Read Online The Amber Knight by Katherine John - Free Book Online Page B

some of his pieces for the museum?’
    ‘Would they be a good investment?’
    ‘The best. They’re not classed as antiques yet, but they will be, and Edmund will tell you good antique pieces are rarer than green storks these days.’
    ‘He has mentioned it.’
    ‘And while we’re on the subject, some of the modern pieces he’s bought for the museum are hideous – and worse than hideous, junk.’
    ‘I’ve a broad back, but I’d appreciate you not airing your opinions around Edmund. He’s sensitive about his amber.’
    ‘I’ve noticed. But you won’t go wrong with genuine Krefta, the elder or younger. Their early output equalled the best produced by George Schrieber and the seventeenth-century Konigsberg workshops. My father always used to say that one day Krefta the younger will be recognised as the finest amber-smith of the twentieth century.’
    ‘Coming from your father, that’s quite a compliment.’
    ‘Not really, my father trained in Krefta’s workshop. Of course that was before Krefta turned to drink. Surprising really,’ she bit her bottom lip as she concentrated on laying the final strands of wire in place, ‘just how many silver- and amber-smiths hit the bottle, but from what I’ve heard, Krefta had a better excuse than most. His wife died of cancer, and according to my father she took years to do it. All of them painful.’
    ‘But Krefta’s still alive?’
    ‘Physically maybe, but from an artistic point of view he’s dead.’ She spoke as though the only life worth living was the artistic. ‘He hasn’t exhibited since the late sixties. So what pieces are you after? If it’s one of his chess sets…’
    ‘It’s nothing of his. I received a note from him this morning authenticating the body of Helmut von Mau.’
    ‘Blessed saints! You’ve tracked down the Amber Knight?’ Feliks walked down the steps into the shop and parked his short, squat body on the edge of Elizbieta’s workbench.
    ‘I’m interested in its whereabouts.’
    ‘Does this interest extend to the Amber Room? They disappeared at the same time.’
    Adam handed the well-thumbed envelope to Feliks who promptly tipped it out on Elizbieta’s work bench.
    ‘Feliks!’ Elizbieta remonstrated as he sent her carefully positioned strands of wire scattering.
    ‘Sorry, my pet.’ His baggy clown’s face sagged. Elizbieta was eighteen to his sixty-five, but he was as besotted as a lovesick boy.
    ‘Sorry! Is that all you’ve got to say…’
    ‘Could it be the Amber Knight?’ Adam cut into Elizbieta’s tirade.
    Feliks studied the photographs for what seemed like an eternity. Pushing a couple across to Elizbieta he picked up a jewellers’ glass from the desk.
    ‘That’s Krefta all right.’ Feliks pointed to the man holding the copy of
Time
. ‘Older, thinner and more lined than when I saw him in the Moscow exhibition in ’68, but definitely him.’
    ‘He looks as though he’s lost his teeth,’ Elizbieta commented, peering over Feliks’s shoulder.
    ‘And the knight?’
    ‘That’s more difficult. I don’t know anything about stone coffins.’
    ‘But you do know amber,’ Adam pressed.
    ‘I have been known to recognise it,’ Feliks conceded dryly, ‘but I couldn’t say for certain what’s in that coffin without doing a few tests.’
    ‘What kind of tests?’
    ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ Feliks pontificated, with an old man’s exasperatingly leisurely attitude. ‘There are records detailing how Helmut von Mau’s corpse was set in amber.’
    Adam repeated what Edmund had told him. ‘The amber in the treasure house in Elblag melted when the town was fired by Hermann von Balk.’
    ‘Then poured around Helmut von Mau’s body which had been placed in a coffin. Amber melts at 280 degrees centigrade which couldn’t have done the corpse much good. Perhaps it’s just as well that most amber clouds when it cools. I doubt the old boy’s a pretty sight.’
    ‘He was old?’
    ‘Thirty-three,’