Though the acquisition elevated Taubman from a relatively unknown figure to a staple of the society pages, he wasted no time in turning the snobbish auction house from an insular upper-class institution into a service-obsessed marketing machine. In his first speech to employees, Taubman informed the shabbily genteel staff that he had been snubbed by them numerous times in his previous dealings with Sotheby's as an art buyer. And he made it clear that he would no longer tolerate such condescension.

Born into a prosperous family, Taubman often said he could never shake the uncanny feeling that someday he might lose his fortune, as his father, a farmer and aspiring builder, had done during the Depression. The loss of his family's money, combined with a penchant for commercial innovation and social adventure, created in him a powerful personal drive. He once described the acquisition of Sotheby's as "buying the throne." Both he and his striking Israeli-born wife -- who once worked the front desk at Christie's, a job noted more for the opportunities to meet a husband with deep pockets than to launch a career -- relished their roles as king and queen of Sotheby's.

Notably absent from the Taubmans' late-February gathering is the dynamic and socially luminous former Sotheby's boss Dede Brooks. "Dede and Alfred haven't had a conversation in a month," reveals a source intimately acquainted with their peregrinations. "They're not allowed to talk to each other. Only through lawyers."

This is a far cry from the hard-charging years when Taubman prized the kind of creativity Brooks exhibited as she leaped at new opportunities for the ossified Sotheby's, like creating the controversial but lucrative service of financing customers' purchases.

For the 49-year-old Dede Brooks, the situation can be nothing short of devastating. A brilliant financial whiz who joined the firm in 1979, she was until recently the most powerful woman in the art world, virtually indistinguishable from the auction house she helped steer from a snobbish, hidebound relic to an aggressive global brand. "Dede's obsessed by Sotheby's," one woman who has worked at both houses says. "It's her life. It's really got to be a terrible blow."

"Dede's so smart," another former colleague observes. "I can't imagine she'd do anything so stupid."

At the same time she abruptly resigned from Sotheby's, Brooks also stepped down from the prestigious board of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, where she had served for three years. Also since resigning from her job at Sotheby's, Brooks has put her Greenwich, Connecticut, house up for sale, asking $4 million for the 7,262-square-foot Colonial she and her husband, Michael C. Brooks, a partner in the venture-capital firm J.H. Whitney, purchased for $1.5 million in 1991. A company loyalist through and through, Brooks is selling it through Sotheby's International Realty.

In light of her current predicament, a story on the house due to run in the May issue of Architectural Digest was indefinitely postponed.

Throughout the art world, there remains a genuine sense of shock that Dede Brooks is no longer at the helm at Sotheby's. "I have the highest regard for that woman," says one prominent dealer. "And I haven't found anyone in this backbiting world to say anything seriously against her. Okay, she's a businesswoman and extremely tough. But that's to be expected."

The incriminating evidence that caused this turmoil, Christie's indicated, had come from Christopher Davidge, the firm's British-born former chief executive, whose sudden departure after 34 years was announced on Christmas Eve in a terse internal e-mail sent to the company's 2,200 employees worldwide. Distancing itself from any skulduggery, the company issued a statement claiming it had only "recently become aware" of the evidence and that it had "immediately disclosed that information to the government."