did so. She held him close to her - but only for a moment - and she also brushed her lips against his cheek. "I think I shall call you Thomas for now, if that's all right," she said before she left him.
Now in the coin shop Lynley waited while the proprietor put his heavy volume away.
Lynley handed him the card they'd found in Jemima Hastings' bag, and he showed Dugue the Portrait Gallery photo of Jemima. He also showed his police identification.
Surprisingly, after Dugue examined the warrant card, he said to Lynley, "You're the policeman who lost his wife last February, aren't you?"
"I am."
"I remember these things," Dugue told him. "Terrible business, that. How can I help you?" And when Lynley nodded at the Portrait Gallery picture of Jemima, he said, "Yes. I remember her. She's been into the shop."
"When?"
Dugue considered the question. He looked out of the shop, which was mostly windows, and studied the corridor beyond it. He said, "Round Christmas. I can't be more exact than that, but I do remember the decorations. Seeing her backlit by the fairy lights we put up in the corridor. So it would have been round Christmas, give or take two weeks in either direction.
Unlike some establishments, we don't keep our decorations up all that long. We all of us loathe them, to be honest. Along with the carols. Bing Crosby may dream of snow. I, for one, dream of strangling Bing Crosby at the end of one week having to listen to him."
"Did she make a purchase?"
"As I recall, she wanted me to look at a coin. It was an aureus, and she thought it might be worth something."
"„Aureus.'" Lynley considered his schoolboy Latin. "Gold, then. Was it worth a great deal?"
"Not as much as one would think."
"Despite its being gold?" It seemed to Lynley that the price of gold alone would make it valuable. "Did she want to sell it?"
"She just wanted to know what it was worth. And what it was, actually, because she'd no idea. She reckoned it was old and she was right about that. It was old. Round one-fifty AD."
"Roman, then. Did she say how she came to have it?"
Dugue asked to look at the picture of Jemima again, as if this would stimulate his memory. After studying it for a moment he said slowly, "I believe she said it was among her father's things. She didn't tell me exactly, but I reckoned he'd died recently and she'd been going through his belongings the way one does, trying to sort out what to do with this and that."
"Did you offer to buy it?"
"As I said, aside from the gold itself, it wasn't worth enough. On the open market, I wouldn't have been able to get a lot for it. You see ...Here, let me show you."
He went to a desk behind the counter where he opened a drawer that had been fashioned to hold books. He ran his fingers along them and brought out one, saying, "What she had was an aureus minted during the reign of Antoninus Pius, the bloke who came to be emperor directly after Hadrian. Know about him?"
"One of the Five Good Emperors," Lynley said.
Dugue looked impressed. "Not the sort of knowledge I'd think a copper would have."
"I read history," Lynley admitted. "In another life."
"Then you know his was an unusual reign."
"Only that it was peaceful."
"Right. As one of the good guys, he wasn't ...Well, let's say he wasn't sexy. Or, at least, he's not sexy now, not to collectors. He was intelligent, well educated, experienced, protective of Christians, clement towards conspirators, and happy to stay in Rome and delegate responsibility to his provincial leaders. Loved his wife, loved his family, assisted the poor, practised economy."
"In a word, boring?"
"Certainly compared to Caligula or Nero, eh?" Dugue smiled. "There's not been a lot written about him, so I think collectors tend to dismiss him."
"Which makes his coins of less value on the market?"
"That and the fact that there were two thousand different coins minted during his reign."
Dugue found what he was looking for in the volume, and he swung it to face Lynley.
The page, Lynley saw, displayed both the obverse and the reverse of the aureus in question. The former depicted the emperor in profile, draped in the fashion of a bust, with CAES
and ANTON-INVS in relief, parenthesising the emperor's head. The latter showed a woman enthroned. This was Concordia, Dugue explained, a patera in her right hand and cornucopiae beneath