Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

“Then you are the new owner of the hotel?” I asked.

“Yes.” She snapped the word out, as if my idle question had contained a challenge. “It has not been easy,” she went on, with the same air of defiance. “But I can do it. Already I have made many improvements.”

I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate her on the improvements. Still feeling my way, I said, “I hope you have good help.”

I was thinking of the hotel staff that had kept the place running so smoothly the year before, but Friedl interpreted the comment differently. With a betraying glance at a door that I assumed led to another room of her apartment, she murmured, “Freddy—Mr. Sommers—has been a great help to me. He is my—my cousin.”

“I’ve met Mr. Sommers.”

Belatedly remembering her manners, she offered me a chair, which I accepted, and coffee, which I declined. I had decided that my smartest move was to keep my mouth shut and let her make the first move. She didn’t waste any time. “Did you get a message from my husband?”

I put on an expression of innocent bewilderment and countered with a question of my own. “Why, did he write to me?”

That was her chance. If she had said yes, and gone on to explain, I might have leveled with her.

Her eyes fled from mine. “I—uh—no, I don’t think…I wondered…Why did you come, then?”

“I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Herr Hoffman was very kind to me last year, so I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

“I see.” She chewed on her lower lip and tried again. “He often spoke of you.”

“Did he?”

“Oh yes. Often. He admired you. Such a learned lady, so clever, so intelligent. You had talked together—of many things…”

“Yes, we did.”

She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What did you talk about?”

“Oh—lots of things. Art and antiques…” I paused invitingly, but the only response was a blank stare, so I went on, “Books, music—he was very fond of Brahms—cats…He had a beautiful little Siamese kitten. I hope it is flourishing?”

“Flourishing? Oh, the cat.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “I got rid of it. I hate the creatures. They are so sly. Besides, it was scratching my beautiful new furniture.”

“I see.”

“Did he speak of anything else?”

If I hadn’t taken such an intense dislike to the wretched woman, I might have felt sorry for her. She was trying to find out how much I knew without giving anything away, but she was going about it so clumsily that she had betrayed more than she realized.

I said, “I see you’ve redecorated this room.”

“Yes. Yes, I could not live with such dirty old things. This is much more cheerful, don’t you think?”

“Cheerful” was not the word I would have chosen. In fact, the room was depressing, for all its bright colors and gleaming chrome. She had ruthlessly swept away not just inanimate objects, but the memories, the traditions, the long years of affectionate living they embodied. The fact that she had done it without deliberate malice only made the desecration worse; it was a symbol of the triumph of mediocrity over beauty and grace.

Ordinarily, I would not have been guilty of the bad taste of trying to buy a dead man’s belongings from his widow of barely two weeks. In this case I didn’t hesitate.

“If you haven’t sold the furniture, I’d like to buy it.”

“Buy it? All of it?”

“I was thinking of the Schrank . Perhaps some of the other pieces.”

Again her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want them?”

“Tastes differ,” I explained patiently. “You like modern, I like antiques.”

“I have already sold them.”

Couldn’t wait to get them out of the house, I thought. Two weeks…

There was a sound from the next room—a muffled thud, as if someone had stumbled, or jarred a piece of furniture. Friedl started violently.

“Oh, do you have company?” I asked. “I’m sorry, you should have told me you were busy.”

“Oh, no. No, there is no one…It must have been the—the cat.”

The cat that wasn’t there. Quite suddenly I was overcome by a burning desire to escape from that sterile, horrible room and its occupant. I rose to my feet. “I mustn’t take up any more of your time. Perhaps you could tell me to whom you sold the Schrank . He might consider an offer.”

Now she seemed as anxious to be rid of me as I was to be gone. She gave me a name and directions, and let me show myself out. As I passed through the lobby, I noticed that Freddy wasn’t at the desk.

The address she had given me wasn’t far. No place in Bad Steinbach is far from any other place in Bad Steinbach. When I reached the fountain I stopped for a moment, to consider the new developments, and to get a grip on myself. The interview had left me shaken and off-balance.

Friedl and Freddy made a much more believable equation than Freddy and the late Frau Hoffman. I wondered whether Friedl had waited until after her husband’s death to begin the affair.

I told myself I mustn’t let my dislike of the woman prejudice my judgment, but it was no use; I felt about Friedl the way Friedl felt about cats. All prejudice aside, however, her behavior had been highly suspicious as well as highly inept. She knew Hoffman had intended to communicate with me. So why the devil didn’t she come right out and say so? What was she trying to hide?

An answer came readily to mind.

If Friedl’s intentions were honest and honorable, she should have welcomed the opportunity to confide in a responsible person—the very person her husband had planned to consult. If she knew about the treasure and intended to keep it for herself…I found that alternative much more plausible, and it explained some of the peculiarities in her speech and manner. She suspected Hoffman had written to me, but she wasn’t sure. Then it had not been Friedl who mailed the envelope. Had Hoffman himself staggered, dying, to a postbox and pushed the envelope stained with his own blood through the slot with his last burst of strength? That scenario was a little too much even for my Rosanna-trained imagination. But then, who had mailed it? Was the blood Hoffman’s? He had died suddenly, by violence….

Much as I abhorred dear little Friedl, I wasn’t ready to accuse her of mariticide. Not yet. It was no strain on my imagination to believe her capable of fraud, however. Yet even that assumption didn’t explain her insistent questions. She had had two weeks in which to dispose of the gold, or move it to another location. That’s what I would have done if I thought my husband had spilled the beans to an outsider. Then I’d sit tight and look innocent, and if some nosy female from a Munich museum came snooping around asking leading questions, I would tell her I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was raving about. Gold? What gold? What would a simple Bavarian innkeeper be doing with a museum treasure? Sorry, Fräulein Doktor, but I’m afraid too much learning has addled your brain.

I had to allow for the obvious fact that Friedl wasn’t the smartest woman in the world. I had not mentioned my name, to her or to Freddy, and she hadn’t even had the basic intelligence to pretend ignorance of my identity. I hadn’t said a single word that betrayed any knowledge of a secret or contradicted my statement that I was playing a simple social call; yet I had a feeling that Friedl was now as suspicious of my intentions as I was of hers, and for all the wrong reasons. My insistence on acquiring the Schrank had been a mistake, if an innocent one. I wanted it because it was beautiful; she thought of it only as a possible hiding place. Sometimes I think God must like stupid people, he gives them so many breaks.