Corpus Christmas Read online

  He hung his fleece jacket on the tripod, piled his camera and case next to them, then followed Pascal Grant up the broad marble staircase, which turned back on itself at a landing halfway up the height of the hall.

  At the left of the stairs, eight thick red candles filled a freestanding fourteenth-century bronze candelabrum, and Mrs. Beardsley and her troops had garlanded the white stone balustrade in evergreen swags and tied them with red velvet ribbons.

  On the wide landing, out of the way of passing traffic, stood the dummy figure of a woman, dressed in a ruffled, high-necked blouse and green serge skirt and buttoned shoes. Looking up at her from the curve of the balustrade on the floor below was her male counterpart, clothed as if on his way out for a stroll around Sussex Square on a December morning in 1905.

  Thrifty Sophie Breul had seldom discarded anything, so the attic held trunks and boxes full of period clothes. When Gimbels closed its Broadway store, someone had salvaged several fashion mannequins for use at the Breul House.

  It was almost like having a Ken and Barbie set for adults, and the docents enjoyed dressing the figures to suit the changing seasons.

  Today, the gray-haired male figure wore a top hat, white silk muffler, and long black overcoat, and he carried a gold-headed cane.

  The second floor was also open to the public, and it consisted of a wide central hall that was richly somber with a coved wooden ceiling and walls covered in dark burgundy silk. Two tall windows overlooked the park at one end and a carpeted mahogany staircase rose majestically at the other.

  Narrow marble-topped tables hugged the walls beneath sumptuously framed oil paintings. The more important pieces of the Breul collection were displayed in the gallery downstairs. These were some of Erich Breul’s less discerning purchases and the massive frames, each with its own small lamp, only mocked shrunken reputations. Here was a seascape by Henry Babbage, once praised as “the American Turner”; there, a landscape by Everett Winstanley, “our Constable”; plus a pair of heroic battle scenes with heavily muscled horses, plunging and rearing about with flared nostrils, the work of Genevieve Carlton, whom the late scholar, Riley Quinn, had called the Rosa Bonheur of central New Jersey.

  Between the paintings, every door stood wide to reveal bedrooms and dressing rooms, Erich Breul’s oak-paneled study and Sophie Breul’s sitting room. The latter was elaborately carpeted, draped, and cluttered with fringed shawls, tasseled cushions, gilt mirrors, cut-glass lamps, and other ornate bric-a-brac that passed for tasteful decor in the late 1890’s.

  Halfway down the hall, they had to press themselves against the wall as a docent exited from the main bathroom with eight German tourists and their tour guide in tow. To judge by the laughter and bright chatter as they passed, the Victorian bathroom had been a great hit. Rick Evans had never seen a bathroom quite that large himself, nor one that lavish: walnut commode, a walnut-enclosed tub deep enough to float in, a wide marble lavatory, and all the brass fixtures fitted out with china knobs and handles.

  At the end of the hall, the gloominess of the stair landing was relieved by an oval Tiffany window that Erich had ordered as a tenth anniversary present for Sophie. Even on this gray December day, its stained-glass leaves and flowers glowed with jewellike intensity.

  Pascal Grant paused beneath it and smiled at Rick shyly. “This is my second favorite window in the whole house,” he said. “You should take a picture of it.”

  “I’m going to,” Rick agreed. He had noticed it when Benjamin Peake, the director, had given him a hurried tour of the public rooms the previous week, but he planned to wait for a sunny day when the window would be more brilliantly backlighted.

  “So,” Rick said as they moved on up the steps to the third floor, “what’s your first favorite window?”

  “The front door downstairs,” the other answered promptly over his shoulder. “Not the big door. My door.”

  Rick remembered seeing steps that apparently led down to a doorway recessed beneath the stoop of the main entrance. “The service entrance?”

  Pascal Grant paused at the top of the stairs and nodded. “That’s mine. I’m service. I have a key and everything.” He pulled a tangle of keys from his coverall pocket. “See?”

  Even though he stood a step or two higher than Rick, his head was tilted so low that he seemed to be looking up at someone taller as he returned the keys to his pocket.

  The third floor was as solidly built as the second, but the hall was narrower and the ceiling was simple plaster except for the cast moldings. Benjamin Peake had made a point about them, but at the moment Rick couldn’t remember if the director had said they were special because of the oak-leaf-and-acorn design or because of the process by which they had been cast. Whichever the reason, Rick decided he’d better borrow Grant’s stepladder, rig some lights, and take a couple of close-ups.

  The front rooms had belonged to Erich Jr. before he went off to France; but in 1948, an imaginative curator had removed the young man’s personal effects to a bedroom on the second floor and restored these rooms to their original state as a nursery and playroom. Like so much else, Sophie had naturally saved everything her only child ever used, so the public now saw baby Erich’s cradle, his crib, his nursemaid’s narrow bed, and, in the connecting playroom, his horsehide rocking horse with its genuine mane and tail, the mane sadly reduced to stubble by much hard riding.

  There were also wind-up toys, books, blocks, even a handful of wax crayons which were now scattered beside a childish drawing of stick figures labeled Papa and Mama and Erich in straggling letters across the picture. Another Gimbels mannequin, this one resembling a four-year-old boy, sat at the table with a crayon fastened in its hand. It was dressed in short pants and a jacket of gray serge, a white batiste shirt, a black silk bow, long black lisle stockings, and high-top, button-up shoes.

  Here again were more visitors. Watched by a woman whose apprehensive air immediately identified her as a docent, seven young day-care kids and their teacher were getting a first hand look at how one privileged child had lived a hundred years earlier.

  “Where’s his television?” demanded a tot as Rick and Pascal Grant passed the doorway.

  “I have a television,” Pascal whispered to Rick. “Mrs. Beardsley and her ladies gave it to me. For my birthday.”

  “That’s nice,” Rick answered, a shade too heartily. Never before had he been required to interact with someone mentally handicapped and his natural compassion was jumbled with both embarrassment and uneasiness.

  Physically, Pascal Grant could be any age from sixteen to twenty-six.

  Mentally, he probably wasn’t too much older than those children.

  A damn shame, Rick thought soberly. The guy was so good-looking. Of course, there were no rules that said it had to be otherwise, but still—

  They passed through an open set of frosted glass doors that bisected the third floor. At the far end of the hall stood a mannequin dressed as a housemaid in a long black cotton dress and white bib apron, with her hair neatly pinned up under a starched white cap.

  On this half of the third floor lay bedrooms for the servants, their one small bath, and a back stairs that ran from the basement kitchen to the attic. In the old days, the glass doors were normally kept shut, but after touring the spacious quarters of the master and mistress, modern visitors always wanted to see where the live-in staff slept when they weren’t cooking and cleaning or fetching and carrying for the Breul family.

  The docents might loyally insist that the Breuls were enlightened and considerate employers, but most visitors gleefully picked up on how even the floor coverings defined class lines. On the nursery side of that translucent glass, the carpet was a thick wool Axminster; on the servants’ side, woven hemp matting.

  At the rear stairwell, black velvet ropes barred the public from further passage. From kitchen to attic, the steps were wide enough to accommodate wicker laundry baskets, cleaning equipment, or storage chests, but they rose much more steeply than the w
ider public staircases and they were uncarpeted. Pascal Grant unclipped one of the ropes from its brass wall hook, waited for Rick Evans to pass, then carefully clipped it back again before leading the way up to the fourth-floor attic.

  The huge attic was warm and smelled almost like a hayloft—a clean, dry mustiness compounded of old cardboard, lavender, and mothballs. Odds and ends crowded the space in an orderly fashion: wooden wardrobe boxes, storage cartons of all sizes, trunks, spare furniture, and, to Rick’s surprise, a makeshift office of sorts.

  At the far end of the attic, extension cords had been strung for lights and a typewriter, and three old tables formed a U-shaped desk for a man who sat reading intently, half hidden from their view by tall metal file cabinets in which were stored a hundred years of Breul papers.

  He did not look their way. “Who’s that?” Rick murmured. “Dr. Shambley.” Pascal put his finger to his lips. “Shh.” He pointed to the remaining boxes of Christmas decorations, gave half of them to Rick and started back down. Not until they were at the bottom of the attic steps did he speak again. “Dr. Shambley’s new. Mrs. Beardsley doesn’t like him.”

  Rick remembered that his grandfather had mentioned a new trustee who was an art historian or something. “Why doesn’t she like him?”

  “I don’t know,” answered the young handyman, but his manner was uneasy and Rick wondered if it were only Mrs. Beardsley who didn’t like the new trustee.

  On the third floor, they had to edge around the tourists who blocked the hall’s frosted glass doors as flash cameras and video minicams recorded the turn-of-the-century house-maid from the toe of her lace-up boots to the tip of her starched cap.

  There was no sign of the day-care group until the two men descended past the final turn on the stairs and saw the children being herded across the wide entry hall like a flock of pigeons. The teacher’s voice echoed off the marble walls as she called, “Now who has to use the bathroom before we put our coats back on?”

  “I do! I do!” they all cried and streamed for the cloakrooms on either side of the main entrance.

  Mrs. Beardsley wore a determined smile on her face, a smile that became genuine as Pascal Grant set down his load of boxes and said, “We got them all, Mrs. Beardsley.”

  “Wonderful, Pascal. Now if you’ll set up the ladder and if Mr. Evans will help you with the lights—though why we can’t have real candles just once, I’ll never understand,” she fretted, half to herself. It was Mrs. Beardsley’s annual regret that the insurance company and the New York City Fire Marshall were both so stuffy about using real candles on the tree.

  Helen Aldershott rolled her eyes at the others and continued to untangle the tiny electric candles that would light the tree safely, if anachronistically.

  It was a little past one and the docents were beginning to murmur of missed lunches before the last glass angel was fastened to the last bare twig. After one final inspection, Mrs. Beardsley nodded imperiously to Miss Ruffton, who tapped on the director’s door and summoned him to preside at the lighting ceremony.

  Every hair was sleekly in place and a festive red tie was knotted beneath his pointed chin as Benjamin Peake emerged from his office, more urbanely than the butler who had once occupied that corner of the mansion. He acknowledged the hours the women had worked to transform the mansion’s formality to a Dickensian festiveness, and he assured them that he spoke on behalf of the trustees when he expressed their appreciation—his, too, of course—for their artistry and dedication.

  Benjamin Peake possessed a rolling baritone that filled the marbled hall and floated up the stairwell. Alerted by his formal tones, a small crowd soon gathered around the tree and even spread themselves along the staircase for a better view.

  When he was sure of everyone’s attention, the director drew his remarks to a close and smiled graciously at his audience. “A very merry Christmas to you all,” he said and clicked the switch Pascal Grant had rigged.

  “Ah!” everyone exclaimed, as the tree blazed forth in all its Victorian glory.

  Fourteen senior suburbanites, in from Connecticut for the day and fresh from touring the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace a short walk away, had gathered in the entry hall for a guided tour. Several began taking pictures of each other in front of the Christmas tree.

  “Your tree is much prettier than Teddy’s,” one of the women told Mrs. Beardsley.

  Pascal Grant paused in the act of carting away the ladder and storage boxes. “Hey, Rick,” he said. “Want to see my window now?”

  Rick Evans made a show of looking at his watch. “Sorry, Pascal, but I’d better finish taking pictures of the tree.”

  Yet when he saw the open disappointment on the other’s face, he relented. “Tell you what, though. Why don’t I come a little early tomorrow, around four? You can show me then, okay?”

  “Okay!” Grant nodded happily.

  * * *

  At the top of the house, Roger Shambley lifted his massive head from a letter that had been misfiled in a cabinet with some of Erich Breul’s business papers.

  “Sorgues?” he muttered to himself, remembering that name from a biography he’d once read. “August of 1912? Hmm… now wouldn’t that be something?”

  He looked past the circle of bright light in which he sat, out to the dim stretches of attic crammed with boxes and trunks, and wild surmises filled his head.

  “Silent, upon a peak in Darien,” he jeered at himself.

  And yet—!

  In another attic several blocks southeast of the Breul House, a different discovery had just been made.

  While renovating their old, but newly purchased, red brick row house in the East Village, Daniel and Gigi DeLucca had found a rusty tin footlocker pushed up under the eaves of the fourth-floor attic behind stacks of National Geographics.

  “Old books?” he’d wondered.

  “Old clothes,” she’d guessed.

  The hasp was rusted tight. “Blackbeard’s treasure,” they decided and, lustily chanting, “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo-ho! Yo-ho!” they had hauled it downstairs and pried it open with a crow-bar.

  Inside they found an unpleasant musty odor and four little bundles wrapped in stained newspapers.

  “Pigeon bones?” she asked as she finished unwrapping the first bundle.

  “I don’t think so,” he said and carefully laid the second bundle back in the chest as if afraid it would explode.

  It was a tiny mummified figure, entwined in what looked to the man like a shriveled grapevine but that the woman instantly recognized as an umbilical cord.

  They left the last two bundles for the police.

  Lieutenant Sigrid Harald arrived shortly after an assistant from the medical examiner’s office. “I’m no Dr. Oliver when it comes to bones,” said Cohen, referring to one of the country’s leading experts on human skeletal remains, “but off the top of my bead, I’d say all four are human and all died within hours of their births.”

  “When?” asked the tall, gray-eyed lieutenant. “How the hell do I know?” Cohen answered testily. They looked at the dates on the yellowed newspapers in which the four pathetic remains had been wrapped. The earliest was March 4, 1935; the latest was April 1, 1947.

  “Look there, Lieutenant,” said Detective Jim Lowry.

  He showed her a flaking page of newsprint that headlined the allied invasion of North Africa. Overlaying a map with arrows pointing to Algiers were four faded brown ovals that looked very much like old fingerprints made by bloody adult fingers.

  Their Christmas card that year depicted Father Christmas in his long red robes and furred hood as he warmed himself before a roaring fire. Inside was a verse from Sir Walter Scott, one of Mr. Breul’s favorite authors:

  Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill:

  But let it whistle as it will,

  We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

  FROM WELCOME TO THE BREUL HOUSE!—AN INFORMAL

  TOUR, BY MRS. HAMILTON JOHNSTONE III, SENIO
R

  DOCENT. (COPYRIGHT 1956)

  II

  Friday, December 11

  THANKS TO THE SUSSEX SQUARE PRESERVATION Society, which had successfully fought to retain them, six of the city’s last original gas streetlights survived in working order, and here in the early December twilight their soft flickers gleamed upon polished brass door handles and kick plates.

  A through street for cars and taxis passed along the bottom of the square, but when vehicular traffic was banned from the northern three sides around the small park, the original cobblestone carriageway was repaved in smooth brick, a substitution Mrs. Beardsley regretted anew as she stood in the doorway of number 7 and watched the last visitors descend the broad marble steps.

  Mrs. Beardsley lived diagonally across the park at number 35. As senior docent, however, she spent almost as much time at the Breul House as she did in her own. She had hoped for the seat on the board of trustees that had recently gone-to Dr. Shambley, but until that prize dropped into her lap, she would continue to conduct tours of the house, arrange seasonal decorations, and intimidate the reduced staff.

  Mrs. Beardsley’s officiousness might weary Benjamin Peake—especially when he was called upon to calm the ruffled waters she left in her wake—but the director revenged himself with the secret knowledge that the woman would never become a trustee as long as he had a say in the matter. Otherwise, he had no intention of discouraging her interest in the place. After all, she deferred to his position, she was capable of surprisingly shrewd promotional ideas, and she worked tirelessly without a salary, of itself no small consideration, given the Erich Breul House’s current financial difficulties.

  Although a discreet sign inside the vestibule suggested donations of three dollars per person to view the house and its contents, at least a third of those who came either donated less or brazenly ignored the sign altogether. This wouldn’t have mattered if hundreds daily thronged the house. Sadly, the two who had just departed were the forty-first and forty-second of the day.