Elizabeth Peters - Trojan Gold

“Snowmobile, I think.” I rose and shielded my eyes against the dazzle of the slopes. “We’re about to be rescued.”

“Vicky.” His fingers, hard and urgent, closed around my wrist. “I withheld no relevant information. I wasn’t trying—”

“Right.” I freed my hand. “Sure.”

The snowplows had been out. The main road was fairly clear and the Marktplatz was walled with ten-foot-high banks. People who live in areas of heavy snowfall don’t let it upset their schedules; church was letting out when we arrived, and the Platz was filled with red-cheeked, cheerful people exchanging greetings and trying to keep the children from flinging themselves and their Christmas finery into the drifts. Sledges and sleighs mingled with cars in the parking area; the horses’ collars were twined with greenery and bright red ribbon, and a team of magnificent white oxen attached to one painted sledge sported bells and bow-trimmed harness. The laughing voices, the snatches of carols, the bright sun and glittering snow made a perfect, picture-postcard Christmas morning.

We went straight to the police station.

At least the headquarters of the local constable was a quaint gabled house, not a grim barracks. There was a tiny Christmas tree on the sergeant’s desk. He was the only one on duty; the remainder of the five-man force was at mass or out with the Ski Patrol searching for lost tourists. He took us for two of the latter and started lecturing us. The storm had been forecast, people had been warned to stay off the slopes; staring pointedly at my battered companion, he suggested I take him to the hospital in Garmisch.

John looked as if this struck him as a splendid idea, but when I launched into my story, he did all he could to back me up. It was some story. I had to do some impromptu editing to make it sound even halfway plausible. I didn’t go into the business of the Trojan gold, figuring that would be too much for a bewildered local sergeant; time enough for complications when the Landpolizei were on the case. Instead, I concentrated on the mad killer theme. The sergeant readily took to that idea; when he exclaimed, “Ah! A crime of passion!” I knew we had sold him. Everybody understands crimes of passion. Of course, John couldn’t resist the chance to show off; baring his breast, he displayed his wound to the admiring gaze of the sergeant, who expressed himself as thoroughly convinced. We told him we would be at the hotel and left him in animated conversation with his superiors in Garmisch.

Tony was in Garmisch too. The sergeant said he had been taken there the day before, since the local lockup was already full of holiday revelers. I would have lingered to inquire about posting bail and such things, but John kept muttering insistently about food and drink, and I figured Tony could wait. I was sure we had not seen the last of Dieter. His tender little ego had taken another lump, and now he knew where the gold was hidden. I didn’t know what he would do, but I knew he would try something. The police would be looking for him, but between the blizzard and the holiday, they would be shorthanded.

I was itching to get back to the cemetery with some tools—including a gun with actual bullets in it, in case Dieter had the same idea. However, as John kept reiterating, that matter could wait until we had figured out a method of transport and replenished our strength. I had to agree with him; I felt as though I would topple over if someone blew hard at me.

The clerk had a handful of messages for me. As I might have expected, all of them were from Schmidt.

“Where is Herr Schmidt?” I asked. “In the restaurant?”

The woman flung both hands shoulder-high in a dramatic shrug. “I saw him earlier, but… Herr Gott, Fräulein , it is a madhouse here. Frau Hoffman dead, and no one knowing what will happen next…. The police asked for you, too.”

“That’s all right, I’ve talked to them,” I began.

John took me firmly by the arm. “If anyone else asks for the Fräulein Doktor, she will be in the restaurant.”

Schmidt wasn’t in the restaurant. The smell of coffee and fresh-baked rolls made me so weak in the knees, John had to lead me to a table. I tackled the food with a gusto worthy of Schmidt himself. As soon as I started to feel stronger, I started to worry again.

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“God knows,” John said placidly.

“What would you do?”

His eyes narrowed, acknowledging the covert insult, but he said only, “Go for the gold—to coin a phrase. It’ll take him a while. There is no hurry.”

“But you’re not him.”

“No, I’m not. I’m so flattered that you noticed the difference.”

“We did a lot of the work for him, softening the ground,” I mused. “Depends on how deeply it’s buried. Transportation will be a problem…. How the devil did he get there this morning? It’s all uphill from Bad Steinbach.”

“And all downhill from the top of the Hexenhut. I expect he took the lift up, and then sashayed down to us. The smoke signal was a grave error on our part, but he must have had some idea before-hand.”

“He overheard us talking about the daffodil bulb.”

John’s lips curled in an elegant sneer. He had visited the facilities, as my mother always calls them, and washed the soot and dried blood from his face; the sneer was one of his best.

“He wouldn’t have wits enough to reason that one out. It’s more likely that your initial visit to the cemetery aroused his suspicions; it wouldn’t occur to him that your motives were as pure and charitable as they really were.”

“Or he located someone who saw me leaving town last night. I almost ran over a policeman when I turned into the road leading to the cemetery; I’ll bet that’s the only place it leads to.” I glanced toward the door. “Where do you suppose Schmidt is? It isn’t like him to stay away from food for more than an hour at a stretch. Maybe he’s taking a nap.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

“It’s the best possible place for him,” John said, sipping coffee. “If I were you, I’d leave him there.”

“No, I need him to help me convince the police to dig up that grave. He’s got more clout than I have.”

“Oh, very well.” John reached in his pocket. “Er—I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere…”

“Back to your old form,” I said, scribbling my name and room number on the check.

I knocked on Schmidt’s door. The mumbled grunt was the reply I had expected. The door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and walked in.

Schmidt was napping, all right, hands folded on his stomach, mustache vibrating with the intensity of his snores. I didn’t see Dieter until I was well inside the room. He had been behind the door.

John put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders sag. “Stupid,” he said critically. “I should have anticipated this.”

“Neither of us is at our best this morning,” I agreed. “I wonder where he got the gun?”

“It isn’t his,” John said. “Unless he was carrying it on him the whole time. I searched his luggage—”

The barrel of the gun slashed across the side of his face and sent him reeling back against the closed door.

“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor schnell , or I will knock you down.”

John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don’t you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.

“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”

“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You’ve won. You are the winner, número uno , top dog, and top cheese of all time—”