A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  “Do you think we’re on the wrong track?” I queried, peering at him.

  “Nope,” Jeremy said. “This is exactly the sort of peculiar spot you’ve dragged me into before. And, against all odds, logic and probability, you invariably are correct. Let’s check it out.”

  When we reached the curving, narrow little cobbled street with all the hobby and antiques dealers, we quickly spotted the shop we’d seen before, with a sign that said, Gifts and Engraving, We Buy and Sell Old Coins. But as we drew closer, we discovered that the windows were completely empty now. Not only that, but the front door was locked, with the sign saying Closed hanging in the glass door, as if it would dangle there like that until the end of time.

  When I peered inside, I saw that the contents of the entire shop had, for all intents and purposes, vanished. No more counters, chairs or displays. No cash register, and certainly, no coins. Just a couple of folding chairs and crumpled newspapers remained, and a bare light bulb hanging overhead, with its long pull-chain trailing forlornly. Even the window-blinds had been removed from their slots, and lay, instead, in an abandoned heap in the dusty window display.

  “They’re really gone!” I said in shock.

  Jeremy consulted two nearby dealers, an antiquarian bookseller and a furniture man, who were standing outside their shops, commiserating. Both shook their heads, and said that early this morning, the engraver and his coin brother had simply packed up and vanished. No forwarding address or number, and they were in a great hurry. “They must have moved most of their stuff last night, because this morning they seemed to be finishing up their packing, and took off quickly,” said the furniture guy.

  “Easy come, easy go, I guess,” agreed the bookseller. “They didn’t want to chat about it, either. We figured it must be tax or loan problems.”

  Then, without another word, the men turned and went back into their shops, suddenly busily rearranging their wares. It was a clear signal that they didn’t care to jawbone any longer, so we left.

  When we returned to our offices, Jeremy muttered, “Think I’ll give Danny a call, to see if he can find out anything in his police files.”

  Later that afternoon Jeremy reported back to me. “Danny ran a check on his computer,” he said. “Those coin blokes appear to be ‘legit’, as far as he can tell, with no police record, and nothing out of place in their drivers’ licenses and normal business records.”

  He showed me his notes from the conversation. I kept staring thoughtfully at the men’s surname. I said, “Why does that name sound vaguely familiar?”

  I went to my computer and did a few searches. Then finally I found the significant match. I hurried over to the file cabinet Honorine kept for us, and pulled out the folder she’d made on Drake.

  “Bingo! Jeremy, look at this,” I cried. “Those coin guys have the same last name as Tina Drake’s maiden name. Before she married Parker, see? There isn’t any more info than that, but still . . . it can’t be just a coincidence, can it?”

  “I doubt it,” Jeremy said thoughtfully. “We ought to talk to someone who’s knowledgeable about old coins. Do you know anyone from your research work?”

  “Not really,” I said, “but it shouldn’t be so hard to find.”

  By the next day, I’d located a man I thought would be helpful, and arranged a meeting with him. “He’s a curator at a museum not far from here,” I told Jeremy. “He specializes in French and European coins, and he’s supposed to have a big collection. He said he thought he’d heard something about a coin with those initials on it, and he’s going to see what he can find for us.”

  “Fine, let’s go!” Jeremy said.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The coin museum was in a section of London known simply as the City. It’s where today’s big banking and brokering gets done, but it’s also where London pretty much began, with charmingly old-fashioned storybook names like Threadneedle Street and Cloak Lane and St. Swithin’s. Some still call this area the “heart” of the city, although its very heartless, mechanized frenzy is supposedly what inspired the poet T.S. Eliot’s grim appraisal of the modern world as a wasteland. Which gives you an idea of what transpires in all the mysterious trading offices around here.

  The museum was not far from the Bank of England, and actually occupied an old defunct bank. It had beautiful high ceilings and skylights that let in good, natural light with which to view the vast array of coins sheltered in glass display cases, arranged upon original mahogany counters and oak tables, where, once upon a Dickensian time, clerks like Bob Cratchit counted out coins and bills while totting up the bosses’ ledgers.

  When we entered, our voices and footsteps echoed in the vast open space. The curator was patiently waiting for us at a desk behind the high, antique counters of bankers’ windows. So, when he raised his head, I was startled into thinking that we’d stumbled upon some poor ancient ghost of a Victorian-era bank clerk that was stuck here waiting for depositors from past centuries to return. But it was only Mr. Marsh, a very slight, balding man, wearing black pants and vest, and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  He now stepped out into the lobby, and turned on a few lights in the display cases that filled the room. As he peered into them, his round face became illuminated with an unearthly glow, making him look like the man in the moon.

  “What an excellent collection!” I commented, gazing at the array of coins from ancient times to present day, exhibiting how mankind had found so many ways to barter, down through the ages. Some coins were no more than funny little slivers of metal, almost as thin as a sheet of paper; others had holes punched in the middle; a few even looked like square donuts. Many were so irregularly produced that they resembled little cookies with a bit nibbled off the edge, as if they’d been bitten by merchants trying to assess their true value. Some of their designs were simple and slightly crooked, like a child’s drawing.

  “Yes, we have some fine pieces,” Mr. Marsh said, proud of his work. “This concave, dish-shaped coin is from the reign of Constantine.”

  He moved to another case. “I expect you’re mainly concerned with the French ones. These, for instance, with warriors’ shields on them, were made when France was known as Gaul to its Roman counterparts. The ones with the vine leaves are Celtic; and the big, thick fellows with crosses are medieval. Now, this silver coin, from the late 1800s, is a ‘Marianne’—the image of Liberty for France—but it’s not just her head, see? Here she is a complete figure, sowing seeds.”

  I peered at the accompanying display label for each item. There were so many words for making coins: they were minted, struck, cast, engraved. There were coins made of gold, silver, bronze, nickel . . .

  The curator could not resist asking, “Is Penny Nichols actually your real name?”

  “Trust me,” I assured him, “I would never have made it up.”

  He smiled, and said, “French coins are a collector’s delight, as they are quite artistic and complex in design. In medieval times the French towns and districts struck many coins of their own, until the Bourbon kings centralized French money. Here are coins from 1643, when the Sun King came to the throne as a child.” He showed us a fairly sizeable coin, with the image of the new boy-king’s head.

  “But I don’t see the one with the ‘J.L.’ insignia,” Jeremy noted, peering intently into the case.

  “Right,” said the curator. “As far as I know, nobody has a single one. May I see your sketch?”

  I showed it to him. He examined it closely, then murmured, “Yes, yes. That is indeed what was supposed to have been engraved on the Lunaire gold. But, you only have the ‘obverse’ side. You do not have the image that we think appears on the reverse side.”

  “If nobody has one, then how do we know what it looks like?” Jeremy asked.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Mr. Marsh replied. He returned to his desk and picked up an accordion folder, which he brought to us. He spread its contents atop one of the glass counters. “I�
��ve heard of the Lunaire, but it doesn’t much come up in conversation anymore.”

  He pointed to some tissue-paper tracings he’d copied from drawings in his coin books, to show me the best rendering he could find of the Lunaire. “Keep in mind that these may only be fanciful drawings. We’re pretty sure about the ‘J.L.’ crest with la lune on the obverse, because the moon image appears on everything Lunaire owned. However, according to some accounts, the reverse side”—he pointed to a sun with a kingly face whose rays seemed like spikes of fire—“has this image of le soleil, representing the Sun King.” I stared at the tracings, then copied them into my own notebook.

  “Just who was this Lunaire guy?” Jeremy asked.

  “He worked for King Louis XIV’s treasury,” said the curator, “and he managed to amass a great fortune for himself, thus becoming a great patron of the artisans he hired to turn his hunting lodge into a marvellous showplace. He had good taste, they say; he hired only the best architects, builders, landscape gardeners, et cetera, to build and decorate his country estate with impressive sculpture, fountains, gates and topiary; and the interior had exquisite marble baths, painted ceiling frescoes, and tapestries.”

  I nudged Jeremy at that last word. “But the guy wasn’t a king, right?” Jeremy asked. “So how come there was a coin made with his insignia on it?”

  “Because, I’m afraid that like Icarus, this man Lunaire flew too high, and one fateful day, at last, he went too far,” Mr. Marsh answered.

  “What did he do?” I asked, wide-eyed.

  “It seems he threw himself a wild birthday party, inviting hundreds of guests to a feast prepared by his excellent personal chef. Among the many amusements, spectacles and games, Lunaire had a goldsmith make these tokens for his card-playing guests.”

  “He made his own currency?” Jeremy asked.

  “They weren’t actually coins. They were fancy gambling chips,” Mr. Marsh corrected. “Their sole purpose was for that one night, when, supposedly, some fantastic games of cards were played. Gambling was quite the rage then, and you’d be surprised at how high those stakes could get. The last hand played at Lunaire’s birthday party was legendary. Various reports of the time say the pot of gold was heaped very high indeed.”

  “How many of these chips were in it?” Jeremy asked.

  “Nobody can really say, because, just before the final cards were dealt, a mechanical fireworks display went awry, and burned practically everything to the ground.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard about such disasters!” I cried. “Kings in that era used to have very elaborate fireworks and complicated mechanical devices for staging dramatic entertainments for their guests. But sometimes if one malfunctioned, the poor worker who was operating the machine died.”

  “Well, this was a bad deal all round. The fireworks sparks landed where they shouldn’t, and all the tents caught fire, causing a great panic. As the guests scrambled away for safety, and Lunaire’s servants rushed to put out the fire, in all the fuss, the pot of gold vanished.”

  We all fell momentarily silent, imagining the scene. I could almost see the powdered wigs and elaborate costumes of the wealthy guests, with their fancy shoes and their great big hats; and all their jeweled snuffboxes, gilded perfume vials and lace handkerchiefs that they carried to keep the whiff of poverty and sickness at bay. I imagined lots of food, drink and hoopla. Not unlike Parker Drake’s party, actually. In my vision of Lunaire’s birthday jamboree, I saw the tents on fire, and all those revelers running wildly about in panic.

  Mr. Marsh continued, “Later, when the king heard of Lunaire’s birthday party and his audacious display of wealth—apparently, the king was shown one of the chips—he was jealous and displeased, to say the least. ‘How dare anyone attempt to ascend higher than the king!’ So, in short order, a conspiracy charge was trumped up, with envious men bearing false witness against him, and the unfortunate Lunaire was dragged off and thrown into prison. But they say it was really just an excuse to confiscate his property—and his gold.”

  “Did the king take the whole pot of Lunaire gold?” I asked.

  “No. Apparently he found only some of the coins, even though he’d ordered his men to seize it all, to be melted down and deposited into the royal treasury. They never found the rest of it. The very day that Lunaire was arrested, the grounds of his grand estate were torn apart as the soldiers searched, in vain. Of course, it’s possible that the whole thing was exaggerated, just to secure a conviction against a man with obviously high political ambitions. All we know for sure is that the man was arrested, tried and condemned to prison, where he died.”

  “Wow,” I remarked. “What a story.”

  “Therefore, we can’t be sure if any of the coins survived to the present day,” Mr. Marsh concluded. “Still, among collectors, there are persistent rumors. People would forget about it and then, they say, one or two pieces of the Lunaire gold were supposedly sighted at coin swaps, down through the centuries, by credible people. Never for sale, just to show off, you understand. It has, however, been a long, long time since anyone has claimed to have seen one.”

  We’d been listening, spellbound. But now the curator closed his file. “That is all we know,” he said. “I wish I could tell you more.”

  “Well,” said Jeremy as we drove home, “it’s obvious that, among coin fanatics, it would be a major coup to find some of that Lunaire gold.”

  “And I inadvertently woke up at least one lunatic,” I said ruefully, “with my brilliant little design ideas. Those coin guys probably knew that Drake was numismatic.”

  “I beg your pardon? Is that anything like asthmatic?” Jeremy inquired.

  “Hoo, hoo,” I said. “You know perfectly well it means he fancies coins.”

  “A numismatic fanatic,” Jeremy couldn’t resist adding.

  “Anyway, suppose the coin guys told Drake they had a hot tip?” I said. “It’s not such a stretch, particularly if he’s a top client, and if they are somehow connected to his wife.”

  “And if Drake heard that somebody like Nichols & Laidley were on the trail of these things,” Jeremy agreed, “he’d definitely try to beat us to it. From what I’ve seen of him, he has to win at everything he does, and win big. Whether it’s a sailing race or a business deal, or who’s got the prettier wife—a guy like him will do whatever it takes to cross the finish line first.”

  My telephone rang. It was Honorine, calling from France. She was very excited.

  “I found some things for you!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Can you come to Mougins right away?”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  When we arrived in Mougins at the family château, we discovered that Honorine had enlisted the aid of her much-maligned suitor, Charles, the young French lawyer. Flattered to finally have Honorine’s attention, he’d obligingly trawled the dusty vaults of France’s arcane legal records for the trial of Jean Lunaire, patron of Armand the tapestry-maker. Honorine excitedly announced that they could shed more light on what happened to both men.

  She ushered us into Philippe’s library, a wonderful dark-panelled room, spacious and inviting, with numerous places to sit and read in any of its black leather- and-walnut chairs. The walls were lined with framed old maps of France as it had evolved over the centuries, and shelves full of books encased behind glass doors. The south wall of the library had tall windows instead of bookshelves, and looked out onto a small garden, with neat, precise square flowerbeds. The entire garden was enclosed by high stone walls with climbing roses and ivy, contributing to the cloistered, “secret garden” atmosphere.

  In the center of the library was a big mahogany table with green-shaded lamps, where Charles had spread out all his notes. He shook hands with Jeremy, and shyly ducked his dark curly head as he gestured for us to be seated at the table. But when he began relaying the information, his voice took on a more authoritative, confident tone, which was a bit touching, as if he’d learned this tone from his schoolmasters.

  “T
his Lunaire was quite a character,” he explained. “For one thing, he didn’t pay all his bills on time, and for that reason there were legal documents that may be useful. Trial and guild records show that he had many bills overdue . . . including those from his tapestry-maker, Armand.”

  Charles pulled out several handwritten pages he’d photocopied, mostly covered with numbers, and some French words in columns. “Apparently Armand made a great many tapestries for Lunaire, so Lunaire owed Armand a lot of money.” He paused to emphasize the significance of this. “But all that debt didn’t stop Lunaire from living high,” Charles said, rather disapprovingly of such a patron. “There was a fantastic party . . .”

  He shuffled through his notes, and, in effect, confirmed what the coin curator had told us about Lunaire’s big birthday extravaganza that had sealed his fate. I examined the copies of old invoices, and although I couldn’t make out the arcane French, I could imagine the gist of it as something along the lines of, This bill is past due. Please make payment immediately!

  Charles continued his report, speaking in a careful, slightly punctilious way. “At Lunaire’s trial, it would appear that people were tortured into incriminating him as conspiring to poison the king,” he said. “Torture and poisoning, I regret to say, were not uncommon in those days. Lunaire denied the charges. But,” he added, turning a page in his folder, with a frown of concentration, “all the same, he was sentenced to life in solitary confinement in prison, where he died.”

  Charles’ tone was brisk and neutral, as he set aside one file and opened another. I glanced at Jeremy, who had been appreciatively observing Charles’ earnest desire to appear professional.

  “Go ahead,” Jeremy said gently to him. “This is very good.”

  Both Charles and Honorine beamed with pride. “As to Honorine’s ancestor, Armand, he was implicated in this plot against the king by a rival tapestry-maker, who accused Armand of procuring the poison for Lunaire during his frequent trips to Grasse,” Charles reported.