Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

I couldn’t trust Schmidt either. He would double-cross me without a moment’s hesitation if he could talk himself into believing he was doing it for my own good. Just as I would do it to him.

I couldn’t trust anybody. And after all the efforts I had made to keep Tony safe and unwitting…

The narrative took the wind out of his sails in another way. Jan’s theory anticipated the one Tony had cleverly formulated after talking with Dieter. “He and Elise both got copies of that photograph,” Tony informed me.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I expected a little more enthusiasm. Even, perhaps, a touch of admiration. Something like ‘Oh, Tony, how clever,’ or ‘Tony, you never cease to amaze me—’”

“You never do,” I said grimly. “So you spilled your guts to Dieter and Elise?”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” I echoed. “Why not indeed? Why ever not?”

“You are sick,” Tony said.

I pushed his hand away. “I’m not sick. Keep your clammy hands off of me. So. Dieter and Elise are on the trail, too. Separately or in collusion?”

Tony scratched his head. “They seem to be colluding now. It was Dieter’s expedition to begin with. Elise paid no attention to the photograph—thought, as I did, that it was a typical crank communication.”

“There was no message on hers?”

“I guess not. There certainly wasn’t on mine. Dieter…” Tony pondered. “He didn’t say exactly, but there must have been something. He called Elise and got her interested; talked her into joining him here.”

“The sly little rascal,” I said. “He certainly didn’t invite me to collude with him.”

“You don’t collude well,” Tony said with a grin. “Dieter likes to be Chief; Elise makes a better Indian than you.” Then he added generously, “That’s a good point; I should have asked Dieter how he knew it was Hoffman who sent the photograph.”

“The same way Jan did, I expect.”

“That’s odd, though,” Tony said. “Why would Hoffman give Perlmutter and Dieter leads he didn’t give the rest of us?”

“I don’t know.”

I had another question, but I wasn’t about to ask Tony—not since I had learned that Ann was a figment of his imagination. Perlmutter’s photograph had been of Frau Schliemann, not Frau Hoffman. Maybe jerky Helene had been right about Tony’s photo after all. What about Dieter and Elise—Frau Hoffman or Frau Schliemann? I would try to find out, though God knows why; I couldn’t think what it might mean, if anything.

“A committee.” Tony was communing with himself. “That makes sense, you know.”

“Maybe it makes sense to you. Go drip on your own floor, Tony. I want to change.”

“It is my floor,” Tony said indignantly. With the air of a squatter establishing property rights, he dropped his soggy jacket onto said floor.

“Oh. So it is. I forgot I was in your room.”

Tony unzipped his ski pants and tried to step out of them. Since he had neglected to remove his heavy, wet boots, the pants only wadded up around his calves. “You needn’t be coy with me, Vicky,” he said tenderly, struggling with the pants. “When I realized you were here waiting for me—Hey, don’t go. I want—”

Though he was effectively pinned to the spot by the wet cloth around his feet, he has very long arms; one of them reached me as I was sidling toward the door and spun me neatly back into a fond embrace. It would have been as pretty as an old Astaire-and-Rogers routine had it not been for the fact I wasn’t feeling as friendly as Ginger, and the additional fact that Tony’s feet were immobilized. We toppled over onto the bed in a flurry of arms and bodies and breathless dialogue, profane on my part, conciliatory on Tony’s, just as Schmidt walked in.

Instead of tactfully retiring, or bursting into laughter, either of which would have been appropriate, Schmidt rubbed his hands together and beamed from ear to ear. “Ah, it is nice to see you so friendly together. Don’t mind Papa Schmidt, just go on with what you were doing.”

This cooled Tony’s ardor as effectively as the elbow I had placed under his chin. He stopped thrashing around and I assumed my feet.

“If we had been doing what you thought we were doing, which we weren’t, we certainly wouldn’t go on doing it with you refereeing from the sidelines.”

“Then what were you doing?” Schmidt asked curiously.

Tony lay motionless, his arms over his face, like a dead knight on the battlefield. I’m not as hardhearted as I’d like to be. The total humiliation of the man moved me; I knelt at his feet and began working him out of his boots. It was a complicated procedure, since everything was soaking wet and his terpsichorean efforts had twisted his pants into overlapping coils.

“We were discussing the case,” I said. “I told him about Perlmutter…. Where did he go, Schmidt?”

“I lost him,” Schmidt admitted. “I made a mistake, you see. I should have adopted a disguise. He had seen me in this suit—”

“Yes, that’s all right,” I said abstractedly.

Schmidt bent over Tony, lifted one arm, and peered down into his face. “Did you learn anything from Hoffman’s papers, mein Freund ?”

“No,” Tony muttered. Schmidt let go of his arm, which dropped with force enough to make Tony grunt. “There’s nothing there,” I said.

Tony sat up. “So that’s why you were here. Can’t you trust me to do a job right?”

“No,” I said coldly. “Damn it, there goes a fingernail. Take your own damned clothes off.”

“Such language does not become a lady,” Schmidt remarked.

“I don’t give a—”

“Nothing?” Schmidt picked up handful of papers and began looking through them. “Nothing at all? No maps, no keys for storage lockers, no code messages?” Neither Tony nor I felt it necessary to dignify this question with a reply. Schmidt went on, “But what is this? Ach, Gott , it is a love letter! ‘To my adored, my own Helen…’ Ha, but that is significant! There is no Helen in the case. Had this dignified old gentleman a mistress, then? She may know—”

I took the paper from Schmidt’s hand. “It’s to his wife,” I said. “There were only a few letters; I guess they weren’t often parted. But she kept them tied up with a blue ribbon.”

“Oh.” Schmidt’s eyes filled. “How touching. Her name was Helen?”

“No, it was Amelie. Helen was his pet name for her. He quotes Goethe and Marlowe—‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships…’ Oh, stop blubbering, Schmidt, or you’ll get me started. You’re a sentimental old—a sentimental fool.”

It wasn’t Schmidt’s easy tears that roughened my voice; it was the memory of the woman’s face in the photograph. There had been beauty in that lined face once, at least to the eyes of the man who loved her.

I gathered up the rest of the letters. “I’m going to burn these,” I said. “Friedl should have had the decency to do it, instead of handing them over to strangers.”

Schmidt approved. Tony did not express any opinion. He was still struggling with his boots when I left them.

I hadn’t brought a dress, since I had not expected to attend any formal social functions. I rather wished I had when I saw Elise dolled up in mink and four-inch heels, but the weakness was fleeting; competition on that level is something I avoid, all the more readily because I don’t own a mink coat. It did occur to me to wonder how Elise could afford one.

Dieter was sporting a Groucho Marx nose with attached mustache—a modest effort, for Dieter. When someone (me) objected, he said it was Weihnacht , and there would be other masked and costumed revelers in the crowd that evening. I doubted it; but Schmidt’s face assumed a wistful expression. He asked Dieter where he had procured the nose, and they entered into an animated discussion of costume and magic shops that sold ghastly props for practical jokers.