Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [34]
In the summer, there are tables and bright umbrellas outside the hotel restaurant and the cafés. At least I assume there were, since that is the custom; I had never visited the village in the summer. There were no tables outside that day. However, the restaurant appeared to be doing good business, to judge by the people passing in and out.
Like the English, the Bavarians eat all the time. Unlike the English, they have not invented separate names for their various snack times; instead of elevenses and teatime and whatever, they refer to all of them as Brotzeit. It was just past 11 A.M. A reasonable time for Brotzeit.
The first thing I noticed was that the lobby had been modernized—not extensively, just enough to add a few jarring notes to what had been a charming period ambiance. There was a souvenir counter with racks of cheap beer steins and dolls dressed in Bavarian costume and pillows embroidered with mottoes like “I did it in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.” The old wooden registration desk had been replaced by a shiny plastic structure. Hoffman wasn’t on duty. The man behind the counter was someone I had not seen before—young and heavy-set, inappropriately attired in a short-sleeved gaudy print shirt. I didn’t linger but went straight through into the restaurant.
It had undergone a similar transformation. The tables were more numerous and closer together, and each one boasted a vase of tacky plastic rosebuds. The bar was a modern monstrosity, frosted glass blocks with colored lights behind them.
Eventually one of the waitresses made it to my table. She was squashed into one of those Salzburger dirndls that you’re supposed to buy several sizes smaller than your actual measurements. They are fastened across the midriff with hooks as stout as industrial steel, and the excess flesh thus ruthlessly compressed billows up over the low-cut bodice into the cute little white blouse, and sometimes beyond. When she bent over to ask for my order, I was reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies—when Walter Matthau, confronted by a similar exhibition, screams, his eyes bulging, “Don’t let them out! Don’t let them out!”
They didn’t get out. I ordered beer and examined the menu the girl had given me. The featured item was something called a Bavarian burger—ground veal and sauerkraut on a bun.
The omens were not auspicious. I had hoped I’d find Herr Hoffman in his usual place behind the desk. He might be elsewhere in the hotel or the village—or the world—but the implications of that bloodstained envelope were getting harder to deny. The refined old gentleman I had known would never have countenanced such vulgarities as plastic rosebuds and souvenir cushions.
I drank my beer and tried to figure out what to do next. There would be nothing unusual in my asking for Hoffman; anyone who had stayed at the hotel would remember him and he had been particularly kind to me. If my forebodings were mistaken, and I devoutly prayed they were, I would simply show him the photograph and ask him what it was all about.
If Hoffman was out of the picture, permanently or temporarily, it might be Frau Hoffman whom I would confront. I had never met her, but I assumed the woman wearing Helen’s jewels must be she; she was the right age, at any rate. I couldn’t think of any reason why I should not be equally candid with her. She was obviously in her husband’s confidence.
If I asked for the manager and found myself facing a total stranger…Play it by ear? I keep thinking I’m good at that, even though events have often proved me mistaken. In this case there wasn’t much else I could do. I paid my check and went back to the lobby.
The concierge behind the counter kept me waiting while he answered the phone and made busy work with piles of papers. He kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I was impressed. At close range, I understood why he was shivering in short sleeves; every move he made was shivering