Laughter of Dead Kings vbm-6

by Elizabeth Peters

  “Always expect the worst, then you are never disappointed?”

  “Or deceived. I trust that satisfies your curiosity. I haven’t opened the post yet. Why don’t you check your messages while I do so?”

  “I didn’t think anybody wrote letters these days,” I said, fishing in my backpack.

  “Jen does,” John said morosely. He waved an envelope at me—I noticed it had a coat of arms emblazoned on the backside—and ripped it open with the air of a man who knows he is going to be hanged and decides he may as well get it over with. “She wants me to pay her a visit.”

  “Fat chance,” I said. I picked up Jen’s envelope and examined the coat of arms. It was divided into four sections—quartered, I think is the term. One contained a shapeless blob, roughly square in shape and gray in color, another a dagger or sword; the third had several fleurs-de-lis and the fourth a couple of leopards or lions standing up on their hind feet. The royal arms of England and/or France? I wouldn’t have put it past Jen to claim a relationship with either and/or both.

  While I tried to figure out the Latin motto, John went methodically through the rest of the post. It appeared to be the usual sort of thing—brochures, catalogs, and, of course, bills.

  “Well?” he inquired.

  “Well what? Oh, Schmidt.” I returned to my backpack and located my cell phone.

  “Put it on speaker,” John suggested, leaning back in his chair and picking up his cup. “I can hardly wait to hear whether Clara has attacked Suzi again.”

  She had. Schmidt rambled on about that for a while; the message ended with a reproachful “Where are you? You have not returned my calls. Why do you not return them? You know I worry.”

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t figured out how to track you,” John remarked.

  “Shh.” The second message was more of the same. The third…I clutched the phone with a suddenly sweaty hand and John sat up straight.

  “Where are you?” Schmidt’s voice was so choked I barely recognized it. “Vicky, I need you. Something terrible has happened. You must call me at once. The number—”

  “I know the number,” I groaned. “And that one, and that one…Schmidt, for God’s sake tell me what’s wrong.”

  “He can’t hear you,” John pointed out.

  The other numbers he had given me were those of his office at the museum, his home, and my house. At least he wasn’t in a hospital—or in jail. Neither one of which, knowing Schmidt as I knew him, would have surprised me.

  I tried his cell phone first. It rang and went on ringing. I was about to try the office when Schmidt’s voice fell like music on my ears. “Vicky! At last! Why have you not—”

  “You sound all choked up. Where are you?”

  “In a café. You remember it; we were here together, one rainy day, when you wept on my shoulder and bared your heart to me.”

  “You’re eating,” I said, watching John’s eyebrow go up. I remembered that café well. There wasn’t a thing on the menu that wasn’t covered in whipped cream. “Schmidt, what’s the matter? Have you gone off your diet?”

  A sound of Schmidt being throttled would have alarmed me had I not known he was swallowing a large bite of something. Something with schlag all over it, I did not doubt. “I have gone off my diet, yes. Why should I torture myself? I am too old, too fat, too disgusting—” Another gulp.

  “She’s ditched him,” John mouthed.

  “Oh, no,” I mouthed back. Aloud I said, “Schmidt, darling, you are not disgusting. Nor any of those other things. Tell Vicky.”

  He proceeded to do so, at some length. Chocolate and whipped cream perked him up; indignation replaced his woe. “She did not even have the courage to tell me to my face. She wrote a note. I will read it to you.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “But I will. Noch einmal, bitte.” The last addressed, I assumed, to the waiter. “She says I am a wonderful man and she does not deserve me. It is the past and the future, not the present, that separates us.”

  “Uh-oh,” said John.

  “What?” Schmidt yelled. “Who is that? What did he say?”

  “It’s just me, Schmidt,” John said, taking the phone. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  Schmidt assured him, between mouthfuls, that there was no need to apologize, and proceeded to repeat the whole sad story. “So,” he concluded, “in such a case as this, a man needs to be distracted and to have his friends by his side. I am coming to see you. I have already my ticket. You will not be put out by me, I will stay at the Savoy. Until tonight, my dear friends.”

  I grabbed the phone from John, who appeared to be temporarily paralyzed; but it was too late. Schmidt had hung up.

  “I’ll call him back,” I said, fumbling. “Tell him we aren’t here.”

  “But we are. And he knows we are. How does he know?”

  “I didn’t tell him. Really. Maybe he just assumed we were going to London.”

  “Maybe. I’d suggest we run for it, but that would be cruel, even for me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, visualizing Schmidt’s round pink face slowly sagging as the phone in the flat rang and rang and rang and nobody answered.

  “Let us try, for once, to stick to the point. Why did Suzi decide to jilt Schmidt, and why now?” John raised an admonitory finger and declaimed, “Is there a clue, perchance, in that cryptic reference to yesterday and tomorrow?”

  “Hmm. What you want me to say is that Suzi may have got wind of the—er—of Feisal’s deprivation. That would fit the clue; it happened in the past and if she’s on the case she’s warning him that the future may be unpleasant for him or somebody close to him.”

  John shook his head. “Too many assumptions. Besides, your theory gives her credit for an extraordinary degree of altruism. If she’s after it—him—and I am the principal suspect, sticking close to Schmidt would be her best lead.”

  “Too many assumptions,” I said meanly.

  “Isn’t that what you would do?”

  “Not if I really cared about him. Using the man you love to trap his friend would be a lousy thing to do. Sure, I’d use any means possible to trap a child abuser or serial killer, but this is just a miserable missing mummy.”

  “What a hopeless sentimentalist you are. She’s a professional, Vicky, and a damn good one. People in her business don’t allow personal feelings to interfere with their chance of promotion.”

  “Well, then, it doesn’t make sense. Unless you have some bright ideas.”

  “At the moment my mind is a black hole. Why don’t you go for a walk, or help Alan dust? I do have a business to run.”

  “Something interesting?” I asked, as he picked up one of the letters he had discarded.

  “Might be. It’s from a Miss Eleanor Fitz-Rogers, who claims to have a collection of pre-Columbian artifacts inherited from her father that she’s considering selling. Elderly spinster ladies,” said John with a faraway look, “are my favorite source.”

  “Because they are easily swindled?”

  “You are obviously not well acquainted with elderly spinster ladies. The important thing is that the collection probably dates from a period when exporting antiquities was perfectly legal.” His eyes went back to the letter. “Definitely worth following up. I think I’ll give her a ring.”

  “Not my field,” I said, and left.

  Alan was sitting behind the desk at the back of the room reading a magazine. Seeing me, he whipped it into a drawer, but not before I had got a look at the cover, which featured a trio of Star Wars storm troopers. Evidently Alan was into fantasy as well as historical reenactment.

  “Business isn’t what I’d call brisk,” I observed.

  “This isn’t Marks and Sparks, duckie. We aren’t trying to attract the sort of people who shop at Alfie’s.”

  There was that sneer again. Personally, I am very fond of Alfie’s, which is an antiques market just up (or down, depending on which way you are going) the street. However, many of
the dealers focus on twentieth-century stuff and what is known in the trade as collectibles. Known to John as junk.

  “It takes time to build the kind of clientele we want,” Alan went on. “Museums, serious collectors, specialists. We notify them when we acquire a piece we believe will be of interest to them, and if the object is valuable enough, we’ll deliver it for inspection.”

  I was familiar with the process, since I am sometimes called in to evaluate and authenticate an object that’s being considered for the museum. I nodded. “Are you still accepting bank transfers and checks?”

  Alan gave me a wry smile. “Oh, you heard about that little scam.”

  “I’ve heard of several.” The most outrageous, which had happened only a few years earlier, involved a gang that had rented a chic apartment near the Grand Canal in Venice. Dealers from London, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam had delivered paintings worth more than a million pounds to a charming, elegantly dressed gentleman in exchange for a receipt and the promise of a bank transfer next day. The bank transfer never arrived, and (I like this touch) the check for the apartment bounced.

  “It served the suckers right,” I said.

  “That sort of transaction used to be standard practice, Vicky. In part it’s because people in this business like to think of themselves as gentlemen, dealing with gentlemen.” Alan shook his head. “Unbelievably naive. Fine art and rare antiquities have become big business. Paintings are selling for incredible sums at auction galleries, and the black market is flourishing. I might accept a wire transfer from the Metropolitan Museum, but not from anyone or anything less well known.”

  “Interesting. Well, thanks for the lecture.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound patronizing.”

  “That’s okay. Art scams aren’t my field.”

  Which was not strictly true. My long association with John in his Mr. Hyde (i.e., Sir John Smythe) persona had taught me more than I really wanted to know about the illegal aspects of the trade. Take forgeries, for instance. Laymen innocently assume that any museum curator knows how to spot a fake, but I wouldn’t swear to anything unless it was in my own limited field, and sometimes not even then. So-called critics talk learnedly about brushstrokes and technique, but the only sure way of detecting a fraud is through scientific analysis—such as the use of pigments which weren’t known before the twentieth century in a purportedly sixteenth-century painting. As for flat-out theft, the security systems in many museums can be circumvented by anybody with a pair of pliers or a nail file—or enough money to bribe a guard. As John had once remarked, the fancier a gadget, the greater the likelihood it will break down at the wrong time. He preferred to deal directly with venal human beings.

  It was all very depressing.

  I said, “I’m going out for a breath of air.”

  I wandered slowly along the street, looking in windows and thinking vaguely about lunch. There was an open-air market not far away; I decided to check it out and maybe pick up a few healthful fruits and vegetables for the flat. I hadn’t gone far when a car pulled to the curb and a voice called, “Miss? Excuse me, miss?” At the window I made out a large piece of paper that appeared to be a map, with the top of a bald head visible over it. Some poor lost soul wanting directions, I assumed.

  The sun was bright, the pavement (as they call it in England) was busy with pedestrians. Helpful little me, I was within a few feet of the car when an arm went round me and pulled me back. The car took off with a screech of rubber, barely missing a taxi.

  FOUR

  G oddamn it,” said John. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I was just…Ow. That hurts. What do you think you’re doing?”

  His grip relaxed. I rubbed my ribs.

  “Saving you from a fate worse than death. Again. Have you no sense of self-preservation?”

  The suspect vehicle had vanished. “I don’t suppose you got the license number,” I said, trying to catch my breath. It was beginning to dawn on me that I had just had a narrow escape.

  “I was otherwise occupied. A futile procedure in any case; the vehicle was probably hired, and tracing a license number isn’t easy unless you’re a copper. Did you get a look at him?”

  “No,” I said, resisting his attempt to lead me back to the shop. “He was hiding behind a map. Naturally I assumed…Give me a break, John, I had no reason to suppose anybody was after me. What made you suppose that?”

  “My general operating principle—always expect the worst. Hasn’t it dawned on you that you are my weak point?”

  He paid me the compliment of not spelling it out in detail. The attempt had been so blatant that it might well have succeeded by virtue of its sheer unexpectedness. A few seconds of shock and confusion on the part of bystanders, and they’d have had me inside the vehicle and away. And once they, whoever the hell they were, had a hostage, they could get anything they wanted from John. I remembered seeing someone in the backseat. Maybe more than one.

  A few passersby had stopped to stare. John kept tugging at me and I kept resisting. One Good Samaritan, a little man with a brushy mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, cleared his throat. “Miss, is this person annoying you?”

  John turned to give him a furious look. I was tempted to say yes, but his nobility demanded a kinder response. “No, we’re just having a little domestic disagreement,” I said. “He wants to go one way and I want to go another. But it’s very kind of you to ask. You are the sort of citizen who makes this country great.”

  The little man marched off, preening himself, and John said under his breath, “Come back inside.”

  “I was going to the market,” I explained. “Which is where I’m going now. With you by my side, my hero, who would dare interfere with me? Stop glowering before some other chivalrous soul decides to come to my rescue.”

  The corners of John’s mouth twitched. “You win, as usual. I doubt they’ll try it again so soon. Give me your word, for what that’s worth, that you won’t venture out alone from now on.”

  I love street markets. I still retain the delusion that produce is fresh from the local farm, even though I know most of it is imported from faraway places with strange-sounding names. Some of the stalls had lovely veggies, lettuce and tomatoes and bananas and artichokes, some sold baked goods and bottled fruit juices, coffee, chocolate, and so on. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be allowed out for a while, so I loaded up as for a siege. “We need butter for the artichokes,” I remarked.

  “I’ve got all I can carry,” said John. One hand was empty, but I saw his point.

  When we got back to the shop, Alan was lounging in the doorway. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Why should you suppose otherwise?” I inquired.

  “No reason.” Alan gave John an odd look. “Do you want me to stick around? I have a date, but I can cancel it.”

  “Take the rest of the day off,” John said. “And don’t forget your hat.”

  After Alan had stalked out we retired to the office, and I spread out a few edibles on the desk. John condescended to accept an apple.

  “Spare me the lecture,” I said. “I realize I have to alter my behavior. I just wish I knew what the hell is going on. Is everybody after us?”

  “Three, by the latest count. Bernardo and Company, the chap in the car just now, and the spinster lady in Kent.”

  It took me a minute to remember. “Oh, the lady with the pre-Columbian collection. You called her?”

  “She was a baritone.” John studied the apple distastefully and put it down on the desk. “Said she had a cold.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “She suggested I call on her at the earliest opportunity. Today, if feasible. Gave me directions to her remote manor house deep in the country.”

  “Oh. Was that what alerted you to my peril?”

  “I suppose so.” John rubbed his forehead. “Perhaps it was the mental bond between us, the marriage of true minds, et cetera.”

  “Right.”


  “And the fact, brought home to me by the baritone, that some individual or group here in England is already on our trail. That we need to be on our guard every bloody second of every day.”

  “You’d like me to butt out of this, wouldn’t you?” I said, responding not so much to his words as to his tone of voice.

  “It’s too late for that, Vicky.” He put his head in his hands.

  “We could have a spectacular public fight,” I suggested. “Declare to the world that we have split up and that we loathe each other.”

  John lowered his hands and gave me a feeble grin. “You have the most unusual ways of trying to cheer me up. Believe me, I thought of that. There are two problems. First, that we wouldn’t be believed. Second, that the lads and lasses who are after me would assume you’d be more than happy to cooperate with them for the sake of revenge.”

  “Okay,” I said briskly. “So what do we do now?”

  “Leave town. As soon as possible.”

  “What about Schmidt?”

  “That’s our next problem. He didn’t tell you what time he’ll arrive?”

  “No. I could call him back.”

  “There’s not a chance we could get on a plane before tonight. Anyhow, I think we need to have a little chat with Schmidt. It’s too much of a coincidence that Suzi should decide to break off with him at this precise time. We’ll hole up in the flat, wait for him to ring, and then go to see him at the Savoy. If he makes it that far.”

  Leaving me with that encouraging thought, he turned back to the computer. “Nothing of significance,” he reported, after checking his e-mail. “You had better see if Schmidt has been in touch again.”

  Once again I found myself yearning for the good old days when letters and telephone calls (with no call-waiting, no voice mail, no answering machines) were the only means of communication, bar the occasional telegram. There was nothing new from Schmidt. By the time I finished reading chatty notes from a few friends, John was brooding over his cell phone.