My wreath was the only memorial on the mounded earth above his grave. It looked cold and lonely; only the dainty footprints of the cat crisscrossed the white covering. The funeral flowers had been tidied away after they withered—probably by poor old Herr Müller. She wouldn’t have bothered. Thank heaven for the kindliness of snow; it covered raw earth and weedy neglect with a benign white mantle.
Frau Hoffman’s grave was equally stark at this season, but there were pathetic evidences of someone’s tending. The stem of a small climbing rose twined around the dark granite. The rose was brown and leafless now, but during the past summer the green leaves and small fragrant blossoms would have softened the starkness of the stone. Dried brown flower heads protruded from the snow—not weeds, as I had thought, but chrysanthemums and asters—autumn flowers.
The cat ambled up to see what was taking me so long. A gust of icy wind rattled the dead stalks. She sat up on her haunches and swiped at a swaying flowerhead. I moved instinctively to stop her, but she scampered away from my hand, and I stood back, smiling wryly. Hoffman wouldn’t mind. Life goes on. Better a warm living creature, rolling and playing, than silence and icy winds.
Clara had gone into a feline frenzy, rotating in a vain attempt to catch her tail, brushing the snow aside in a wide patch that bared the withered flowers and frozen earth. A white protrusion caught my eye and I bent to examine it.
It was a bulb—probably a daffodil, to judge from its size. Freezing, the ground had heaved and thrust the bulb out and upward. One less flower to brighten the springtime and testify to the hope of resurrection; it would never survive the winter’s cold, exposed and vulnerable as it was. I knelt, thinking I would replant it, but the ground was frozen hard as stone.
Bad Steinbach looked like a teeming metropolis after the loneliness of the cemetery. I was glad to be back in civilization unscathed. My shoulders ached; I realized I had been driving with my head pulled in like a turtle’s, in anticipation of attack. Thank you, Herr Professor Schmidt.
The town was livelier than usual, and as I watched people bustling around, setting up scaffolding and booths and arranging benches under the arcade, I remembered there was some sort of festival that night. Weihnacht, fröhliche Weihnacht…Mine wasn’t looking very fröhlich at the moment, what with a frozen body in my garden at home and a number of live bodies harassing me in Bad Steinbach.
I opened the car door. The cat jumped out and went swaggering off, without so much as a thank-you for the ride or a backward glance. I wondered whether she would find John at home.
When I asked for my key, the clerk gave me a handful of messages. The first was from Tony. “Dieter and Elise came by, have gone skiing, we’ll be at the Kreuzeck, why don’t you join us?” I crumpled it and went to the next, which read, “Astonishing news! Have made great discovery! Come instantly to my room!”
The other slips of paper were telephone messages, all of them from Schmidt, all of them demanding I present myself instantly. “What the devil—” I said involuntarily.
“The Herr returned an hour ago and left the message,” the clerk said wearily. “He has telephoned your room every ten minutes since. If you would be so kind, gnädiges Fräulein—”
I promised I would put a stop to Schmidt, and headed for the stairs. Schmidt and his astonishing discoveries; he had probably spotted all the members of the Politbüro lurking around Bad Steinbach.
Since he didn’t have a room in the hotel, I assumed he meant Tony’s, so I went there. A hearty “Herein, bitte,” answered my knock. I opened the door.
Schmidt was eating, of course. Brotzeit. The table was covered with beer bottles and plates, and across from Schmidt was Jan Perlmutter.
Schmidt greeted me with a shriek of pleasure. “It is you at last; I thought it was the room service. Look, Vicky—see—I have captured him!”
Jan rose to his feet and made me a stiff, formal little bow. “Guten Tag, Fräulein Doktor. I must protest the Herr Direktor’s statement. It is not accurate. To say that he captured me is a falsification of the facts.”
I studied him thoughtfully. “I liked you better as a blond, Jan.”
“That is easily remedied,” Jan said, straightfaced. “I am wearing a wig.” He pulled it off.
“And a rotten wig it is. Is that the best a socialist Soviet republic can do?”
Jan looked blank. Dieter was right; the man had absolutely no sense of humor. But the tight golden curls clung damply to his beautiful skull and he looked good enough to eat. I smiled at him. “Sit down, Jan.”
Jan sat. “He did not capture me. When I recognized the distinguished director of the National Museum…”
“I overpowered him,” Schmidt explained, brandishing his beer stein. “With a chop to the throat and a partial nelson to the leg. I then applied a hammer-bolt and forced him to return here with me.”
I said, “Shut up, Schmidt. All right, Jan, I gather you were about to make a statement. Proceed.”
“I will begin at the beginning,” Jan said.
Well, he tried. The man had a logical mind; it wasn’t his fault that Schmidt kept interrupting.
He began by taking a piece of cardboard from his breast pocket and handing it to me. “Yes,” I said. “It’s Frau Schliemann…. My God. It is Frau Schliemann!”
“Who?” Schmidt leaned forward and peered over my shoulder. “Herr Gott! This is not the same—”
“Schmidt, will you please refrain from unnecessary comments? Go on, Jan. Where did you get this?”
It had come to him in the mail. Unlike my photograph of the lady who was not Frau Schliemann, this offering had something written on the back. “What happened to the Trojan gold? Inquire of A. Hoffman, former assistant curator of the Staatliches Museum, Berlin 1939, now owner-manager of the Gasthaus Hexenhut, Bad Steinbach.”
“Now you understand why I am here,” said Jan solemnly.
“I’m damned if I do.”
“But—did you not receive a similar communication?”
Schmidt’s mouth opened. I put a doughnut in it. “Even if I had,” I said truthfully, “I wouldn’t have assumed it was an oracle from on high.”
“You don’t understand,” said Jan.
“I told you I didn’t.”
What I failed to understand was that East German scholars, particularly those of the Berlin museums, had developed a mild neurosis about the Trojan gold. They knew the Russians didn’t have it, which put them one up on the rest of us and also added to the mystery. Jan’s boss, the director of the Bode Museum, was particularly sensitive about the subject; the very mention of Troy, Schliemann, or Helen initiated a fit of twitching and mumbling. So as soon as the photograph arrived, Jan carried it dutifully to his superior.
Schmidt couldn’t let that pass. “Ha, I knew he would not have the initiative to come here on his own. They cannot go to the toilet without permission. However, Vicky, there is something admirable about the loyalty of a subordinate to—”
“Never mind, Schmidt,” I said. “Are you telling me your boss fell for this yarn, Jan?”
Not only did he fall for it; the old boy practically had a stroke. He had been on the staff of the museum and had known Hoffman well. After the war he hadn’t bothered to look him up, since the relationship had been purely professional; if he thought about the matter at all, he assumed Hoffman had been killed. When Jan assured him that Hoffman had been rusticating in Bavaria for over forty years, he thought the circumstances curious enough to merit investigation. And, as Jan modestly remarked, who was better qualified than he to investigate? The letter had been addressed to him, he knew Hoffman personally—and he also knew the five other scholars who had stayed at the Gasthaus Hexenhut.
Not that Jan actually made that last statement. He didn’t have to; I knew as well as if I had been sitting in on the discussion that this factor had been raised and debated. Jan was no dumbbell; he must have suspected he might not be the only one to receive a message.
He was rattling merr
ily along, his crisp curls coiling tighter as they dried, and he looked so beautiful I hated to scuttle his story. But I forced myself.
“Just an innocent little inquiry,” I said. “All open and aboveboard.”
“Aber natürlich. I have done nothing against the law—”
“Then why the wig? Why were you trailing me in Munich? Oh yes, you were, Jan; I saw you. What were you up to, that you didn’t want to be recognized?”
I would like to say that Jan’s reaction typified the police-state mentality, but I’m afraid it is typical of people in general: When somebody catches you pulling a dirty trick, blame them.
“You were conspiring against me,” Jan said sulkily.
“Me and who else? Him?” I indicated Schmidt.
Jan shook his head. “No. Of course, your superior would be in your confidence. I did not blame you for that.”
“Ha,” said Schmidt, giving me a meaningful look.
“But when I saw Dieter enter the museum, and then Tony came, all the way from America, I knew all of you were together, against me. The Western capitalist oppressors—”
“That is a flat-out lie,” I said indignantly.
“Yes? But they are here now, and also Elise and the Herr Direktor. For what have you come if it is not to steal the treasure from me?”
Schmidt emitted one of his fat, rich chuckles. “It has a suspicious look, Vicky. Admit it.”
“Well…I suppose if someone has a strong streak of paranoia to begin with…”
Schmidt’s open amusement went farther than my righteous indignation to convince Jan. He looked uncertainly from Schmidt to me.
“Are you telling me it is only a coincidence that you have met here? That you are not—”
“Conspiring? Hell, no, we aren’t even cooperating! Nobody has the faintest idea of what anybody else is doing. I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
Jan studied me solemnly. Then his lips parted and stretched into one of his rare smiles. The effect was dazzling. “I am inclined to believe you.”
“How very condescending.”
“But, Vicky, you are the one I would have expected to be best informed. You knew the old man best; it was to you he talked, sent flowers—”
“You make it sound like some sort of November-June romance,” I snapped. “We did talk. But he never mentioned the gold, Jan. Believe it or not.”
“I do believe it. Because if he had told you then, you would not be here now.” Jan leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together pyramid-style, like Holmes getting ready to enlighten poor thick-headed Watson. His smile continued to dazzle, but his eyes were as hard and opaque as brown pebbles. “I will tell you what else I believe,” he went on. “I believe you were all summoned here, as I was summoned. That Hoffman intended to divulge to us the secret he had guarded for so many years. We are in a sense an international committee, representing some of the world’s great museums, and he knew us personally. But Hoffman’s death frustrated his intention. So now we are assembled, as he wished us to be, and the treasure is still missing. You don’t know where it is either. I have observed you, all of you. Your actions have been as aimless and undirected as my own.”
“Humph,” Schmidt grunted. “He is no fool, this one.”
I was forced to agree. Jan’s theory was one that had not occurred to me—nor to the great John Smythe. It left a few minor odds and ends unaccounted for—like the frozen corpse in the back yard—but it had merit.
However, I was not moved to take Jan into my confidence and clasp him to my bosom (tempting as that idea might be). For once I didn’t have to warn Schmidt to avoid the same error. His little blue eyes narrowed to slits, and he rumbled, “Yes, he is no fool. Watch out, Vicky. Next he will suggest we puddle our information—”
“Pool,” I said. “Not puddle, Schmidt. Pool.”
“But is not that the most logical thing to do?” Jan asked guilelessly. “Working together we may achieve what none of us can do alone. We are scholars, not criminals; our aim should be to restore a treasure that belongs, not to any individual, but to the world.”
Schmidt’s reaction to this beautiful sentiment was openmouthed indignation. I looked around for something to put in his mouth before he could put his foot in it. However, he had eaten everything. So I kicked him in the ankle, and he began swearing in fluent Mittelhochdeutsch.
“I have no quarrel with your reasoning, Jan,” I said. “But I’m afraid the cause is as hopeless as it is noble. As you have seen for yourself, I have no idea where to look. There are thousands of square miles of mountain scenery out here.”
“So what do you suggest?” Jan asked.
“Me?” I opened my big blue eyes wide and looked innocent. “I’m baffled, Jan. So, as long as I’m here, I figure I might as well stay for a few days and enjoy some skiing and some Christmas cheer. The others will be going on to Turin on the twenty-seventh. I will return to my job—which I have rather neglected lately—and forget the whole thing.”
“I see,” Jan said slowly.
“You’re welcome to join the crowd,” I went on. “There’s some sort of local festival here this evening; I think Elise and Dieter are planning to have dinner with us and watch the show.”
“Perhaps I will do that.”
“Good. But—this is only a suggestion, of course—I don’t think you ought to discuss this with the others. They are even more baffled than I am.”
He agreed to meet us at the hotel at six. We parted with many expressions of good will.
After I had ushered him out, I turned to Schmidt, who was methodically finishing his catalogue of Middle-High-German obscenities. One advantage of an advanced education is that it provides you with such an extensive list of languages to swear in.
“Now what’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “That little nudge didn’t hurt.”
“I am angry with you,” Schmidt explained. “Vicky, you are a fool; don’t you know that when a Communist invites you to share a meal with him, he is planning to eat your food and his own?”
“That evil suspicion did occur to me, Schmidt.”
“He will give nothing away. He only wishes to pick your brain.”
“There’s nothing in my brain to pick.”
“Humph,” said Schmidt.
“It should be amusing,” I said dreamily. “He’ll be looking for hidden meanings in everything we say. Finding them, too, I expect.”
“Your idea of amusement is very strange,” Schmidt grumbled. “Why are you sitting here? Why don’t you follow him?”
“Why should I?”
“Because he…because you…” Schmidt bounced up. “If you don’t, I will.”
“Have fun.”
“Humph,” said Schmidt. Snatching his cap, he trotted to the door.
He opened it; then he stood back. Clara sauntered in, her tail swinging. “Guten Tag,” Schmidt said absently, and proceeded on his way.
“He wasn’t home?” I asked.
The cat didn’t reply. Jumping onto the bed, she clawed one of Tony’s shirts into a nest, lay down on it, and went to sleep.
The beds had been made, but Schmidt and Tony had managed to create considerable havoc. Cast-off clothing littered the bed and the floor, the crumbs of Schmidt’s snack were scattered far and wide, and poor Hoffman’s private papers were all over the place. The majority of them had been returned to the cartons, not too neatly; I had the impression that they had been tossed there in frustrated disgust. Others littered the chairs and the beds.
I glanced through one of the untidy piles. It consisted of a dunning letter to a guest whose check had bounced, a receipt from an antique shop in Garmisch, and bills from several record shops. Poor Tony. No wonder he had given up in despair and gone skiing.
What to do, what to do? The long empty afternoon was mine to do with as I wished, but none of the options attracted me. Skiing with Tony and the others, in the gray, flat light that skiers particularly hate—with Elise glowering at
me and Dieter arranging pratfalls for me and Tony sulking because he spent more time on his backside than on his skis…Pounding on the door of the house where John squatted like a toad in its hole? He probably wouldn’t let me in, which would hurt my ego, or else he would let me in, and I would end up doing something I would regret.
To my disgust I realized that while my mind was wandering, my hands had been busy, tidying up the room. That’s what early childhood conditioning does. I noticed with sour amusement that the sweater I had just rescued from the floor was the one Ann had made with her own fair hands. She’d have a fit if she saw how cavalierly Tony treated her love-offering; it smelled faintly of the beer I had spilled the previous day. I wondered if Ann sewed cute little tags onto her creations—a picture of crossed knitting needles and a motto, “From the needles of…”
There was a tag at the back of the neck, all right. The sweater had been handmade. In Taiwan.
I stood quite still, clutching the sweater and trying to talk myself out of my evil-minded suspicions. There were a dozen different explanations for the discrepancy, the most obvious being that this was not the same sweater. My good angel, my better self, asked piously, “What difference does it make?” My other self—the one with the higher IQ—knew it did make a difference. And it knew how to ascertain the truth.
I dropped the sweater onto the floor and kicked it for good measure.
At first I thought it would be safer to make the call from a public phone, but after some reflection, I realized that it wouldn’t matter if the conversation was overheard because it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone except me—and Tony. So I went to my own room and put through a call to Munich. Some people might have taken advantage of the boss’s absence to indulge in a long lunch hour, but not Gerda. She was there. However, she was not noble enough to refrain from pointing out at some length that while she was at her desk, working her little heart out, certain other people were gadding around enjoying themselves.
Trojan Gold vbm-4 Page 19
