Schmidt never climbs the tower stairs except in cases of dire emergency, which is one of the reasons why I chose that particular office. He was waiting for me in the Hall of Armor, adjoining the tower; as I descended, I heard him talking to the guard on duty. I caught the punch line—“But, mein Herr, it is your mustache!”—followed by a chorus of guffaws from Schmidt and his stooge. Everybody laughs at Schmidt’s jokes, even though they are all culled from the Bavarian equivalent of Joe Miller’s book. A director has certain prerogatives.

I stepped over the velvet rope with its “Eintritt verboten” sign, greeted the guard, tucked Schmidt’s scarf into his collar, and led him out. It was still snowing. There was almost no wind, and the soft white flakes fell gently from the tarnished silver bowl of the sky. Traffic had stirred the streets into a sloppy slush, but the towers of Munich’s myriad churches looked as if they had been frosted with vanilla icing.

We went to our favorite Bierstube, which specializes in a particular variety of heavy dark beer to which Schmidt is addicted. (There are few varieties of beer to which Schmidt is not addicted.) Schmidt ordered Weisswurst and got it, even though the church bells had already chimed twelve. He ordered a lot of other things, too, including an entire loaf of heavy black bread and a pound or so of sweet butter. I sipped daintily at my own beer and waited for him to get to the point, knowing it wouldn’t take long. Schmidt thinks he is sly and subtle, but he is mistaken.

After the waiter had brought the first course, Schmidt tucked his napkin into his collar and stared fixedly at me.

“That was not Frau Schliemann in the photograph.”

“I know.”

“You know? Oh yes, you, you always know.” Schmidt stuffed his mouth with wurst and masticated fiercely. Then he mumbled, “Mrshwenill.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Miss Know-It-All.”

“Ms. Know-It-All, bitte.”

Schmidt grinned. I reached across the table and removed a speck of wurst from his mustache.

“So what shall we do?” he asked.

“What can we do?”

“Have the wrapping examined to see if the stain is blood,” Schmidt said promptly.

“We could.” And of course I would. I had known that ever since I saw the brown-red water. Since we did a lot of work with fabrics, we had a fairly well-equipped lab at the museum. If that particular test was beyond our chemist, I had several pals in the police department.

“But what if it is blood?” I went on.

“Human blood!”

“So what if it is human blood? We can’t trace the damned thing; there is no return address. Perhaps the sender will follow up with a letter.”

“And perhaps he is no longer in a position to do that,” said Schmidt. “It took a lot of blood to make a stain that size, Vicky.”

His illogical, melodramatic conclusion irritated me all the more because it was exactly what I had been thinking.