Silhouette in Scarlet

‘Medium height, heavy-set, brown hair and beard, horn-rimmed glasses?’

‘No.’

‘Sure? He could have shaved the beard – ’

‘No chance. Mine is blond, seven feet tall.’

‘Hmmm. Do I perchance scent a rival?’

‘Definitely. Speaking of scent, what is that perfume?’

‘Like it?’ John turned a ruffled shoulder to me and batted his eyelashes. They weren’t false. His eyelashes are one of his best features, and he knows it.

‘Love it.’

‘Then I know what to get you for your birthday. Gather up your gear and get lost, darling. I’ll see you tonight.’

‘But I want to know – ’

‘Later.’ He began picking up my scattered possessions. Instead of kneeling, he moved in a shuffling squat – afraid to dirty the knees of his white slacks, I suppose. I was about to join the pursuit when all of a sudden he went absolutely rigid. His knees hit the floor. Stiff as a marble statue of a supplicant he knelt, staring at the papers he held.

During the course of our Roman adventure I had seen John face assorted perils – guns, dogs, maniacal killers with relative aplomb. His appearance of Best British sangfroid was not due to courage but to his insane sense of humour; he couldn’t resist making smart remarks even when the subject of his ridicule was brandishing a knife under his nose. When the wisecracks gave out, he reverted to type, groaning over every little scratch and trying to hide behind any object in the neighbourhood, including my skirts. I’d seen him turn pale green with fright and livid with terror. I had never seen him look the way he looked now.

I let out a muffled croak. John leaped up as if he had knelt on a scorpion. Thrusting the papers into my lap, he reached the doorway in three long leaps and disappeared.

There were three papers in the lot he had handed me. One was the message from Schmidt, on the back of which I had scribbled Gustaf Jonsson’s home address. One was a receipt from the store where I had bought my sweater. The last was my silhouette.

I put them in my purse. I was looking around to make sure John hadn’t missed something when I heard a harsh cough. Someone was coming. Slow, shuffling footsteps, heavy asthmatic breathing . . .

The man who appeared in the doorway wore a uniform like that of a guard. That’s what he was – a museum guard. He glanced incuriously at me and walked slowly around the room inspecting the cases.

He was the only person I saw on the way out. The museum was about to close. Everyone else had gone. No seven-foot-tall Vikings, no short, bearded men with horn-rimmed glasses, no overdeveloped females wearing flaxen wigs. I ought to have been relieved. I felt squirmy all over, as if hundreds of eyes were watching me.

After I had walked a few blocks in the bright summer sunlight the feeling dissipated. Maybe John’s wide-eyed horror had been one of his peculiar jokes, a gimmick designed to allow him to get away before I could ask any more questions.

The most interesting question of all was the one I had failed to pick up on because I was distracted by his disguise. He had been there before me. He might have followed me and reached the treasure room by another route. But his first words had been a compliment on my astuteness. ‘I felt sure you would figure it out.’ Figure what out? Had he known I would find my way to the Hansson collection? The chalice did mean something.

I found a cafe and ordered coffee. Taking the catalogue of the Hansson collection from my purse, I turned to the description of the chalice.

The answer jumped out of the surrounding print as if it were outlined in red – one word that linked the jumbled fragments together into a coherent whole. The name of the chalice.

Yes, it had a name. Many unique objects do – the Ardagh chalice, the Kingston brooch, the Sutton Hoo treasure. They are called after the places where they were found, in tombs and barrows and fields. The proper name of my treasure was the Karlsholm chalice.

My eyes had passed over that word a dozen times without noting its significance, but my good old reliable subconscious had made the connection – that inward eye that is the bliss of solitude and, upon occasion, the salvation of Bliss. Wordsworth’s inward eye had turned up daffodils. Mine had produced the chalice itself, without outre symbolism or Freudian nonsense. And I had missed it again. This time I couldn’t miss it. Only moments earlier I had glanced at the paper with Gustaf’s address. That’s where he lived – in Karlsholm.

Chapter Four

I DECIDED TO GO back to the hotel instead of struggling with the intricacies of a pay phone. I found several messages waiting for me. Two were from Schmidt, one was from Leif. The latter had called at eleven-ten, right after I left the hotel. He had not left a number, but said he would call back at six.

I looked at my watch. It was already after five, too late for some of the calls I needed to make. Served me right, too. I should have taken action that morning instead of trying to play ostrich. Nasty things don’t go away when you hide your head, that just gives them a chance to sneak up on you.

I tried the bank first, on the off chance, but there was no answer. Bankers’ hours are the same everywhere. Next I called Schmidt. His messages were always marked ‘Urgent,’ but in view of the revelations of the previous evening I thought I had better take these ‘Urgents’ seriously. Schmidt kept erratic hours – being the director, he could keep any hours he liked – and, having neither kith nor kin, wife nor child, he often stayed late at the office.

I almost dropped the phone when I heard the voice of Schmidt’s secretary. Gerda’s punctual departures are a staff joke; it is claimed that the wind of her passage out of the office can knock a strong man flat. I said, ‘What did you do, sit on a tube of glue?’

Gerda was not amused. She said stiffly, ‘Herr Professor Dr Director Schmidt has departed. He asked me to remain to deliver a message.’

‘To me?’

‘Aber naturlich,’ Gerda said. It is also a staff joke that I am Schmidt’s pet. I’m not supposed to know that, but of course I do.

‘That was kind of you,’ I said, in my most ingratiating voice. ‘What’s the message?’

Gerda switched to English. Her self-conscious voice and stumbling pronunciation showed she was reading aloud.

‘“Cousin Gustaf checks out with carillon. Golden boys say he is night attire of felines, Empress of Germany.”’

After a moment I said, ‘You had better give me that again.’

She gave it to me again. I scribbled. Then I said, ‘I appreciate it, Gerda. Thanks a lot. You run on home. Oh were there any calls for me today?’

‘Nein.’

‘Gerda, are you mad at me?’

‘Nein.’

‘Then why do you sound like the Ice Queen?’

‘Herr Director Schmidt has said, “Read the message, then shut up.”’ The phrase she used was German slang, not exactly vulgar, but definitely not the kind of language she was accustomed to hearing from Schmidt, who treated women with the courtliness of a vanished age.

I thought it over. Then I said cunningly, ‘If he had not said that, is there anything you would tell me?’

Gerda giggled. ‘Nein,’ she said.

I tried a few more subtle tricks and got a few more nein’s. It was unlikely that Schmidt would confide in her; he hadn’t a high opinion of her intelligence or discretion.

So I bade her goodnight and turned to Schmidt’s message. It was mystification for the fun of it, serving no useful purpose. Gerda wouldn’t understand outdated American slang, but there was no earthly reason why he had to give it to her in code.

All I said was that Cousin Gustaf was in the clear. With bells on. Schmidt had called the bank references