Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [22]
I started to say something sarcastic, but he looked so ridiculous pawing at his hair, with those preposterous breasts jutting out at an impossible angle as he bent over the case, that my sense of humour got the better of me. I didn’t want him to see me laugh, so I turned and sat down on one of the velvet-covered couches surrounding the pièce de résistance, the case containing the chalice.
‘What are you going to look like next time I see you?’ I asked.
John sat down beside me. ‘Not like this. I’ve already shaved twice today, and my skin is quite sensitive.’
‘You make a very pretty girl.’
‘I knew you were going to say that. What’s your room number?’
‘First tell me what this friend of yours looks like.’
Half a lifetime of eluding the law had made John quick at catching undertones. He turned so abruptly that I jumped. My purse slid off my lap and spilled half its contents onto the floor.
‘Have you acquired a friend too?’ he asked intently.
‘I may have.’
‘Medium height, heavy-set, brown hair and beard, horn-rimmed glasses?’
‘No.’
‘Sure? He could have shaved the beard – ’
‘No chance. Mine is blond, seven feet tall.’
‘Hmmm. Do I perchance scent a rival?’
‘Definitely. Speaking of scent, what is that perfume?’
‘Like it?’ John turned a ruffled shoulder to me and batted his eyelashes. They weren’t false. His eyelashes are one of his best features, and he knows it.
‘Love it.’
‘Then I know what to get you for your birthday. Gather up your gear and get lost, darling. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘But I want to know – ’
‘Later.’ He began picking up my scattered possessions. Instead of kneeling, he moved in a shuffling squat – afraid to dirty the knees of his white slacks, I suppose. I was about to join the pursuit when all of a sudden he went absolutely rigid. His knees hit the floor. Stiff as a marble statue of a supplicant he knelt, staring at the papers he held.
During the course of our Roman adventure I had seen John face assorted perils – guns, dogs, maniacal killers with relative aplomb. His appearance of Best British sangfroid was not due to courage but to his insane sense of humour; he couldn’t resist making smart remarks even when the subject of his ridicule was brandishing a knife under his nose. When the wisecracks gave out, he reverted to type, groaning over every little scratch and trying to hide behind any object in the neighbourhood, including my skirts. I’d seen him turn pale green with fright and livid with terror. I had never seen him look the way he looked now.
I let out a muffled croak. John leaped up as if he had knelt on a scorpion. Thrusting the papers into my lap, he reached the doorway in three long leaps and disappeared.
There were three papers in the lot he had handed me. One was the message from Schmidt, on the back of which I had scribbled Gustaf Jonsson’s home address. One was a receipt from the store where I had bought my sweater. The last was my silhouette.
I put them in my purse. I was looking around to make sure John hadn’t missed something when I heard a harsh cough. Someone was coming. Slow, shuffling footsteps, heavy asthmatic breathing . . .
The man who appeared in the doorway wore a uniform like that of a guard. That’s what he was – a museum guard. He glanced incuriously at me and walked slowly around the room inspecting the cases.
He was the only person I saw on the way out. The museum was about to close. Everyone else had gone. No seven-foot-tall Vikings, no short, bearded men with horn-rimmed glasses, no overdeveloped females wearing flaxen wigs. I ought to have been relieved. I felt squirmy all over, as if hundreds of eyes were watching me.
After I had walked a few blocks in the bright summer sunlight the feeling dissipated. Maybe John’s wide-eyed horror had been one of his peculiar jokes, a gimmick designed to allow him to get away before I could ask any more questions.
The most interesting question of all was the one I had failed to pick up on because I was