Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [3]
I said slowly and patiently, ‘Human beings have been producing works of art of one kind or another for over thirty-five thousand years. Even if you include only the major visual arts and restrict yourself to Western art, you have to start with Stone Age man, proceed through the Egyptians and the Minoans and the Etruscans and the Greeks, to early Christian art and Byzantine and medieval and Renaissance and . . . Oh, hell. What I’m trying to say is that nobody can be an expert on all those fields. My specialty is medieval European art. I don’t know – ’
‘What about the Trojan gold?’ Feder inquired. ‘That does not come under the heading of medieval European art, does it?’
I had been afraid somebody was going to bring that up.
Schmidt refers to the affair of the Trojan gold as ‘our most recent case.’ He doesn’t often refer to it, however, because it had not been one of ‘our,’ most resounding successes. People had been looking for the gold, a hoard of priceless ancient jewellery which had vanished from besieged Berlin at the end of World War II, for almost fifty years. Educated opinion believed the Russians had carried it off to Moscow. Schmidt and I and a few other people had spent several weeks the previous winter following up a clue that suggested it had been smuggled out of Berlin before the Russians entered the city, and hidden somewhere in Bavaria. At one point I thought I had found the hiding place. Turned out I was wrong. Schmidt was still complaining about how I had misled him. Which I hadn’t, not deliberately. I had been – well – wrong. Sometimes I am wrong.
Not this time, though, dammit. Feder was smirking at me as if he had said something clever. He was correct. The Trojan gold could not be described as medieval art.
I tried again. ‘That had nothing to do with my expertize or lack thereof. It was pure chance.’
‘But you recognized, from a bad photograph, that the jewels pictured were genuine. Some degree of expertize – ’
‘Anybody could have done that!’ My voice rose. ‘The gold of Troy is famous. Everybody knows about it. Almost everybody . . . Let me put it this way, meine Herren; I could not pose as an expert on Egyptian art for more than five minutes without getting caught out. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting I accept the position of guest lecturer on a Nile cruise. In exchange for a free tour I will be expected to talk at least once a day on some damned temple or pyramid, and be prepared to answer questions from the people taking the cruise, who wouldn’t be taking the cruise if they weren’t already interested in and informed about the subject. Five minutes, hell! I wouldn’t last sixty seconds. Why me, for God’s sake? There are hundreds of people who know more about the subject than I do.’
‘But my dear Fräulein Doktor!’ Burckhardt exclaimed. ‘Look at it this way. Never again will you have the opportunity for such a holiday. This is a luxury cruise; the boat is new, designed for millionaire tourists – suites instead of rooms, gourmet food, the best of everything. Passengers will be admitted to places that are barred to the ordinary tourist, the lecturers are all distinguished scholars – ’
He waved a brightly coloured brochure at me. I shied back. ‘That’s just the point, Herr Burckhardt. Karl, will you please tell your friend that I am not an empty-headed blond bimbo, even if I do look like one.’
Lately I’d been trying very hard not to look like one, swathing my too well endowed torso in loose jackets and my long legs in full skirts that flapped around my calves. I had let my hair grow long so I could wind it into a schoolmarmish bun. Nothing seemed to work. If you are tall and blond and blue-eyed and shaped like a female,