Trojan Gold

The crowd swayed back and forth, laughing and cheering. Children broke away from their parents and capered madly in the open space; they were promptly snatched away by an adult, but some of the younger men remained, daring the headlong rush that would soon be upon them. The priest came out onto the church steps, robed in scarlet and lace, holding the Book and surrounded by his entourage.

Then the head of the procession appeared. It wasn’t a parade, it was a rout; they came at a dead run, their feet trampling the snow, their torches whirling, their faces flushed with exercise and excitement. The noise was deafening. Some of the youths waited till the last possible second to throw themselves aside, or to join the fringes of the rushing throng. Parents clutched their children tighter; girls squealed with half-real, half-pretended terror as the bright tails of the waving torches came dangerously close to them. As the procession thundered toward him, the priest stood his ground, smiling and raising the gilded crucifix; the runners came to a sudden stop, spreading out to fill the spaces reserved for them on either side of the church steps.

That should have marked the end of the performance, but instead of dispersing, the crowd pressed closer to the ropes, and nervous giggles replaced the shouting. The priest remained in his place, his crucifix raised. Then from the darkness beyond the Platz came a soft pattering of feet and an odd rustling.

They ran in silence, with a strange broken step, darting from side to side and then huddling together, but never slowing their frenzied speed. Wrapped in straw, like animated haystacks, with faces out of nightmares—long hairy muzzles, pointed fangs, horns crowning their brutish heads. They were armed, not with guns, but with chains, axes, hatchets, and long, sharp pikes.

One of them darted toward us, its hatchet raised. It had a stag’s head, the great horns rampant, the glazed eyes fixed. The people around us gasped and swayed; I lost my footing and felt a moment of sharp, genuine terror as I feared I might fall under the close-packed bodies and booted feet. Then I was caught and held by someone’s arms. The menacing figure spun back to join its fellows, and the bizarre procession passed on, to the open space in front of the church, where it was surrounded and menaced by the runners. The crowd cheered as the honor guard, the last of the forces of light, marched proudly past. They carried guns and wore a kind of uniform—apparently a select group from one of the Christmas shooting clubs.

That was the end of the parade, and people started moving away, toward the church. Jan continued to hold me close. His lips brushed against my ear. “Poor little Vicky, did the demons frighten you? Never fear, I will protect you from the darkness.”

“I slipped,” I said coldly. The truth is, I have always been terrified by witches and demons—or perhaps I should say by scary costumes. It stems from a Halloween outing when I was about eight and was cornered by a bunch of fierce twelve-year-olds dressed like skeletons.

Jan didn’t believe me. “I have always desired you,” he whispered hotly. “Later I will come to you. Tell me where your room—”

Even if I had been tempted by the offer, which I wasn’t, being somewhat suspicious of Jan’s motives, the sheer publicity would have put me off. Several of the group overheard—Tony, for one.

“Next time it gets to be too much for you, just put a notice on the bulletin board,” I said rudely and swung the heel of my boot against Jan’s shin. He released me, a little more abruptly than I had anticipated; I staggered forward, bounced off the ropes, and found myself nose to nose with an individual wearing a ski mask patterned in shrieking colors of crimson and green. Two eyes blue as cornflowers gazed soulfully into mine; the mouth framed by the slit of the mask was twitching with some strong emotion. Probably suppressed laughter.

John melted into the crowd, as was his wont, and my dear old friends clustered around to confer about what we should do next. Dieter was all for hitting the night spots of Garmisch, and Elise, shivering and tottering on her ridiculous heels, seconded the idea of indoor entertainment. No one else was interested, so the two of them went off arm in arm. Jan had a hard time deciding which group to spy on; after wavering indecisively, he ran off after Dieter and Elise.

Their departure cleared the air considerably. I was still mad at Tony, but not as mad as I had been. Once I cooled off, a possible explanation for his inexcusable behavior had come to me—a relatively harmless and mildly flattering explanation. I decided to let bygones be bygones, at least for the rest of the evening.

Schmidt bought more of everything that was edible and pressed samples on us—gingerbread and candy canes and cookies and pretzels shaped like snowflakes and marzipan pigs wearing sugary wreaths around their sweet pink necks—and, of course, beer. The church was packed, not even standing room; but the doors stood open to the bright night, and we gathered with other spectators beside the steps and listened to the sweet high children’s voices singing. “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht,” “O du fröhliche,” and the lovely old cradle song—“Mary sits among the roses and rocks her Jesus-child…”

Schmidt was too choked by emotion to sing, which was fortunate, since he can’t, but the others joined in; Tony hummed in a mellow baritone and I threw in a few wobbly notes of my own. When the mass ended, the congregation poured out, full of virtue and ready for fun; there was dancing in the plaza and an exhibition of marching by one of the shooting societies, and an incredible amount of eating and drinking. This was the last night of public revelry—Christmas Eve would be spent in family gatherings and quiet devotions—so people made the most of it. The merriment was still in full swing when I persuaded Schmidt we ought to pack it in. The children and older people and family groups had gone home and things were getting rather lively. A couple of fights had already broken out; I was afraid that, left to his own devices, Schmidt would start challenging people to duels and some other drunk would take him seriously.

A final nightcap in the bar consoled him, and we went upstairs arm in arm singing his favorite carol, a corny old pop song about the Weihnachtsmann. Tony didn’t know the words, which did not prevent him from singing along. As Schmidt entered their room, bellowing the refrain—“Didel-dadel-dum und didel-dadel-dum—” Tony caught my hand. “Can I…I mean, is it okay if I…I mean—”

“I know what you mean and no, you can’t and no, it is not okay.” I pulled my hand away and marched off. Honestly, I thought—it just shows what a mistake it is to be nice to some people. At the door of my room I turned. Tony was looking at me, his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. If he had appeared apologetic, or pleading, or even disappointed, I might have weakened, but his pose of righteous indignation brought my anger to the boiling point.

“Shame on you,” I said. “Faithless and forsworn already? How could you so easily forget dear little Ann, the knitter of sweaters?”

Out of consideration for sleeping guests, I did not slam my door. Dimly in the distance I heard the reverberation as Tony slammed his.

The maid had left a single light burning; the room looked warm and cozy, but it was already cooling off. Tossing my jacket onto the bed, I quickly got into my nightgown and opened the window a crack. I was about to leap into bed when suddenly there came a tapping—as of someone gently rapping—at my chamber door.

“Go away, Tony,” I called.

The tapping came again. It occurred to me that it might not be Tony. I unlocked the door and looked out.

Not Tony, not Jan, not John. Dieter.

I assumed he must be up to one of his unseemly jokes. He was dressed for it, in an overcoat that practically touched the floor and a fifties fedora pulled low over his eyebrows. The reek of beer was so strong I fell back a step. Dieter took this for an invitation; he slithered through the opening and closed the door. Then he turned the key.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I said, backing away from him. “Get the hell out of here, Dieter.”

“I will take off my coat and stay awhile,” said Dieter, with the profound air of a man quoting from the classics.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” I began.

He did anyway. My eyes popped. He was wearing the most hideous pajamas I have ever seen—and I include Schmidt’s, which range from the merely tasteless to the utterly unspeakable. Dieter’s were lavender, printed with sketches of naked women and rude sayings in German, French, and English. I started to laugh. Dieter looked hurt. He put out one hand and pushed me, hard. I fell backward onto the bed; Dieter fell on top of me.

I was tired, and still bemused by the lavender pajamas; it took me a few seconds to react. When I did, I was surprised to find that my struggles to free myself were futile. He had both my arms pinned, and his mouth covered mine so that I couldn’t express my exasperation. Exasperation was the word—not fear, nor even worry; he was stronger than I had realized, but I am not exactly a fragile little victim type. I decided to relax and bide my time. It wasn’t until I heard the fabric of my nightgown give, with a nasty rending rip, that I got mad. That nightgown had cost me 380 marks.

Before I could slug him, Dieter suddenly soared up into the air. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. He seemed to hang there, arms and legs dangling, mouth horribly smeared with my lipstick, for the longest time. Then his feet dropped, his body swung sideways, and he toppled over backward.

I raised myself onto my elbows and stared at John. “Well! That was lovely. Rambo couldn’t have done it better.”

“Rambo would have blown him away.” John frowned at his scraped knuckles and raised them tenderly to his mouth. “Which is what I should have done,” he mumbled. “When will I learn to control these impetuous impulses? I suppose now you’re going to tell me you didn’t need rescuing.”

“Well, no,” I said apologetically. “Although it was a very nice gesture.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s only Dieter.”

“Maybe you did need rescuing.”

“Oh, it was just a silly joke. Look at those pajamas.”

“They’re a joke right enough. The absolute nadir of bad taste.”

“Exactly. Dieter thinks I’m here with Tony. He probably set this up so that Tony would burst in on us and find us in a compromising position.”

“Very funny,” muttered John. “Far be it from me to criticize your personal habits, but the way these men keep popping in and out…Is Tony about to join us?”

“I shouldn’t think so. But you’d better go. If Dieter wakes up and sees you—”

“He could hardly have missed me,” John said caustically. “Had I but known you were entertaining, I’d have worn my mask.”

“I think he’s coming to,” I said.

A mumble from poor Dieter confirmed the diagnosis. John glanced down at him. “No, he’s not,” he said.

“John, don’t—” It was too late—not that he would have paid any attention anyway. The toe of his boot clipped Dieter’s jaw in a carefully calculated, but very nasty-looking blow. Dieter subsided. I winced.

John sat down beside me on the bed. He started to speak, then frowned and fumbled under his thigh. “What the hell is this?”

I studied the object he was holding; things had been happening so fast, I had to think before I could identify it. “It’s a bulb.”

“I can see that,” John said in exasperation. “Perhaps I should have been more explicit. Why are you hatching daffodils in your bed?”

“It must have fallen out of my pocket. How do you know it’s a daffodil?”

“My dear old mum is a fanatical gardener. I’ve planted thousands of the damned things for her. There’s no use carrying it around, Vicky, it’s the wrong time of year.”

“Well, I know that. I found it at the cemetery—on Mrs. Hoffman’s grave. It looked so lonesome and cold—”

A moan from the recumbent form at our feet interrupted me. John said, “I should have kicked him harder.”

“Don’t you dare kick him again.”

“I suppose I can’t go on doing it indefinitely. He must have a jaw like Gibraltar. Honestly, Vicky, you can waste more time on trivial conversation than anyone I’ve ever met. Get rid of him. Like MacArthur, I will return.”

“When?”

“As soon as you get rid of him.” John rose to his feet, then looked searchingly at me. “Can you handle the fellow?”

“No problem. He’s very drunk.”

“Smells like a brewery,” John agreed, wrinkling his nose fastidiously. “Very well, then—à bientôt.”

He faded into the night like a shadow, leaving a blast of cold air to remind me my torso was bared to the breezes. After examining the damage, I was tempted to kick Dieter myself. Annoyance made me less tolerant of his moans of pain and protestations of regret than I might otherwise have been; I bundled him ruthlessly out into the hall and watched with mean satisfaction as he set off on a slow retreat, ricocheting from wall to wall.

“You forgot these,” I called, heaving his coat and hat after him.

I suppose I needn’t have spoken quite so loudly. As luck would have it, Schmidt chose that moment to open the door of his room. His exclamation of surprise and interest brought Tony to the door as well; the two of them stood there like Mutt and Jeff, staring from Dieter in his lavender pajamas to me, in what was left of my expensive nightgown.

I retreated and slammed the door. As I turned the key, icy air brushed my back and I whirled around, crossing my arms over my chest. “Close that window,” I ordered.

He had already done so. “Cold?” he inquired. “Personally I find it a bit close in here.” He peeled off his sweater and hung it neatly over a chair. “Stop right there,” I said, as his fingers went to the buttons of his shirt. “This is going to be a business conference.”

“You aren’t dressed for it,” said John.

“Where the hell is my robe?”

It was lying on the bed. I reached for it, and jumped spasmodically as a thunderous knock echoed at my door. “Vicky?” Tony bellowed.

“What do you want?”

“I want to come in.”

“Well, you can’t. Go away.” I got one arm in a sleeve. It was the wrong sleeve. John, lips twitching, moved to help me—or so I thought; instead of the robe, it was his arms that went around me. After an exploratory traverse, his lips settled into the hollow between my neck and shoulder.

“What happened?” Tony demanded loudly. “Are you all right? What did you do to him? What did he do to you?”

“Noth—ooop!—nothing.” John was laughing soundlessly; the movements of his lips were horribly ticklish. “Stop that,” I gurgled.

“What?” Tony shouted.

“Get lost, Tony. I mean it.”

“That goes for you, too,” I added, as the sound of heavy, offended footsteps thumped away.

John released me and sat down on the bed. “How do you do it?” he asked curiously. “Where do you find these farcical characters?”

“We are not amused,” I said, finally managing to get both arms into the sleeves of the robe. “Do you suppose we can possibly have a sensible conversation now?”

“Yes, I suppose we’d better. There’s no telling who will pop in next. Let’s see—where were we? You were telling me about visiting Hoffman’s grave.”

“That’s all there was to it. I visited the grave, I left my wreaths. That was a relatively peaceful interlude in a day otherwise full of surprises. Don’t you want to know why Schmidt got drunk last night?”

“Yes, I do, rather.”

“He found a body in my back yard. A dead body.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Do let’s stop being so cool and sophisticated about all this,” I grumbled, pacing the floor. “It was Freddy. According to Schmidt, he had been stabbed.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t work up much heated indignation about Freddy’s demise,” John said. “I saw he wasn’t at his post today; I assumed he had fled or been sent away, but it doesn’t surprise me to learn that someone found him an unnecessary encumbrance. Let’s see…. Schmidt found him yesterday. He must have been killed, and left on the premises, the night before. The murderer would hardly risk carrying out his activities in daylight; your neighborhood is too populous. So what was the noble dog doing night before last?”

“I had taken him to his sitter early in the evening. Which means,” I added, before he could do so, “that the killer didn’t know I have a dog; or he knew the dog was out of the way; or he didn’t give a damn whether the body was discovered or not.”

“That would seem to cover all the possibilities,” John admitted. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

“No, thank you. Let me get on with my report. If you’d stay at home where you’re supposed to be, you’d have known all these interesting things earlier.”

“Oh, were you looking for me?”

“Yes. So was Clara.”

“I can’t say I’m sorry to have missed Clara.”

“She went with me to the cemetery.”

“How jolly. I seem to detect a note of criticism, even of resentment, in your voice; is there something I’m missing?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. Let’s see, what else is new? Oh, yes. Jan Perlmutter has come in out of the cold, or out of the closet, or whatever—”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

John threw up his arm as if to protect himself from a blow. “Your suspicion cuts me to the quick. I saw the gentleman with you this evening, and I recognized him from the snapshot you were good enough to share with me.”

“Oh.” I sat down on the bed. “So you admit you’ve been watching over me. Or is it following me?”

“A little of both.” His hand moved across the small of my back.

“I said this is business—”

“A little of both,” John repeated. “Yes, I saw Perl-mutter. I found it amusing….” Somehow I found myself on my back with John leaning over me and the robe I had assumed with such difficulty half-off. He continued without missing a beat, “…seeing you all together, smiling at each other and lying…” He kissed me and went on smoothly, “…in your collective teeth with every word….”

I let out a screech. “Your hands are freezing.”

“Oh, sorry. Let’s try this.”

The next sound I made wasn’t a scream, but I supposed it might have been rather shrill. John’s reply, if any, was lost in a thunderous crash. The door exploded inward and a large, round projectile hurtled through the opening. A large, round, orange projectile.

“You are safe, Vicky, I am here,” Schmidt shouted. “There is nothing to fear!”

“Oh, Christ,” John said. “Is that—does he have—”

He rolled off me and got very slowly and carefully to his feet.

“Put the gun down, Schmidt,” I said apprehensively.

“Oh, it is Sir John,” Schmidt exclaimed. “I am so glad to see you again, my friend.”

John bared his teeth in a sickly smile. “I’m delighted to see you, too, Herr Schmidt. Er—that’s a very nice gun you have there. Colt forty-five, isn’t it?”

Schmidt nodded, beaming. “Yes, it is a rare antique. Would you like to see it?” He offered it to John. I think he’d forgotten his finger was still on the trigger. The muzzle was pointing straight at John’s nose.

“Lovely,” John said in a strangled voice.

His hand moved in a blur of speed, sweeping the weapon neatly out of Schmidt’s pudgy little paw. Then he turned pea-green and collapsed into the nearest chair.

“You don’t have to be so rude,” Schmidt said, hurt. “I would have given it to you.”

“Where did you get it?” I demanded. Germany in its admirable wisdom has very tight gun-control laws.

Schmidt grinned and winked. “Ha ha, Vicky. I have my connections.”

“It probably isn’t even registered,” I muttered. “Schmidt, what possessed you to come crashing in here?”

“You screamed,” said Schmidt.

“I did not scream. I…It was not a scream.”

“Well, I see that now,” said Schmidt. He gave me an admiring leer. “I forget that you have so many lovers. First Tony—”

John stopped mopping his brow and gave me a thoughtful look, but said nothing. Schmidt went merrily on, “I knew it was not Tony, since he was with me. Dieter was very angry after you would not let him make love with you, he said many rude things which you did not hear because you had closed the door, but I was afraid he would come back and do what he said he would do to you, so I brought my gun, in case of trouble, and tiptoed here to listen at the door and make sure Dieter had not come back to assault you, and then when you cried out…Well, now you see how it was. Are you going to get up from the bed?”

“No,” I said.

“Then I will sit here and we will have a conference,” Schmidt announced.

“Schmidt,” I said wearily, “the door is gaping open—I don’t know how we are going to explain that—and I am somewhat inadequately clothed—”

“Yes, it is very nice,” said Schmidt, eyeing me with candid approval.

“…and why Tony hasn’t appeared I cannot imagine—”

“He won’t come; he is sulking,” Schmidt explained. “He said you were rude to him and so far as he is concerned the entire male population of Bad Steinbach can assault you. But he didn’t mean it, Vicky.”

“Go away, Schmidt,” I said.

“I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here and talk to Sir John.”

“I’m afraid not this evening, Herr Schmidt.” John had recovered himself; he rose with all his old grace, and had the effrontery to grin at me. “Shall we try my place next time?” he inquired politely. “This has been an evening I won’t soon forget, but the novelty of it would pall with repetition.”

“Go away, John,” I said.

“Can I have my gun back?” Schmidt inquired meekly. John weighed it in his hand. I knew it was against his principles to carry a weapon—”the penalties are so much more severe”—but it was even more against his principles to give it back to Schmidt.

“I’ll take it,” I said, standing up with a martyred sigh. My nightgown promptly slid down to my hips, and Schmidt emitted a gentle moan of pleasure. I decided he had had enough excitement for one night, so I put on my robe and slipped the Colt into its pocket, over Schmidt’s strenuous objections—to the robe and to the “sequestion of his piece,” as he called it.

I got them both out, and shoved an armchair against the door to hold it in place. Schmidt had burst the tongue of the lock completely out of its socket. That was one thing he did well, falling heavily on things and breaking them. I went to bed. Nobody woke me. I didn’t know whether I was glad or sorry about that.

Nine

I THINK I HAD A RIGHT TO EXPECT THAT AFTER the carnival of comedy inflicted on me the night before, matters were going to calm down. Wrong; the second act of the farce began with the arrival of my breakfast. It surprised me a little, because I hadn’t ordered breakfast.

I mumbled “Herein,” in response to the call, and then realized that she couldn’t because the chair was blocking the door. So I got up and moved it.

The woman wasn’t one of the waitresses—at least she wasn’t one of the current waitresses. She did not respond to my sleepy “Guten Morgen”; carrying the tray with that never-to-be-forgotten skill, she pushed past me and slammed it down on a table.

“That’s very nice of you,” I began.

“Eat it and go,” said Friedl. She folded her arms. “I need the room. It is reserved. You will please check out before Mittag.”

There were two cups on the tray. I sat down and poured coffee. “Are you joining me?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why…Oh, I get it. Not bad,” I said judiciously. “As you can see, Frau Hoffman, I am alone. What’s bugging you? Why aren’t we friends anymore?”

“You can ask?” She flung out one arm in a dramatic gesture toward the door, sagging on its hinges. “I do not allow such things in my hotel.”

“Oh, that was just Schmidt,” I said. “He’ll pay for it. He’s got pots of money.”

Now that the coffee had cleared my head, I could see her outrage was not assumed. Her chin was jerking spasmodically and her eyes were about to overflow.

“Something is wrong,” I said. “Please, Frau Hoffman, won’t you sit down and tell me about it?”

“But that is just it. You don’t talk to me. I invite you here, I appeal to you for help and you betray me….”

Her voice broke into ugly, gulping sobs.

“You’re right,” I said quickly. “Absolutely right. I owe you an apology.”

Her sobs subsided into snuffles. She looked suspiciously at me. “You apologize?”

“Yes. We’ve neglected you, I know that. But believe me, Frau Hoffman, that’s only because there is nothing to report. We’ve explored every lead we could think of and found nothing.”

Tears had excavated deep tracks through her make-up. “That is what you say; but how do I know you aren’t lying to me—keeping it for yourself?”

Friedl was herself again. I decided it was time to respond in kind instead of being so bloody polite. “You don’t,” I said. “Whereas I know you have consistently lied to me. I want to help you, but you must tell me everything you know.”

“I have….” Her hand went to her mouth.

“I don’t think so. What happened to Freddy? Why are you so frightened?”

“Freddy?” Her voice rose shrilly. “What does he have to do—”

My abused door swung open. “More screaming,” said a familiar voice. “Again it is Schmidt to the rescue!”

It wasn’t just Schmidt, it was an entire delegation—Tony, and behind him, looking uncharacteristically shy, Dieter.

“Nobody is screaming,” I said irritably. “We were just talking. If you will all go away, perhaps I can resume what was beginning to look like a very interesting conversation. Girl talk. Do you know about girl talk, Schmidt? It’s between girls—females. No men allowed.”

Nobody took the hint. Dieter shoved Tony, who shoved Schmidt, and the trio came into the room.

“We will talk, too,” said Schmidt. “We can put the cards on the table, since the spy is not here.”

“He’ll probably turn up any second,” I said resignedly.

With the instincts of a homing pigeon, Schmidt zeroed in on the second cup and my hitherto untouched breakfast. He said indistinctly around a mouthful of pastry, “Let us have three more cups and perhaps an omelet, eh? Then we can sit back and have a pleasant—”

“Drop that telephone or I’ll break your wrist,” I said. “This is my room, dammit; I’m tired of people walking in and out as if—”

“I’m not leaving until everyone else leaves,” Tony announced. He folded his arms magisterially.

“Why not talk now?” Dieter was frankly amused. He dropped into the armchair and smiled impartially at all of us. “Cards on the table, as the Herr Direktor has said. You were holding out on us, weren’t you, Vicky? You are in the confidence of this charming lady. Don’t you think it is time you admitted the rest of us to her confidence?”

Friedl glanced at him askance. “I don’t know anything,” she muttered.

“That’s true,” I said. “Friedl—Frau Hoffman—asked me to come, and Schmidt and Tony were in on the deal, too. But she knows even less than we do. Only that her husband was mumbling about some long-lost treasure.”

Dieter rolled his eyes and looked skeptical. “It sounds very peculiar to me.”

“Your basic premise still holds,” I pointed out. “If any of us knew where it is, we’d grab it and run.”

Friedl’s reddened, smeary eyes turned to me. “You would?”

“Now, don’t give Frau Hoffman the wrong idea,” Tony said. “We’re not trying to pull a fast one. If we ran with it, we’d run straight to the proper authorities. Right, Vicky?”

“Oh, right. Sure.” I added thoughtfully, “Whoever the proper authorities may be….” I saw Friedl’s head swivel toward me, her eyes narrowing. She might not be too bright, but she had a good ear for nuances—of a certain variety.

“We wish to help you, Frau Hoffman,” Dieter said. “You know we are honorable people, with reputations to consider. Have faith in us.”

“Well…”

“If you still want me to leave,” I began.

“No. No, I didn’t mean…” She glanced around the room and seemed to gain confidence from the silent approval and sympathy the men were beaming at her. “I would be pleased to have you stay on.”

“For another day or two, then. Perhaps we can talk later—all right?”

I hoped she would take the hint, and her departure; the arrival of the committee had ended any hope of a confidential chat, but I had a feeling that Friedl and I might have things to say to one another under the right circumstances.

“Changed your mind, eh?” said Tony, after Friedl had left. “Now why—”

Schmidt had finished my food. “It is time for breakfast,” he announced. “Let us adjourn the meeting to the restaurant and confer some more.”

“Yes, why don’t you?” I said. “I’ll join you later.”

Dieter was the last to leave. He looked doubtfully at the sagging door. “Did I do that?” he asked. He sounded as if he hoped he had.

“No. Don’t you remember?”

His sudden rueful grin stretched the purpling bruise on his jaw. “I remember only that I made a fool of myself, as I always do with you. Did you have to hit me so hard?”

“I didn’t…”

His eyes were wide and innocent. I amended my original statement; if he really didn’t know there had been another person in my room, there was no need to tell him. “I have a few bruises of my own, buddy.”

“Am I forgiven?”

“I think you came out worse than I did.”

Dieter’s hand went to his jaw. “Yes. I think so, too.”

Glancing into the restaurant as I passed, I saw that Jan had joined the group. If I had entertained the slightest intentions of participating in that so-called conference, the sight of him would have squelched them.

Sullen gray clouds pressed down on Bad Steinbach. A scattering of snowflakes was blown into frenzied dances by the frigid wind. Gaiety prevailed, despite the cold; booths and stands still fringed the Marktplatz, dispensing food, drink, and variegated trinkets. It was Christmas Eve. The demons of darkness had been banished for a year, and tonight the birthday of the Child would be celebrated with midnight mass at the church and private family devotions.

There was no sign of life at Müller’s shop—inside or outside. My signaled knock went unanswered. As I re-emerged into the Marktplatz, I saw someone sauntering slowly across the open square. He walked toward one of the cafés and went in.

The small place was crowded, the few tables occupied. I joined the man who was standing at the counter—a man with a bushy gray mustache and heavy matching brows. His knit cap was pulled low over his ears. I ordered coffee and bread from the bustling waitress and waited until it had been delivered before I turned to him.

“Why aren’t you answering your door?”

He had his back to the room, but his eyes remained fixed on the mirror behind the counter. There was a second door not far away; I knew if he saw anything that bothered him, he’d be out the door in a flash—leaving me with the check.

“I’ve moved,” he said after a moment. “Too many people know where I live.”

“What have you done with the cat?”

That inconsequential question drew a flash of blue eyes and a half-smile. “Locked her in the house with three days’ supply of food and water. Müller will be back by then.”

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell.”

“It’s Friedl. She’s wound so tight she’s ready to explode. She burst into my room this morning in a fit of hysterics and ordered me to leave—”

“Well, what can you expect after that performance last night?” The gray mustache quivered.

“Oh, that was just an excuse. I tell you, she’s terrified.”

“Perhaps this is the time to apply pressure.” There was no pity in his voice, only a cold ruthlessness. I knew he was right, but I hated him for being right—and I hated myself for agreeing.

“It’s for her own good,” I argued.

“Oh, quite. Poor little Friedl…. You won’t gain any information about the whereabouts of Hoffman’s treasure, but you might learn the identity of his murderer. If that detail concerns you….”

“It concerns me,” I said curtly. “We could be wrong, you know. All the members of the group are behaving exactly as one might expect them to. How do we know there isn’t an unknown third party involved?”

“Eighth or ninth party, rather. Whoever he is, he has murdered two people. Friedl may be next.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what has me so…” The cup I was holding wobbled. John’s hand closed over mine, steadying it.

“Then it behooves you to convince the lady—I use the term loosely—to spill her guts, before he can do it for her…. Sorry. ‘A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.’”

“Amen. You’re neglecting to watch the mirror.”

“Oh, right.” John released my hand and assumed his former position. After a moment he said, “I believe you are overly concerned about the danger to Friedl. Through her, he has access to the hotel and to Hoffman’s papers and property. He’d be a fool to kill her so long as there is the slightest chance that she’ll find something, or remember something, that might help him. But if he ever finds out where it is…”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am always right,” John said.

“You keep saying ‘he.’ You don’t have any idea—”

“Not the slightest.” His eyes remained fixed on the mirror. Mine remained fixed on him. He hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “I use the masculine pronoun for the sake of convenience. By all the standards of detective fiction, the villain ought to be Elise. She’s been less prominent in this affair than the others.”

“The least likely suspect? No, that’s Rosa D’ Addio. She isn’t even here.”

The corner of John’s mouth relaxed. “That sounds like Schmidt’s logic. She probably ignored the photograph. Any sane scholar would.”

“Exactly. Which brings us back to—”

“Your lot,” said John. “Speaking of which, or whom—”

I glanced over my shoulder. When I glanced back, he was gone.

I hadn’t seen any familiar faces. I assumed John had pulled another of his little tricks to distract me so he could slither away.

When I got back to the hotel, I found that my buddies had finished breakfast and were staked out in the lobby waiting for me. I thought I caught a glimpse of Dieter’s shrieking aquamarine jacket ducking back into the restaurant as I walked into the hotel; his wish to avoid me showed an unexpected sensitivity. Maybe Tony had read him a little lecture.

“Where is Jan?” I asked, sitting down on the couch next to Schmidt.

Schmidt chuckled. “In the kitchen. He is interrogating the cook, I think. A council of desperation! I have already questioned her, and the good woman knows nothing—except the recipe for the Bavarian burger, which she was kind enough to give—”

“Spare me,” I said, wincing.

“That reminds me,” said Schmidt. “I want my gun back.”

I failed to see the connection, but I said firmly, “You can’t have it.”

“It is a valuable weapon, a museum piece. I want—”

“I’m not going to steal it, Schmidt. Just keep it until…until later. And that reminds me…” I scowled at Tony. “What possessed you to let Schmidt out of the room with that weapon last night? He could have killed somebody.”

Tony had to raise his voice to be heard over Schmidt’s sputtering protests. “I hoped he would.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“He wouldn’t shoot you.” Tony thought a minute. “Unless it was by accident. Vicky, I am not going to comment on your sexual activities—”

“You damn well better not.”

“Because that is a private matter between you and your conscience. But I would like to know, if you will pardon my curiosity, what made you decide to stay on at Bad Steinbach.”

“Yes, I would like to know that, too,” said Schmidt. “You have found a clue? If you have, and you keep it to yourself, you can find yourself another position. I will set fire to you.”

“Not ‘set fire,’” I said automatically. “Oh, never mind. I don’t have a clue, Schmidt. I will come clean with you, though. I think Friedl may be having second thoughts. She’s wound tighter than one of Dieter’s trick snakes. It’s barely possible that, properly persuaded, she will break down and talk to me. Me,” I added, clutching Schmidt’s collar as he started to rise. “Confidences of that sort are best induced on a one-to-one basis.”

“Why not me to her?” Schmidt asked hopefully.

“I think Tony to her would be more effective,” I said. “But give me a crack at her first, okay?”

They agreed. Then Schmidt said, “Can I have my gun back?”

“No.”

“Humph.” He glanced at his watch. “Ha. It is time for Mittagessen.”

“Schmidt, you just ate a huge breakfast,” Tony protested.

“But it is now almost Mittag. Come, I will take you both to lunch. Then…Then what shall we do?”

“You guys can do anything you like,” I said agreeably. “I’m going to Garmisch. I have to do my Christmas shopping.”

“Christmas shopping!” Tony was incredulous.

“This is Christmas Eve,” I reminded him.

“Ha, yes,” Schmidt said eagerly. “And tonight we have the roast goose and the presents and the Christmas tree…. I will find a tree, a little one, and we will put the ornaments on it—”

“I thought you were going to your sister’s.”

“I will call and tell her I am dying,” said Schmidt. “I would rather be with you, Vicky.”

“Me, too, Schmidt.” I smiled at him. “And I’d rather be here than trying to explain to the Munich police why there’s a dead man in my garden.”

“So that is why you stay,” said Schmidt.

“It’s a good reason. What do you want for Christmas, Schmidt?”

I figured it was safe to leave Schmidt unattended. After lunch he would have a nice long nap, and then his shopping would keep him busy for the rest of the afternoon. Tony asked to go with me, expecting, I’m sure, that I would fob him off with some excuse or other. He was disarmed, poor innocent, when I said it was fine with me. “But you’ll have to go off on your own part of the time,” I warned him. “I’m not going to buy you a present with you looking over my shoulder.”

Tony smiled shyly.

As soon as I’d gotten rid of him, I went to the magic shop Dieter had mentioned. They had what I wanted; I also bought Schmidt a lightbulb nose like Dieter’s and a few other props. After that, I let myself go; what the hell, it was Christmas Eve. When I got back to the car, loaded with parcels and wrapping paper, Tony was waiting for me.

“You really did go shopping,” he said in surprise.

“You must stop doubting me, Tony. I told you I wanted to get something for you. Here it is…. No, no fair peeking.”

It was a sweater, made in Taiwan. I had the tag all made out: “From Ann, your imaginary fiancée in the Far East.”

Tony had packages of his own; he showed me what he had bought for Schmidt while we drove back. It was getting dark. Clouds shrouded the sky and hung low over the mountains. The lights of Christmas trees and candles, placed in the windows of every house to honor the Child, defied storm and darkness. The radio was playing carols, and even the voice of the announcer predicting heavy snow in southern Germany didn’t spoil my mood. Damn it, I thought, I’m going to have a happy Christmas Eve. I’ll forget about poor frozen Freddy and all the rest of it for a few hours. Caesar would be having the time of his life with Carl, feasting on goose and pudding and anything else his canine heart desired. He would then be violently sick—on Carl’s floor, not mine. And John would be—where? Probably freezing his butt in the snow while he spied on me or on someone equally harmless. Serve him right. That cynical creature was as far removed from the gentle kindliness of Christmas as the pagan deities the priest had exorcised.

For the first time that year, and under rather inauspicious circumstances, I found I had some genuine Christmas spirit. Tony and I parted at our respective doors after agreeing we would meet in an hour for the start of the festivities. He promised he’d keep Schmidt out of my way until I had finished wrapping my presents, and I promised I wouldn’t peek through his keyhole or otherwise cheat until he called to tell me he and Schmidt were ready.

Humming unmelodiously but cheerfully, I spread my purchases out on the bed—including a box of chocolates, Vicky’s present to Vicky. The bright wrappings and colored ribbons, an American contribution to old-fashioned German customs, looked pretty and festive. I had even remembered to buy a small pair of scissors and some tape.

Dusk deepened into darkness twinkling with lights. Far away in the distance, muted by the closed window, I could hear the sound of a radio or tape playing Christmas carols. I thought of poor Clara, locked in the dark house all alone. Perhaps I ought to get her and let her share the goose. One of the neighbors must have a key. And if I did happen to run into John…Nobody should be alone on Christmas Eve. I might even ask him to join us. Schmidt would be tickled pink to have him. Tony would be furious…. It would be an interesting combination—a real witches’ brew of personalities. Not such a good idea, after all. Besides, it was unlikely I would see him.

I was busily wrapping packages when the telephone rang. Expecting Tony, I didn’t recognize the voice at first, or understand what it was trying to say. Then the hoarse, rattling sounds shaped themselves into words. “Please—come—help me….”

“Friedl?” I exclaimed. “Is that you? What’s wrong?”

“Yes…come, please….” There was a muffled thud, as if the telephone had dropped from her hand, and after that nothing but silence.

I dropped my own phone and bolted for the door. No time to tell Tony—no time to do anything except get to her, as fast as I could. God, she had sounded as if she were being strangled, even while she was trying to speak to me.

The lobby was full of holiday celebrants, gathered around the tree in the center. The bar had spilled out into the lobby, and people were raising glasses, singing, and laughing. By contrast the private corridor was ominously quiet. Not a soul was visible, not a whisper came from Friedl’s apartment. The door to her sitting room was ajar. I eased it open.

Tony was bent over the couch—over something lying on the couch. Hearing me enter, he straightened and turned around. Great drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead, and his face was a horrible gray-green. But it wasn’t as bad as the face of the woman on the couch. I recognized her by her frizzy blond hair and by her clothing.

“She’s dead,” Tony said.

I touched Friedl’s wrist, searching for a pulse—a futile gesture, but one I felt I had to make. “She’s dead, all right. It must have happened within the past few minutes.”

“I didn’t do it,” Tony said. “She was on the floor—”

“You picked her up? Oh, Tony!”

“I didn’t think.” Tony raised one hand to his forehead. “She called me—asked me to come down here on the double—sounded absolutely frantic, I hardly recognized her voice. You believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe you.” My response was automatic. As I stared down at the swollen cyanotic face, I was remembering what John had said earlier that day. “If he ever finds out where it is…”

It would seem that he had found out.

And so had I. I could only marvel that it had taken me so long.

Ten

A CLICKING SOUND, LIKE CASTANETS, made me start. It was Tony’s teeth. Poor baby, he wasn’t accustomed to death in such an unattractive form.

Well, neither was I. They say one’s mind works with unnatural quickness in times of crisis. Mine doesn’t always oblige in that way, but I knew we were in deep trouble. Not that there was any danger of Tony’s being convicted for Friedl’s murder; he hadn’t done it and they couldn’t prove he had. This was a delaying tactic, and it was more than likely…

“Get out of here,” I ordered. “Quick, run.”

I followed my own advice, but Tony just stood there, frozen with shock. Before I could return to him and remove him forcibly, there was a crash of crockery and ringing metal. Instinctively I ducked behind the open door. One of the waitresses stood in the doorway. She hadn’t seen me; her bulging eyes were fixed on Friedl’s hideous face. The tray had fallen from her hands.

The sight of her distress jolted Tony out of his. He took a step toward her. She screamed and fled. She went on screaming all the way down the hall.

“No, wait,” I gabbled, grabbing at Tony as he stumped toward the door. “It’s too late. This is what he wants….”

I could see the scheme in its entirety. I should have known the person who had set Tony up wouldn’t neglect to provide a witness. Running away now would be the worst thing Tony could do. Not only would it be taken as an admission of guilt, but if he was a fugitive, pursued by the police, one well-placed shot would give the authorities their murderer—dead and unable to defend himself. The safest place for Tony now was the slammer.

There was no time to explain. Already I could hear running footsteps and cries of alarm. I held on to Tony. “Wait, no time,” I insisted. “Wait.”

He didn’t struggle. All his natural, law-abiding instincts demanded that he stand like a man and face the music.

What I did was a dirty, low-down trick, but I had no choice. The crowd surged in—guests, waiters, busboys—all shouting in horror and distress—and surrounded Tony and the corpse. His poor white bewildered face was the last thing I saw as I slid quietly out the door.

I had to risk going to my room. I met no one on the stairs or in the hall, but when I opened the door, I saw Clara lying on my bed in a welter of tangled ribbon and shredded wrapping paper.

“Dammit,” I exclaimed. “How did you get in here? You’re not supposed to eat ribbons; they can block your intestines.”

Clara raised her head. A curl of scarlet ribbon dangled from her mouth like an outré mustache, and it seemed to me that there was a distinctly critical look in her eyes.

“Right,” I muttered. “Right. No time…” I snatched up my jacket and backpack and ran out.

How had she gotten into my room? The window was closed. John had locked her in the shop….

As I trotted through the lobby, I heard Schmidt’s well-known voice in the distance. He’d keep an eye on Tony. I wished I could have had him arrested, too. But the danger was not in the hotel, I was sure of that; it was heading up the mountain, to the same place I was going.

The twinkling Christmas lights and warmly lit windows of the houses I passed were poignant reminders of a misspent life. If I had settled down to domesticity, I’d be in just such a pleasant cottage, baking cookies and patting the dog and kissing the kiddies, instead of skidding along icy roads under a sky dark as death, on my way to a rendezvous with a murderer.

The traffic was surprisingly light. Not so surprising, actually; it was Christmas Eve, sensible people were safe at home. I swore—at myself—and swerved to avoid some idiot who was standing in the middle of the road waving his arms. As I turned sharply into the narrow track leading up the mountain, it occurred to me that the idiot had been wearing a uniform of some kind.

The wheels hit a stretch of ice and the car went into a skid. Despite the cold, I was sweating when I pulled out of it, and I forced myself to let up on the gas. There was no hurry. He couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes ahead of me, half an hour at the most. And what he had to do would take a long time, even if he had thought to bring the proper equipment. Needless to say, I had not. It wasn’t the gold I was after, it was the man. Not that I had the slightest idea of what I was going to do if I found him.

With a sharp stab of relief I remembered that Schmidt’s gun was in my backpack. Good old Schmidt.

The road was bad. I had to concentrate on keeping a steady pace, fast enough so the car wouldn’t stall on the slope, slow enough so I could handle the frequent skids. Only my own headlights broke the darkness ahead of me. I must have gone half the distance before a flash of light in my rearview mirror betrayed the presence of a following vehicle.

Could I be ahead of him? Certainly I could. My foot had started for the brake; the car wove wildly when I returned it to the gas, a little too emphatically. It made no sense to stop; if I did, I’d never get started again, and there was no place to turn until I reached the cemetery. Perhaps it was the law behind me—the cop I had narrowly missed. Such dedication over a simple traffic violation? I sincerely hoped so, but I wasn’t counting on it.

I had to keep both hands tight on the wheel, but how my fingers itched for that lovely gun. Time enough for that later, I told myself, and set my mind to considering alternative strategies. Or was it tactics? I can never remember which is which. Any attempt at innocent coincidence—“Fancy meeting you here”—was O-U-T, out. There was only one reason why anyone, including me, would visit the abandoned churchyard on such a night—and it wasn’t the desire for a quiet spin in the country. No, it would be a direct, honest confrontation for once, no pretense, no kidding around. I would have to get him—or her—before whoever it was got me.

I think if I had known who it was, I wouldn’t have been so nervous. Dieter or Jan or Elise? I wasn’t afraid of any of them, or of any hypothetical third party. I was afraid of the unknown. And of the possibility that it might be someone I did know but had not wanted to suspect.

The following headlights behind me alternately shone out and vanished, as I swung around the tight upward curves. The car wasn’t making any attempt to catch up; it stayed at the same discreet distance. So, I thought, not the police. No flashing lights, no siren.

Intent on the car behind me, I almost passed the cemetery. My turn was too sharp and too fast; the Audi slid sideways into a high snowbank, and the engine died.

I had closed my eyes involuntarily. When I opened them, I saw nothing but snow. Mercifully, my door was still clear. I fought my way out, pausing only long enough to snatch my backpack and turn out the lights.

There was no moon to shine on the breast of the new-fallen snow, but the pale surface was lighter than the sky. The desolate church loomed like a crouching dinosaur, its tower the stiff, raised head. I floundered through the drifts, leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Maybe abandoning the car had not been such a great idea after all. But the prospect of being trapped inside, with the opposite door blocked, was even more unpleasant.

The night blossomed with light. I fell face down, burrowing into the snow.

After a while I realized the light was gone. The car had passed by. It hadn’t turned into the churchyard; I would have heard the engine cut off.

I got slowly to my feet and brushed the snow from my face, and listened. The night was not silent. The wind blew shrill from the east, wailing under the eaves of the church and rattling the branches of the trees. It made a lonely howling in the night, like the poor demons of paganism, cast into outer darkness and bewailing their banishment from the throne of light.

As I stood there slowly congealing, I faced the unpleasant truth. I had panicked. I do that sometimes; what the hell, I’m not Superwoman. While I was thinking patronizingly about poor old Tony’s inability to react quickly in a crisis, I was reacting too quickly, mounting my horse and riding off in all directions. I should have tried to find help. Though whether I would have succeeded, on Christmas Eve, with a new-laid murder preoccupying the small police force, was open to question.

Either I was all alone in the cemetery, or the other denizens of the region were singularly silent types…. Obviously nobody had arrived on the scene before me. There was no sign of activity near the lonely grave. It would require a blowtorch or a long-burning fire to soften the frozen earth before anyone could begin digging. The driver of the car that had been following me must have been an innocent local, homeward bound to his cottage on the other side of the mountain.

Obviously I couldn’t spend the night squatting on Frau Hoffman’s grave, waiting for the unknown to turn up. I could freeze to death before that happened, if it ever did. I decided I had better get back to the car. In the enthusiasm of new-car ownership I had stocked the trunk with a variety of suggested emergency equipment. Some of it might even be there. The blanket was kaput; I had used it to cover the seat one day when I took Caesar to the vet, and he had eaten most of it. But if memory served, I still had a small folding shovel and a few other odds and ends. If I couldn’t dig the car out and get it back on the road, I might at least survive until morning.

It was at that point in my cool, deliberate reasoning that I heard something that was not the wind moaning in the branches. The wind wouldn’t call my name.

The voice came behind me—between me and the car. Did I panic? Of course I did. I started forward, my progress agonizingly slowed by the depth of the snow. Get behind something—that was my only thought. A snowbank, a wall—how about a tombstone? Plenty of them around.

“Vicky!” Unmistakably my name, though the wind snatched the syllables and played with them. High-pitched and distorted by emotion, it could have been the voice of a man or a woman.

I reached an area where the snow was slightly less deep—only about to my knees. The black square framed in whiteness was Hoffman’s tombstone. The snow lay deep and untouched over the graves. One of my wreaths had toppled forward, only a black half-circle showed, partially veiled by the drifting snow.

I could hear him now, thrashing after me. I reached into my bag and found the gun. My hands were stiff with cold, despite my gloves. I realized I’d have to remove one of them to get my finger around the trigger.

“Vicky!” Then, at last, I knew the voice.

He was a dark featureless shadow against the paler blanket of snow, but I would have known that shape anywhere. His voice was rough and uneven, barely recognizable. “What the hell are you doing? It’s thirty degrees below freezing; are you trying to turn yourself into an icecube?”

I said, “Friedl is dead. Murdered. Strangled.”

“Ah.” His breath formed a ghostly plume against the darkness. After a moment he said, “It’s here. I should have known. The bulb.”

“The wrong time of year, you said.” My lips were numb with cold. “Bulbs are planted in the fall, before the ground freezes. I expect he put the chrysanthemums in at the same time. Even if anyone noticed, in this remote place, the signs of digging would be explained.”

“And what more appropriate spot than the grave of his Helen,” John murmured.

Had he read Hoffman’s love letters? Not necessarily. His quick, intuitive mind was capable of appreciating the poetry of real life, even if he couldn’t feel it himself.

When he spoke again his voice cracked with anger. “So you came rushing up here in the dead of night, with a blizzard forecast, to catch a killer. Are you out of your mind? Even if he knows—”

“She’s safe until he finds out, you said.”

“I said a lot of things. What am I, the voice of God? He may have had other reasons for murdering her.”

I said, “I have a gun.”

“How nice.” He had regained control of his breathing; his voice was almost back to normal, light and mocking. “I suppose you could use it to start a fire. But if I may venture to make a suggestion, a packet of matches would be more useful.”

“I’m not so sure. What are you doing here?”

“I followed you, what do you think? You came haring out of the hotel as if your jeans were on fire and took off like a bat out of hell.” The dim shadow shifted, and I said warningly, “Don’t come any closer.”

“For God’s sake, Vicky! Do you want them to find us frozen in place, like Lot’s wife and her brother? Let’s go back to town and have a hot drink and a nice long—” His voice broke, in a long indrawn breath. Then he said quietly, almost reverently, “My God.”

Even the great John Smythe couldn’t have feigned that emotion. I glanced behind me.

It was almost upon us. I caught only one flashing glimpse before it engulfed me, but the sight burned an image into my eyes.

Snow. A solid, opaque wall of whiteness, silent, deadly, moving down from the mountain heights.

Within three seconds it had filled my mouth and nostrils, weighted my lashes, hidden the world. I heard John call out, and tried to fight my way toward him, but the wind tore his voice to tatters and drove me to my knees. When I struggled up, I had lost all sense of direction. Groping blindly, I stumbled forward. My foot caught on a tombstone and I fell again. The faint far-off wail I heard might have been his voice, or the wind—or my own whimper of fear. I couldn’t even see the ground, it was the same color as the air around me, but I felt it cold against my face as I slid forward. The blackness that filled my vision was a pleasant change after all that uniform white.

Warmth. Still dark, but warm and therefore wonderful. Surely there was a faint red glow, a specific source of heat not far away…. I was afraid to open my eyes. Mother always warned me I’d go to the bad place if I didn’t mend my sinful ways. Little did she know. After being frozen to death, hell seemed like…

“Heaven,” I murmured blissfully.

“You aren’t the first woman to tell me that,” said John’s voice.

I turned my head slightly and burrowed deeper into the lovely, prickly warmth of his sweater.

“How did you find me?” I asked drowsily.

“I believe the usual answer is, with great difficulty. To be quite honest, I fell over you. Lucky for you…. Lucky for both of us, in fact. It helped orient me; I was heading straight for the cliff.”

“Where are we?”

“Why don’t you open your eyes and find out?”

So I did.

The only light came from the flames of the fire by which I was lying. An empty, echoing darkness reached out beyond the light. At least it was enclosed; there was no wind and no snow, but it was warm only by comparison to the out-of-doors. Though the few details I could make out were indistinct, reasoning told me that there had only been one source of shelter near at hand.

“The church?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Where did you find the wood for the…Oh, John, you didn’t!”

“I hadn’t much choice. Luckily the pews were old wooden affairs. They burn very nicely.”

“But you’ll set the place on fire!”

“No fear. The baptismal font makes a handy little fireplace. Really,” John went on in a meditative voice, “I had no idea how convenient an abandoned church can be. I must remember to look for one the next time I’m benighted.”

“Good God,” I said helplessly.

“I couldn’t agree more. If you are sufficiently recovered to tend the fire, I will go questing to see what other useful items I can find. I felt a fire was the most important thing. You were unpleasantly frigid to the touch when I towed you in.”

I sat up. Once away from the warmth of his body, I realized the temperature of the air was well below freezing. I felt like a piece of bread in one of those old wire toasters, singed on one side and cold on the other.

He had removed my wet outer clothes and laid them on the floor near the fire. I heard him move away, cat-footed in the dust. He was whistling softly.

Well, I could think of worse people to be caught in a blizzard with. My lips twisted in a reluctant smile as I saw the crumpled papers next to the makeshift fireplace. They were pages from a hymnal.

I looked over my shoulder. The flame of his lighter gleamed like a star in the dimness, and I thanked God he had taken up smoking. “Haven’t you got a flashlight?” I called, and then recoiled as the high ceiling threw the last syllables back at me like the voice of the Inhabitant himself.

“Yes. In the caaaar…. Fascinating echo, isn’t it? Yodayahlalala…”

He came back carrying an armful of wood, which he dumped onto the floor. “I wonder if I could invent a torch,” he mused, squatting. “My lighter isn’t going to hold out indefinitely. We ought to save it in case the fire needs to be restarted.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked, as he straightened with a burning fragment in his hand.

“A bottle of sacramental wine would hit the spot.”

“I doubt that a thrifty Bavarian would overlook anything like that. Besides, this isn’t a Catholic church. Some offbeat local sect.”

John came back to the fire to rekindle his makeshift torch. “Please,” he said, in tones of the utmost sincerity, “Please don’t start talking about the Old Religion. The ambiance is grisly enough without that.”

“The Old…oh, you mean the witchcraft cult—the theory that it was a survival of pre-Christian religions. There are plenty of survivals around here.”

His teeth gleamed uncannily with reflected firelight. “Yes, I saw you gibbering at the Buttenmandeln. Or was that just an excuse to fling yourself into Perlmutter’s arms?”

He went off again before I could answer. I huddled closer to the fire.

The torch burned fitfully, now flaring up, now sinking to a sullen glow. Gliding through the darkness, it resembled a giant, diabolical firefly. A dry, inhuman squawl made me jump before I identified it as the sound of rusty hinges. The dancing light disappeared. An interminable time seemed to pass before it appeared again.

“Found the sacristy,” John announced. “Or the off-beat local version of same. Not much there.” He tossed a bundle onto the floor. Dust billowed up in an evil-smelling cloud.

“God,” I said involuntarily. “It smells like a grave.”

“Mold. Let’s eschew suggestive similes, shall we, and say mold.” John nudged the bundle with his foot. “Curtains. They’re rotting and filthy—and moldy—but we’re in no position to be fastidious. It’s going to be a long, cold night.”

“No wine?”

“No wine.” He sat down next to me. I edged away.

“Now don’t tell me you are going to come all over prim propriety,” he jeered. “Bundling, I have been informed, is a thrifty old New England custom which ought equally to have applied in the frigid tundras of Minnesota.”

“It’s not unheard of,” I admitted, moving into the circle of his arm. “I’ll endeavor to overcome my qualms about doing it in a church. What’s a commandment or two compared to death by freezing?”

“Fornication,” said John precisely, “is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments.”

“That’s a relief.”

“In fact,” John went on, “if one analyzes the sexual regulations of the Old Testament, one finds that they are based on property rights rather than moral attitudes.”

“Is that right?” I pressed closer against the warmth of his body.

“Adultery is prohibited because a man’s wife belongs to him in the same sense as his horse and his ass and so on. The daughter belongs to the father, so sibling incest infringes on the old man’s territory.”

“But surely father-daughter relationships—”

“There’s no prohibition against that.” John added thoughtfully, “I checked.”

I started to laugh. “This is an incredible conversation. Would you consider me vulgar if I asked why you investigated that particular issue?”

“That is not only vulgar, it is repellent,” John said coldly. “Idle curiosity alone prompted my investigation. It’s my greatest weakness—but one never knows when a seemingly irrelevant bit of information may come in handy.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

He turned slightly and put his other arm around my shoulders, holding me close against him. His warm breath stirred my hair. After a moment he let out a long, tremulous sigh.

“God, I’m hungry,” he said.

John claimed he had not eaten since breakfast because he had been too busy playing bodyguard for me. I took that with a grain of salt, but I was moved by his plight. I was hungry, too.

“I don’t suppose you brought my backpack? Oh, you did—bless your heart.”

“I had no choice. It was attached to you like a misplaced pregnancy.” A tender and touching hope dawned on his face as he watched me rummage in the knapsack. “I could even eat that bulb.”

“No, you couldn’t. Daffodil bulbs are poisonous.”

“So they are. I’d forgot. Another example of seemingly useless information proving relevant.”

“Yes; one never knows when one might want to poison an acquaintance. Here.”

John studied the object dubiously. “What is it?”

“Gingerbread. Schmidt kept forcing it on me last night.”

“I loathe gingerbread. What’s that white on it?”

“I guess some of the tissue I wrapped—”

“Hand it over.”

I went on rummaging while he munched. His eyes widened as the pile of edibles mounted up. An apple, two-thirds of a fruit-and-nut chocolate bar (large size), more gingerbread, little packets of sugar (with pictures of Alpine scenes) and artificial sweetener, and two tea bags. I’m sure it was the tea that wrung an involuntary exclamation of admiration from John.

“O goddess! Lady of the Sycamores, Golden One, who gives food to the hungry and water to the thirsty—”

“It’s nothing,” I said modestly. “I thought I had…Oh, here it is. I’m afraid it’s a little stale, and some of the jelly seems to have oozed out…. If you can find a container, we might have a spot of tea.”

John surged to his feet. “There are a few broken flower pots in the sacristy. And God knows there is plenty of snow.”

I don’t think he got all the encrusted dirt out of the pots, but as he said philosophically, it gave a spurious look of strength to the tea. He was fascinated by my hoard.

“Are you clairvoyant, or do you always prepare for blizzards?”

“I always carry artificial sweetener. Not all restaurants have it.”

“Then why the sugar?”

“I can’t resist the pretty pictures on the packets. I’m making a collection.”

John nodded gravely. “Of course. And the apple—the chocolate—?”

“Doesn’t everybody carry things like that around?”

He dropped his head onto his raised knees, sputtering with helpless laughter.

“Have another piece of gingerbread,” I said hospitably.

Life never ceases to amaze me. In my wildest dreams or nightmares, I had never expected to spend Christmas Eve in an abandoned church with an unreformed and unrepentant thief, dining on stale gingerbread and muddy tea. And I certainly would not have expected to enjoy it.

We talked for hours, huddled in front of the little fire, wrapped in cobwebby curtains and sipping tepid tea. He kissed the crumbs from my lips and held me close, for warmth, but we didn’t dare lie down for fear we’d fall asleep and the fire would go out. It was as if two opposing armies had declared a temporary truce. He talked more easily than he had ever done, and I tried to avoid questions that would raise the barriers again. We talked about everything under the sun—even the weather.

“I’ve never seen anything like that moving wall of snow.”

“And you are from the wintry wastes of Minnesota.”

“Have you?”

“Once. That’s why the sight of it petrified me. It was in the so-called mountains of western Virginia.”

“What were you doing in Virginia?”

I slipped then, but instead of clamming up, he answered readily, “Visiting a friend. I do have a few, you know. I was only a few feet from the lodge—bringing in wood—when it hit, but for a few memorable moments I didn’t think I was going to make it back.”

And about abstruse academic subjects.

“Who is the Lady of the Sycamores?”

“Hathor, Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, and so on. I may have misquoted. My specialty is classics, not Egyptology.”

“Greats,” I said. “Isn’t that what you call it? You went down with a first in Greats?”

“Well, not exactly,” John said, amused. “It cannot be said that I went down from university, as the idiom has it; rather, I was pushed off the ladder of learning.”

“Far be it from me to ask why.”

“It wasn’t extortion or fraud, if that’s what you are implying. Just a little matter of a tutor arriving home before he was expected.”

“I’m sure there is an Old Testament parallel.”

“Oh, quite. Potiphar’s wife. I was very young and naïve. I didn’t take up a life of crime until after that,” John went on cheerfully. “Someday I must tell you about my first scam. I don’t believe I have ever equaled the sheer splendid lunacy of that concept. It didn’t come off, unfortunately, but I’m still immensely proud of it.”

And about his family.

“Is your mother’s name really Guinevere?”

“It really is.”

“I’d love to meet her.”

“You wouldn’t like her.” After another of those meaningful pauses in which he excelled, he added, “She wouldn’t like you either.”

But not about the gold of Troy.

We recited poetry and sang, to keep awake. I taught John all the words to Schmidt’s favorite Christmas carol, which he approved—“kitsch at its finest”—and he taught me the second part of the glorious duet in Bach’s Cantata 140, where the soprano’s “mein Freund ist mein” is echoed by the baritone’s “und ich bin dein.” My voice had suddenly descended from soprano to tenor during my last year in high school, so I took the baritone part and John sang soprano, both of us shifting octaves with reckless abandon. John was an excellent musician; I wondered whether he knew that my most secret, unfulfilled ambition was to be able to sing. He was kind enough to refrain from critical comment and I sang away with happy incompetence, no longer bothered by the ghostly responses from the rafters. “My friend is mine—and I am thine.”

“Isn’t that a little romantic for J. S. Bach?” I asked.

John was trying to play the oboe obbligato on a tissue-covered comb. He broke off long enough to remark, “Your theology is deficient, duckie. It’s not a love song, it’s all about the marriage of the faithful soul to Christ.”

“It sounds like a love song.”

“So it does,” John said agreeably. He returned to the comb.

I fell asleep in the middle of a long lecture on horticulture—I remember he waxed eloquent on the subject of double digging, a technique on whose details I am hazy, but which, he said, his mother insisted upon—and did not waken until he moved to put more wood on the fire. I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry. I’m so tired….”

“You’ve had a busy day. Why don’t you lie down?”

“The floor’s too cold,” I mumbled.

“Come here, then.”

He was still holding me when I woke again to find that the darkness had been replaced by gray gloom. At first I thought the bright yellow streaks across the floor were paint.

“Sunlight,” I muttered.

“It’s morning,” said John. “‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.’ Come on—be a big, brave girl—don’t topple over—”

I was so stiff I could hardly move. Stiff, cold, hungry…I looked up at him from under my hair. He had risen to his feet and was methodically flexing his arms, grimacing as he moved them.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

“How could I? ‘my strength is as the strength of ten,’” John chanted, stamping his feet in cadence, “‘because my heart is pure.’”

The truce had lasted only one night, and the barriers were up again. I had expected it, but that didn’t keep me from resenting it. Silently I extended my hand; briskly he pulled me to my feet, turned me around, and gave me a hearty slap on the backside.

“Dusty,” he remarked. “Let’s have a look outside. At this moment, I’d trade you and the gold for a hot breakfast.”

I stood for a moment, stretching creaking muscles and looking around. The ruined building had been stripped of all portable objects, but even in its prime it had lacked the exuberant charm of the local Catholic churches. There was nothing to be seen except a bare floor littered with pieces of the fallen pews, bare stone walls, and boarded-up windows. Sunlight stretched long fingers through the cracks, and drifts of snow marked breaks in windows and roof. The fire had died to coals.

I pushed through the swinging doors and found myself in a narrow vestibule. The outer door was ajar, held open by a heap of drifted snow. John must have had to force it. No small feat, in that howling storm, with muscles already half frozen and my dead weight encumbering him. His footprints led up and over the drift. Shrugging into my jacket, I followed.

I had to shield my eyes with both hands. The world had changed overnight, into something so beautiful I forgot physical discomfort in sheer wonder. The sky overhead was a pure, cold blue, but behind the eastern mountains the bright shades of dawn framed the frosty peaks. The shadows on the white slopes were not gray but ravishing tints of pastel—pale rose, blue, lavender. The blanket of new snow dazzled like cold fire—swan-white, angel-white, glittering with billions of tiny sparkles.

My sunglasses were in the pocket of my jacket. After I put them on, I dared to open my eyes, and then I saw John. He was knee-deep in snow, even though he stood under the porch eaves where the snow was less deeply drifted. It undulated across the open courtyard in lovely dimpled dunes. My poor precious Audi was only an elephant-sized lump.

John stared dispiritedly at the scene, his hands shielding his eyes, and I decided this was not an appropriate moment to comment on the splendor of the view. “Where are your sunglasses?” I asked.

“In my car,” John said, snapping the words off like icicles.

“And your car is…”

“Halfway down the slippery slope beyond, under a foot of snow,” said John. “Were you aware that just over the hill the road drops straight down at a forty-five-degree angle?”

“Surely—” I began.

“I didn’t see the church until I had passed it. I had no idea where you were going. I’ve never driven this road before. I was going too fast—as were you—”

From across the valley came a far-off, elfin chiming of bells. “‘Oh sweet and far, from cliff and scar,’” I quoted. “Merry Christmas, John.”

“So what shall we do?” I asked brightly. We had gone back inside, and John was doggedly feeding the fire, as if he meant to settle down for a long stay. “You should put it out,” I went on. “We can’t leave—”

“That is the situation in a nutshell,” said John. “We can’t leave. Not unless you plan to spend the rest of the winter in a snowdrift between here and Bad Steinbach.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be a sissy. It’s a beautiful day and it can’t be more than a couple of miles—”

“Just a nice little downhill run on skis,” said John. “Unfortunately we don’t have any.”

“I do, actually. On top of the car. I never got a chance to use them. Hell of a vacation.”

His expression lightened briefly as he considered this new information, but it quickly closed down again. “The plows and the Ski Patrol will be out before long—”

“On Christmas Day?”

“Yes, I should think so. This is an emergency, and there are bound to be idiots like us who were caught in the storm.”

“We can’t just sit here and wait to be found.”

“Oh, do use your head,” John said crossly. “Even if we could dig one of the cars out, the road is impassible. I don’t fancy a two-mile hike through drifts that are up to my neck, either.”

“I could ski down and get help.”

“It’s too risky. If you got in trouble there’d be no one to bail you out. It doesn’t take long to freeze to death when you’re lying helpless with a broken leg.”

“Are you always like this in the morning?” I demanded.

“No, it’s just a performance I put on in order to discourage long-term relationships.”

“I can’t sit around here all day! I’ve got to get poor Tony out of the slammer—”

“Tony?”

“I walked out on him,” I admitted guiltily. “The killer set him up—one of the maids found him standing over Friedl’s freshly slaughtered body, and raised the alarm. He was surrounded by what looked like the beginning of a lynch mob when I left.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d lynch him,” John said coolly. “They’re very law-abiding in these parts, and Friedl didn’t inspire that variety of devoted affection.”

“Even so—”

“I’ll tell you what we could do.” John stroked his stubbly chin. “Start a fire outside—smoke signal.”

“On Frau Hoffman’s grave?” I asked.

He wasn’t abashed. “Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Just as well to have a look before you call the cops,” John went on. “If you’re wrong, you’ll look a bloody fool—Did you say yes?”

“I said okay. Same thing.”

We used scraps of the broken pews for shovels. The air was cold but utterly still; John had no trouble getting the fire started. It burned clear and bright until we piled pine boughs on it. As we worked, the chiming of distant Christmas bells made a macabre accompaniment. I hated what I was doing, even though I felt Hoffman wouldn’t mind.

In between hauling wood from the church, I tackled my buried car. Clearing the ski rack wasn’t difficult; there was only a foot of snow on top. On the lee side, away from the wind, a lonely fender protruded, and I was able to dig my way into the door. My emergency kit produced some dried fruit—“petrified” would be more accurate. I carried it to John, like a dog offering a bone, but this time he was not amused.

Smeared with smuts from the fire, his eyes sunken and shadowed, he continued to tend the flames while he chewed.

I sat down on a snowbank a little distance away and watched. The moment I had resolutely refused to consider was approaching. It would take hours of slow heat to soften the ground. We would need shovels, trowels. And then…

Neither of us had discussed what we intended to do if we found the gold. There was no need. John knew what I would do.

I didn’t know what he would do. The trouble with John—one of the troubles with John—was that he wasn’t a cold-blooded villain. He wouldn’t kill to gain his prize. At least he wouldn’t kill me. I thought he was rather fond of me—as a person, I mean, not just as an enthusiastic lover. He might even have wavered, at odd moments, and toyed with the idea of letting me have the treasure. But I knew that when the time came, when the glittering thing was actually before him, there was a ninety-to-one chance that old habits would prevail over…call it friendship.

His lean cheeks were flushed with exercise and heat, but the underlying color was a pale gray. He was short on sleep and on food, burning calories like crazy—but it never occurred to me that I could defeat him in a hand-to-hand fight. Surreptitiously, my hand sneaked into my backpack. The gun was still there. Thank God I hadn’t dropped it in the snow.

I don’t know how long we were there. Sometimes John sat down by the fire to rest; sometimes I went inside to get more wood. The plume of smoke had been rising darkly for a long time before he came, schussing straight down the final slope between the trees and stopping in a spray of driven snow, skis almost touching in a perfect parallel. He wore ordinary ski clothing, but the face that looked out from under the hood of the parka was muzzled and fanged and dark with rank fur. In his right hand, instead of a pole, he carried one of the long pikes the Buttenmandeln had brandished.

I was bent over, adding wood to the fire when the apparition appeared, and it is a wonder I didn’t fall face down into the flames. As the snarling muzzle turned toward me, I went reeling back. Even John the imperturbable was taken off guard. He had been perched impiously on the tombstone; struggling to rise, he slipped and sat down with a splash, his back against the granite. And there he stayed, because the point of the pike was planted in the center of his chest.

I got the gun out. Don’t ask me how. I was pleased to see that my hands were dead steady as I sidled sideways, away from the smoke, to a spot from which I could get a clear sight.

My voice wasn’t as steady as my hands. “Drop it,” I squeaked. “Hände hoch—er—”

At first I was afraid I had made a slight tactical misjudgment; the graceful hooded figure started, and a dark circle spread out around the tip of the pike—accompanied, I must add, by a yelp from John. Then the shaggy muzzle turned toward me.

The vocabulary of violence is limited. I heard myself repeating the most ghastly clichés.

“I’ve got you covered,” I pointed out. “You’re dead meat, mister—uh—miss…uh…Go ahead, make my day.”

John’s eyes, the only part of him he dared move, rolled wildly in my direction. “For Christ’s sake, Vicky!” I don’t know whether he was objecting to the sentiment or to the hackneyed phrase in which I had expressed it.

The masked head tilted slightly, as if considering the options. A stand-off, I thought, still sticking to clichés. Now what do I do? I can’t shoot…The top of the pike wasn’t in very far, but one quick push would drive it home. The bloodstain continued to spread.

I don’t suppose it took the other more than a split second to come to a decision, but it seemed lots longer than that to me. He didn’t release his hold on the pike. His left hand moved, pushing his hood back and pulling the mask from his face.

“You,” I said.

The terrible thing was that he looked like the same good old comedian, rosy-cheeked, broadly grinning. “You didn’t recognize me, did you?” he said. “These latex masks are wonderful. Keep the face warm, too.”

“Please, Dieter. Put down the pike.”

“But if I do, he may get away.” Dieter’s smile stiffened. “You know who he is, don’t you?”

“I…yes, I know. How do you know?”

I fought to control my voice and my nerve, but it wasn’t easy—there was something so grisly about Dieter’s nonchalance, as he held John pinned against the tombstone, casual as a naturalist about to impale a beetle or a butterfly. He looked marvelous on skis, his usual clumsiness transformed.

“Why, I saw the rascal in court, when I testified against him in a case of fraud a few years ago,” Dieter explained. “He had substituted a forgery for a valuable painting; the poor woman had kept it for years as insurance for her old age, and when she was forced to sell it, the truth came out. Such a filthy swindle. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him yesterday in Bad Steinbach. It is good you have the gun; keep him covered while I tie him up, and then we will go for the police.”

The bloodstain was the size of a small saucer. John didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

Dieter’s smile faded. He said awkwardly, “I am sorry, Vicky, if he was…If you were…It’s the treasure he wants, you know. If he told you otherwise, he lied to you.”

I said, “He’s been lying all along.”

“Vicky—” John began.

“You made a number of slips,” I said. “That casual comment about how Hoffman turned up in Bavaria and married the innkeeper’s daughter—how did you know it was his wife’s father who owned the hotel? I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know myself, until later.”

Dieter was smiling again. His fingers tightened on the handle of the pike; the bloodstain oozed outward, a scant millimeter at a time.

“There were other things,” I said quickly. “You knew Tony’s last name. You were too sure about too many things for which there was little or no evidence. You told me the matter wasn’t worth pursuing, but you stuck close enough to me to be on hand when—when…Dieter, please—don’t.”

“Then give me the gun,” Dieter said, grinning.

There was nothing else I could do. I said, “I’ll trade you.”

Dieter laughed aloud. “Try it, it’s fun. There is satisfaction in inflicting pain on someone who has hurt you—your pride, your ego.” With a brutal twist he wrenched the pike out of padding and flesh, and snatched the Colt from my hand.

I reached for the pike but it fell to the ground, brushing my outstretched fingertips. Dieter turned, took aim, and fired at point-blank range.

Eleven

I HADN’T EXPECTED HIM TO ACT SO quickly. He had been having such a good time tormenting his victim, like a nasty little boy pulling wings off butterflies. The sound of the shot, less than three feet from my ears, threw me off balance; I went sprawling in the snow, groping for the handle of the pike. When I sat up, Dieter was pointing the gun at my stomach. John had fallen sideways, face down, across Hoffman’s grave.

“Now you,” Dieter said. “I would like very much to hold you in suspense awhile, as I did Albrecht—”

“Albrecht?”

“Perhaps you knew him by another name. He had many.”

“Yes, I know.”

I drew my feet up under me. My fingers closed around the butt of the pike. It left a delicate smear of blood on the snow as I pulled it toward me. Dieter pivoted, planting his pole, gliding out of range. “Amuse yourself,” he said. “I wish I had more time, but I must not linger—much as I am enjoying your desperate attempt to save yourself….”

“I hurt your stinking little ego rather badly, didn’t I? I guess there’s something to be said for feminine intuition; deep down inside, I knew you made me sick to my stomach.”

His lips drew back over his teeth. Funny, I had never noticed how long and sharp they were. “If I am careful where I put the bullet, it will take you a long time to die,” he mused. “Think of Dieter the joker, the butt of your laughter, as you lie bleeding in the snow by the corpse of your lover. Think of me enjoying the treasure you were good enough to find for me.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so, Dieter.”

The damned pike wasn’t heavy, but it was long and hard to balance. I got my feet and swung the thing into position. Dieter stepped back, grinning. For all my bravado, I was beginning to feel a wee bit uneasy. Could I have made some ghastly mistake? Surely not…. But John hadn’t moved, not so much as a fingertip.

Dieter fired. I couldn’t help cringing. It is unnerving to have a gun go off practically in your face, even though you know it is loaded with blanks.

I’d have done more than cringe—fainted, for example—if I had realized that the harmless sounding blank cartridges were capable of inflicting a considerable degree of damage when fired at close range. Luckily for me, Dieter aimed at my midsection, not at my face. The wadding bounced harmlessly off the thick layers of my padded jacket; sparks from burned powder set tiny spots of cloth smoldering.

The expression on Dieter’s face when he saw me still upright and unharmed almost made up for the unpleasantness of the past few minutes, and for the ruin of my expensive ski jacket. I lunged at him, and missed by a mile. He was off-balance too; in a kind of frenzy, he emptied the magazine. The rolling echoes of the shots were followed by a deeper and more ominous rumble, high on the mountain. He’d start an avalanche if he wasn’t careful….

As I turned for a second try, Dieter threw the empty gun at me—a spiteful, childish gesture that gave me a certain amount of equally childish satisfaction. I ducked. Dieter planted his pole and skated away from me across the open ground. I started after him, but I knew it was hopeless. Once he reached the road, he had a straight downhill run—not the best of slopes, but well within the capability of a skier of his skill. Anybody who could have made it down the three-encumbered hillside had to be first-rate. As John had said…

John.

He hadn’t moved. A few of the blackened spots on his ski cap were still smoking, and the acrid stench of singed wool stung my nostrils as I tugged at him, trying to turn him over. He was dead weight, heavy and unresponsive. Could I possibly have slipped up when I replaced the cartridges in the Colt—left one live one in the chamber? I knew—I knew!—I hadn’t done so, but if he had taken the charge full in the face…Why hadn’t the shopkeeper warned me that the blanks were so dangerous? I thought they just made a big bang. Of course, I had never expected anyone would fire the gun….

“Is he gone?” said a voice, quite literally from the grave.

Relief hit me so hard, every muscle went soggy. I collapsed onto the muddy ground beside him. “Yes, damn it. God damn you, John, what’s the idea of scaring me like that?”

“Scaring you?” He rolled over. Knowing Dieter better than I did, he had flung himself aside in time to escape the worst of the powder burns, but the side of his face was speckled with angry-looking scorch marks. One had narrowly missed his eye. “Me?” he demanded, his voice rising. “Scaring you?”

“What was I supposed to do, tell you not to worry, the gun wasn’t loaded? I thought Schmidt would try to steal it back, so I got some blanks from that magic shop in Garmisch and…I assumed you would assume…uh…”

John raised a tremulous hand to his brow. “My nerves will never be the same.”

“I don’t know what else I could have done,” I argued. “I hoped I could bluff him, but I sure as hell couldn’t shoot him, and he would have skewered you before I could get close enough to tackle him.”

“I think you prolonged it on purpose,” John said. His hand moved wincingly from his face to his chest. “Bloody hell. Once these down jackets are slashed, there’s no way of repairing them.”

I pushed his hand aside and began to unzip the jacket. “You did lie to me. You knew it was Dieter all along.”

“I did lie to you, but I did not know it was Dieter all along. Ow—take it easy—”

“Crybaby.” I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed the sodden cloth aside. “It’s only a little hole.”

“Another inch and it would have been a little hole in my lung. I don’t know why I associate with you. Do you realize that I never have work-associated accidents unless you’re around?”

“What, never?”

“Well…hardly ever. There is a nice clean white handkerchief in the inside pocket of my jacket.”

“I might have known. The instincts of a gentleman cannot wholly be suppressed. Even with a liar—”

“It was for your own good. I tried to talk you out of it.”

Without replying, I got up and went to the car for my first aid kit.

“What next?” John inquired, still prone, as I buttoned him back into his clothes.

“I am going to take determined steps to leave this place within the next ten minutes,” I said. “By one means or another. God knows what Dieter will try next. In case you wonder why I am not rushing hysterically for my skis, or making ineffectual efforts to dig my car out of that drift, it is because I am being very calm and weighing all possible alternatives before I fly into action in my inimitable way. And also because for once—just once—for the first time in our acquaintance—I want the simple, unvarnished truth. In this case, it is not merely curiosity that moves me to inquire. I have a distinct and genuine need to know all the facts.”

“A persuasive argument,” said John, nodding. His eyes rolled down toward the hand I had planted firmly on his chest. “That is also a persuasive argument. All right. The simple truth is that I heard rumors about the Trojan gold as long ago as August. In fact, I was approached by a former acquaintance, who claimed that he expected to gain possession of it shortly and asked if I would be willing to assist in—er—marketing it. I told him I had no time to waste on what-ifs, and to let me know when he actually had it in his hands.

“Now what you must understand, Vicky, is that the contact was made through certain channels that allow the communicants to remain anonymous. I never saw this individual, whom I knew only by a code name—Hagen. He had been involved with a little, er, business deal I invested in several years ago. I knew he was connected with a museum and I was fairly sure he was male—though even that information was carefully guarded. I never tried to find out more; that’s part of the bizarre ethics of my profession, you know. One respects a colleague’s anonymity.

“I dismissed the matter then; I had other things to think about. When you told me of your involvement, I realized, with considerable relief, that you really had nothing to go on. It wasn’t until the end of the conversation that you casually mentioned your old academic acquaintances, several of whom had just happened to turn up, and an unpleasant suspicion entered my mind. If one of your friends was the individual I knew as Hagen, you could be in deep trouble. Ensuing development convinced me that my worst fears were justified. Hagen had failed to locate the treasure and was hoping you could do it for him. I decided to keep a brotherly eye on you—”

“And on the treasure.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Your doubts cut me to the quick. The attack on you and Schmidt surprised me; it didn’t fit my theory. Later investigation strongly suggested that a subordinate had gone off half-cocked and acted without authority. Freddy had already committed a major blunder by killing Hoffman before he could be persuaded to talk, and after he tried the same thing on you, Hagen realized Freddy’s stupidity and arrogance could ruin everything. So out went Freddy. In the meantime…God, what’s that noise? Avalanche?” He sat up with a start.

“Snowmobile, I think.” I rose and shielded my eyes against the dazzle of the slopes. “We’re about to be rescued.”

“Vicky.” His fingers, hard and urgent, closed around my wrist. “I withheld no relevant information. I wasn’t trying—”

“Right.” I freed my hand. “Sure.”

The snowplows had been out. The main road was fairly clear and the Marktplatz was walled with ten-foot-high banks. People who live in areas of heavy snowfall don’t let it upset their schedules; church was letting out when we arrived, and the Platz was filled with red-cheeked, cheerful people exchanging greetings and trying to keep the children from flinging themselves and their Christmas finery into the drifts. Sledges and sleighs mingled with cars in the parking area; the horses’ collars were twined with greenery and bright red ribbon, and a team of magnificent white oxen attached to one painted sledge sported bells and bow-trimmed harness. The laughing voices, the snatches of carols, the bright sun and glittering snow made a perfect, picture-postcard Christmas morning.

We went straight to the police station.

At least the headquarters of the local constable was a quaint gabled house, not a grim barracks. There was a tiny Christmas tree on the sergeant’s desk. He was the only one on duty; the remainder of the five-man force was at mass or out with the Ski Patrol searching for lost tourists. He took us for two of the latter and started lecturing us. The storm had been forecast, people had been warned to stay off the slopes; staring pointedly at my battered companion, he suggested I take him to the hospital in Garmisch.

John looked as if this struck him as a splendid idea, but when I launched into my story, he did all he could to back me up. It was some story. I had to do some impromptu editing to make it sound even halfway plausible. I didn’t go into the business of the Trojan gold, figuring that would be too much for a bewildered local sergeant; time enough for complications when the Landpolizei were on the case. Instead, I concentrated on the mad killer theme. The sergeant readily took to that idea; when he exclaimed, “Ah! A crime of passion!” I knew we had sold him. Everybody understands crimes of passion. Of course, John couldn’t resist the chance to show off; baring his breast, he displayed his wound to the admiring gaze of the sergeant, who expressed himself as thoroughly convinced. We told him we would be at the hotel and left him in animated conversation with his superiors in Garmisch.

Tony was in Garmisch too. The sergeant said he had been taken there the day before, since the local lockup was already full of holiday revelers. I would have lingered to inquire about posting bail and such things, but John kept muttering insistently about food and drink, and I figured Tony could wait. I was sure we had not seen the last of Dieter. His tender little ego had taken another lump, and now he knew where the gold was hidden. I didn’t know what he would do, but I knew he would try something. The police would be looking for him, but between the blizzard and the holiday, they would be shorthanded.

I was itching to get back to the cemetery with some tools—including a gun with actual bullets in it, in case Dieter had the same idea. However, as John kept reiterating, that matter could wait until we had figured out a method of transport and replenished our strength. I had to agree with him; I felt as though I would topple over if someone blew hard at me.

The clerk had a handful of messages for me. As I might have expected, all of them were from Schmidt.

“Where is Herr Schmidt?” I asked. “In the restaurant?”

The woman flung both hands shoulder-high in a dramatic shrug. “I saw him earlier, but…Herr Gott, Fräulein, it is a madhouse here. Frau Hoffman dead, and no one knowing what will happen next…. The police asked for you, too.”

“That’s all right, I’ve talked to them,” I began.

John took me firmly by the arm. “If anyone else asks for the Fräulein Doktor, she will be in the restaurant.”

Schmidt wasn’t in the restaurant. The smell of coffee and fresh-baked rolls made me so weak in the knees, John had to lead me to a table. I tackled the food with a gusto worthy of Schmidt himself. As soon as I started to feel stronger, I started to worry again.

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“God knows,” John said placidly.

“What would you do?”

His eyes narrowed, acknowledging the covert insult, but he said only, “Go for the gold—to coin a phrase. It’ll take him a while. There is no hurry.”

“But you’re not him.”

“No, I’m not. I’m so flattered that you noticed the difference.”

“We did a lot of the work for him, softening the ground,” I mused. “Depends on how deeply it’s buried. Transportation will be a problem…. How the devil did he get there this morning? It’s all uphill from Bad Steinbach.”

“And all downhill from the top of the Hexenhut. I expect he took the lift up, and then sashayed down to us. The smoke signal was a grave error on our part, but he must have had some idea before-hand.”

“He overheard us talking about the daffodil bulb.”

John’s lips curled in an elegant sneer. He had visited the facilities, as my mother always calls them, and washed the soot and dried blood from his face; the sneer was one of his best.

“He wouldn’t have wits enough to reason that one out. It’s more likely that your initial visit to the cemetery aroused his suspicions; it wouldn’t occur to him that your motives were as pure and charitable as they really were.”

“Or he located someone who saw me leaving town last night. I almost ran over a policeman when I turned into the road leading to the cemetery; I’ll bet that’s the only place it leads to.” I glanced toward the door. “Where do you suppose Schmidt is? It isn’t like him to stay away from food for more than an hour at a stretch. Maybe he’s taking a nap.” I put my napkin on the table and stood up.

“It’s the best possible place for him,” John said, sipping coffee. “If I were you, I’d leave him there.”

“No, I need him to help me convince the police to dig up that grave. He’s got more clout than I have.”

“Oh, very well.” John reached in his pocket. “Er—I seem to have lost my wallet somewhere…”

“Back to your old form,” I said, scribbling my name and room number on the check.

I knocked on Schmidt’s door. The mumbled grunt was the reply I had expected. The door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and walked in.

Schmidt was napping, all right, hands folded on his stomach, mustache vibrating with the intensity of his snores. I didn’t see Dieter until I was well inside the room. He had been behind the door.

John put his hands in his pockets and let his shoulders sag. “Stupid,” he said critically. “I should have anticipated this.”

“Neither of us is at our best this morning,” I agreed. “I wonder where he got the gun?”

“It isn’t his,” John said. “Unless he was carrying it on him the whole time. I searched his luggage—”

The barrel of the gun slashed across the side of his face and sent him reeling back against the closed door.

“Lie down!” Dieter shouted, his face suffused. “On the floor schnell, or I will knock you down.”

John spread the fingers of the hand he had clapped to his face and peered at Dieter. “Don’t you want to boast about your cleverness before you shoot me?” he asked in wavering but encouraging tones.

“You talk about me as if I were a child,” Dieter cried. “You taunt me—you dare make fun of me! I will kill you, I will kill all of you—”

“He might at that,” I said, before John could come back with another of those cute, provocative, dangerous little quips. “Dieter, calm down. You’ve won. You are the winner, número uno, top dog, and top cheese of all time—”

“‘…the bravest by far in the ranks of the Shah,’” murmured a faint voice from behind the bloody hand.

“It would serve you right if he did shoot you,” I snarled. “Dieter, what have you done to Schmidt?”

Dieter relaxed visibly. “A few sleeping pills. It is easy to drug that fat gourmand; he will eat anything and he eats constantly.” He added in self-congratulatory tones, “It is his gun. He took it from the drawer when he felt himself succumbing to the Valium, but he was so sleepy I think he would have shot himself in the stomach if I had not taken it from him.”

I felt my throat closing up. Poor brave little Schmidt. Damn the courageous old galoot anyway. The fact that he hadn’t tried to steal the Colt back should have warned me that he had another gun.

“I was going to take him as a hostage.” Dieter gave Schmidt’s rotund and recumbent form a resentful look. “But he is too heavy to carry. So I decided to wait here for you. I knew you would come sooner or later.”

“It’s later,” I said, as John continued to watch Dieter through his first and second fingers. “We’ve already been to the police. They’ll be looking for you.”

“Not soon,” Dieter said coolly. “It is Weihnacht, and the storm has made for some confusion. But you will come with me, Vicky, and then if anyone tries to interfere with me, I will kill you.”

“Take him,” I said, indicating John.

“Right,” John said. “Take me….” And then the idiot spread both arms wide and sang, “Please do take me—’m all yours if you—”

Dieter was too smart to risk it a second time. He had caught John off guard with the first blow, but he must have seen the flexed hands, poised and ready. He stepped back.

“Over by the bed. Lie down on the floor. Hands under you.”

The barrel of the gun shifted toward me and John said, “Calm down, old chap. You don’t want to shoot anyone.”

“No, I don’t. I would rather not attract attention. But if I am forced to shoot, it will be all of you. This gun is a very nice gun.”

It was, too. Nothing but the best for Schmidt—an automatic pistol—a Beretta, as I later discovered—the kind that fires the whole clip so long as the finger remains on the trigger.

John obeyed. “Face down,” Dieter ordered.

With an expressive look at me, John rolled over. He must have known what was coming. I didn’t. I suppose I expected Dieter would bend over and bang him on the back of the head with the gun. Instead, Dieter swung his foot. He didn’t hold back, as John had done with him; his toe connected with a sickening soggy crunch that spilled John over onto his back, his head and shoulders under the high antique bed. This time he wasn’t faking. His twisted body and outflung hands were as limp as dead fish.

I rocked to a halt as Dieter wriggled the gun admonishingly. He glanced longingly at John’s body, but decided not to risk another kick, much as he obviously wanted to. “Come,” he said. “We will go now.”

Lovingly entwined, we went down the stairs and through the lobby. Dieter’s left arm was around my shoulders, his fingers caressing my throat, his thumb nudging the nerve ending behind the ear. His right hand was inside his jacket, Napoleonstyle. I could feel the muzzle of the gun through both our jackets.

We had emerged from the hotel before I got my voice under control. “You’ll never make it up there, Dieter. The road is too icy.”

“I think of everything,” Dieter said. His thumb jabbed deep, and pain lanced through my head. Reflexively my head turned, away from the pressure. He forced my face down toward his and kissed me on the mouth.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, licking blood off my lower lip.

“But a romantic son of a bitch,” said Dieter, grinning and nodding at an elderly couple who had paused to smile at the young lovers. He pushed me toward a sleigh strung with bells and bright ribbons. “See what I have hired to take my sweetheart for a drive. I think there will be time for more romance while we wait for the ground to soften. How would you like that, eh?” He went on to enumerate all the “romantic” things he was going to do to me. The lad had quite a vocabulary.

I gritted my teeth and yearned for the moment when he would help me into the sleigh. He’d have to take the gun out of my ribs for a second, and that was all I would need. Boots, fists, teeth…

I should have learned by then not to underestimate him. The moment my foot touched the high step, he gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward across the seat, my breath stifled by a fuzzy fur wrap. With a hearty chuckle at my clumsiness, he hauled me upright, folded me in a fond embrace, and hit me on the chin.

I don’t know what happened after that, but I’ll bet we made a charming picture as we drove out of town—bells chiming, horses trotting, and me wrapped cozily in the fur rug with my head on Dieter’s shoulder and his arm around me.

He must have hit me again or I wouldn’t have stayed unconscious so long. I didn’t wake up until we had reached our destination and Dieter had had his way with me. No, not that; but I found myself flat on my back with my wrists and ankles tied to stakes, all ready and waiting as soon as Dieter found time to attend to me. My jaw hurt and my back was so cold it felt as if it were stuck to the frozen ground, and the arch of bright blue sky, which was all I could see at first, made my eyes ache.

After a while it occurred to me that I could turn my head.

The fire had gone out. Dieter was at work, scraping off the top layer of softened dirt and ash. He had even brought tools, the clever boy. Not shovels and pickaxes; no archeologist in his right senses would use anything so destructive, and this was an archaeological excavation of sorts. One careless thrust of a sharp instrument might penetrate the container and reduce the gold of Troy to a heap of golden scraps.

God bless Hoffman, he had buried it deep. The fire had softened only the top few inches of soil. Before long, Dieter had removed it, along with a handful of pitiful bare bulbs that would never be flowers. Reaching for an armful of kindling, he arranged it with a horrible travesty of Boy Scout tidiness and lit a match. When the wood had caught and was burning brightly, he rose to his feet and looked at me.

It would have made a great scene in my book—the heroine spread-eagled and helpless, awaiting a fate worse than death. (I was beginning to wonder how I could have found that phrase funny.) I was wearing more clothes than Rosanna would have worn, but I had a feeling Dieter would get around to that before much longer. There was only one positive aspect to the situation. He’d have done better to tie my wrists and ankles together. The stakes had not been driven deeply into the hard ground. I had already managed to start one wriggling.

“I need more wood,” Dieter explained. “Can’t use these wet branches; they make too much smoke. I’ll be back in a minute.”

John would have said, “Take your time,” or “Don’t hurry back,” or something even wittier. I resisted the temptation. The workings of Dieter’s mind were fascinating. He wasn’t your usual mad murderer, no such thing. He was perfectly sane. The treasure was his main objective, and he really wasn’t sadist enough to risk that or his precious skin for the fun of torturing me.

Cheerful thought. As soon as Dieter was out of my field of vision, I threw all my strength into the muscles of my right arm. The stake popped out with such unexpected ease my arm flew up into the air. I replaced it even more hastily than it had arisen and twisted it around so I could look over my shoulder. Smart of me. He was back sooner than I would have expected, his arms full of wood.

I got back into position, praying he wouldn’t notice my arm was free. He went right on past; while he busied himself building up the fire and extending the scope of the fire, I continued working on the left-hand stake. It was exasperating, nerve-racking work, because I didn’t want him to realize what I was doing.

All too soon, the methodical woodsman had things going to his satisfaction. I rolled my eyes and made faces as he approached, hoping to focus his attention on my distorted face instead of my right wrist. He knelt down with his back toward it, took hold of the zipper of my jacket and pulled it down.

Sometimes I really wonder if I am in my right mind. I did not take the course of action I knew prudence and common sense demanded. I was only slightly less helpless with one hand free than with neither. I was wearing so many layers of clothing it would take Dieter quite some time to work his way down to the foundations; his preoccupation and my vigorous reactions would provide excellent cover for freeing my other limbs, or at least making a damn good try.

It was pure kneejerk reflex. The instant the zipper parted, my right arm flew up, without any conscious effort on my part. My fist hit him in the back of the neck. It wasn’t a bad attempt, considering that my muscles were stiff with cold and restricted circulation, but of course it only stunned him for a moment. It also irritated him a lot. He jumped up, swearing, and then jumped back as I tried to grab his ankle. The damage was done, so there was no point in pretending to be submissive; I squirmed and struggled and yelled, and tried to get my right hand across to where the left was still pinned. While I was doing that, Dieter reached into his pocket and took out a knife. It was one of those Swiss Army things, with every attachment but a buttonhook.

The left-hand stake would not budge. It didn’t take Dieter long to comprehend what I had known all along; he had just been startled for a minute. With a nasty grin he kicked my flailing hand aside and planted one foot on my stomach—not too hard, just hard enough to hold me down and make me wonder how many ribs were cracking—while he examined his knife. Trying to decide which of the little tools to use? Corkscrew, can opener…

I didn’t really want to see which one he picked, but unholy curiosity kept my eyelids from closing. My right hand was out of commission; it was just one gigantic ache. I kept tugging at the stake holding the left one. Dieter unfolded one of the knife blades. That was a relief. I did hate the idea of the corkscrew.

Removing his foot from my diaphragm, Dieter circled to my right. Careful lad; he was going to take care of that limp, flopping right hand before he got down to business. If he hadn’t moved, I would have missed it—the most spectacular entrance ever made by a hero rushing to the rescue.

I said spectacular, not impressive. John had to leave the slope, which curved westward above the cemetery, and follow the trail Dieter had taken earlier, through the trees. Only an Olympic-class skier could have done it, and only with the devil’s own luck. John wasn’t in Dieter’s class, and for once his luck seemed to have run out. When I caught sight of him, he was in mid-air, skis crossed and arms flailing. He hit the ground with a thud that sent sympathetic twinges through my straining body. A huge cloud of snow billowed up to cast a merciful veil over the scene.

The sheer splendid ineptitude of the performance held Dieter frozen for a few moments. Not until the snow began to settle and a dim form appeared, groping but upright, did he remember he had a gun.

At least the fall had freed John’s skis; the bindings are supposed to let go when that happens. He still had his poles. As he came wobbling toward us, blinking the snow from his eyes, Dieter’s hand dipped into his pocket. I let out a screech of warning. Half blinded though he was, John reacted in time; one of his poles swung in a wide arc. The gun flew out of Dieter’s hand and sank into the snow.

The side of John’s face was not a pretty sight, but I knew he must have ducked in time to escape the full impact of Dieter’s kick, or he wouldn’t be where he was. He was not at his best, however. Dieter flew at him, knife, corkscrew, and all; he went over backward in another billow of snow. Dieter staggered back clutching the inside of his thigh. Slightly off target, that kick, but not bad under the circumstances. It gave John time to regain his feet.

They circled one another warily. Dieter held the knife low; knees flexed, left hand weaving, he looked very professional. John’s movements lacked their usual spring; he was at a disadvantage in a one-to-one fight against an opponent who probably knew as many dirty tricks as he did and who was in much better physical condition. I wished that he had been able to overcome his prejudice against firearms. The ski poles kept Dieter from closing in, but they were not very effective attack weapons, the fiberglass shafts too light to strike a crippling blow, the tips more blunted than the older type that had caused so many accidents on the slopes.

The left-hand stake gave way. I sat up and stretched, trying to reach my feet. Muscles I had forgotten I owned screamed in protest. Oh, God, I thought, straining. Oh, God, help me, I swear—from now on, I’ll do those exercises every morning.

One of the poles broke clear across as John brought it down in a vicious blow on Dieter’s head. It staggered Dieter for a moment, but it staggered John more. Dieter knocked the jagged stub out of his hand and John fell back, avoiding Dieter’s rush. Slowly but inexorably they were retreating toward the far edge of the plateau, where only the ragged remains of a stone wall stood between them and the drop to the road below. I redoubled my efforts, but twice zero is still zero, and all my muscles had gone limp and stringy like overcooked spaghetti. The fingers of my right hand were practically useless; I was sure a couple of them must be broken.

Dieter was facing away from me, John toward me. Seeing me struggling, he yelled, “Hurry up, can’t you?”

I always knew that mouth of his would get us in trouble. Dieter risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Apparently he didn’t like what he saw. His next move caught John off guard; he turned and pelted back toward me, leaving John beating the empty air with his remaining ski pole.

Dieter was after the gun. The snow was wet and heavy; the hole where it had sunk out of sight was clearly visible to him as it was to me. I had marked the spot, since I meant to head straight for it as soon as I was free. Dieter got off one shot before John tackled him. He wasn’t aiming at John; the bullet hit the ground less than a foot from my shoulder.

They went rolling and tumbling across the graveyard, Dieter trying to escape his opponent’s grasp long enough to aim and fire, John trying to prevent just that. Dieter squeezed off a few more shots; I gathered that they missed, since John continued to press him back. The echoes rolled from hill to hill, and as they faded I heard another sound, the sound of distant thunder. That was strange, I thought. The skies were clear, there wasn’t a cloud in sight….

Looking up, I saw it begin—a small puff of white, so innocent and harmless, at the barren summit of the Witches’ Hat. It wasn’t a cloud. It was a mass of snow. By the time it reached the bottom of the slope, it would be studded with boulders like raisins in a pudding, with snapped-off branches and whole trees.

The cloud expanded. It was coming straight down the ski slope, the path of least resistance, but it would not follow the curve of the slope. By the time it reached that point, it would have gained enough momentum and mass to continue straight on down—into the cemetery. Perhaps the trees would stop it or minimize its impact; perhaps they wouldn’t. All these years the surrounding forest had protected the church, but the ski run had changed that. Herr Müller had been so right—fools, tampering with God’s work for their sport….

One of the pegs came out, but I was still tethered, like a goat, by one foot. The two men were perilously close to the edge of the drop, on their feet, clinging like lovers. Dieter’s raised rigid arm strained to free itself from John’s desperate grip. I don’t know whether Dieter was even aware of the dreadful thing roaring down toward him. John was; but he couldn’t run for cover unless he let go of Dieter, whereupon Dieter would probably shoot him in the back, or else lie low until the avalanche had passed—and then shoot both of us.

It happened so fast. John’s taut body gathered itself for a final effort. Dieter’s feet went out from under him. The small of his back hit the top of the low wall, and for a split second he hung there. I heard him scream, even over the mounting roar from the slope; but it was a scream of rage, not terror, and he never let go his hold on John or on the gun, though if his hands had been free, he might have saved himself. They went over together.

I had about six seconds in which to decide what to do. That’s longer than it sounds. It didn’t take any time at all. I found myself on my feet and running like a madwoman, the broken stake flopping. On the top of the wall, I could see two pale patches that weren’t snow. Slowly a head rose up between the grasping hands. I was close enough to see every detail; in fact, I felt as if I were looking through binoculars, everything was abnormally clear and sharp. His eyes opened so wide the pupils looked like cabochon sapphires set in milky mother-of-pearl, and his lips shaped words. I couldn’t hear him but I knew what he was saying. Good advice, but I went on running, throwing myself flat when I reached the wall and reaching out with both hands. My fingers weren’t broken, they worked just fine; all ten of them clamped around John’s left wrist.

I didn’t look over my shoulder. I figured the sight would just depress me. It sounded like an express train, rushing toward the heroine tied to the tracks; but there wouldn’t be a hero galloping up on his great white horse this time. A couple of skull-sized rocks, the precursors of the main mass, bounced off the ground and flew over the edge. “Duck,” I yelled. I knew he couldn’t hear me, though our faces were only inches apart.

In the final seconds, the agonized lines of his face relaxed. His eyelids dropped, veiling his eyes, and he said something—not the expletives, orders, and insults he had been hurling at me—something quite different. It surprised me so that I almost let go of his wrist. “What?” I screamed. “What did you say?”

Then it was on us.

I pushed my face down into the snow.

The only good thing about it was that it didn’t last long, though the howling assault seemed to go on forever. A couple of rocks bounced off my back, but I didn’t feel them at the time because all the nerve endings in my body were focused on my hands and the cold, limp thing they held in a death grip. I was still holding it when the echoes faded into silence and I dared to raise my head.

The brunt of the avalanche had been broken by the trees above the cemetery. If the full force had struck, it would have swept both of us away with it. It was bad enough, however. I think the noise was the worst. My ears were ringing even after the thunder died, and I felt lightheaded and dizzy. My eyes wouldn’t focus at first. Then I saw that most of the wall was gone. Only a few tumbled courses remained. There was no sign of John—no face, no white-knuckled hands.

He was still down there, though. I could feel his weight—his entire, dead weight, pulling at my arms. I must not have been thinking very clearly. Instead of calling his name, I croaked, “What was that you said?”

I do not know how the hell I ever got him back up. At first he was no help, he kept passing out. Finally, he got one toe into a crevice and I was able to grasp the back of his jacket. When at last he was sprawled on the ground at my feet, I looked over the edge.

Fifty feet below, the road was blocked by snow and fallen stone. Nobody would be coming that way for a while. The section of cliff above the road was almost perpendicular, a sheer drop of broken, jagged stone. A single blotch of color broke the gray-white monotony of the background—a patch of bright turquoise, unmoving and crumpled.

I bent over John and shook him. He groaned and tried to burrow deeper into the snow.

“Come on,” I said briskly. “Let’s hope the horses didn’t bolt during all that pandemonium. You’ll have to walk or crawl or something; I can’t drag you, my arms feel as if they’re about to fall out of the sockets.”

When I returned to my room, he was still lying across the bed, booted feet dangling and dripping, stained jacket soaking the spread. I put the tray down on the table and bent over him. His lashes were stuck together in starry points. They lay quiet in the bruised and sunken sockets.

“John,” I whispered.

There was no reply. I said, “Kitty, kitty. Here, nice Kitty.”

His eyes popped open. “If you let that damned cat—”

“She’s not here. I just said that to tease you.”

“Oh, God,” said John. He closed his eyes again. “To think I once praised your sense of humor.”

“Just rest easy.”

“I intend to. I don’t intend to move for at least three days. I may die here, quietly and peacefully—”

His voice faded.

“Hang in there,” I said soothingly. “You can die later, after I’m through with you.”

I had to cut the laces of his boots, they were so sodden and twisted. Midway through the ensuing process, he revived sufficiently to sit up so that I could ease his jacket off. Surveying my preparations, he remarked, “I do admire a well-organized person. But I don’t see any thumb-screws or cat-o’-nine tails or—”

“I have everything I need. I wanted to make sure we weren’t interrupted.”

“I see,” John said warily.

“You’ll have to stand up for a minute. I want to change the bed.”

He did so, without comment, clinging to the bedpost for support; I scooped the whole soggy mess of ribbons, papers, and wet spread into my arms and tossed it aside before replacing it with the blankets I had taken from Tony’s bed. The sight of his bruised, lacerated body almost shattered my resolution, but I was determined he wasn’t going to get away with it this time.

After I had tended the scars of battle, I propped him up with a couple of pillows. “Now,” I said encouragingly. “The worst is yet to come. What about a glass of wine to stiffen your nerve? Come on, don’t be so suspicious. I haven’t added anything to it. You don’t think I would poison you, do you?”

He wouldn’t take the glass until I had drunk from it. “This has been very pleasant,” he said politely. “But I wouldn’t want to keep you from your other obligations. Shouldn’t you—”

I smiled brightly at him. “You aren’t keeping me from a thing. Tony is still in Garmisch, Schmidt is sound asleep—Clara is sleeping on his stomach—and everything else can wait.”

“Vicky,” John began nervously. “I honestly didn’t intend—”

“Never mind that.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “What was it you said, just before the avalanche hit? No, don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You remember. Say it. Say it again, loud and clear.”

John moistened his lips. “I…”

“That’s a start. Come on, get it out.”

“I don’t…”

“Yes, you do.”

“I…I need another glass of wine.”

“No, you don’t. You aren’t going to get out of it by claiming you were drunk.”

He closed his eyes. I put one finger on a lowered lid and pushed it up. There was no brilliance, no sapphirine glitter in the eye that glared back at me; it was opaque as lapis lazuli, resentful and bloodshot. Then a spark stirred deep in the azure depths; he pushed my hand away and imprisoned it in his.

“I love you,” he said flatly. “I—love—you. Shall I elaborate? I have loved you. I do love you. I will love you. I didn’t want to love you. I tried not to love you. I will undoubtedly regret loving you, but—God help me—I love you—so much—”

“That’s what I thought you said,” I murmured.

“So he has gone?” Schmidt demanded, pouting.

“He has gone. Back into the shadows whence he came—but ready, whenever the chance of profit beckons, to take up his role as Supercrook, robbing the rich to sell to the highest bidder—”

“You joke? You can joke, in the face of this disgrace, this—this fiasco?” Schmidt’s pout turned to a scowl. It was hard to tell the difference, since both expressions involved lowering brows and an out-thrust lower lip, but I was only too familiar with my boss’s countenance. He went on, his voice rising in pitch and in volume, “Never have I been so humiliated! I, the director of the National Museum! Gaping down into an empty hole, while vulgar policemen snickered behind their hands and went home to tell their wives about the crazy old man who thought there was a treasure buried in an innkeeper’s grave…. I believed you. That was my mistake. I should have known better. I should have known you would betray me….”

He went on in this vein for some time. I didn’t interrupt, since in a way I felt I deserved a reprimand. It was Tony who came to my rescue. He had been released just in time to join the expedition to the cemetery, and I must give him credit; he hadn’t so much as smiled when the grave turned out to be empty of anything except Frau Hoffman’s coffin.

“Hold it, Schmidt,” he said. “You can’t blame this on Vicky. On the basis of the information we had, her deduction was eminently logical—and don’t forget, we both went for it. So we were mistaken. The job had to be done.”

Schmidt said, “Humph.” I said, “Thanks, Tony,” and I meant it; but his kindly, if somewhat patronizing, consideration for my feelings couldn’t wipe out my own sense of chagrin. I would never forget the awful sinking sensation that seized me when I realized my brilliant if belated deductions had been flatout wrong. The fact that everyone else, including John, had also been wrong, was small consolation. The policemen hadn’t actually snickered, but there had been quite a few suppressed grins and meaningful glances.

Avoiding those glances, I had found myself scanning the hillside, half-expecting to see a lurking form or the gleam of sunlight on a head of fair hair. I had left John recumbent in bed, looking as frail and pathetic as only John could look, but I had not been under any delusions as to his intentions or his capabilities. Nor had I been at all surprised to find no trace of him when I returned to the hotel. The chambermaid had tidied the room and made the bed; there was not even a crumpled pillowcase to show he had ever been there.

“Well, then,” said Schmidt briskly, “why are we wasting time talking? We must return to Munich at once—we must organize ourselves. The gold is out there somewhere; now that its presence has been made public, there is no hope of concealment, so we may as well invite cooperation, eh? Yes, yes; all the museums and universities will join in the search—fine-tooth combs—strong young graduate students….” He rubbed his hands together, his good humor completely restored by the picture taking shape in his mind—hundreds of hapless underlings crawling over the mountains of Bavaria, under the direction of that brilliant mastermind, Anton Z. Schmidt.

Frankly, the prospect left me cold. If the gold was ever found, it would be as the result of ordinary, painstaking police-type investigation of Hoffman’s activities over the months preceding his death, interrogation of everyone who had spoken with him, consultation with local guides and mountaineers who knew the terrain and could suggest likely hiding places. All very efficient and very boring.

“Hurry, Vicky,” Schmidt ordered. “Why are you so slow? Die Weiber, die Weiber, always they delay—”

I put my mutilated nightgown into the suitcase and closed it. “I’m ready. Except for Clara. She was in your room, Schmidt; why don’t you go and get her?”

“You are adopting her, then?” Schmidt asked.

“It was predestined,” I said with a sigh. “I called Herr Müller this morning; he wants to stay with his daughter for a few weeks, and he doesn’t trust the neighbors to look after Clara properly, and…To make a long story short, he talked me into it. He always wanted me to take her.”

“That is good,” Schmidt said seriously. “The poor Caesar, he will have someone to play with,”

He went trotting out. Tony leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through the tumbled waves of his hair. “I still don’t understand everything that happened,” he grumbled. “I never suspected Dieter.”

I hadn’t either, but I didn’t say so. I felt I had been humiliated quite enough already. “There are some things none of us will ever understand; the only people who knew the truth are dead. This isn’t one of those neat storybook solutions, where the detective triumphantly ties up all the loose ends and exposes all the unknown motives. But the general outline is clear, isn’t it? I was the only one to whom Hoffman sent a photograph of his wife. Either there was a return address on the envelope, or he intended to follow it up with a letter. I think—I’m almost sure—he was still hesitating. His initial infatuation with Friedl had cooled, he had realized she couldn’t be trusted with his secret—but it never would have occurred to him that he might be in danger from her. He was anticipating only an inevitable, but hopefully not imminent, natural death, so he saw no need for haste.”

“That seems reasonable,” Tony admitted. “But you’ll never prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove it. I said this wasn’t a storybook ending…. In fact, I don’t believe Friedl meant to kill Hoffman. She knew he was about to communicate with me, and she ordered Freddy to stop him. Freddy goofed—or perhaps he misinterpreted her orders. Neither of them was very bright. It was sheer bad luck for them that Müller found the envelope before one of them could retrieve it. When Dieter learned what had happened, he decided he had better come to Bad Steinbach and supervise matters in person. They weren’t sure that I had received the photograph until I showed up, along with Schmidt; but Dieter had already taken the precaution of sending similar photos to all the others. He didn’t have copies of the one of Frau Hoffman, so he had to settle for Frau Schliemann.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Tony admitted. “He wanted an excuse for being here, if one of us spotted him—”

“And it got Jan Perlmutter here as well. Jan was supposed to be the fall guy in case things went wrong. That’s why he got a clue you and the others didn’t get. Dieter never meant you to show up; and he only brought Elise along as camouflage.”

“It’s an awfully complicated, convoluted plot,” Tony said.

“Dieter had a complicated, convoluted mind—as evidenced by some of his practical jokes. We’ll never know for certain why he killed Freddy, but Freddy was a danger to him all along; he knew Dieter’s identity and wasn’t above a spot of blackmail. Tossing the body into my garden was just another little spot of confusion. Then Friedl started to crack. Her nice simple little plan of finding the loot and peddling it through Dieter had taken on alarming dimensions and the treasure was still missing. She was jealous of him—look at the way she flew off the handle after she found out he had come to my room—and more than a little afraid of him. She was ready to confess, I’m sure; he realized it too, and got rid of her; called both of us, imitating her voice, to set us up. The more suspects, the better.”

“I guess that clears most of it up,” Tony said.

“Not quite all.” I folded my arms. “I didn’t have a chance to give you my Christmas present, Tony, and now I can’t find the card—Clara must have chewed it up. So I will eschew subtleties and say straight out, What the hell is the idea of lying to me about imaginary Annie?”

Tony blushed. “Oh,” he muttered. “I was afraid you had figured that all out.”

“You were right. Well?”

Tony sprang from his chair and wrapped his arms around me. “You know why, Vicky. Damn it, you’ve been putting me off for years. I thought if you thought—”

“A little reverse psychology?”

“Right. Vicky, I’m crazy about you. You know that. I always will be. Won’t you—”

“No. I’m sorry, Tony.”

I didn’t try to free myself. After a moment, his arms relaxed their hold. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“He,” I said, without thinking.

“Dammit, don’t criticize my grammar when I’m baring my soul to you,” Tony shouted. “And don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, Tony.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Oh, sure. Not that that has anything to do with it.”

Tony flapped his arms. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t try. It doesn’t even make sense to me. Let’s get going. We’ll have a nice, friendly, belated Christmas Eve tonight, before you leave for Turin in the morning. I hope and trust that by this time the police have removed Freddy; his presence might cast a certain pall over the celebration. We’ll stop by Carl’s and pick up Caesar and introduce him to…What’s taking Schmidt so long?”

“‘Peace! Break thee off,’” said Tony; “‘look where it comes again!’”

He had recovered sufficiently to smile and to quote Shakespeare, so I decided my refusal hadn’t broken his heart after all. “‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” I agreed. “What happened to you, Schmidt?’”

As Schmidt pointed out, at some length, the answer was self-evident. He had Clara clamped under one arm, and his other hand held her jaws closed. Both hands were crisscrossed by bleeding scratches. Clara’s blazing eyes and muffled growls indicated that though temporarily overpowered, she was not subdued. She didn’t scratch me or Tony. She bit Tony, and she squirmed and howled when I tried to free her from the red ribbon tied around her neck. The bow was under her chin, and so lacerated I had to cut the ribbon off. It took all three of us to cram her in the carrier I had bought that morning.

“Cats hate bows,” I explained to Schmidt, who was sucking his wounds. “It was a pretty thought, Schmidt, but—”

“Do you think I would be so stupid?” Schmidt demanded. “I did not put the ribbon on her. I thought you had. She was in the wardrobe; that is why it took me so long to find her, and when I did, she—”

“I see what she did.” I turned the ribbon over in my hands. A small package had been tied firmly to the bow. Clara’s teeth had penetrated, but not destroyed it. I ripped it open under the curious eyes of Tony and Schmidt.

Inside was a small golden rose, enameled in scarlet and crimson, with green leaves. An attached ring enabled it to be worn as a charm on a bracelet or as a pendant. It wasn’t the sort of thing one could pick up at a local shop; the exquisite workmanship and soft colors showed the hand of a master goldsmith, probably a long-dead master, for it was old—Persian work, at a guess.

“How romantic,” said Schmidt.

“Isn’t it?” I agreed. Actually, I found the paper wrapped around the trinket even more romantic—it was a receipt from a famous antiquarian jeweler’s in Manhattan, and it was marked “Paid.” Nice to get a present I would not have to return to its rightful owner…. But I think the thing that touched me most was my hero’s gallantry in taking on Clara singlehanded.

I tucked the packet into my pocket. “Let’s go.”

Schmidt seemed to feel that some further ceremony was called for. He couldn’t decide in which direction to face, to address the absent and admired one; after spinning around a few times, he settled on the window. Raising one hand in solemn respect, he declaimed, “Ave atque vale, Sir John. The memory of your gallantry will live, green in our hearts—”

“You sound like a funeral sermon, Schmidt,” I said.

Tony was still in a Shakespearean mood. “How about ‘When shall we three meet again?’” he suggested sarcastically.

I don’t think Schmidt recognized the source. “Yes, yes,” he exclaimed. “Very appropriate. How does it go on?”

He and Tony went out together, Tony reciting “‘In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won…’”

They had left me to handle the carrier. I picked it up and followed them. The quotation was more appropriate than Schmidt or Tony knew. I had won this battle, and John had lost something more important to him than Trojan gold. Served him right…. I wondered how the next round would turn out.

About the Author

Elizabeth Peters was named Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America in 1998. She earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s famed Oriental Institute. In addition to the Vicky Bliss mysteries, Elizabeth Peters is the author of the bestselling Amelia Peabody mysteries.

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Books by Elizabeth Peters

THE APE WHO GUARDS THE BALANCE

SEEING A LARGE CAT · THE HIPPOPOTAMUS POOL

NIGHT TRAIN TO MEMPHIS

THE SNAKE, THE CROCODILE AND THE DOG

THE LAST CAMEL DIED AT NOON · NAKED ONCE MORE

THE DEEDS OF THE DISTURBER · TROJAN GOLD

LION IN THE VALLEY · LORD OF THE SILENT

THE MUMMY CASE · DIE FOR LOVE

SILHOUETTE IN SCARLET · THE COPENHAGEN CONNECTION

THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS · THE LOVE TALKER

SUMMER OF THE DRAGON · STREET OF THE FIVE MOONS

DEVIL MAY CARE · LEGEND IN GREEN VELVET

CROCODILE ON THE SANDBANK · THE MURDERS OF RICHARD III

BORROWER OF THE NIGHT · THE SEVENTH SINNER

THE NIGHT OF FOUR HUNDRED RABBITS

THE DEAD SEA CIPHER · THE CAMELOT CAPER

THE JACKAL’S HEAD · THE FALCON AT THE PORTAL

HE SHALL THUNDER IN THE SKY

And in Hardcover

THE GOLDEN ONE

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

TROJAN GOLD. Copyright © 1987 by Elizabeth Peters.