Street of the Five Moons

Chapter One

I WAS SITTING at my desk doing my nails when the door opened and the spy sneaked in. He was wearing one of those trench coats that have pockets and flaps and shoulder straps all over them. The collar was turned up so that it practically met the brim of the hat he had pulled down over his eyebrows. His right hand was in the coat pocket. The pocket bulged.

‘Guten Morgen, Herr Professor,’ I said. ‘Wie geht’s?’

Wie geht’s is not elegant German. It has become an Americanism, like chop suey. I speak excellent German, but Herr Professor Doktor Schmidt was amused when I resorted to slang. He has a kooky sense of humour anyhow. Schmidt is my boss at the National Museum, and when he’s in his right mind he is one of the foremost medieval historians in the world. Occasionally he isn’t in what most people would call his right mind. He’s a frustrated romantic. What he really wants to be is a musketeer, wearing boots and a sword as long as he is; or a pirate; or, as in this case, a spy.

He swept his hat off with a flourish and leered at me. It breaks me up to watch Schmidt leer. His face isn’t designed for any expression except a broad Father Christmas grin. He keeps trying to raise one eyebrow, but he can’t control the muscles, so they both go up, and his blue eyes twinkle, and his mouth puckers up like a cherub’s.

‘How goes it, babe?’ he inquired, in an accent as thick as Goethe’s would have been if he had spoken English – which he may have done, for all I know. That’s not my field. My field is medieval Europe, with a minor in art history. I’m good at it, too. At this point it is safe to admit that I got my job at the museum in Munich through a certain amount of – well, call it polite pressure. Professor Schmidt and I had met while he was under the influence of one of his secondary personalities – a worldly, sophisticated crook, like Arsene Lupin. We had both been looking for a missing art object, and some of the good doctor’s activities towards this end might not have struck his scholarly colleagues as precisely proper. No, it was not blackmail – not exactly – and anyway, now that I had been on the job for almost a year, Schmidt was the first to admit that I earned my keep. He didn’t even mind my working on my novel during office hours, so long as I took care of pressing business first. And let’s face it – there are few life-and-death issues in medieval history.

Professor Schmidt’s eyes fell on the pile of typescript at my right elbow.

‘How goes the book?’ he inquired. ‘Did you get the heroine out of the brothel?’

‘She isn’t in a brothel,’ I explained, for the fifth or sixth time. Schmidt is mildly obsessed by brothels – the literary kind, I mean. ‘She’s in a harem. A Turkish harem, in the Alhambra.’

Professor Schmidt’s eyes took on the familiar academic gleam.

‘The Alhambra was not – ’

‘I know, I know. But the reader won’t. You are too concerned with accuracy, Herr Professor. That’s why you can’t write a popular dirty book, like me. I’m stuck for the moment, though. There have been too many popular books about Turks and harems. I’m trying to think of an original example of lust. It isn’t easy.’

Professor Schmidt pondered the question. I didn’t really want to hear his idea of what constituted original lust, so I said quickly, ‘But I distract you, sir. What did you want to see me about?’

‘Ah.’ Schmidt leered again. He took his hand out of his pocket.

It didn’t hold a gun, of course. I had not expected a gun. I had expected an apple or a fistful of candy; Schmidt’s potbelly is the result of day-long munching. But at the sight of what emerged, clasped tenderly in his pudgy fingers, I gasped.

Don’t be misled by the gasp. This is not going to be one of those books in which the heroine keeps shrieking and fainting and catching her breath. I’m not the fainting type, and not much surprises me. I’m not that old (still on the right side of thirty), but my unfortunate physical characteristics have exposed me to many educational experiences.

Let me make it perfectly clear that I am not kidding when I refer to my figure as unfortunate. I’m too tall, almost six feet; I inherited a healthy, rounded body from my Scandinavian ancestors, along with dark-blue eyes and lots of blonde hair; I don’t gain weight, so the said body is slender in what are supposed to be the right places. As far as I’m concerned, they are the wrong places. All you ugly ducklings out there, take heart; you are better off than you realize. When people love you, they love the important things about you, the things that endure after wrinkles and middle-aged spread have set in – your brains and your personality and your sense of humour. When people look at me, all they see is a blown-up centrefold. Nobody takes me seriously. When I was younger, I wanted to be little and cuddly and cute. Now I’d settle for being flat-chested and myopic. It would save a lot of wear and tear on my nerves.

Sorry about the tirade. But it isn’t easy to convince people that you’ve got a brain when all they can see are curves and flowing blonde hair. Nor is it easy for a woman like me to get a job. Intellectual women mistrust me on sight. Intellectual men are just like all other men, they hire me – but for the wrong reasons. That was why meeting Professor Schmidt was such a break. Bless his heart, he’s as innocent as he looks. He really thinks I am brilliant. If he were six feet four and thirty years younger, I’d marry him.

He beamed at me as he stood there in his spy costume, with his hand outstretched; and the object on his palm glowed and shimmered, almost as if it were smiling too.

It was a pendant, made of gold richly embellished with filigree volutes and leaf shapes. Two tiny gold figures of kneeling women supported the rigid loop through which a chain had once passed. All around the heavy gold rim were stones set in filigree frames – stones of green and red and pearly white. In the centre was an enormous azure-blue stone, translucent as water contained in a crystal dome. There was a flaw in the central stone, a flaw that looked like a small rough-hewn cross.

A casual eye might have taken those stones for irregular, roughly polished chunks of glass. Mine is not a casual eye, however.

‘The Charlemagne talisman,’ I said. ‘Schmidt, old buddy – put it back, okay? You can’t get away with it; somebody is sure to notice it’s gone.

‘You think I have stolen it?’ Schmidt grinned even more broadly. ‘But how do you suppose I have removed it from the case without setting off the alarms?’

It was a good question. The museum has a superb collection of antique jewellery, which is kept in a room built especially for it – a room that is one enormous vault. It is locked at night and watched continuously by three guards during the day. The alarm system is so delicate that breathing heavily on one of the cases will set bells ringing. And although Schmidt was one of the directors of the museum, neither he nor anyone else had authority to remove any of the historic gems from their cases unless he was accompanied by two other museum big shots and a whole battalion of security guards.

‘I give up,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how you got it out, but for heaven’s sake, put it back. You’ve been in trouble before with your weird sense of humour, and if they find out – ’

‘Nein, nein.’ He shook his head regretfully, abandoning his joke in the face of my obvious concern. ‘It is not stolen from the case. I have not taken it from there. It was found last night in the pocket of a dead man, in an alley near the Alter Peter.’

My mind fumbled with this information for a few moments.

‘This isn’t the real brooch, then,’ I said.

‘A ber nein. How could it be? I assure you, we would notice if the gem had been taken away. It is a copy. But, liebe Vicky, what a copy!’

I took it from his hand. Even though I knew it was not the real gem, my touch was tentative and respectful. The more closely I examined it, the more my amazement grew. I had to take Schmidt’s word for it that this wasn’t the real talisman, but it certainly looked good, even to my trained eye.

The goldwork was superb, each tiny filigree wire having been shaped and set with masterful skill. As for the jewels, even an expert gemologist would have had trouble deciding they were fakes without the use of the complex instruments of his trade. The original pendant had been made in the ninth century, long before modern techniques of faceting gem stones were developed. The rubies and emeralds and pearls on the golden frame were roughly polished and rounded – ‘cabochon’ is the technical term. The only precious stones that are cut in that antique style today are star rubies and star sapphires; the rounded shape brings out the buried star refraction. The cabochon-cut sapphire in the centre of this jewel shimmered softly, but did not glow with the buried fire of a faceted stone. I knew that it was not one sapphire, but two, placed back to back, and that the flaw in the centre was not a ‘star’ or a natural blemish, but a sliver of the ‘True Cross,’ which made the jewel into a very expensive reliquary, or talisman.

‘You could fool me,’ I said, putting the pendant down on my desk blotter. ‘Come on, Schmidt, elucidate. Who was this character in whose pocket the pendant was found?’

‘A boom,’ said Schmidt, with a wave of his hand.

‘A what?’

‘A boom, a vagabond, a drunkard,’ Schmidt repeated impatiently.

‘Oh. A bum.’

‘Did I not say so? He had no money, no passport, no papers of any kind. Only this, sewn with care into a secret pocket in his suit.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Not violently,’ Schmidt said, with obvious regret. ‘There was no wound. Of poison, perhaps, or drugs. Or cheap hooch, or – ’

‘Never mind,’ I said. When Schmidt starts speculating, especially in what he fondly believes to be American slang, he can go on and on and on. ‘Really, Schmidt, this is fantastic. I suppose the police notified you. How did they know this was a copy of one of our pieces?’

‘They thought it was our piece,’ Schmidt said. ‘They are men of culture, our Polizisten; one of them comes often to the museum and recognized the ornament. I was called in this morning.’

‘You must have had a fit when you saw it,’ I said sympathetically. ‘With your weak heart and all.’

Schmidt rolled his eyes dramatically and clutched at his chest.

‘It was a terrible moment! I knew of course that our pendant could not have disappeared; but was this the fake, or the one in our treasure room? Until our experts could examine both, I died a mlllion deaths.’

‘It could still fool me,’ I admitted. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Do not say such things, even in jest! No, this is the imitation. But such an imitation! The gold is genuine. The stones are not glass, they are modern synthetics. You have no doubt heard of these imitation rubies, emeralds, sapphires? Some are such excellent copies that only the most sophisticated equipment can tell they are not real. And the workmanship of this . . .’

‘I don’t see why you’re so upset,’ I said; for he was mopping his bald head, and his baby-blue eyes were narrowed in distress.

‘So some eccentric collector wanted a copy of the Charlemagne pendant. A good copy, not like the moulds museums sell these days. The use of real gold is rather peculiar, perhaps, but the frame is hollow; I don’t suppose there is more than a few hundred dollars’ worth of precious metal involved here. What’s the problem?’

‘I thought you would understand!’ Schmidt’s eyes widened. ‘You are such a clever woman. But then jewellery is not your specialty. To go to such trouble, such expense, in order to imitate a piece like this . . . There are only a few goldsmiths in the world capable of such work. They do not have to earn a living making copies. It is . . . too cheap and yet too costly, this copy. Do you see?’

When he put it that way, I did see. I nodded thoughtfully and looked more closely at the lovely thing on the desk.

Most women have a weakness for jewels. The only reason why men don’t is because it is out of fashion. In earlier centuries men wore as many ornaments, with as much vanity, as women did. I could understand why someone might want a copy of the Charlemagne talisman for purely decorative reasons. I wouldn’t have minded wearing one myself. But anyone who wanted a copy, just for fun, wouldn’t go to the trouble of using such expensive materials, nor pay a jeweler of such skill the exorbitant sum necessary. There was another point that Schmidt had not mentioned. In order to copy the jewel with such fidelity, a designer would have to study the original in detail. Nobody had applied to the museum authorities for permission to do so, or Schmidt would have known about it. Therefore someone must have spent long hours studying photographs and descriptions, perhaps even visited the museum. Why do all this surreptitiously if his purpose was honest?

‘You think some gang of thieves is planning a robbery,’ I said. ‘That there is a plot to substitute imitations for the real jewels.’

‘It is a possibility we must consider,’ said Schmidt. ‘You see that we cannot ignore such an idea.’

‘Yes, of course. You are quite right. I’ve seen movies about things like this – ’

‘Not only in fiction,’ Schmidt said gloomily, passing his handkerchief over his forehead. ‘The problem of skillful fakes has been with us since the beginning of time. As soon as man began collecting beautiful objects, for himself or in museums, the swindler and faker began their dastardly work. Vicky, we must find out about this. We must know for sure. If there is a harmless purpose – then, good. But if not, every museum, every collector in the world is vulnerable to a craftsman of such skill. Supposing that the substitution could be made, it might take us years to discover that ours was not the genuine object. A copy so good as this would defy more than a casual glance.’

‘Right.’ I touched the central sapphire of the pendant with my finger. It felt cool as water and smooth as ice. It was hard for me to believe the darned thing wasn’t genuine. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

‘Not we. You.’ Schmidt’s rosy face regained its normal good humour. ‘The police have investigated, naturally. But they have come to a – what is the English? – a dead stop.’

‘Dead end?’ I suggested.

‘Yes, yes. The man on whose body this was found had no identification. His description, his fingerprints, are not known to Interpol. Our police are magnificent, but there is a limit to what they can do. So I turn to the lady whose skill and imagination are like those of the great English Sherlock. I appeal to my Vicky! Find this man for me, this unknown creator of magnificent copies. You have done it before; you can do it now.’

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 protected 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.

There was no alley behind the Via delle Cinque Lune.

The street didn’t even form one side of a square. As I have said, it was curved. Maybe there was only one entrance to the shop. From the rubbish piled by the door that seemed a likely hypothesis.

I turned and went back along the Street of the Five Moons. I didn’t stop to look at the mandarin’s robe this time, but I took careful note of number 37 itself. There was nothing distinctive about it except for a name painted in discreet black lettering above the door – A. Fergamo. It meant nothing to me. But I saw something else I had not noticed before – a slitlike opening on one side of the building, so narrow that the sun did not penetrate the gloom within.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped to make several purchases. I took them to my room and freshened up; then I went to the hotel dining room and ordered the specialty of the house, with a bottle of Frascati. It was all on Professor Schmidt, and I toasted him as I drank my wine.

I left the hotel at about ten. It was too early for breaking and entering, but I didn’t want to wait any later for fear of attracting attention. Even in Rome, nice girls don’t go out alone at 2 a.m. The streets were still crowded with people. They all seemed to be paired off like Siamese twins, even the middle-aged tourists. The elderly ladies arm in arm with their paunchy, balding escorts looked rather sweet. There is something about Rome on a spring evening . . . I had to remind myself that I had more important matters to deal with.

I ducked into the first dark doorway and put on my disguise. It wasn’t very complex, just a dark raincoat, a pair of glasses, and a navy-blue scarf tied closely over my hair. I was wearing sneakers and brown slacks. That was all I needed – that, and a stooped, shuffling walk and a sour look that curved the corners of my mouth down. Nobody bothered me after that.

I prowled the streets of Rome for almost three hours. Lights went out as I wandered. Shops closed, windows darkened. When midnight struck from the countless church towers, I was on the Lungotevere Sangello, one of the broad boulevards that follow the winding course of the Tiber. I stood for a long time with my elbows on the stone parapet, looking down at the river where the reflected shapes of St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’ Angelo shimmered in the dark waters. The lights of the Via delle Conciliazione led straight as a ruler toward the circular piazza of St Peter’s, and the great dome blocked out a circular section of the sky.

Rome is a swinging city; it doesn’t roll up the pavements at midnight. But some areas are more lively than others, and the antique area had gone to bed at ten o’clock. When I tore myself away from the magnificent view, I found most of the streets deserted.

It was a good thing I had visited that part of town by day: I had a hard time finding my way. Once I had left the busy boulevards by the Tiber, I might have been in another world, for this part of Rome hasn’t changed in externals for hundreds of years, and it doesn’t go in for streetlights. I had a flashlight – one of my purchases earlier that day – but I didn’t want to use it. So I shuffled along, head bowed, through the darkened streets. Occasionally I passed another form as dark and shadowy as my own. At the far end of a curving street I would sometimes catch a glimpse of bright lights and hear a ghostly echo of revelry from the Piazza Navona. It is one of the tourist centres, and some of the cafés and restaurants stay open far into the night. It was only a few blocks away, but it might as well have been a few miles. The lights didn’t penetrate into the gloomy passageways where I wandered. I hoped the constabulary of the city kept itself busy watching over exuberant tourists.

Finally I found number 37 and the passageway alongside the shop. Lord, was it dark in there! The street was dark enough; this slit looked like the mouth of a big animal. I groped into it, sliding my feet so as not to stumble over something I could not see. My hands felt gritty as they trailed along the crumbling brick of the wall.

There may have been windows in the wall, though I doubt it; why construct windows that open onto a two-foot-wide alley? I was looking for a door, and I soon found it. Then I used my flashlight, shielding it with the ample folds of my raincoat. The door was solid and the lock was a big, old-fashioned type.

Any adolescent with a grain of initiative learns how to pick locks. I learned in tenth grade from Piggy Wilson. He used to steal bikes – not for filthy gain, just to ride around on. He had a thing about bicycles . . . Anyhow, all you need for an ordinary lock – not the combination, or Yale, types – are a couple of long, stiff steel probes and another long metal gadget with a hook on the end. Remember buttonhooks? They were before my time, too, like the high-buttoned shoes on which they were once used. But I had read about them, and I had found one in an antique shop of the cheaper sort, on the fringes of the Via dei Coronari area.

With the buttonhook and a thin steel probe it was no problem to force the lock. I had expected there might be chains and bolts as well, and had planned to worry about them when I found them. To my surprise and pleasure the door gave to the pressure of my hand as soon as I had unlocked it. I should have been suspicious, instead of pleased. I should have known there was a reason why the door wasn’t bolted.

I heard the reason before I saw it. It was a growl that sounded as if it came from the throat of a grizzly bear – a low bass rumble, with lots of teeth behind it.

I switched on the flashlight. In its beam I saw the source of the growl. Not a grizzly bear, nothing so harmless – but a dog the size of a small horse, black as Satan except for a mouthful of white fangs. Talk about the Hound of the Baskervilles. There it was, except for the phosphorescent slaver – a Doberman pinscher, the fiercest guard dog in the world.