Street of the Five Moons (10 page)

I had suspected it might be. Somewhere in the depths of the villa someone was banging on a gong, and had been doing so for some time.

I ran a comb through my hair and followed the sound of the gong, which had assumed a slightly hysterical resonance. The closer I got, the more outrageous the noise became; I had my hands over my ears when I came upon it — a mammoth structure as big as the one that is banged in old Arthur Rank movies. Pietro was swatting it with a huge mallet. His tie was up under his left ear and his face was bright red with anger and exertion. When he saw me he dropped the mallet. The gong shivered and echoed and died, and I took my fingers out of my ears.

“It is too maddening,” Pietro exclaimed. “The boy is always late; never is he on time; and now Helena too. And Sir John, where is he? They all conspire to keep me from my lunch. I suffer from a rare disease of the stomach, my doctor tells me I must eat at regular hours.”

“I was late too,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about your rare disease.”

Pietro straightened his tie, mopped his face, smoothed his hair, and smirked at me.

“But for you it is different. You are a guest. I should have given you more time. Come, we will go in. We will not wait for them.”

We didn’t have to wait long for Helena and Smythe. She gave me a big grin as she entered; her crucifix, of gold and pearls, was prominently displayed. Smythe followed her in and took a seat next to me.

The meal was a pattern of the others I was to eat in that house. The boy never appeared at all, nor did the dowager. Pietro explained that his mother often dined in her rooms. That was almost all he said. Smythe didn’t contribute much either. He seemed preoccupied. As soon as we had devoured the vast quantities of food, Pietro went staggering out to take a nap. Helena followed him, and I caught Smythe’s arm as he passed me on his way to the door.

“Don’t you think it’s time we had a talk?” I asked.

I forget whether I’ve mentioned that he was just about my height — an inch or so taller, maybe, but the heels on my sandals made up the difference. We were eyeball to eyeball as we stood there, but by some alchemy he managed to give the impression that he was looking down at me — down the full length of his nose.

“I suspect it will be wasted effort on my part,” he drawled. “But I’m willing to give it another try. Let’s stroll in the gardens, shall we?”

“How romantic,” I said.

It might have been, if someone other than Smythe had been my escort. The cool tinkle of the fountains followed us through shady walks and avenues lined with flowering shrubs. When I tried to talk, Smythe shushed me.

“May as well find a quiet spot,” he said.

We rounded a corner, and I jumped six feet off the ground. Straight ahead was a giant monster’s head carved of stone. It was so big that the open mouth was taller than I am. Its snarling expression and horned, serpent-entwined head would have been startling even in miniature.

“I suppose that’s your idea of a joke,” I said, getting my breath back.

“Sorry. I forgot the damned thing was there. It’s not a bad place for a private chat, actually. Come on in.”

He walked through the mouth, stooping slightly to avoid the stone fangs that fringed it.

I followed him. The stone of which the atrocity was carved was a rough, dark substance, pumicelike in texture, but much harder. Lichen and moss had grown over the surface like peeling skin. It was a singularly unappealing piece of work.

The hollow head had been fitted up as a summer house. Light came in through the eyes and mouth and nose slits, but it was still pretty dark. Smythe sat down on a bamboo chair and waved me toward another.

“Are there any more little charmers like this around?” I asked.

“Several. The ninth count got the idea from a friend — Prince Vicino Orsini — back in the sixteenth century.”

“I’ve read about the Orsini estate,” I said. “Bomarzo — isn’t that the name of it?”

“I don’t remember. It’s about fifty miles north of Rome. Quite a tourist attraction, I understand.”

“Never mind the guidebook excerpts,” I said. “I want—”

“My dear girl, you introduced the subject.”

“Consider it finished, then.”

“Did you really leave a letter with your solicitor?”

“I left a letter, but not with my solicitor. I don’t have a solicitor. I admit that the evidence I’ve collected so far isn’t conclusive. If it were, I’d go to the police. But I’m sure you will agree that my demise or disappearance would confirm my suspicions in a particularly inconvenient fashion.”

“Inconvenient for us, certainly. We don’t want publicity.”

“Then what do you intend doing about it?”

“About what?” His left eyebrow lifted.

“Why, this — the plot — the….”

He leaned back in his chair, his hands folded on his flat stomach, and smiled at me.

“Really, Victoria, you’re being unreasonable. I don’t see why I should do anything. It’s up to you to take action, I should think. What are
you
going to do?”

“Find out all about the plot,” I said. “Then go to the police and have you all put in jail.”

“How very unkind of you. I do think you are jumping to conclusions. What makes you suppose this is a police matter?”

I got a grip on myself. His nonchalant, oblique style of conversation was affecting mine; we were talking around the subject and not saying anything.

“You seem to know all about me,” I said. “I suppose you checked up on me after I gave you my name. You know where I work; you also know that your man in Munich—”

“Lovely title for a thriller,” he interrupted.

“It’s been done. Stop interrupting. Your man in Munich is dead, and you know he had the Charlemagne talisman—”

Smythe sat upright. His smile had faded, and his eyes were bright and speculative.

“So that was it. No, I didn’t know what had stimulated an employee of the National Museum to burglary, but the mere fact was enough to make us suspicious of you. Even so, my dear, the existence of the talisman is irrelevant. What a nasty suspicious mind you must have, to leap to the conclusion that our pretty little copy meant larceny.”

“Where you made your mistake was having me kidnapped,” I retorted.

“You don’t suppose I would do anything so stupid?” Smythe demanded scornfully.

“Who did, then?”

“None of your business. Good Lord, girl, you didn’t really imagine I was going to blurt out a detailed confession as soon as you had me to yourself? You can’t prove a bloody thing. You can sit here till moss grows on you, and you still won’t be able to prove anything.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really. We have our tracks very nicely covered, I assure you. You won’t learn anything here, but it is possible that you may get into trouble. My colleagues are harmless souls, on the whole, but one or two of them…. I spoke quite sharply to them about kidnapping you, and I hope it won’t happen again. But I can’t promise, and I’m damned if I’m going to make a habit of rescuing you. Why the hell don’t you go away?”

“You wouldn’t be so anxious for me to leave if there were nothing to be learned here,” I said.

“Rudimentary Logic One. How to Construct a Syllogism. That doesn’t follow, you know. I told you, I am not completely certain of my colleagues’ reliability.” His tone changed. He leaned forward, his blue eyes softening. “Look here, Vicky, it’s really quite a harmless little plot. Why can’t you drop it?”

“If I knew all about it, I might agree with you,” I said sweetly.

Smythe opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he fell back in his chair and started to laugh.

“No, no,” he said, between chuckles. “I was tempted to spin you a pleasing yarn. I could do it, you know. But you have a mind that is almost as twisty as mine. You’d never believe me, would you?”

“Frankly,” I said, throwing tact to the winds, “I wouldn’t believe you if you told me the sun rises in the east. Why don’t
you
give it up? If the plot is that harmless, it can’t be worth much. I’m very persistent, and my friends already know quite a lot about you.”

Gravely Smythe removed a white handkerchief from his pocket, waved it in the air, and then returned it to its place.

“The parley is over,” he said. “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I am going back to the house; I have work to do. Coming?”

“I’m beginning to like this place,” I said. “I think I shall stay awhile.”

Smythe walked to the mouth — the door, that is. He turned. Against the sunlight he was a dark paper shape, a silhouetted shadow. I couldn’t see his features, but when he spoke his voice had lost its humorous tone.

“I admire your bravado, Vicky. But don’t push it too far. There are things that walk in the garden here — and not only by night.”

Which was a nice thought to leave with a girl who was sitting inside a monster’s head.

II

I fell asleep out there in the monster’s head, lying on a nice soft chaise longue. It was very unusual for me to do that. I never sleep in the daytime. I don’t usually eat lunches like that one either, with almost half a bottle of very potent wine.

Things started to liven up about four o’clock, when Pietro rose from his nap — if that’s what he was doing up there in his room. As I was to learn, he was usually somnolent and lazy in the morning, but he revived, like a night-blooming cereus, as twilight approached, and by midnight he was going strong.

He was a rather engaging little man. Unlike many blasé millionaires, he really enjoyed life. Not that I’ve known that many millionaires; I base that statement on what I read in the magazines. Wine may have contributed to his joie de vivre. He started drinking as soon as he got up, and continued until he collapsed. He drank fairly slowly, just a little bit faster than his body could absorb the stuff, so it took him quite a while to get loaded. He passed through several distinct stages along the way. The first sign of inebriation was a profound intellectuality. He would talk about history and politics and philosophy, using a lot of long words and quotations from Greek philosophers I had never heard of. He invented them, I think.

As the dinner hour approached, sensuality replaced the lure of the intellect. If I was alone with him during that period I had to keep moving, but eating used up most of his libidinous urges, and after dinner he became soft and sentimental. That was when he played old Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald records on his huge hi-fi and tried to do Viennese waltzes.

The belligerent mood succeeded this one, but being a noble Italian, Pietro wanted to fight with swords instead of fists. During these hours he often challenged people to duels. At about midnight he became quite vivacious and told a lot of old jokes and did vaudeville routines. He fancied himself as an amateur magician. He had all the paraphernalia, including one of those trick boxes for sawing a lady in half, but by that time his hands were getting unsteady, and even the housemaids refused to be sawed. Sometime in the early hours of the morning he collapsed and was carried off to bed by his valet and Mr. Smythe. I don’t know what he needed a mistress for, unless it was during the pre-dinner hour.

It was during the intellectual stage that first evening that he decided to show me his collections. He warned me that it would take days to study them properly; this was just a quick run-through, to give me a chance to decide what I wanted to concentrate on.

I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things. Museums are my favorite hobby, as well as my profession. But that was a unique experience. The objects he showed me were not museum pieces, they were part of the furniture.

“But what about thieves?” I said, midway through the tour. “This place is wide open, Pietro; anybody could get in.”

“But how would they get out? Carrying that…” And he gestured at a greater-than-life-size marble torso of Hercules that stood on a pedestal in the
salone
. “You would need a truck, would you not, and a block and tackle. It is not easy to put such an apparatus into my drawing room.”

“That’s right, I guess.” The little man wasn’t as foolish as he looked. “But what about the smaller objects?”

“There are many servants, even when I am not in residence. My housekeeper checks the inventory daily. As for the very small, very valuable objects, naturally I keep them in my safe.”

“Things like jewelry?” I said.

“Ah, you like jewelry?” Pietro patted my arm, and for a minute I thought the sensual phase was arriving a little early. But he went on. “That I keep in the vault. You would care to see it?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, wide-eyed. “I just love jewelry.”

“Ah, women,” sighed Pietro. “You are all alike — even you clever ladies are like all the others where jewels are concerned.”

The safe was a small room, right next to his sitting room upstairs, and he had sense enough to stand between me and the combination lock as he opened it.

“It is changed yearly,” he explained, twirling knobs. “A little person comes from the bank.”

At his suggestion I sat down on a velvet divan and he brought out boxes, which he piled on a low table in front of me. Then he started opening the boxes.

For half an hour or so I forgot I was a well-educated, cynical specialist, gainfully employed in a museum. I wallowed in jewels.

The pieces that really got to me were the Renaissance jewels. There was a pendant of gold and enamel, with a mermaid made out of a Baroque pearl. Its contours formed the mermaid’s torso; her raised arms and flowing hair were gold. The scales of her fishtail were made of roughly polished emeralds. And there was a necklace two feet long, made of stones as big as the end of a man’s thumb — emeralds and rubies and amethysts and topazes. Another necklace was of square-cut rubies framed in gold, with a cabochon ruby the size of a bantam hen’s egg dangling from the center. There was a headdress like one I had seen in a Botticelli painting — fine bands of gold supporting a star sapphire with stylized flower petals all around it. A star-shaped brooch set with pearls and rubies and emeralds framed in twisted gold wire. Rings….

I tried to look at these jewels with a critical eye, but it wasn’t easy, because Pietro insisted that I try them on. Rings on my fingers, bells on my toes…. He was getting to the amorous stage. I was absolutely clanking with jewels when the door burst open and Helena stormed in.

Alas, it appeared that we were no longer buddies. She glared at me and burst into impassioned speech.

“So this is where you are! You give this to her — never have you let me have so much as a miserable little ring, and you shower this — this—”

What followed was a fascinating excursion into Roman gutter slang. I had never known there were so many different words for a lady of ill repute. Pietro stood it for a while, and then he let out a roar.

“
Silenzio
! How dare you come here and use such vulgar language to a lady? A learned lady, who comes to study my collection! She is — she is writing a book, which will make me famous, is that not so, Vicky?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I surely am. You surely will be.”

Helena started to speak again, but Pietro shouted her down.

“Go! Go and learn manners. I do not give you so much as a ring, no! These jewels have been in my family for centuries. They belong to the Contessa Caravaggio, not to a — a—”

“That’s all right,” I said, as he glanced apologetically at me. “I know what you mean. You had better put the jewels away, Pietro.”

And — I hate to admit it, but I must — as I started to remove the ornaments from my fingers and throat and breast, my hands were stiff and reluctant. That was when I first began to understand the lure of precious jewels — a violent emotion that has prompted a good deal of bloodshed over the centuries.

It wasn’t until I got back to my own room and began getting ready for cocktails that I could think sympathetically of Helena.

If those damned pieces of crystallized carbon affected me as they had done, what must they do to Helena? I will do myself some justice; it wasn’t only the value of the stones that fascinated me, it was the beauty of the workmanship. The Renaissance jewelers weren’t simply craftsmen, they were the great artists of the period. Cellini was a sculptor as well as a goldsmith; Ghirlandaio, Verrocchio, and Michelozzo worked as jewelers. The “Doors of Paradise,” those matchless bas-reliefs at the Baptistery in Florence, were designed by a goldsmith named Ghiberti.

The unknown workman who had copied the Charlemagne talisman was in good company. I wondered if any of the jewels I had seen that day were fakes.

I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about fakes. It isn’t a single subject, it is a dozen subjects, because the techniques used in imitating jewelry, for instance, obviously differ from the methods used for porcelain or paintings. But all imitations have one thing in common, and that is this: if they are well done, it is practically impossible to tell them from the real thing.

The stuffier connoisseurs and art critics like to think they can spot a fake masterpiece by its stylistic failings alone. After all, if Rembrandt was so great, he should not be easy to imitate. This is a nice theory, but it is wrong. Every single museum in the world, including the snootiest, has objects tucked away in the basement that their experts would like to forget about — forged paintings and sculptures that they paid through the nose to get because they thought the pieces were genuine. Oh, sure, once a piece of art is known to be a fake — because the forger confessed, or chemical tests exposed it — then it’s easy to pick the thing apart. “The drapery in the imitation Greek bas-relief is not as crisp and sure as in the original….” Bah, humbug. The best of the experts have been fooled.

Take the case of Van Meegeren, who was probably the most famous and most successful art forger the world has ever known. If he hadn’t confessed, his fake Vermeers would still be featured in museums. His was a rare and lovely case of poetic justice, because he had to confess in order to save himself from a far more serious charge. During the German occupation of Holland, Van Meegeren sold one of his paintings to that clod Goering, who thought he was a connoisseur. Goering believed he was buying a genuine Vermeer, of course. Unfortunately, so did the Dutch government, and after the war, when they were catching up with traitors and quislings, they arrested Van Meegeren on a charge of collaborating with the Nazis — specifically, for selling national art treasures. The really amusing thing about the case was that when Van Meegeren confessed to faking dozens of Vermeers, the art world refused to believe him. What — the great “Supper at Emmaus” a fraud? Nonsense. It was obviously by Vermeer; in fact, it was his masterpiece! Not until Van Meegeren painted a new Vermeer, in his cell in the city jail, were the skeptics convinced. Then — such is human nature — they all started picking flaws in the paintings they had once hailed as treasures.

I knew something about how paintings are faked. I also knew that the only sure way of detecting a good forgery is by means of chemical and physical tests. For instance, a careless modern forger might use paints such as synthetic cobalts, ultramarine, or zinc white, which weren’t manufactured until the nineteenth century. But a good forger would avoid such sloppy errors. Van Meegeren was careful to use only the pigments obtainable in Vermeer’s day. They are still available; there are no “mystery pigments” or unknown techniques. Most forgers know enough to use old canvases, and they are skilled at imitating things like cracks and wormholes and patinas. There are all kinds of tricks, I’m sure — and any honest art historian will admit it, after a drink or two — that there are still lots of forgeries adorning the sacred halls of the world’s great museums. As for private collectors, they are hopelessly outclassed, especially if they buy things of questionable origin. They daren’t consult appraisers or scholars if they suspect the objects are stolen.

I felt sure that a great deal of antique jewelry had been faked, too, but the only piece I could remember reading about was the Saitaphernes tiara. A tiara is not necessarily a delicate half crown like the ones worn by fairy princesses. This piece was shaped like a tall pointed hat made of thin gold and covered with embossed scenes and inscriptions. The inscriptions had been copied from genuine Greek texts, so they sounded authentic, and the workmanship was good enough to fool the boys at the Louvre, who bought it for that great collection! The jeweler was a Russian named Rouchomowsky. Like Van Meegeren, he had a hard time making the art world accept his confession when he finally broke down. Again let me repeat — there are no lost techniques. Rouchomowsky had learned how to perform the ancient art of granulation — designs formed by tiny beads of gold, no bigger than grains of coarse sand, each one of which is individually welded into its place. Some of his forgeries were excellent copies of ancient Etruscan goldwork.

If Rouchomowsky could do it, so could someone else. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this gang had an undetectable racket. The only certain method of detecting fakes is by scientific tests, and if you use authentic materials, there is no way in the world they can test wrong. Gold is gold. It varies in purity, of course, but a careful faker would make sure he used the same type normally employed by the Greek or Renaissance craftsmen he was copying. Imitation jewels used to be easy to spot, but nowadays, since the discovery of synthetic jewels, a well-made piece can virtually defy laboratory tests. I wondered why Schmidt was so sure he had the genuine Charlemagne talisman. If I had been in his shoes, I would have taken good care of both of them.

I put on my one long dress — black jersey, very slinky — and took out my own personal jewelry collection. I must say it looked rather tacky.

Six

THE MEN WERE WEARING DINNER JACKETS; and if I had not felt less than kindly toward “Sir John Smythe,” I would have had to admit that formal wear suited his slim build and fair hair. His cummerbund was nice and flat. Poor Pietro looked like a melon with a purple ribbon tied around it.

The dowager was sitting by the drawing-room windows, in a tall carved chair like a throne. Her presence subdued her son slightly. He had to confine his amorous proclivities to Helena, since the old countess beckoned me to her side and kept me engaged in conversation.

She was cute. She reminded me of my grandmother. Not that they looked alike; Granny Andersen was a typical Swede, big-boned and blond even in her seventies, with eyes like blue steel chisels. But they were both matriarchs. The dowager had a passion for fashionable scandal. She wanted to know all the latest about Elizabeth Taylor’s new husband, and what Jacqueline and Princess Grace were doing. I wasn’t up to date on that subject, but I was a good listener. We both agreed, regretfully, that while recent American presidential wives might be very nice ladies, they had not contributed much to the world of glamour.

Before long, young Luigi wandered in. He looked vaguely around the room, as if he had forgotten what he came for; then he caught his grandmother’s eye and ambled over to her. She put out her thin, veined hand and drew him down to a seat on a low stool at her side. They made a pretty picture sitting there — sweet old age and attentive youth.