Free Corpus Christmas by Margaret Maron

leaving tonight, will you, Dr. Shambley?
     The burglar alarm wasn’t switched on till almost midnight last night because he thought you were still here.”
    “I’ll remember,” he said brusquely. “
Buona notte
.” Dismissing her, he crossed the hall and entered the library, pettishly turning on the lights she had extinguished only
     moments before.
    A slam of the front door restored the earlier silence. Already, the automatic thermostat had begun to lower the temperature
     here. For a moment, he contemplated finding the master control and turning it up again, then decided it was pointless.
    He’d begun to despair of finding the letters he knew Erich Jr. must have written during his brief months in France. He had
     already leafed through all the personal papers still stored in Erich Breul’s library. Except for that one tantalizing letter
     misfiled in the attic, there was nothing later than the spring of 1911 when young Breul wrote to say how pleased he was that
     both parents were coming to Harvard, that he’d reserved rooms for them at Cambridge’s best hotel for graduation weekend, and
     that “although you will find her much altered since her father’s death, Miss Norton trusts that her health will enable her
     to receive you at Shady-hill.”
    Charles Eliot Norton! Shambley had marveled when he read that. One of the patron saints of fine arts—an intimate of Ruskin,
     Carlyle, Lowell, and Longfellow—and the Breuls,
padre e figlio
, had been guests in his home!
    Disconsolate, Shambley twirled Erich Breul’s large globe in its teak stand. Those letters might as well be in Timbuktu for
     all the chance he had of finding them at this point.
    Sophie Breul had saved her son’s toys, his schoolwork, his best clothes. Surely she would have saved his letters as well.
     Yet he’d exhausted all the logical places and no more of Erich Jr.’s last letters were to be found.
    He gave the globe a final twirl, switched off the lights, and crossed the hall to the cloakroom for his overcoat, the hollow
     sound of his footsteps on the marble floor echoing eerily from the walls all around him.
    He started to leave, remembered Mrs. Beardsley’s injunction, and descended the stairs to the basement, muttering to himself.
     As if he had nothing better to do than remind another cretin of his duties!
    At the bottom of the steps, Roger Shambley paused, uncertain exactly where the janitor’s room was. Lights were on along the
     passageway beyond the main kitchen and he followed them, noting the storerooms on either side. Late last week he had checked
     through the racks of pictures that Kimmelshue had consigned to the basement on the off chance that the old fart really had
     been as senile as Peake claimed. A waste of time. No silk purses hiding among those sows’ ears.
    No pictures stacked behind that pile of cast-off furniture, trunks, and rolled carpets, or—
    He stopped, thunderstruck.
    Trunks?
    Slowly, almost holding his breath, he found the light switch, pulled a large brown steamer trunk into an open space, and opened
     it.
    Inside were books, men’s clothing, turn-of-the-century toilet articles, and a handful of—
Dio mio
, yes! Programs from Parisian theaters, a menu from a Montparnasse café, and catalogs from various art exhibits.
    Excitedly, he pawed to the bottom. A few innocuous souvenirs, more clothing, nothing else. Erich Breul Jr.’s last effects
     didn’t even fill one trunk.
    Well, what did you really expect?
he jeered at himself. Retaining the catalogs, he shoved the large trunk back in place and lifted the lid of the smaller one
     to see yellowed feminine apparel, an autograph album from Sophie Breul’s childhood, and what looked like an embroidered glove
     case. He almost pushed it aside without opening it, but scholarly habit was too strong and as soon as he looked, be knew he’d
     found treasure: fourteen fat envelopes, thick with European postage stamps. The top one was postmarked August 1911 and