Trojan Gold (2 page)

Schmidt's pink forehead crumpled into rows of wrinkles. “
Sehr interessant
,” he muttered, worrying his mustache. “Now where have I seen this face before?”

“Something strikes a chord,” I agreed. “It looks like a theatrical costume. Hardly the sort of thing we'd want for the collection.”

“
Nein, nein
. And yet…What is it that strikes me?”

Gerda cleared her throat. “I recognized it at once, Herr Direktor. When I took the course at the university last spring—or perhaps it was summer—yes, it was the Herr Professor Doktor Eberhardt's course in the minor arts of Asia Minor—”

I was tempted to lunge at her. She'd had hours to check on that photograph and make fools of her two educated bosses. Schmidt was just as infuri
ated. “Get to the point,” he shouted, glaring.

Gerda looked smug. “Surely the very-highly-expert doctors recognize the photograph. It is that of Frau Schliemann wearing the treasure of Troy. If you recall, it was in 1873 that the distinguished archaeologist found the mound of Hissarlik, in what is now Turkey, and identified it as—”

“You need not summarize the career of Heinrich Schliemann,” said Schmidt, with heavy sarcasm. “Hmm. Yes. Possibly you are correct. It is not, of course, my field.”

It wasn't my field, either. All the same, I should have identified the photograph. Every art historian takes introductory courses, and every woman worthy of the name is fascinated by jewels. Gerda had one-upped me with consummate skill, and it was for that reason, I think, that I pursued the matter. On such low-down, petty motives does our fate depend. If Gerda had not tried to show off, and made me look stupid—if I hadn't been suffering from a well-deserved hang-over—I would probably have returned to my office, tossed the photo into a “pending” file, and awaited the expected, irate inquiry from the sender. Which would not have come.

Instead, I said sharply, “What did you do with the outer envelope?”

Schmidt was still studying the photograph with a puzzled frown. Without looking up he asked, “How do you know there was another envelope?”

“Because this one is blank—no address, no stamps, no postmark. Come on, Gerda; there had to be an outer envelope. What happened to it?”

Gerda's eyes shifted. Mine followed the direction
of her gaze. Her wastebasket was not only empty, it was as clean as my kitchen floor. Cleaner—I have a dog. “You threw it away?” I yelled.

“It was covered with filth,” Gerda said, with a fastidious curl of her lip. “Stained and dirty—one could scarcely read the name.”

“Was there a return address?”

“None that I could read. The dirty stains—”

“Postmark?”

Gerda shrugged.

Schmidt followed me out of the office. I asked him where he was going, and he said simply, “With you.”

“Why?”

“You are going to look through the trash for the missing envelope.” Schmidt savored the phrase. “The missing envelope…A good title for a thriller,
nicht
?”

“It's been used. Probably by Nancy Drew.”

Schmidt didn't ask who Nancy Drew was. Maybe he knew. As I said, he has deplorable tastes in literature. “And,” he went on cheerfully, “a good beginning for an adventure.”

“What makes you think this is the beginning of an adventure? If,” I added, “one can apply that melodramatic word to the unfortunate incidents that have marked my academic career.”

“I hope it is. It has been six months since our last case. I am bored.”

Since Schmidt's only contribution to my last “case,” if it could be called that, was to be pushed into the local slammer by a group of suspicious Swedes, his use of the plural pronoun might have been questioned—but not by me. He was still sulk
ing about missing most of the fun. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but I didn't want to encourage him either. I had had enough “cases,” or “adventures,” or, more accurately, “narrow escapes.”

Not that I expected the mysterious photograph (damn! another thriller title) would lead to any such undesired development. It wasn't really mysterious, only odd, and if I could find the covering letter—there must be one, Gerda had simply overlooked it—the oddity would turn out to be odd only in the academic sense. Like most academicians, I had received my share of crank letters. Some were communiqués from the lunatic fringes of historical scholarship—like the woman who claimed to be possessed by the ghost of Hieronymus Bosch. Before her family got her committed, she sent me fifteen huge canvases she had painted under his spiritual direction. Some were from amiable ignoramuses who hoped to sell us some piece of junk they had dug out of the attic. This would probably turn out to be something of that sort, and my present quest was a real waste of time and effort. Possibly an explanatory letter had been sent under separate cover and had been delayed in transit. In any case, if the idea was important enough to the sender, he or she would write again when I failed to reply.

Having arrived at this reasonable conclusion, did I return to my office and my duties? No, I did not. I was still annoyed with Gerda, and an odd, provocative sense of something not quite right about that photograph was beginning to trouble my mind. With Schmidt trotting happily at my heels, I threaded a path through the maze of corridors and
rooms that constituted the basement of the museum. The plan represented the Graf's vague idea of a medieval undercroft, complete with model dungeons and torture chambers. Schmidt had tried to set up the usual labs and studios, but the workers had gone on strike, even after fluorescent lighting had been installed and the rusty shackles and implements of torture had been removed. Von Blauert, our chemist, complained that he kept having nightmares about being shut up in the Iron Maiden. So Schmidt resignedly moved the whole lot up to the top floor, and the cellars were used only for storage of nonperishable items. There was also a door opening into the sunken enclosed courtyard behind the museum, where the trash from the museum ended up in big bins that were picked up bi-weekly by a local firm. The courtyard did double duty as a staff parking lot, which was how I knew about the trash.

Hearing our footsteps ring in dismal echoes along the authentic-stone-paved passageway, Carl, the janitor, opened the door of his room. His face lit up when he saw me, and he greeted me with flattering enthusiasm. At least it would have been flattering if I had not known that I was not the object of his adoration. It was my dog he doted on.

There's an antique witticism that runs, “I don't have a dog, he has me.” Caesar is a Doberman, big as a pony and slobberingly affectionate. I had to bring him to work with me one day when the exterminators were dealing with an infestation of some strange little purple bugs in my house. Carl was in the courtyard when we arrived, and it was love at first sight, on both parts. Carl was in the
habit of paying a formal call on Caesar every few weeks; he always brought presents of bones and took Caesar for a long walk.

I had to give him a detailed rundown on Caesar's health before he allowed me to question him. Yes, he had emptied Gerda's wastebasket that morning. He emptied her wastebasket every morning and every afternoon. No, the trash men had not collected that day; Tuesday and Friday were their regular days. Certainly, we could prowl around in the trash all we liked. He hoped we enjoyed ourselves.

He didn't offer to help, and I didn't ask, since I couldn't tell him what I was looking for. I only hoped I would recognize it if I saw it.

Snowflakes trickled down out of a pewter-gray sky as I climbed on a packing case and peered down into the bin which, according to Carl, held that day's garbage. Schmidt, who would have needed a ladder to reach the same height, jumped up and down to keep warm and demanded that I toss down an armful or two so he could help me search. I was tempted to give him a bundle of the riper refuse—the remains of people's lunches, from the smell—but controlled myself. A handful of papers stopped his outcries; he hunkered down in the lee of the bin and began sorting them, happy as a puppy with a moldy bone.

Cold had turned Schmidt's pink face a delicate shade of lavender by the time I found the envelope. It should have been on the top of the heap; but in the manner of all desired objects, it had slid down into a corner, behind a soggy paper bag containing two apple cores and the crusts of a Gorgonzola-and-wurst sandwich. For once Gerda had not ex
aggerated. The paper was filthy. A disfiguring brown stain covered much of the envelope. It was an old stain, hardened and dark; and although I am not particularly fastidious, my fingers were slow to close over it.

A shiver ran through me. The shiver was not one of apprehension; it was freezing out there. I only wish I did have premonitory chills when something awful is about to happen to me. Then I might be able to avoid it.

I dragged my purpling superior from the papers he was examining. Once inside, we examined my find.

“Ha,” Schmidt cried eagerly. “Blood!”

“Mud,” I said shortly. “Schmidt, your imagination is really deplorable.”

“There is no return address.”

“Oh well, I tried. Now I can forget the whole thing.”

“But, Vicky—”

“But me no buts, Schmidt. Don't think it hasn't been fun; we must meet and pick through garbage again someday.”

“Where are you going now?”

“To the library. I have work to do.”

I had work to do, all right, but not in the library. I stayed there only long enough to get the book I wanted. Then I took it upstairs to my office.

The snow was falling more heavily now; it formed a lacy, blowing white curtain around the walls of my room. I felt much better. Nothing like a little exercise and a yelling match to restore a lady to perfect health after a night on the town. I spread
my clues out on the desk and settled down to study them.

The envelope first. There was no return address, at least not on the part of the envelope that had escaped the obliterating stain. After prolonged rummaging in my desk drawers I found the magnifying glass Schmidt had given me for Christmas one year. Schmidt expected me to use it while I crawled around on the floor looking for clues in the dust—something I hardly, if ever, do. I actually had used the glass a time or two in the preliminary stages of authenticating a work of art; sometimes all it takes to spot a fake is a close-up look at the brush strokes or the machine-drilled “wormholes.”

On this occasion the Holmesian accessory was of no help. Under magnification, the blurred letters of the postmark were larger but no more legible. The first two letters might have been a B and an A. Bad something? There are hundreds of towns in Germany named Bad Something. The opaque dark stain covered most of the back of the envelope and a good third of the front, including the areas where one might have expected to find a return address. Even under the lens I couldn't see any traces of writing.

I filled my sink with water and dunked the envelope. It was of heavy paper coated on the inside with a thin layer of plastic, which had prevented the stain from spreading to the inner wrapping. I was wasting a lot of time on something that was probably a peculiar practical joke; but when I returned to my desk and opened the reference book from the library, I knew why my curiosity had been aroused. Gerda had been only half right. Superfi
cially the photo I had received did resemble the famous photograph of Sophia Schliemann decked out in the gold of Troy. But mine was not a picture of Sophia. It was of a different woman—wearing the same jewelry.

Not the same jewelry—a copy. It had to be a copy, because my photograph had been taken quite recently. The woman's hairstyle, the photographic technique, and a dozen other subtle clues obvious to a great detective like Victoria Bliss proved as much.

Besides, there was a calendar on the wall, visible behind the woman's shoulder. It read “May 1982.”

The gold of Troy had vanished, never to be seen again, in the spring of 1945.

I felt it begin—a warm, delirious flush of excitement rippling giddily through my veins. A harbinger of adventure and discovery, of mysteries solved and treasure restored to an admiring world? More likely a harbinger of certifiable lunacy. I slammed the book shut and planted both elbows on it, as if physical restraint could contain the insanity seeping from those pages like a dark fog, inserting sly tendrils into the weak spots of my enfeebled brain. I swear the damned book squirmed, as if struggling to open itself.

I pressed down harder with my elbows and dropped my head onto my hands. I knew what was wrong with me. I was bored and depressed and disgustingly sorry for myself, otherwise I would never have given the insane hypothesis a second thought.

Christmas was only a few weeks away, and this
year I couldn't afford to go home to Minnesota. They would all be there for the holidays—Grandmother and Granddad Anderson, my brothers and their families, including Bob's new baby son whom I had never seen. Mother and Grandmother, the world's greatest Swedish cooks, would be baking, filling the house with the warm rich smells of cinnamon and cloves and chocolate and yeast; Dad would be decorating the tree and Granddad would be sitting in his favorite chair telling Dad he was doing it all wrong and trying to pick fights about politics with his “damned liberal grandchildren”; and the kids would be screaming with excitement and punching each other and trying to figure out how to break into the closet where their presents were hidden….

I was all alone and nobody loved me.

But even as I watched a fat tear spatter on the cover of the book, my unregenerate memory was trying to recall what I knew about the gold of Troy.

My field is medieval European painting and sculpture. However, in my line of work, it is necessary to become something of a Jack-of-all-trades, since museums can't afford to hire experts in every specialty of art history. I had had to learn about jewelry, since we have one of the best small collections on the Continent. And the career of Heinrich Schliemann is a fable, a legend, a children's book come to life.