Knight Light
by Claudia Riess
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GENRE: Mystery
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BLURB:
On March 24, 1946, World Chess Champion,
Alexander Alekhine, is found dead in his hotel room in Estoril, Portugal.
The cause of death remains mired in controversy when, three-quarters of a
century later, a letter of his that could rock the art world is unearthed in a
routine home renovation in upstate New York. The letter is addressed to a
person of international repute and offers information about art works looted during
the German occupation of Paris.
When the young man in possession of the letter is
brutally murdered, his mentor, art history professor Harrison Wheatley and
Harrison’s sleuthing partner, art magazine editor Erika Shawn, hurl themselves
into the dual mission of tracking down both the killer and the looted art.
The hunt takes the couple to far flung locations,
and as the stakes rise along with the murder count, it looks like the
denouement will take place far from the comforts of home.
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Excerpt:
Harrison was at a loss.
“Denise, what is so disturbing to you about this?”
She opened her mouth to answer, then changed her mind. After a beat, she said, “I’ll tell you what
happened next, and you will know for yourself.”
He had no choice. He
nodded and waited for her to continue.
She smoothed her skirt and refolded her hands, as if this
would bring order to what was to come.
“The next morning after breakfast—dry rolls and tea without sugar, it
was—Ben and I set out for our respective homes.” Her voice had cracked a bit, and she cleared
her throat. “Ever since the incident at
the cinema, Benny was keeping his distance from me. It was clear he was unsure how to act in my
presence. I wanted us to go back to the
way we were, so I turned around and caught up with him. ‘I’ll walk you home,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking by myself,’
he said. I walked with him anyway. I hardly knew what to say next, and he was of
no help, giving me the cold shoulder, so we walked down the street in silence
for the entire ten minutes it took us to get to number 110, the address of the
Eisenberg gallery and residence. You
should know that the Eisenberg’s apartment, like the Wildenstein’s, was
accessible from inside the building. The
apartment was not as grand as theirs, though.
Three rooms, three flights up.”
Madame D paused to take another of her curative deep breaths.
“I will get right to the point,” she said evenly, although
Harrison saw her hands briefly unclasp to take up a patch of skirt material and
clutch it between her palms. “The door
to the gallery was wide open, but we didn’t need that clue to realize that
something terrible had happened. We
could see it through the gallery window.
Ben let out a low grunt, like an animal that had just been wounded, and
ran into the building. I followed after
him.
“The floor was strewn with empty frames, like a heap of
firewood. Not a single canvas had been
left behind. I stood dumbly in the
center of it as Ben tore around in circles screaming ‘Maman? Papa? Maman?
Papa?’ before realizing he was going nowhere and shot out of orbit to head for
the back office. I followed behind in a
kind of wide-awake daze, and when I reached the room, I saw first a neat pile
of paperwork on a small desk, and then, beside it on the floor, the bodies of
two German officers piled together like discarded rag dolls. Ben was crammed in a corner as if pinned
there by an invisible force, his mouth open, screaming without making a
sound. And then, as if suddenly
released, he sprang out the door, brushing by me without seeing me, running and
stumbling toward the stairwell that led up to the apartment. I followed him like a sleepwalker, alert to
every detail, but viewing it from another dimension of time and space.
“I was standing behind him as he pushed open the door to the
apartment, and so my first view of the scene was obstructed. His was not.
Both his parents were lying face-up on the hardwood floor. Each had been shot in the middle of the
forehead. Except for the neat bullet
holes, their faces were remarkably intact.
The pools of blood, like crimson pillows beneath their heads, were proof
enough that their wounds had been fatal, but Ben, dropping to his knees beside
his mother’s inert form, refused to believe it, whispering and howling that she
wake up. And still, not a word had
passed between us. What happened next
was so unearthly, even more so than the murders, that I did not truly believe
it was happening until it was done.”
Madame D paused a moment before going on, and Harrison felt
that if he said a word it would be considered an act of transgression. “The window in the living room,” she
continued—“we were in the living room, you see—went nearly from the floor to
the ceiling. The window was open and the
long white curtains—cotton batiste they must have been—were fluttering in the
breeze. Maybe Ben saw them as angel
wings, I don’t know. Maybe he thought he
could fly—remember, he believed he could become anything he wanted to be—and
that the curtains were heavenly portals or something of the sort. It’s so painful not to know what he was
thinking when he rose to his feet and without a word, without a cry, ran to the
window and flew off. In my mind I hear
myself shouting ‘Ben, no!’ just as he is about to jump, so I must have shouted,
don’t you think?” She looked at
Harrison, actually wanting him to answer.
Harrison felt keenly aware of what he had just been hearing,
yet stunned speechless by it. Like the
young Denise, he reflected.
“Harry?” she urged.
“Don’t you think I shouted that?”
He must choose his words carefully—no! say what you
think! “Yes, I believe you did,” he
said, faltering. “Probably you
did.” Counterpunching in the forefront
of consciousness: What? Two German officers and two Jews killed by the same
person?
“In the end I know it doesn’t matter,” she said, “but I want
to believe I said something.”
“How can anyone know how to react in such a situation?” he
asked, as the question in his head refused to be gaveled into silence. “I hardly know how to react in this
situation, and I’m a grown-up!”
She granted him a smile, but her thoughts were elsewhere: “I
blame myself, you know,” she said quietly.
“If I had let Ben hold my hand in the theater, or if I had pulled my
hand away less forcefully, he might have rushed to me, if even for a parting
embrace, and I would have held onto him until that dreadful impulse had melted
into a river of tears.”
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Claudia Riess is a Vassar graduate who's worked in the editorial
departments of The New Yorker and Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. She is
author of the Art History Mystery Series published by Level Best Books and
includes: “Stolen Light,”* “False Light” and “Knight Light.” She is also author
of “Semblance of Guilt” and “Love and Other Hazards.”
“Knight Light,” the third novel in her Art History Mystery
Series, released February 23, 2021, follows the series amateur sleuths Erika
Shawn, art magazine editor and Harrison Wheatley, art history professor, as
they tackle the sinister world of art crime that tests both their courage- and
love-under-fire.
https://twitter.com/ClaudiaRiess
https://www.facebook.com/ClaudiaRiessBooks
Amazon buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Knight-Light-Art-History-Mystery-ebook/dp/B08VY6RQVF/
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteI liked the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDelete