Elizabeth Peters: Street of the Five Moons

He beamed at me as he stood there in his spy costume, with his hand outstretched; and the object on his palm glowed and shimmered, almost as if it were smiling too.

It was a pendant, made of gold richly embellished with filigree volutes and leaf shapes. Two tiny gold figures of kneeling women supported the rigid loop through which a chain had once passed. All around the heavy gold rim were stones set in filigree frames – stones of green and red and pearly white. In the centre was an enormous azure-blue stone, translucent as water contained in a crystal dome. There was a flaw in the central stone, a flaw that looked like a small rough-hewn cross.

A casual eye might have taken those stones for irregular, roughly polished chunks of glass. Mine is not a casual eye, however.

‘The Charlemagne talisman,’ I said. ‘Schmidt, old buddy – put it back, okay? You can’t get away with it; somebody is sure to notice it’s gone.

‘You think I have stolen it?’ Schmidt grinned even more broadly. ‘But how do you suppose I have removed it from the case without setting off the alarms?’

It was a good question. The museum has a superb collection of antique jewellery, which is kept in a room built especially for it – a room that is one enormous vault. It is locked at night and watched continuously by three guards during the day. The alarm system is so delicate that breathing heavily on one of the cases will set bells ringing. And although Schmidt was one of the directors of the museum, neither he nor anyone else had authority to remove any of the historic gems from their cases unless he was accompanied by two other museum big shots and a whole battalion of security guards.

‘I give up,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you got it out, but for heaven’s sake, put it back. You’ve been in trouble before with your weird sense of humour, and if they find out – ’

‘ Nein, nein. ’ He shook his head regretfully, abandoning his joke in the face of my obvious concern. ‘It is not stolen from the case. I have not taken it from there. It was found last night in the pocket of a dead man, in an alley near the Alter Peter. ’

My mind fumbled with this information for a few moments.

‘This isn’t the real brooch, then,’ I said.

‘ A ber nein. How could it be? I assure you, we would notice if the gem had been taken away. It is a copy. But, liebe Vicky, what a copy!’

I took it from his hand. Even though I knew it was not the real gem, my touch was tentative and respectful. The more closely I examined it, the more my amazement grew. I had to take Schmidt’s word for it that this wasn’t the real talisman, but it certainly looked good, even to my trained eye.

The goldwork was superb, each tiny filigree wire having been shaped and set with masterful skill. As for the jewels, even an expert gemologist would have had trouble deciding they were fakes without the use of the complex instruments of his trade. The original pendant had been made in the ninth century, long before modern techniques of faceting gem stones were developed. The rubies and emeralds and pearls on the golden frame were roughly polished and rounded – ‘cabochon’ is the technical term. The only precious stones that are cut in that antique style today are star rubies and star sapphires; the rounded shape brings out the buried star refraction. The cabochon-cut sapphire in the centre of this jewel shimmered softly, but did not glow with the buried fire of a faceted stone. I knew that it was not one sapphire, but two, placed back to back, and that the flaw in the centre was not a ‘star’ or a natural blemish, but a sliver of the ‘True Cross,’ which made the jewel into a very expensive reliquary, or talisman.

‘You could fool me,’ I said, putting the pendant down on my desk blotter. ‘Come on, Schmidt, elucidate. Who was this character in whose pocket the pendant was found?’

‘A boom,’ said Schmidt, with a wave of his hand.

‘A what?’

‘A boom, a vagabond, a drunkard,’ Schmidt repeated impatiently.

‘Oh. A bum.’

‘Did I not say so? He had no money, no passport, no papers of any kind. Only this, sewn with care into a secret pocket in his suit.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Not violently,’ Schmidt said, with obvious regret. ‘There was no wound. Of poison, perhaps, or drugs. Or cheap hooch, or – ’

‘Never mind,’ I said. When Schmidt starts speculating, especially in what he fondly believes to be American slang, he can go on and on and on. ‘Really, Schmidt, this is fantastic. I suppose the police notified you. How did they know this was a copy of one of our pieces?’

‘They thought it was our piece,’ Schmidt said. ‘They are men of culture, our Polizisten ; one of them comes often to the museum and recognized the ornament. I was called in this morning.’

‘You must have had a fit when you saw it,’ I said sympathetically. ‘With your weak heart and all.’

Schmidt rolled his eyes dramatically and clutched at his chest.

‘It was a terrible moment! I knew of course that our pendant could not have disappeared; but was this the fake, or the one in our treasure room? Until our experts could examine both, I died a mlllion deaths.’

‘It could still fool me,’ I admitted. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Do not say such things, even in jest! No, this is the imitation. But such an imitation! The gold is genuine. The stones are not glass, they are modern synthetics. You have no doubt heard of these imitation rubies, emeralds, sapphires? Some are such excellent copies that only the most sophisticated equipment can tell they are not real. And the workmanship of this . . .’

‘I don’t see why you’re so upset,’ I said; for he was mopping his bald head, and his baby-blue eyes were narrowed in distress.

‘So some eccentric collector wanted a copy of the Charlemagne pendant. A good copy, not like the moulds museums sell these days. The use of real gold is rather peculiar, perhaps, but the frame is hollow; I don’t suppose there is more than a few hundred dollars’ worth of precious metal involved here. What’s the problem?’

‘I thought you would understand!’ Schmidt’s eyes widened. ‘You are such a clever woman. But then jewellery is not your specialty. To go to such trouble, such expense, in order to imitate a piece like this . . . There are only a few goldsmiths in the world capable of such work. They do not have to earn a living making copies. It is . . . too cheap and yet too costly, this copy. Do you see?’

When he put it that way, I did see. I nodded thoughtfully and looked more closely at the lovely thing on the desk.

Most women have a weakness for jewels. The only reason why men don’t is because it is out of fashion. In earlier centuries men wore as many ornaments, with as much vanity, as women did. I could understand why someone might want a copy of the Charlemagne talisman for purely decorative reasons. I wouldn’t have minded wearing one myself. But anyone who wanted a copy, just for fun, wouldn’t go to the trouble of using such expensive materials, nor pay a jeweler of such skill the exorbitant sum necessary. There was another point that Schmidt had not mentioned. In order to copy the jewel with such fidelity, a designer would have to study the original in detail. Nobody had applied to the museum authorities for permission to do so, or Schmidt would have known about it. Therefore someone must have spent long hours studying photographs and descriptions, perhaps even visited the museum. Why do all this surreptitiously if his purpose was honest?

‘You think some gang of thieves is planning a robbery,’ I said. ‘That there is a plot to substitute imitations for the real jewels.’