An Exhibition of Murder Read online

  ‘Do you want him to break off his engagement for you?’ he asked with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Please, no. He has selected the perfect bride-to-be. Interested in old things, like he is. At least, I suppose she is, considering she’s the daughter of a museum director. I never met her. But she must hate me.’ The thought gave her a secret thrill.

  ‘Why would she hate you? If there’s nothing between you and that dusty digger.’

  ‘Because people suggest there is and fiancées can be so terribly possessive. There. All done.’ She put her brush in her purse and pouted at the mirror. She did love this lipstick colour, the bright red of ripe cherries.

  ‘But you assure me she has no real reason to be jealous?’ he pressed.

  ‘I assure nothing, to no one. Darling, I must dash.’ She shot to her feet and made for the door, but he was faster than she was, pushing himself up from the bed and grabbing her by the wrist like a snake striking.

  ‘Don’t. That hurts.’

  ‘If you give yourself to him, I will kill him.’ His breath caressed her face. She liked him obsessive like that. But she’d never let him know.

  ‘You are mad.’

  ‘Not really.’ He let go of her abruptly, half turning away. Lighting a cigarette, he inhaled slowly. ‘There’s a persistent story that the golden mask he took and brought here has a curse upon it. If he dies, it must be this curse striking him.’

  ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. The police here wouldn’t believe in a curse, and they would examine the body and find some mark from a knife or pistol…’ She waited a moment watching as he exhaled. The smoke wafted to the ceiling, veiling his features. That determined jaw, the eyes that sometimes revealed a glimpse of a darkness she dreaded. ‘Do you still have your pistol?’

  ‘I thought you were in a hurry to leave, darling.’ The emphasis on the last word dripped with cynicism.

  ‘Do you?’ she pressed, suddenly a bit worried for him. That he loved her madly was fine of course, a boost for her sense of self-esteem. Any woman liked to be admired. But him committing a crime for her would be another matter.

  Part of her thought it was rather romantic. But the other half, which contained her common sense, knew it wouldn’t be so romantic if he got stuck in a prison and she could never see him again.

  And if the police decided that the motive for murder was somehow connected to her, the woman who both victim and killer had loved, would she become implicated? Could the murderer claim she had put him up to it and take her down with him as an accessory?

  She forced a smile. ‘Don’t do anything hasty, darling.’ At the door she looked over her shoulder.

  ‘To the curse.’ He lifted his hand with the cigarette as if toasting her. ‘May it be successful.’

  ‘You’re impossible.’ She walked out and closed the door with a bang, but even as she ran down the rickety stairs, she could hear his laughter. She had sometimes called him mad in jest, especially right after he had broken off his engagement to be with her. It had been an awfully good match, and he had thrown it all to the wind for her. That was madness at its best.

  But lately she had started to wonder if love also had a dark side. If the mad daring she had admired in him could also turn against her. Hurt her. Destroy her entire life.

  * * *

  The sun shone down on the lanes of the famous Prater park where couples walked arm in arm, deep in conversation about their weekend plans or their wedding arrangements. Nannies pushed prams with immaculate white lacing and toddlers hobbled after mothers who were there to show off their new hats to acquaintances they might run into.

  The Prater was the beating heart of the city and a meeting place for many. Nobody paid attention to the young woman hurrying along in a simple yellow dress with a white cardigan on top. Compared to the ladies decked out in haute couture with feathered hats and boas, she looked almost like a servant on a day out. She had beautiful dresses aplenty in her wardrobe at home, given to her by her doting father and paid for with money earned from his discoveries, like the fabled golden mask of death that would soon enthral everyone who laid eyes on it. But in her heart, it only inspired fear, and a voice whispered that the wealth acquired because of it would bring them nothing but trouble. That death would come again, like it had on the excavation site. She wanted to escape from it all. Be someone else, forget about what had happened. And about what was yet to come.

  Clutching her purse, she rushed to the spot they had agreed on earlier, a decorated white bridge across the pond where little boys in school uniform were sailing their boats. From a distance she could already see the tall figure waiting there for her.

  His blond hair shone in the sunlight and his expression was serious while he threw bread to the ducks gathered beside the bridge. As always when she saw him, she was struck by his determined stance, by the conviction in everything he did, in a gesture as simple as tearing off a piece of a Kaiser roll and tossing it into the water where loud quacking and a flurry of feathers gave away where it had fallen. Here was a man who knew what he wanted, and for some inexplicable reason he wanted her.

  She halted a moment, to catch her breath and to stop her heart from beating so violently she could scarcely go on. What she did was forbidden. Dangerous in so many ways. But she didn’t care. Gone was the girl who was afraid to stand out, who craved approval from her father, her companion, her friends. If she had ever had any.

  She was a woman now, loved and desired.

  Her hands trembled and she blinked hard as she kept staring at the vision on the bridge. The young man with his strong hands, his profile cut out in marble it seemed against the backdrop of the park. He looked so serious. Was he thinking about the same things as she was? How their love was forbidden, impossible, and at the same time undeniable and real? How could she ever tell her father that…

  No. She wasn’t going to tell him anything. He had no time for her anyway. He was too busy with his exhibition, his golden death mask which would be on display for the very first time since its discovery. He believed he would now establish his name – and not just to find sponsors for his next expedition. He had already reached that stage. It would have been pitiful if he had not at his age. But he believed he would now become immortal. His name would be in history books because he had discovered a burial site from one of the fabled Lykean kings who had ruled the Mediterranean seas many centuries ago with their expertly crafted war ships and who had expanded the realm of small Greek islands they had originally inhabited into a gigantic kingdom, subduing other people in brutal wars that had claimed many lives. The whispers about them in ancient texts had always been taken as fables only, but her father had set out to prove that they had indeed existed, pinpointing the island of Palymnos as the seat of power where the palace had stood and the great kings had been buried. Everyone had laughed at him, until he had started to unearth golden artefacts, his determination paying off in full with the discovery of the mask: the representation of the great ruler’s face, smooth, devoid of emotion, not knowing pity or mercy.

  She couldn’t believe how her father could see the death mask as something of beauty, when to her mind it was connected with bloodshed. She had even dreamed of it, sat in its glass container, on display for all to see, and blood had started to run across it like tears. It had been a horrible dream, a nightmare from which she had awoken with a start and a scream.

  Iris had come to her, like she always did, with a gentle soothing, a scolding about her reading too many books which put fanciful ideas into her head, and with warm milk which tasted vaguely of anise. Then she had fallen into a deep darkness that was worse than the nightmares. A sort of nothingness in which her body was heavy and her arms unable to move.

  ‘Violet!’

  The voice brought her back to the present with a jerk. He had seen her and waved at her, his normally cold face alight with a smile. She ran to him and stood in front of him, gasping for air. ‘Hello.’

  He kept smiling at her as he s
tudied her face, raised a hand to brush down her cheek. The warmth of his touch seeped into her deepest being. He was the life, the warmth, the sunshine that could banish the cold. He was everything to her and no matter what Papa might think if he ever found out, she’d never give up on this love.

  He put an arm around her and she stood in his embrace breathing deep and slow, willing the tension to subside. But it did not. It raged through her like waves of the ocean beating upon the shore. Not because it was forbidden. Not because her father would hate her for this if he knew.

  But because she was certain deep down inside that she wasn’t supposed to be feeling what she felt. Happiness was out of the question for her. That someone had grown to love her was wrong. She was not lovable. She was not good.

  She forced herself to stand very still, not to break away from him and betray her restlessness. He loved her and he believed her to be innocent, a quiet sort of girl whom he should protect. And she was. She was now. What had been was over and done with. She wanted to forget it. She wondered if she could.

  If she was allowed to. Or whether returning this man’s love would condemn them both. Would it make him as unhappy as she was?

  The idea of hurting him cut through her like a knife, but she could not tear herself away. Or bring herself to tell him the truth and give him a choice. No. She needed him, his warmth, his reassurance. She would not speak and not go away. She would stay and hope for the best: that he would never know and it would never drive them apart.

  Chapter Three

  Erneste Demain sat at the desk in his study, looking over the letters his footman had just delivered. Some of them were bills, others invitations to speak at a gentlemen’s club about the discoveries made during the last expedition. In particular, the death mask of the kings of Lykea had aroused great enthusiasm in scientific minds. And even men with no former interest in history or archaeology now wrote to him, drawn by the eternal lure of that precious metal. Gold.

  Demain himself could still feel the pounding in his blood he had experienced when Treemore had rushed into his tent to tell him that Müller had hit on something truly spectacular. ‘It appears to be solid gold. You must come and see it.’

  He had run behind the expedition leader to reach the site where, in a hole deeper than a grave and with steep walls reaching up far over his head, Karl Müller, the German expert on the Lykean kings, was standing carefully removing earth from something lodged in the wall.

  While Demain watched in fascination, that ‘something’ took on a shape. It seemed to be a human face looking at Müller from the earthen wall. As more and more dirt was removed, the features became clearer, revealing the empty sockets that should have housed the eyes. ‘At last,’ Treemore had muttered by his side. ‘A death mask.’

  Glancing at him, Demain had been shocked by the look on his face. An almost manic greed had sparkled in those deep-set eyes and his mouth worked as if he could barely contain himself.

  Demain shivered a moment and glanced at the hearth. Perhaps he should call the footman in to stir up the fire. It was cold in here.

  It was cold inside of him when he thought back on those moments when the coveted mask had fallen into their hands. He couldn’t believe his luck that such a world-changing discovery had been made during the expedition he had been on. Normally, he stayed at home, satisfying himself with progress reports from Treemore. After all, Demain wasn’t a man of practice; he was no historian, or archaeologist, merely the man providing Treemore with funds to keep his expeditions going. In exchange, Demain had been made a full partner, but he was always aware he lacked knowledge.

  Even then, during those moments of grand discovery, he had stared at the mask looking at them from the wall and wondered if it was real. If it was of that ancient dynasty the others had told him about. They could easily deceive him. He didn’t know why he expected them to do such a thing, but as a man of means he had seen his fair share of attempts to defraud him of his fortune and he was always conscious of his vulnerability when other people’s knowledge far outdid his own. Treemore’s insistence that Palymnos had been the main seat of the Lykean kings hadn’t been supported by solid proof from ancient sources, and for a time the search for valuables connected with these rulers had seemed more of a wild goose chase than a scientific pursuit. People had snickered about Treemore, and about Demain as his backer, calling them ‘deluded old men‘. The criticisms never seemed to hurt Treemore who was far too self-assured to doubt his own theories, but Demain had sensed a desperate need to make at least one spectacular find and prove all the cynics wrong. Standing there, looking at the mask, Demain had wondered, briefly, if Müller had felt the same pressure to succeed and had somehow produced the required discovery by… fraud?

  Looking back on it now, it seemed silly he had spoiled those precious moments by worrying about the authenticity of the mask. Others ached for such a moment of glory. They worked all their lives to find something spectacular and never did. He was merely the money provider, going along on a single expedition, and he had witnessed something not many people alive today had. Indeed, not many people in the centuries before them had. After all, this mask had been buried there for over sixteen hundred years.

  Its glory radiated on all involved. In spite of his lack of knowledge, Demain was asked to lecture on the mask, to share his experiences on Palymnos, to show photos of the expedition to gentlemen who knew far less than he did, but still wanted to feel part of it. There was something oddly uniting in a precious object which people queue to see up close, to be part of its mysterious allure, its ongoing history. He could now pass himself off as an expert while knowing no more than he had before. It was strange and satisfying. Even if Treemore never ceased to make him feel inferior.

  Demain’s hands tightened on the desk. Unfortunately, that discovery which had propelled him to sudden fame and standing also connected him inevitably and unbreakably to one of the most insufferable men he had ever met. Treemore was pompous, vain, self-centred and condescending. And with Müller now dead, he had even more power over the mask and its future.

  Shaking his head in annoyance at this shadow on his happiness, Demain reached for the next envelope on the stack. It was a cream coloured long envelope with a typed address. He turned it over but didn’t see a sender address. Strange.

  With his pen knife, he slowly sliced it open and extracted a sheet of paper folded in threes. It was typewritten like the envelope. It contained but two lines of text. Eight words in all. But they turned Demain’s blood into ice.

  Karl Müller was murdered.

  The murderer will pay.

  * * *

  The train’s stuttering movements as it drew to a halt ceased completely and doors to compartments were thrown open. Passengers streamed onto the platform, gesturing to the waiting porters to come for their luggage. Ladies with large feathered hats descended without haste, followed by dutiful husbands or daughters. A small white dog barked, the sharp sounds echoing against the train.

  Retired Scotland Yard Inspector Jasper stood motionless a moment, taking it all in: the newspaper boy a few yards away trying to sell the latest edition to the new arrivals; the passengers arriving to catch the train and kissing their loved ones goodbye; a little girl standing on tiptoe to hug an elderly man who could be her grandfather.

  He stretched the muscles in his legs, glad to be moving again after having sat for too long. A scent of waffles invaded his nose, making his stomach growl. Beside him his Labrador Red whined as if he smelled it as well and wanted some. Or perhaps he was straining on the leash to reach the small white dog still yapping and turning in circles.

  ‘Quiet,’ Jasper admonished Red, patting his head for a moment. His eyes scanned the crowd for the portly figure of his host. Werner Herziger had promised to come and collect him at the station upon his arrival. The museum director had written to him while Jasper was still in Venice to say that now that the Inspector was so close by, he had to come over and attend a grand openin
g at the museum. ‘Something that will appeal to you, my friend. A death mask.’

  Jasper grimaced a moment. Even though he had quit the active service and had started a new life on the French Riviera where he had bought a villa overlooking the sea, people still associated him with his former profession.

  And he couldn’t blame them as it seemed murder didn’t want to stop following him around. After solving crimes committed at his neighbour’s house, he had hoped to relax on a well-deserved vacation in Greece, but even on the most idyllic of islands, death had prowled the countryside. At a masked ball in Venice he had received the shock of his life coming face to face with a woman whose accidental death he had investigated years ago. No, it didn’t seem like his former profession would let go of him. Or that violent death would stop appearing in his life. So with a sort of weary resignation he had written to Herziger that he had always wanted to visit Vienna (which wasn’t a lie) and that he couldn’t wait to see the mask he spoke of (which wasn’t a lie either as Jasper did appreciate rare objects of art).

  Still, although the sentiments he had expressed had been quite genuine, he had reread his letter with a sense of unease, perhaps because he knew from his career that precious objects were often the cause of crime.

  Hadn’t Vienna been terrorised lately by burglaries committed by a shadowy figure called Luchs in German and the Lynx in English, after the silent predator the burglar seemed to personify? The thief always took highly valuable objects like jewellery or art as long as he could carry it, when he vanished from the houses he entered, as quietly as he had come. The police didn’t seem to have any clues as to his identity or where he might strike next. But putting the letter to Herziger in the mail, Jasper had felt an itch at the back of his neck as if his visit to Vienna might mean crossing paths with the mysterious Lynx.