“I see.”

“I myself had no artistic talent. I wasn’t even a fair copyist. Nor did I have any true artistic ambitions.” She cocked her head again, probed my eyes with hers. “The painting was to be mine, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

“Oh?”

“My grandfather promised it to me. He was never a wealthy man. He and my grandmother lived comfortably but he never piled up riches. I don’t suppose he had much idea of the value of Mondrian’s painting. He knew its artistic worth, but I doubt he would have guessed the price it would command. He never collected art, you see, and to him this painting was nothing more or less than the valued gift of a treasured friend. He said it would come to me when he died.”

“And it didn’t?”

“My grandmother was the first to die. She contracted some sort of viral infection which didn’t respond to antibiotics, and within a month’s time she was dead of kidney failure. My parents tried to get my grandfather to live with them after her death but he insisted on staying where he was. His one concession was to engage a live-in housekeeper. He never really recovered from my grandmother’s death, and within a year he too was dead.”

“And the painting-”

“Disappeared.”

“The housekeeper took it?”

“That was one theory. My father thought my uncle might have taken it, and I suppose Uncle Billy thought the same of my father. And everyone suspected the housekeeper, and there was some talk of an investigation, but I don’t think anything ever came of it. The family came to some sort of agreement that there’d been a burglary, because there were other things missing, some of the wedding silver, and it was easier to attribute it to some anonymous burglar than for us to make a thing of suspecting each other.”

“And I suppose the loss was covered by insurance.”

“Not the painting. My grandfather had never taken out a floater policy on it. I’m sure it never occurred to him. After all, it had cost him nothing, and I’m sure he never thought it might be stolen.”

“It was never recovered?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Time passed. My own father died. My mother remarried and moved across the country. Mondrian remained my favorite painter, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and whenever I looked at one of his works in the Modern or the Guggenheim I felt a strong primal response. And I felt a pang, too, for my painting, my Mondrian, the work that had been promised to me.” She straightened up, set her shoulders. “Two years ago,” she said, “there was a Mondrian retrospective at the Vermillion Galleries. Of course I went. I was walking from one painting to another, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and I was breathless as I always am in front of Mondrian’s work, and then I stepped up to one painting and my heart stopped. Because it was my painting.”

“Oh.”

“I was shocked. I was stunned. It was my painting and I would have known it anywhere.”

“Of course you hadn’t seen it in ten years,” I said thoughtfully, “and Mondrian’s paintings do have a certain sameness to them. Not to take away anything from the artist’s genius, but-”

“It was my painting.”

“If you say so.”

“I sat directly across from that painting every Sunday night for years. I stared at it while I stirred my green peas into my mashed potatoes. I-”

“Oh, did you do that, too? You know what else I used to do? I used to make a potato castle and then make a sort of moat of gravy around it, and then I’d have a piece of carrot for a cannon and I’d use the green peas for cannonballs. What I really wanted was some way to catapult them into the brisket, but that was where my mother drew the line. How did your painting get to the Vermillion Galleries?”

“It was on loan.”

“From a museum?”

“From a private collection. Mr. Rhodenbarr, I don’t care how the painting got into the private collection or how it got out of it. I just want the painting. It’s rightfully mine, and at this point I wouldn’t even care if it weren’t rightfully mine. It’s been an overwhelming obsession ever since I saw it at the retrospective. I have to have it.”

What was it about Mondrian, I wondered, that appealed so strongly to crazy people? The catnapper, the man on the phone, Onderdonk, Onderdonk’s killer, and now this ditsy little lady. And, come to think of it, who was she?

“Come to think of it,” I said, “who are you?”

“Haven’t you been listening? My grandfather-”

“You never told me your name.”

“Oh, my name,” she said, and hesitated for only a second. “It’s Elspeth. Elspeth Peters.”

“Lovely name.”

“Thank you. I-”

“I suppose you think I stole the painting from your grandfather’s house lo these many years ago. I can understand that, Ms. Peters. You bought a book in my shop and my name stuck in your mind. Then you read something or heard something to the effect that I had a minor criminal career years ago before I became an antiquarian bookman. You made a mental connection, which I suppose is understandable, and-”

“I don’t think you stole the painting from my grandfather.”

“You don’t?”

“Why, did you?”

“No, but-”

“Because I suppose it’s possible, although you would have been a fairly young burglar yourself at the time, wouldn’t you? Personally I’ve always thought that my father was right and Uncle Billy took it, but for all I know Uncle Billy was right and my father took it. Whoever took it sold it, and do you know who bought it?”

“I could take a wild guess.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“J. McLendon Barlow.”

That was news to her. She stared at me. I repeated the name and it still didn’t seem to mean anything to her. “That was the man who loaned it to the Vermillion Galleries,” I said, “and later on he donated it to the Hewlett Collection. Remember?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “The painting-my painting-was on loan from the collection of a Mr. Gordon Kyle Onderdonk.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And I read newspapers, Mr. Rhodenbarr. That minor criminal career of yours doesn’t seem to have ceased with your entry into the book business. If the papers are to be believed, you were arrested for Mr. Onderdonk’s murder.”

“I suppose that’s technically true.”

“And now you’re out on bail?”

“More or less.”

“And you stole the painting from his apartment. My painting, my Mondrian.”

“Everyone seems to think that,” I said, “but it’s not true. The painting’s gone, I’ll admit that, but I never laid a glove on it. There’s some sort of traveling exhibit coming up and Onderdonk was going to lend them his painting. He sent it out for reframing.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“He wouldn’t?”

“The sponsors of the show would attend to that, if they felt the work needed reframing. I’m positive you took the painting.”

“It was gone when I got there.”

“That’s very difficult to believe.”

“I had trouble believing it myself, Ms. Peters. I still have trouble, but I was there and saw for myself. Or didn’t see for myself, since there was nothing to see except an empty space where a picture had been.”

“And Onderdonk told you he’d sent the picture out for framing?”

“I didn’t ask him. He was dead.”

“You killed him before you noticed the painting was gone?”

“I didn’t get a chance to kill him because somebody beat me to it. And I didn’t know he was dead because I didn’t look in the closet for his body, because I didn’t know there was a body to look for.”

“Someone else killed him.”

“Well, I don’t think it was suicide. If it was, it’s the worst case of suicide I ever heard of.”

She looked off into the middle distance and a couple of frown lines clouded her brow. “Whoever killed him,” she said, “took the painting.”

“Could be.”

“Who killed him?”

“I don’t know.”

“The police think you did it.”

“They probably know better,” I said. “At least the arresting officer does. He’s known me for years, he knows I don’t kill people. But they can prove I was in the apartment, so I’ll do for a suspect until they come up with a better one.”