Street of the Five Moons vbm-2 Read online

  His blue eyes glowed like the cabochon stone in Charlemagne’s talisman.

  Modesty is not one of my virtues, but this naïve appeal made me feel uncharacteristically modest. It was true that once before I had had moderate success as a sort of historical detective, but I succeeded in that case because the solution to the problem depended on a body of specialized knowledge, which I happened to possess. I am a historian, not a criminologist, and if this was a case of art forgery on a grand scale, I rather suspected that the skills of the latter specialist would be more useful than those of the former.

  However . . . Again my eye was drawn to the soft blue gleam of the great sapphire. Fake? It looked awfully real to me. There was something hypnotic about that stone, and about the appeal Schmidt had made. My work was pleasant but rather dull; even my pornographic novel had bogged down. And it was May, that month of all months when emotion overcomes good sense.

  ‘Well,’ I said. I leaned back in my chair and put my fingertips together. (What fictional detective was it who did that? Sherlock Holmes? Schmidt made a wonderful Watson.) ‘Well, Wat – I mean, Schmidt, I just might be willing to take this case.’

  The police official reminded me of Erich von Stroheim, whom I had seen on the Late, Late Show back in Cleveland, except that he didn’t have a monocle. I guess they’ve gone out of style. He kissed my hand, however. I enjoy having my hand kissed. I can’t imagine why American men haven’t taken it up, it gets even us feminists.

  I hadn’t expected to have my hand kissed, but I had expected some interest. Bavarians like blondes. Bavaria, in case you didn’t know, is one of the southern provinces of Germany; its people are members of the Alpine sub-race, short and stocky and brunette, so they appreciate the Valkyrie type. I was wearing a tight sweater and skirt, and I let my hair hang down over my shoulders. I didn’t care what Herr Feder thought of my brains, I just wanted to get all the information I could out of him.

  After all, there wasn’t much he could tell me. All the normal sources of inquiry had drawn a blank. The dead man simply wasn’t known to the police.

  ‘This does not mean he is not a criminal,’ Feder explained, rubbing his thick grey eyebrows. ‘It only means that he is not known to us or to Interpol. He may have been arrested in some other country.’

  ‘Have you checked in the States?’ I asked, leaning back in my chair and taking a deep breath.

  ‘What?’ Feder’s eyes moved reluctantly back to my face. ‘Ah — verzeihen Sie, Frdulein Doktor . . . No, we have not. After all, the man committed no crime – except to die.’

  ‘The museum authorities are rather concerned.’

  ‘Yes, so I understand. And yet, Fräulein Doktor, is there really any cause for suspicion? Like all police departments these days, we are badly overworked. We have too much to do investigating crimes that have occurred; how are we to spend time and money inquiring into a vague theory? If the museum wishes to investigate on its own, we will extend the fullest cooperation, but I fail to see . . . That is, I have no doubt of your intelligence, Fräulein Doktor, but – ’

  ‘Oh, I don’t intend to pursue criminals into dark alleys, or anything like that,’ I said. We both laughed gaily at the very idea. Herr Feder had big, white, square teeth. ‘But,’ I continued, ‘I am curious about the case; I was about to take leave anyway, and Herr Professor Schmidt suggested I might pursue certain leads of our own, just to see what I could find out. I wonder . . . I guess I had better see the corpse.’

  I don’t know why I made that suggestion. I’m not squeamish, but I’m not ghoulish, either. It was just that I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I had no other lead.

  I regretted my impulse when I stood in the neat, white antiseptic room that houses the morgue of Munich. It was the smell that got me: the stench of carbolic, which doesn’t quite conceal another, more suggestive, odour. When they turned the sheet back and I saw the still, dead face, I didn’t feel too good. Suggestion – the reminder of my own mortality. There was nothing particularly gruesome about the face itself.

  It was that of a man in middle life, though the lines were smoothed out and negated by death. He had heavy black brows and thick, greying black hair; his complexion was tanned or naturally swarthy. The lips were unusually wide and full. The eyes were closed.

  ‘Thank you,’ I muttered, turning away. When we got back to his office, Feder offered me a little sip of brandy. I hadn’t been that upset, but I didn’t like to shatter his faith in female gentleness. Besides, I like brandy.

  ‘He looks like a Latin,’ I said, sipping. It was good stuff.

  ‘Yes, you are right.’ Feder leaned back in his chair, his glass held lightly between unexpectedly delicate fingers. ‘Spanish or Italian, perhaps. It is unfortunate that we found no identification.’

  ‘That seems suspicious.’

  ‘Perhaps not. The man was in the alley for hours, no one knows how long. It is possible that some casual thief robbed him. If he carried a wallet or bag, it would have been stolen for the money it contained. His papers, if any, would have been in that wallet. And a valid passport is always useful to the criminal element.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I agreed. ‘A thief would have overlooked the jewel, since it was sewn into his clothing.’

  ‘So we think. There were a few odds and ends in his pockets, the sort of thing a thief would not bother with. Handkerchief, keys – ’

  ‘Keys? Keys to what?’

  Feder produced a positively Gallic shrug.

  ‘But who can tell, Fräulein Doktor? They were not keys to an automobile. If he had an apartment, the good God alone knows where it might be. We inquired among the hotels of the city, but have had no luck. It is of course possible that he only arrived in Munich yesterday and had not registered at a hotel. Would you care to see the contents of his pockets?’

  ‘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.

  It was too early to dine, so I found a sidewalk café, ordered a Campari and soda, and watched the passing throng.

  At least that was what I planned to do. I hadn’t been seated for more than sixty seconds when a good-looking boy sat down next to me, smiled like a Fra Angelico angel, and made an extremely improper suggestion in Italian.

  I smiled back at him and made an equally improper suggestion in Italian as fluent as his, but better accented. (The Roman dialect sounds atrocious; it is jeered at by other Italians, especially the Florentines, who speak lovely pure Tuscan.)

  The boy’s expression was ludicrous. He had expected me to understand only his sweet smile. I went on to explain that I was expecting my boyfriend, who was six feet six inches tall, and a star soccer player.

  The boy left. I opened my guidebook and pretended to read. Actually, I was checking the map, and plotting.

  Shops in southern Italy close between noon and four o’clock and then reopen until seven or eight. The streets are crowded during these lovely evening hours, when the heat of the day is passing and the light lingers. There was still plenty of time for me to visit the Via delle Cinque Lune and number 37 in a subtle and inconspicuous manner.

  As I walked along, I began to realize that one of the elements in that plan wasn’t going to be as easy as I had anticipated. I am not exactly inconspicuous. For one thing, I’m half a head taller than most Romans, male or female; I stood out like a perambulating obelisk in that throng of little dark people. It became increasingly evident to me that I was going to need some sort of disguise.

  I felt even more conspicuous after I had crossed the Via del Corso and plunged into the twisting network of small streets around the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona. There are no sidewalks, except on the big main streets and corsos. The house facades front onto the pavement, which is so narrow in some places that pedestrians have to flatten themselves against a wall to let a Fiat go past. Every tiny piazza has a café or two, whose tables and chairs are insecurely protecte
d from traffic by potted shrubs.

  I walked slowly along the Via dei Coronan, peering into the windows of the shops. It wasn’t easy to see the merchandise; there were no plate-glass show windows, brilliantly lighted, as in American stores. But the dark, dusty interiors of these shops held treasure. A worm-eaten but oddly compelling wooden saint, greater than life size, from some looted church; pairs of huge silver gilt candelabra; Meissen china, bodiless gilded Baroque cherubs, a dim, cracked triptych with scenes from the life of some virgin saint . . .

  I would have passed the entrance into the Via delle Cinque Lune if I hadn’t been looking for it. You couldn’t even get a Fiat into that passageway without squeezing, but it was lined with shops even darker and more expensive looking than the ones on the Via dei Coronari. One window had an embroidered Chinese robe that stopped me in my tracks. A concealed light brought out the shimmer of the gold threads, which outlined amber and citrine chrysanthemums and a peacock’s tail of glowing blue-green. It must have been a high official’s robe. I had seen one not nearly so lovely in the Victoria and Albert in London.

  The number above the door of the shop was 37.

  I went on slowly, looking in other windows and feeling absurdly pleased with myself. The odds were at least two to one that number 37 should be an antique shop; there were greengrocers and chemists on the street, plus private houses and apartment buildings. It was a small confirmation of my nebulous theory, but I was in a mood to appreciate any encouragement.

  The street curved like the arc of a bow and ended in another equally narrow passageway called the Via della Stellata. At the far end of this latter street I could see a patch of sunlight and a piece of a fountain. It was Bernini’s ‘Fountain of the Rivers,’ in the Piazza Navona.

  I don’t often read mystery stories. For light reading I prefer bad historical novels with voluptuous heroines and swashbuckling heroes, and lots of swordplay and seduction. But in some of the mysteries I had read, the heroes – and villains – used to break into places quite a lot. They usually burgled the back entrance through an alley that was conveniently located behind the place they wanted to search.