercely. Once when confronted with some paintings by Jackson Pollock, she had rebelled, declared the whole room to be filled with 'scribble-scrabble baby pictures' and had so dug in her heels that Anne gave up. Even a required college survey course in art appreciation had not altered her original evaluation. She still felt that abstract art was an elaborate put-on, and this plain black square before her seemed to prove it. She dismissed it with a shrug and looked around.
The rest of the upper hall was in darkness except for a sliver of light beneath the first door. Sigrid tapped softly, and at her slight pressure the door slid open upon an injudicious blend of Parisian bordello and American 'sweet sixteen'.
Sigrid's first stunned impression of Doris Quinn's bedroom was of its overpowering fluffiness. Bouffant white silk shades capped each delicate crystal lamp, and at all the windows heavily ruffled curtains crisscrossed beneath red velvet drapes and swags. An overstuffed chaise longue was upholstered in some sort of white fur heaped with plush velvet cushions, while the dressing table was swathed in frilly white organza. Sigrid's feet sank alarmingly into the soft red carpet, and her eyes were assaulted by coy bouquets of red-and-green roses spangled across a white wallpaper.
The bed, an extravaganza in beknobbed and curlicued brass, had a curved tester and dust ruffles of lace-edged organza. The puffed silk coverlet repeated the wallpaper's overblown roses, and it, too was edged in white lace, as were the pillows.
In the midst of this froth of white lace Sigrid recognized Piers Leyden's muscular form as he struggled with a woman's inert body.
"Ah, the hell with it!" she heard him mutter. Then he heaved himself upright and staggered over to collapse on the chaise longue.
"Professor Leydon?" she asked hesitantly.
He smiled up at her without really focusing, turned over and buried his curly black head in the velvet cushions. "All classes are canceled," he announced and promptly passed out.
From the direction of the bed rose a muffled snore. Sigrid tiptoed over, nearly tripping on the thick rug. It was like walking on marshmallows.
Doris Quinn was visible only from the waist down. A black elastic girdle smoothly encased her softly rounded bottom, and the shapely legs, which dangled over the edge of the bed, still wore sheer black stockings. Her head, arms and upper torso were entangled in a lacy black slip. Frustrated in his effort to remove it, Leyden had abandoned in mid-stream the whole idea of putting Doris Quinn to bed.
If she spent the entire night with her head and arms so constricted by that slip, Sigrid reflected, Mrs. Quinn was going to wake up awfully stiff and sore-that is, assuming she didn't suffocate during the night. Deftly she extricated the rest of Doris from the slip and was rewarded by another snore and an overpowering aroma of liquor, mingled with expensive perfume.
With the slip removed from her head, Doris Quinn was unveiled as a well-tended forty, who probably waged a daily battle with calories, but whose slight plumpness had doubtless helped keep her soft white skin so smooth and unwrinkled. Her tousled tresses were unnaturally blond but too expertly managed to show anything so crass as dark roots. Altogether a small and cuddly, pampered, indulged and thoroughly sexual woman. The kind that always made Sigrid feel gawky even though scornful of so much feminine artifice.
Irritably she turned down the covers and rolled Doris Quinn under, tucked her in, then firmly closed the rose-bud mouth. She glanced over at Piers Leyden, comatose on the furry chaise, shrugged and switched off all but one of the ruffled lamps before tiptoeing to the door. A final and distinctly unfeminine snore goaded her into banging the door shut behind her.
On the landing she paused again to glare at that offensive black painting. What on earth had impelled Quinn (and after seeing his wife's taste in bedroom furnishings, she was sure it was Quinn) to give wall space to something so meaningless? And not just wall space. He must have paid an electrician quite a bit to custom wire that concealed spotlight high in the ceiling.
But even as she frowned at the picture, she became aware of hidden depths beneath its smooth surface. The longer she stared, the more there was to see. Instead of being one shade of matte black, the painting was actually a harmonious blend of transparent blacks and browns; and each subtle tonal difference assumed a different geometric form, the shapes seeming to float in a dark void, shifting and realigning to form a rich angular pattern.
She looked away, and the canvas resumed its blank surface. She concentrated, and again veiled complexities revealed themselves. Sigrid was obscurely pleased by its elusive beauty and came downstairs in a much better humor than when she'd gone up.