One

THIS TIME IT WASN'T MY FAULT.

On several previous occasions I have found myself up to my neck in trouble (and that's pretty high up, because I am almost six feet tall), which might have been avoided if I had displayed a little ladylike discretion. This time, however, I was innocent of everything except stupidity. They say some people attract trouble. I attract people who attract trouble.

Take Herr Professor Dr. Schmidt, for instance. You wouldn't think to look at him that he could be so dangerous. Physically he's a combination of the Wizard of Oz and Santa Claus—short, chubby, disgustingly cute. Intellectually he ranks as one of the world's greatest historians, respected by all his peers. Emotionally…Ah, there's the rub. The non-professional parts of Schmidt's brain are permanently frozen at fourteen years of age. He thinks of himself as D'Artagnan, James Bond, Rudolf Rassendyll, Clint Eastwood, and Cyrano de Bergerac, all rolled into one. This mental disability of Schmidt has been partially responsible for propelling me into a number of sticky situations.

Yet Schmidt's profession, which is also mine, sometimes requires its practitioners to enter a world far removed from the ivory towers of academia. He's the director of the National Museum in Munich; I work under him, specializing in art history. Nothing duller or more peaceful than a museum? Tell that to any museum director and listen to him giggle hysterically.

There is a flourishing black market in stolen art objects, from historic gems to great paintings. Murph the Surf, who lifted the Star of India from New York's American Museum of Natural History in 1964, was a veritable amateur compared to modern thieves, who have to contend with closed-circuit television, ultrasonic waves, photoelectric systems, and other science-fiction-type devices. They contend admirably. According to one estimate, seventy-five percent of all museums suffer at least one major theft per year.

Sometimes the stolen masterpieces are held for ransom. Insurance companies don't like to publicize the amounts they shell out for such purposes, but when you consider the prices even second-rate Great Masters are bringing at auction these days, you can see that this branch of the trade pays very well. Other treasures simply vanish. It is believed that criminal organizations such as the Mafia are investing heavily in "hot" art, storing it up like gold and silver coins. And there are private collectors who like to sit in their hidden, air-conditioned vaults gloating over beauty that is theirs alone.

It's no wonder museum directors sleep badly, and worry a lot.

Which has nothing to do with the present case. It wasn't my job, or my tendency to interfere in other people's business that led me astray this time. It was one man. And I should have known better.

It rains a lot in southern Germany. That's why the Bavarian countryside is so lush and green. In bright sunshine Munich is one of the world's gayest and most charming cities. Under dull gray skies it is as dismal as any other town. This spring had been even wetter than usual. (They say that every spring.) As I stood waiting for the bus one evening in late May, I felt that I had seen enough water to last me for a long while. My umbrella had a hole in it, and rain was trickling down the back of my neck. I had stepped in a puddle crossing Tegernsee Allee, and my expensive new Italian sandals were soggy wrecks. A sea of bobbing, shiny-wet umbrellas hemmed me in. Since most Munichers, male and female, are shorter than I am, the streaming hemispheres were almost all on my eye level, and every now and then a spoke raked painfully across the bridge of my nose. Italy, I thought. Capri, with a blue, blue sea splashing onto white sand. My vacation wasn't due until July. I decided to move it up.

Naturally, the package arrived that evening. Some people have a diabolical sense of timing. Even the weather cooperates with them.

The rest of the mail was the usual dull collection, plus the weekly letter from my mother, which I wasn't exactly aching to read. It would contain the usual repetitive news about her bridge club and her recipes, plus the usual veiled hints about how I ought to be settling down. My birthday was rapidly approaching—never mind which one—as far as Mom is concerned, every birthday after the twenty-first is a step down the road to hopeless spin-sterdom. I kept sending her carefully expurgated descriptions of my social life, but I couldn't expect her to understand why marriage was the last thing I wanted. She and Dad have been like Siamese twins for over forty years.

Before I could read the mail or divest myself of my wet clothes I had to deal with Caesar. He is a souvenir of a former misadventure of mine, in Rome, and there were times when I wished I had brought back a rosary blessed by the Pope or a paperweight shaped like the Colosseum, instead of an oversized, overly affectionate dog. Caesar is a Doberman—at least he looks like a Doberman. Like Schmidt's, his personality doesn't match his appearance. He is slobberingly naive and simpleminded. He likes everybody, including burglars, and he dotes on me. He has cost me a small fortune, not only in food, but in extras, such as housing. Even if I had the heart to confine a horse-sized dog to a small apartment, there wasn't a landlord in the city insane enough to rent to me. So I had a house in the suburbs. The bus ride took almost an hour twice a day.

I let Caesar out and let him in, and fed him, and let him out and dried him off. Then I settled down with the mail and a well-deserved glass of wine.

I opened the package first, noting, with only mild interest, that I was not the first to open it. German customs, I assumed. The stamps were Swedish, the address was in neat block printing, and the return address, required on international parcels, was that of a hotel in Oslo.

Swedish stamps, Oslo address, anonymous printing—that should have warned me, if there were anything in this business of premonitions. There isn't. I was still only mildly curious when I opened the box. But when I saw the contents—one perfectly shaped crimson rose—my blood pressure soared.

It had been over a year since I had seen John—almost three years since the red rose had been mentioned. But I had good cause to remember it.

"One red rose, once a year." He hadn't said it, I had. At Leonardo da Vinci Airport, as I was leaving for Munich and John was leaving for parts unknown, with, as he quaintly put it, the police of three countries after him. John was another souvenir of that Roman adventure, and he had turned out to be even more inconvenient than Caesar. I had seen him once in the intervening time. We had spent three days together in Paris. On the third night he had departed out of the window of the hotel room while I slept, leaving behind a suitcase full of dirty clothes, an unpaid hotel bill, and a tender, charming note of farewell. My fury was not mitigated when I learned, from a sympathetic but equally infuriated inspector of the Sûreté, of the reason for his precipitate departure. They had waited until morning to close in on him, feeling sure—said the inspector, with a gallant Gallic bow—that he would be settled for the night.

The police wouldn't tell me what it was he had stolen. I didn't really want to know.

John is a thief. He specializes in the objects I am paid to guard and protect—gems, antiques, art objects. He isn't a very successful thief. He's smart enough, and God knows he's tricky, but he is also a dedicated coward. When he hears the heavy footsteps of cops or competitors thundering toward him, he drops everything and runs. That may not seem like an attractive quality, but it is actually one of John's more appealing traits. If everybody were as reluctant to inflict or endure pain, there wouldn't be any wars, or muggings of helpless little old ladies.

Copyright © 1983 by Elizabeth Peters