Elizabeth Peters - Night Train to Memphis

He waved a brightly coloured brochure at me. I shied back. ‘That’s just the point, Herr Burckhardt. Karl, will you please tell your friend that I am not an empty-headed blond bimbo, even if I do look like one.’

Lately I’d been trying very hard not to look like one, swathing my too well endowed torso in loose jackets and my long legs in full skirts that flapped around my calves. I had let my hair grow long so I could wind it into a schoolmarmish bun. Nothing seemed to work. If you are tall and blond and blue-eyed and shaped like a female, some people assume you don’t have a brain cell working.

Karl tried to hide his smile. ‘I warned you this approach would not work, Burckhardt. The lady is very astute. I imagine she already suspects why we are making this request.’

I nodded gloomily. It didn’t require a high degree of intelligence. The affair of the Trojan gold was only the most recent of several encounters I have enjoyed with the criminal element, if ‘enjoyed’ is the right word. I do not enjoy being shot at, assaulted, kidnapped, and chased across the countryside. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

‘Something is going to happen on that cruise,’ I said. ‘What is it? Murder, hijacking, or just a simple case of grand theft which could easily lead to murder or hijacking?’

‘If you will allow me to explain,’ Burckhardt began.

‘That’s what I’ve been asking you to do.’

Burckhardt leaned back and folded his arms. ‘The information reached us via a channel which has proved particularly fruitful in the past. How our agent acquired the information we do not know, but he has never before failed to be accurate. He gave us three facts: first, that there is a plot to rob the Cairo Museum; second, the individuals involved will be on the Nile cruise which starts on November first; third, one or more of them is personally known to you. Now obviously we cannot halt the cruise or detain everyone who has signed up for it. We must have an agent on that boat. You are the obvious choice, not only because you – ’

‘Wait,’ I said. My voice sounded quite normal. That surprised me; even though I had half expected it, one of his statements had had the same impact as a hard kick on the shin. ‘Let’s go back over that interesting assemblage of so-called facts, shall we? First, why are you guys involved? Why don’t you pass the information on to the Egyptian government and let them handle it?’

‘Naturally we have notified the authorities in that country. They have requested our cooperation. Are you familiar with the current political situation in Egypt?’

I shrugged. ‘Not in detail. Keep it short, will you?’

‘I will endeavour to do so.’ Burckhardt steepled his fingertips and tried to look like a professor. He didn’t. ‘The modern nation of Egypt did not attain independence until 1922. For over a century it was exploited, as some might say, by Western powers, and many of the most valuable antiquities were – er – “removed” to museums and private collections in Europe and America. Anti-Western sentiment is of long standing and it is now being fostered by certain groups who wish to replace the present government of Egypt with one more sympathetic to their religious views. They have attacked tourists and members of the government. If the historic treasures of Egypt are stolen by a group of foreigners – ’

‘I see your point,’ I said reluctcntly. ‘Okay. Next question. Seems to me your information is very fragmentary. Why don’t you ask this hot-shot agent of yours where he got it and tell him to dig around for more?’

Another exchange of meaningful glances. ‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me this is another of those plots. He’s dead. Right? Found in an alley with his throat cut? Horribly tortured and . . . I don’t believe this!’

‘Believe it,’ Karl said soberly. ‘We had not wanted to tell you – ’

‘I can see why. It might have put a slight damper on my girlish enthusiasm for playing Nancy Drew.’

‘You would be in no danger,’ Karl insisted.

‘And if I believe that, you’ve got a bridge you’d like to sell me cheap.’

‘Bitte?’ Karl said, looking puzzled.

‘Never mind.’

‘It is true. We will have other agents on that cruise; they will guard you day and night. The moment you have identified the individual – or individuals – in question, they will be placed under arrest – ’

‘No, they won’t.’

‘Bitte?’ said Burckhardt, trying to look puzzled. He knew perfectly well what I meant.

I spelled it out. ‘You can’t arrest people because Victoria Bliss thinks they look like somebody who might once, maybe, have committed a crime. You’ll have to wait till they do something illegal. And while you’re waiting, I’ll be sitting there like a groundhog on a superhighway at rush hour. If . . . they . . . are known to me, I’m also known to them.’

‘You will be in no danger,’ Burckhardt repeated.

‘Damn right.’ I stood up. ‘Because I won’t be on that cruise. Auf Wiedersehen, meine Herren.’

‘Think about it,’ Karl said smoothly. ‘You needn’t decide now.’

I was thinking about it. My acquaintanceship with the members of the art underworld is more extensive than I would like, but there was one individual with whom I was particularly well acquainted. His had been the first name that occurred to me – if it was his name. He had at least four aliases, including his favourite, ‘Sir John Smythe.’ I didn’t know – I had never known – his last name, and even though be had told me his first name was John, I had no reason to suppose he was telling the truth. He hardly ever did tell the truth. He was a thief and a swindler and a liar, and he had dragged me into a number of embarrassing, not to say dangerous, situations, but if he hadn’t come to my rescue at the risk of grievous bodily harm to himself – something John preferred not to do – I wouldn’t be in Karl’s office wondering whether he and Herr Burckhardt knew, or only suspected, that the ‘individual’ they were after might be my occasional and elusive lover.

III

It took me a long time to get back to sleep after that grisly dream. I was not in the best possible condition to cope with Munich’s rush-hour traffic next morning – short on sleep, tense with a mixture of anger, anxiety, and indecision. It was raining, of course. It always rains in Munich when somebody offers me a trip to some place bright and warm and sunny.

I’ve lived in Munich for a number of years, ever since I wangled a job out of the funny little fat man who had been a prime suspect m my first ‘case,’ as he would call it. 1He wasn’t the murderer, as it turned out; he was a famous scholar, director of the National Museum, and he had been impressed by my academic credentials as well as by the fact that I could have embarrassed the hell out of him by telling the world about some of his shenanigans during that adventure. We had become good friends and I had come to think of Munich as my adopted home town. It’s a beautiful city in one of the most beautiful parts of the world – when the sun is shining. In the rain, with fallen leaves making the streets slick and dangerous, it is as dreary as any other large city.

When I pulled into the staff parking lot behind the museum, Karl the janitor popped out of his cubicle to inquire after the health, not of my humble self, but of Caesar, for whom he has an illicit passion. I assured him all was well and hurried through the storage areas of the basement, praying Schmidt hadn’t arrived yet. I had to go to the museum office to collect my mail and messages; if I didn’t, Gerda, Schmidt’s hideously efficient and inquisitive secretary, would bring them to me and hang around, talking and asking questions and ignoring my hints that she should go away, and then I would probably hit her with something large and heavy because Gerda gets on my nerves even when they are not already stretched to the breaking point.