Elizabeth Peters: Street of the Five Moons

‘I suppose I should,’ I said glumly.

I wasn’t expecting anything. I just said that because I felt I shouldn’t overlook any possible clue. Little did I know that in that pitiful collection lay the key that was to unlock the case.

It was a folded piece of paper. There were several other scraps like it, receipts from unidentified shops for small sums, none over ten marks. This particular scrap was not a receipt, just a page torn out of a cheap notebook. On it was written the number thirty-seven – the seven had the crossbar that is used by Europeans for writing that number, in order to distinguish it from their numeral one – and a curious little group of signs that resembled fingernail clippings. They looked like this:

I sat staring at these enigmatic hieroglyphs until Herr Feeder’s voice interrupted my futile theorizing.

‘A puzzle of some sort,’ he said negligently. ‘I see no meaning in it. After all, the cryptic clue only occurs in Kriminalromanen, is that not correct?’

‘How true,’ I said.

Herr Feder laughed. ‘It is, perhaps, the address of his manicurist.’

‘Were his nails manicured?’ I asked eagerly.

‘No, not at all.’ Herr Feder looked at me reproachfully. ‘I made a little joke, Fräulein Doktor.’

‘Oh.’ I giggled. ‘The address of his manicurist . . . Very witty, Herr Feder.’

I shouldn’t have encouraged him. He asked me to dinner, and when I said I was busy, to lunch next day. So I told him I was leaving town. Usually I deal with such matters more subtly, but I didn’t want to discourage him completely; who knows, I might need help from him if the case developed unexpected twists. Although at that point I didn’t even have a case, much less a twist.

It was a gorgeous spring day, a little cool, but bright and blue-skied, with fat white clouds that echoed the shapes of Munich’s onion-domed church spires. I should have gone back to work – I had a number of odds and ends to clear up if I was going to play Sherlock – but there was no point in clearing them up if I didn’t know where I was going. And I couldn’t face Professor Schmidt. He would expect me to have deduced all kinds of brilliant things from my visit to the police.

I wandered towards the Alter Peter. I guess I should explain that this doesn’t refer to an elderly gentleman, but to Munich’s oldest church, dedicated to the Apostle. It was begun in 1181, which puts it into my period, but the redecorating of the eighteenth century converted it into a Baroque church, at least internally. Baroque sculpture and decoration take some getting used to; they look frivolous and overdone to modern tastes. But I like them. It seems to me a church ought to express the joy of religion as well as its majesty. The Zimmerman stucco-work at old St Peter’s always cheers me up. But I didn’t go in. I walked through the neighbouring streets for a while. It was a waste of time, actually. I didn’t know which of the alleys in the vicinity had harboured my dead man, and if I had known, there was nothing to be gained from staring at the vacated space. The police would have searched the area thoroughly.

I passed through the Viktualenmarkt, with its booths of fresh fruits and vegetables and its glorious flower stalls. They were masses of flaming colour that morning, all the spring flowers – yellow bunches of daffodils, great armfuls of lilac, fat blue and pink hyacinths perfuming the air. I ended up on Kaufingerstrasse, which was a favourite haunt of mine, because I adore window-shopping. It was just about the only kind of shopping I could afford. Some of the most delectable windows were those of the shops that sold the lovely peasant costumes of southern Germany and Austria. People still wear them, even in sophisticated Munich – loden cloaks of green or creamy-white wool, banded in red, with big silver buttons; blouses and aprons trimmed with handmade lace; and, of course, dirndls. They differ in style according to the area where they originated: the sexy Salzburger dirndl, with its lowcut bodice, artfully designed to make the most of a girl’s secondary sex characteristics; the Tegernsee type, which has a separate skirt and jacket, the latter lengthened behind into a stiff pleated peplum. I love those brilliant costumes, of bright cotton print or embroidered velvet; but I am not the dirndl type. However, I had my eye on an ivory wool cape with buttons made out of old silver coins, so I stopped by the shop to see if by any chance they were having a sale. They weren’t. I turned away, and then something across the street caught my eye.

It was only an advertising sign for Lufthansa airlines. ‘Rome!’ it exclaimed, above a huge photograph of the Spanish Steps lined with baskets of pink and white azaleas. ‘See Rome and live! Six flights daily.’

All the pieces came together then, the way they do sometimes when you leave them alone and let them simmer. The swarthy skin and Latin look of the dead man; Herr Feder’s joking suggestion that the cryptogram represented an address; the atmosphere of antiquities, treasure, and jewels that coloured the whole affair.

I had been thinking vaguely of going to Rome on my holiday, and wondering where I was going to get the money. There was one particular area I longed to explore at leisure – a region near the Tiber, where Bernini’s windblown angels guard the bridge that leads to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. A region of narrow twisted streets and tall frowning houses. The Via dei Coronari is the antique lovers’ paradise. And not far from the Via dei Coronari is a street called the Via delle Cinque Lune – the Street of the Five Moons.

It was only a hunch. I couldn’t even call it a theory. But the five curved signs might represent crescent moons; and surely it was more than a coincidence that that particular part of Rome specialized in antiques of a very expensive nature.

At any rate, it wouldn’t do any harm to investigate number 37, Via delle Cinque Lune. I turned and walked towards the museum, planning some mild larceny.

I can be reasonably glib when I try. Tony, one of my former colleagues at the University, refers to me as Old Slippery Tongue. But I couldn’t have put this deal across with anyone except Professor Schmidt. Goodness, but that man is gullible! I worry about him sometimes. Fortunately he is not quite as gullible about other swindlers as he is about me. He has a slightly exaggerated idea of my intelligence. I didn’t even have to lie to him. He thought my interpretation of the cryptogram was absolutely super. ‘But of course,’ he shouted, when I had explained. ‘You have it! What else could it possibly mean?’

Well, I could think of about a dozen other possibilities. It’s funny that Schmidt, who is so sharp in his own field, can’t tell the difference between a fact and a feeble theory in any area other than medieval history. But I guess a lot of experts are like that. Heaven knows they fall for spiritualists and conmen just as often as those of lesser brain power.

So I got my leave of absence, to start that very day, and a nice little expense account. How Schmidt planned to justify this expenditure to his colleagues I couldn’t imagine, but that wasn’t my problem. I cashed the cheque he gave me, called the airport and made a reservation, and rushed home to pack. My passport was in order, so the only thing left to do was figure out where I was going to stay in Rome.

It didn’t take me long to decide. People on expense accounts don’t stay in pensions or hotels. It wouldn’t look good. I felt I owed it to my employer to check into the best hotel in town.

There may be more beautiful cities than Rome on a bright May morning, but I doubt that any of them will ever get to me in quite the same way. The Spanish Steps looked just like the picture on the billboard in Munich, with the massed flowers spilling down them like a pink-and-white waterfall. The tourists did spoil the scene slightly – the artist had thoughtfully omitted them from the billboard – but I didn’t mind them; they added that note of nonchalant irreverence that is so typical of Rome. ‘Electric’ is the word for that city; everything is all mixed in together: lush voluptuous Baroque fountains with sculptured columns from the time of the Caesars; a modern sports arena, all steel girders and moulded concrete, next to a twisty dark street in which Raphael would feel right at home. Tying it all together, like a running ribbon of greenery, are the trees and plants – umbrella pines and cypresses, palm trees, ilex, and oleander; and salmon-pink geraniums and blue plumbago fringing balconies and roof gardens.