The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: (One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre)

8.

After making sure to lock each of the window latches, I picked up his suitcase and, stepping carefully over the body, went out into the hallway. The owner was already waiting for me with glue and strips of paper. Du Barnstoker hadn’t left, he was still standing there with his shoulder propped against the wall. He looked twenty years older. His aristocratic jowls drooped and quivered pitifully.

“Horrible!” he muttered, staring at me with despair. “A nightmare…!”

I locked the door and sealed it with the five strips of paper, each of which I signed twice.

“Horrible!…” Du Barnstoker muttered behind me. “Now there won’t be a rematch… nothing…”

“Go back to your room,” I told him. “Lock yourself in and stay there until I call you… Wait a second. Was the note yours?”

“It was mine,” Du Barnstoker said. “I…”

“All right, we’ll deal with that later,” I said. “Go on.” I turned to the owner. “I need to take both your sets of keys. There aren’t any more, are there? Good. I need you to do something for me, Alek. Don’t tell our one-armed visitor about this. Make something up if he gets too restless. Look in the garage, see if all the cars are where they should be… And one more thing: if you see Hinkus, don’t let him leave—even if you have to use force. That’s it for now. I’ll be in my room. And not a word to anyone, understand?”

The owner nodded his head without saying anything and went downstairs.

Back in my room I set Olaf’s suitcase on the filthy table and opened it. Here, too, nothing seemed right. It was even worse than Hinkus’s dummy suitcase. At least that had had rags and books in it. But there was only one thing inside this flat and elegant suitcase, and that was some sort of device: a black metal box with a rough surface, some multicolored buttons, little glass panels with nickel-plated verniers on them… No underwear, no pajamas, no soap dish… I closed the suitcase, collapsed back into the armchair and lit a cigarette.

All right. What do we have here, Inspector Glebsky? Instead of deep sleep between clean sheets. Instead of getting up early so you can take a snow bath and ski around the whole valley. Instead of eating a good dinner and then indulging in a game of pool, and flirting with Mrs. Moses, and in the evening installing yourself comfortably by the fireplace with a glass of hot port. Instead of enjoying every day of your first real vacation in four years… What do we have instead of all this? We have a fresh corpse. Cold-blooded murder. Crime’s tedious confusion.

All right. At twenty-four minutes past midnight on the third of March of this year, I, Police Inspector Glebsky, in the presence of the good citizens Alek Snevar and Du Barnstoker discovered the dead body of one Olaf Andvarafors. The corpse was found in the room of the aforementioned Andvarafors; the room was locked from the inside, but the window was wide open. The body was lying facedown, stretched out on the floor. The head of the dead man was turned one hundred and eighty degrees in a brutal and unnatural fashion, so that, even though the body was lying facedown, its face was turned towards the ceiling. The hands of the dead man were extended towards, and had almost reached, the small suitcase that was the only piece of luggage belonging to the deceased. The victim’s right hand was clutching a necklace made out of wooden beads, which belonged, as is well known, to the good citizen Kaisa. The features of the victim were distorted, his eyes were wide, his mouth was open. An acrid chemical smell, either from carbolic or formalin, was noted around the mouth. No specific and unambiguous signs of a struggle were present in the room. The bed linen was rumpled, the closet door was open, the heavy chair meant in these rooms to stay at the table had been moved. Traces on the windowsill, or for that matter the snow-covered ledge, could not be found. No traces on the key itself (I took the key out of my pocket and examined it closely again)… Visual inspection of the key did not reveal any marks. Due to the lack of technicians, instruments and a lab, medical and fingerprint examination, as well as all other forms of specialized investigation are not possible (and will not be possible). Taking everything into account, death resulted from Olaf Andvarafors’s neck being twisted with enormous force and brutality.

I had no idea what to make of the strange odor coming from his mouth, not to mention how much strength the killer must have possessed in order to twist this giant’s neck without causing a long and noisy struggle that left behind many traces. But then as everyone knows, multiply two negatives together and you get a positive. It was possible to assume that Olaf had been first given poison, putting him in some sort of helpless state, at which point he was finished off in this brutal manner—a feat that would have required quite a bit of strength on its own, by the way. Yes, this hypothesis explained one thing, though in doing so it immediately raised new questions. Why finish off an incapacitated victim in such a violent and difficult way? Why not just stab him with a knife or wrap a rope around his neck, if worst came to worst? Rage, bloodlust, hatred, revenge?… Sadism?… Hinkus? All right, maybe it was Hinkus, although Hinkus looked too rubbery for that kind of exertion… Or maybe it wasn’t Hinkus, but whoever had written me the note about Hinkus?…

It didn’t make any sense. Why couldn’t this be about a fake lottery ticket or doctored account book? Those I could have sorted out quickly… This is what I had to do: I had to get in the car and drive until I reached Bottleneck; from there I would try to make my way on skis. I’d reach Mur and come back with the boys from homicide. I even stood up, but then I sat down again. It was a good way out, of course, but it would have had bad consequences. To leave everyone here to their own devices, giving the killer time and possibilities… to leave Du Barnstoker, who’d been threatened… And anyway, how was I supposed to make it work? You can imagine for yourself what an avalanche in Bottleneck would look like.

There was a knock on the door. The owner came in, carrying a tray with hot coffee and sandwiches on it.

“All the cars are here,’ he said, setting the tray down in front of me. “The skis too. There’s no sign of Hinkus anywhere. His coat and hat are up on the roof—but you’ve probably seen those already.”

“I have,” I said, as I sipped the coffee. “And what about the one-armed man?”

“He’s sleeping,” the owner said. He put his lips together and pressed his fingers against the seams of spilled glue on the table. “Yes… He’s asleep all right. A strange guy. His color has come back, and he already looks pretty good. I put Lel in with him, just in case.”

“Thank you, Alek,” I said. “You can go now, and let’s keep everything quiet. Let everyone sleep.”

The owner shook his head.

“That’s not going to work. Moses is already up, his light’s on… Well, I’ll be going, at least I can lock up Kaisa, she’s an idiot. Although she doesn’t know anything so far.”

“Keep it that way,” I said.

The owner left. I savored my coffee, pushing the sandwich plate away as I lit another cigarette. When was the last time I saw Olaf? I was playing pool, he was dancing with the kid. That was before the card game had broken up. And then they left, when the clock struck half past… something. Immediately after that Moses announced that it was time for him to go to bed. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out when that was. But then, how long before that had I seen Olaf for the last time? Maybe not that long. All right, we’ll work on that. Now, what about Kaisa’s necklace, Du Barnstoker’s note, whether or not Olaf’s neighbors—Du Barnstoker and Simone—had heard anything…

I had just started feeling that I was putting some sort of a picture together, when suddenly I heard a dull, quite heavy thud against the wall bordering the memorial room. I groaned slightly in anger. I threw my jacket off, rolled up my sleeves and tiptoed carefully out into the corridor. One for the kisser, then a slap on each cheek, I thought briefly. I’ll give him a practical joke, whoever it was…

I opened the door and flew like a bullet into the memorial room. It was dark and I quickly flipped the light switch. The noise stopped suddenly; the room was empty, but I had the feeling that someone was in here. I examined the bathroom, the closet, the curtains. There was a dull moan behind me. I jumped towards the table and hurled a heavy armchair out of the way.

“Get out of there!” I ordered fiercely.

Another dull groan answered me. I squatted, peering under the table. There, wedged between the table-legs in a terribly uncomfortable-looking position—bound with a rope, doubled over and with a gag in his mouth—was the terrifying gangster, maniac and sadist Hinkus, staring at me with dark, tear-filled, suffering eyes. I dragged him into the middle of the room and removed the gag from his mouth.

“What happened?” I asked.

He answered me with a cough. He coughed for a long time, painfully; he was spitting all over the place, groaning and hacking. I looked in the bathroom, got the Dead Mountaineer’s razor and cut his ropes. The poor guy was so numb that he couldn’t even raise his hands to wipe his face off. I gave him some water. He drank it greedily, until finally he got his voice back and uttered a complicated curse. I helped him stand up and led him over to the armchair. Muttering profanity, his face distorted pitifully, he began rubbing his neck, his wrists, his hips.

“What happened to you?” I asked. Looking at him, I felt relieved: for whatever reason, the idea of Hinkus as a secret murderer had really disturbed me.

“What happened…?” he muttered. “See for yourself! Tied up like a sheep, shoved under a table…”

“Who did this?”

“How should I know?” he said angrily, shaking suddenly all over. “Christ!” he muttered. “I need a drink… You don’t have anything to drink, Inspector?”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll get something. Just as soon as you answer my questions.”

He lifted his left hand up with difficulty and pulled back the sleeve.

“Dammit, the bastard crushed my watch,” he muttered. “What time is it, Inspector?”

“One in the morning,” I answered.

“One in the morning,” he repeated. “One in the morning…” His eyes stared. “No,” he said, and stood up. “I need a drink. I’m going down to the pantry to have a drink.”

I sat him back down with a light push on his chest.

“There’s plenty of time for that,” I said.

“I’m telling you, I want a drink!” he said, raising his voice as he tried to stand up again.

“And I’m telling you, that there’s plenty of time for that!” I said, pushing him back again.

“What gives you the right to order me around?” He screamed at the top of his voice.

“Don’t shout,” I said. “I’m a police inspector. And you, Hinkus, are a suspect.”

“A suspect of what?” he asked, lowering his voice.

“You know what,” I said. I was trying to buy some time, in order to figure out what my next move was.

“I don’t know anything,” he said gloomily. “Why are you fooling around with me? I don’t know anything, and I don’t want to know anything. And you’ll be sorry for horsing around like this.”

I also felt that I would be sorry for horsing around like this.

“Listen, Hinkus,” I said. “There’s been a murder in the inn. So I suggest you answer my questions, because if you cross me, I’ll squash you like a bug. I’ve got nothing to lose here—in for a penny, in for a pound.”

He stared at me quietly for a while, his mouth open.

“A murder…” he repeated, as if disappointed. “Here! And you think I have something to do with it? Me, who was very nearly killed… Who was murdered?”

“Who do you think?”

“How should I know? When I left the dining room, everyone was still alive. And after that…” he was quiet.

“Well?” I asked. “And after that?”

“And after that nothing. I was sitting by myself on the roof, taking a nap. Suddenly I was being grabbed by the neck, someone threw me down, and after that I don’t remember anything. I woke up under this lousy table, going crazy almost—I thought I’d been buried alive. I started knocking. I knocked and knocked, but no one came. Then you came. That’s it.”

“Are you able to say roughly when you were abducted?”

He thought about it for a few minutes, sitting in silence. Then he wiped his mouth with his hand, looked at his fingers, shuddered again, and wiped his hand on his pant leg.

“Well?” I asked.

He looked at me with dull eyes.

“What?”

“I asked, roughly when…”

“Right, right: sometime around nine. The last time I looked at my watch it was eight forty.”

“Give me your watch,” I said.

He obediently unbuckled the watch and held it out to me. I noticed that his wrist was covered with purple-blue spots.

“It’s broken,” he explained.

The watch wasn’t broken: it was crushed. The hour hand was broken off, but the minute hand showed forty-three minutes past the hour.

“Who was it?” I asked again.

“How should I know? I told you I was napping.”

“And you didn’t wake up when they grabbed you?”

“They were behind me,” he said gloomily. “I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.”

“Wait—look at me!”

He glanced at me sullenly out of the corner of his eyes, and I knew I was on the right track. I held his jaw between my finger and thumb and jerked his head up. I had no idea what those bruises and scratches on his lean, sinewy neck meant, but I spoke confidently.

“Stop lying, Hinkus. He was in front of you, and you saw him. Who was it?”

He freed his head with a jerk.

“Go to hell,” he croaked. “Straight to hell. It’s none of your damned business. Whoever was murdered here, I didn’t have anything to do with it, and everyone else can go to hell too… And I need a drink!” he roared suddenly. “I hurt all over, do you understand that, you police pig?”

He was right, so far as I could see. Whatever else he was involved in, the murder had nothing to do with him—at least not directly. However, I had no right to give up now.

“If that’s what you want,” I said coldly. “Then I’m going to have to lock you in the closet, and there’ll be no brandy or cigarettes until you tell me everything you know.”

“What do you want from me?” he groaned. I could see that he was close to tears. “Why are you hassling me?”

“Who grabbed you?”

“Dammit!” he whispered despairingly. “Can’t you understand that I don’t want to talk about it? I saw him—okay, I saw who it was!” He winced again, twisting himself away from me. “I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to see what I saw! You, damn you, I wouldn’t want you to see it! You’d drop dead from fear!”

He was starting to fall apart.

“All right,” I said, standing up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To get something to drink,” I said.

We went into the corridor. He was wobbly, he clung to my sleeve. I was interested to see how he would react to the tape around Olaf’s door—but he didn’t notice anything. Clearly his mind was elsewhere. I took him into the pool room, found the brandy on the windowsill, which still had half a bottle left from last night, and gave it to him. He grabbed the bottle greedily and took a long swig from it.

“Goddammit,” he croaked, wiping his mouth off. “Now that’s more like it!”

I watched him. It was possible, of course, that he was in cahoots with the killer, that he’d thought all this up as a diversion (especially since he’d come here with Olaf)—even, that he himself was the murderer and that his accomplices had tied him up afterwards in order to give him an alibi. This seemed too complicated to be true; at the same time, there was no denying that something didn’t seem right about him: he clearly didn’t have tuberculosis, he didn’t act anything like a youth counselor, and there was still the question of what he’d been doing up on the roof… Then it hit me! Whatever he’d been doing on the roof, someone hadn’t liked it—maybe because it had interfered with Olaf’s murder. So they’d gotten rid of him. They’d gotten rid of him, and whoever had done it had somehow given Hinkus a terrible scare, which meant that they weren’t guests at the inn, since Hinkus was clearly not afraid of anyone at the inn. It was some kind of mess… And then I remembered the part about the shower, and the pipe, and the mysterious notes… and I thought about how green and terrified Hinkus had looked that afternoon, coming down from the roof…

“Listen, Hinkus,” I said softly. “The person who grabbed you… You saw him earlier this afternoon, didn’t you?”

He glanced at me wildly and took another swig from the bottle.

“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s go. I’m locking you in your room. You can take the bottle with you.”

“What about you?” he said hoarsely.

“What about me?”

“Are you going to leave?”

“Of course.”

“Listen,” he said. “Listen, Inspector…” His eyes were restless, he was searching for the right words. “You… I… You… Check in on me, okay? Maybe I’ll remember something else… Or maybe I can stay with you?” He stared at me pleadingly. “I won’t try to escape, I… nothing… I swear…”

“You’re afraid of being left alone in your room?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“But I’m going to lock you in,” I said. “And I’ll keep the key with me…”

He waved his hands in desperation.

“That won’t help,” he said.

“Come on, Hinkus,” I said sternly. “Buck up! You’re acting like a scared old biddy.”

He didn’t say anything but only hugged the bottle tenderly against his chest with both hands. I took him to his room and, after promising one more time that I’d check in on him, locked the door. I really did take the key and put it in my pocket. I felt that whatever was going on with Hinkus, it wasn’t over yet, and that I’d be dealing with him again. I didn’t leave right away. I stood for a few minutes in front of the door, with my ear against the keyhole. I could hear liquid being poured, then the creaking of the bed, then a repetitive noise. I couldn’t make out what it was at first, but then I understood: Hinkus was crying.

I left him alone with his conscience and made my way to Du Barnstoker’s room. The old man opened his door immediately. He was pretty worked up. He didn’t even offer me a seat. The room was full of cigar smoke.

“My dear inspector!” he said quickly, executing a series of elaborate gestures with the cigar that he was holding in two fingers of his outstretched hand. “My esteemed friend! This is damnably awkward for me to say, but things have gone far enough. I must confess: I have committed a small indiscretion…”

“So you killed Olaf Andvarafors,” I said glumly, collapsing into the armchair.

He shuddered and threw his hands into the air.

“Good lord! No! I have never raised a finger against anyone in my entire life! Quelle idée! No! I only want to confess, with the utmost sincerity, that I have been performing regular mystifications on our inn’s guests…” He clasped his hands to his chest, sprinkling cigar ashes all over his bathrobe. “Please understand: they were only jokes! Lord knows, not well-executed or intelligent ones, but completely innocent… It is my métier, after all, I adore an atmosphere of mystery, mystification, general bewilderment… But there was never any mal intent, I assure you! I had nothing to gain…”

“Exactly what jokes are you talking about?” I asked dryly. I was angry and disappointed. I had not thought that Du Barnstoker would be caught up in all this. I’d expected better of the old man.

“Well… All those little jokes about the ghost of the Dead Mountaineer. The, er, shoes that I ‘stole’ from myself and put under his bed… The prank in the shower… You were a little taken in by one—remember his pipe ashes?… Anyway, things like that, I can’t remember them all…”

“You ruined my table too?” I asked.

“Table?” he looked at me helplessly, then looked over at his own table.

“Yes, my table. It was covered with glue, a good piece of furniture hopelessly ruined…”

“No!” he said fearfully. “Glue… a table… No, no, that wasn’t me, I swear!” He clasped his hands to his chest again. “You must understand, Inspector, I had the best intentions, not the slightest damage was inflicted… I even felt that people were enjoying it—why, our dear inn owner played along so well…”

“The owner was in on it with you?”

“No—how could you think that!” He flapped his hands at me. “I only mean that he… that he, well, he seemed pleased… haven’t you noticed that he’s a bit of a mystifier himself? You know, the way he makes his voice sound like that, and then there’s all that ‘Allow me to dive into the past…’”

“I see,” I said. “And the footprints in the corridors?”

Du Barnstoker’s face grew focused and serious.

“No, no,” he said. “That wasn’t me. But I know what you’re talking about. I saw it once. This was before you arrived. Wet footprints, from bare feet, leading from the landing to—silly as it sounds—the memorial room… Another joke, of course, though not one of mine…”

“All right,” I said. “Forget the footprints. I have one more question. The note that you allegedly received—am I to understand that this was also your work?”

“That wasn’t mine either,” Du Barnstoker said with dignity. “When I gave you the note, I was telling the absolute truth.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What you’re saying is, Olaf went out, leaving you sitting by yourself. Then someone knocked on the door, you went to answer it, and saw that there was a note on the floor in front of the door. Is that what happened?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Wait a minute,” I said again. I felt a thought coming on. “Please, Mr. Du Barnstoker, tell me: what made you think that this threatening letter was addressed to you?”

“I understand what you mean completely,” Du Barnstoker said. “It was only afterwards that I realized—only after reading it did I think that probably, if the note had been meant for me, it would have been slipped under my door. But at that moment I acted subconsciously… That is to say, whoever knocked must have heard my voice, must have known that I was there… Do you see what I’m saying? In any event, when poor Olaf returned, I immediately showed him the note, so that we could both have a good laugh over it…”

“All right,” I said. “And what about Olaf? Did he laugh?”

“N-no, he didn’t… His sense of humor, you see… He read it, shrugged, and we got right back to the game. He remained perfectly calm and serene and didn’t mention the note again… As for me, as I told you, I’d decided that someone was playing a joke on us—to be totally honest, I still think that… You know that in a narrow circle of bored vacationers, you’ll always find one person…”

“I know,” I said.

“You think the note is authentic?”

“Anything’s possible,” I said. We were quiet. “Now tell me what you were doing from the moment that the Moseses went to bed.”

“Of course,” said Du Barnstoker. “I was expecting that question and have gone over the whole series of events in my memory. It happened like this: when everyone had dispersed—it was around nine thirty—I spent some time…”

“Just a minute,” I interrupted. “You said it was nine thirty?”

“Yes, around that time.”

“Good. Then tell me something first. Can you remember who was in the dining room between eight thirty and nine thirty?”

Du Barnstoker took his forehead in his long white fingers.

“Mmm…” he said. “That is going to be harder. I was busy with the game… Well, naturally, there was Moses, the owner… From time to time Mrs. Moses was there picking up the cards for him… We were at the table… Brun and Olaf danced, and then afterwards… No, excuse me, before that Mrs. Moses and Brun… But you must understand, my dear inspector, I cannot possibly be certain when that was—eight thirty, nine… Oh! The clock struck nine, and I—I remember—I looked around the hall and thought how few of us were left. The music was playing, but the room was empty. Only Olaf and Brun were dancing… You know, unfortunately, this seems to be the only clear impression that has remained in my memory,” he concluded with regret.

“So,” I said. “Neither the owner nor Moses left the table even once?”

“No,” he said confidently. “Both of them turned out to be remarkably zealous gamblers.”

“Meaning that at nine o’clock there were only the three gamblers, Brun and Olaf?”

“Precisely. I remember that quite clearly.”

“Good,” I said. “Now, back to you. After everyone had dispersed, you sat for some time at the card table practicing card tricks…”

“Practicing card tricks…? I suppose it’s possible… Sometimes when I’m lost in thought, you know how it is, my hands take on a will of their own, it happens subconsciously. Indeed. Then I decided to smoke a cigar and made my way back here, to my room. I smoked the cigar, sat in this armchair and dozed off, I have to confess. I was woken up by what felt like a sort of shove—suddenly I remembered that I had promised poor Olaf that I’d give him a chance to get his revenge at ten o’clock. I looked at my watch. I don’t remember exactly what the time was, but it was a little after ten, and I felt relieved that I wouldn’t be too late. I hastily cleaned myself up in front of the mirror, grabbed a bundle of bills and my cigars and went out into the corridor. It was empty, Inspector—that I remember. I knocked on Olaf’s door: nobody answered. I knocked a second time, again without any success. I decided that Mr. Olaf had forgotten about his revenge and found something more interesting to pursue. However, I am terribly scrupulous when it comes to this sort of thing. I wrote the aforementioned note and stuck it to his door. Then I waited until eleven, upon my honor, reading this book here, and at eleven went to bed. And the interesting part of it, Inspector, is that not long before you and the owner started making your racket and clambering up and down the hallway, I was woken up by a knock on my door. I opened it, but no one was there. I went back to bed, but couldn’t get to sleep.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I see. What you’re saying is that from the moment that you pinned the note until you went to bed at eleven o’clock, nothing else of significance happened… there were no noises of any kind, or movement?”

“No,” Du Barnstoker said. “Nothing.”

“And where were you? Here, or in the bedroom?”

“Here, sitting in this chair.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “One last question. Did you talk with Hinkus before lunchtime yesterday?”

“With Hinkus?… That ill little… Wait a second, my dear friend… Of course! We were standing outside the shower, remember? Mr. Hinkus was irritated because we had to wait, and I was calming him with some trick or another… Ah yes, the lollipops! He was quite amusingly confused after that. I adore illusions like that.”

“And after that you two didn’t speak to one another?”

Du Barnstoker pressed his lips together thoughtfully.

“No,” he said. “So far as I can remember, not at all.”

“And you didn’t go up on the roof?”

“On the roof? No. No, no. I didn’t go up on the roof.”

I stood up.

“Thank you, Mr. Du Barnstoker. I believe this will help the investigation. I hope you understand how inappropriate further practical jokes would be at this point,” (he quietly waved his hands at me). “Well, that’s good. I strongly advise you to take a sleeping pill and go to bed. In my opinion, that’s the best thing you could do at this point.”

“I’ll try,” Du Barnstoker said.

I wished him a good night and left. I went to wake up the kid, but then I caught sight of the door to Simone’s room shutting quickly and quietly at the end of the hall. I made my way swiftly back to it.

I went in without knocking and immediately saw that I’d done the right thing. Through the open bedroom door I saw the great physicist, hopping on one leg, trying to get his pants off. This was even more ridiculous given that the lights were on in both of the rooms.

“Don’t bother, Simone,” I said grimly. “Anyway, you don’t have time to get your tie off.”

Simone collapsed helplessly onto the bed. His jaw was trembling, his eyes bulged. I went into the bedroom and stood in front of him, my hands in my pockets. We were quiet for a while. I didn’t say a single word: I only looked at him, giving him time to realize that he was done for. He drooped even more under my gaze, drawing his head further towards his shoulders, his knobby, hooked nose looking even more despondent. Finally he couldn’t hold back any longer.

“I will only speak in the presence of my attorney,” he announced in a cracking voice.

“Come on, Simone,” I said with disgust. “You’re a physicist. What kind of lawyer are we going to find for you in this backwater?”

Suddenly he grabbed my jacket lapel and, looking up into my eyes, hissed:

“I know what you want, Peter, but I swear, I didn’t kill her.”

Now it was my turn to take a seat. I groped behind me for a chair and sat down.

“Put yourself in my position—why would I?” Simone continued fervently. “There has to be a motive… No one just kills… Of course, there are sadists, but they’re insane… Especially this kind of monstrosity, it’s like a nightmare… I swear! She was already quite cold when I took her in my arms!”

For a few seconds, I closed my eyes. So there was another dead body in the building. And this time it was a woman.

“You know perfectly well,” Simone blabbered on. “Crimes don’t just happen. True, André Gide wrote… But that’s just an intellectual game… You need a motive… You know me, Peter! Look at me: do I really look like a murderer?”

“Stop,” I said. “Shut up for a minute. Think hard and then tell me exactly what happened.”

He didn’t stop to think.

“Of course,” he said readily. “But you have to believe me, Peter. Everything that I’m saying is the sincere truth, and nothing but the truth. That’s how it happened. Even during that damned ball… She’d given me hints before, though I didn’t dare… But this time you’d pumped me full of brandy, so I decided, why not? It’s not a crime, is it? And then it was eleven o’clock, things were calming down, I left and quietly went downstairs. You and the owner were talking nonsense about the cognition of nature, the usual balderdash… I quietly walked past the den—I was wearing socks—and crept to her room. The old man’s light was off—hers too. As I’d expected, her door wasn’t locked, so right away I was encouraged. It was pitch-dark, but I did make out her silhouette: she was sitting on the couch directly across from the door. I called to her softly, but she didn’t answer. Then, well, I sat down next to her and, you know how it is, embraced her… Brr-r-r!… I didn’t even get a chance to kiss her! She was stone dead… hard, stiff… Like ice! Like petrified wood! And that grin… Who knows how I got out of there. I must have broken all the furniture… I swear to you, Peter, take the word of an honest man: when I touched her, she was already completely dead, cold and numb… You know I’m not a beast…”

“Put your pants on,” I said in quiet despair. “Clean yourself up and follow me.”

“Where are we going?” he asked in a terrified voice.

“To jail!” I shouted. “Solitary confinement! The torture tower, you idiot!”

“Of course,” he said. “Right away. I just didn’t understand you, Peter.”

Back in the lobby we ran into the owner, who gave me a confused look. He was sitting at a coffee table, on which a heavy Winchester automatic lay. I motioned for him to stay where he was and turned down the corridor towards the Moses’s room. Lel, who was lying in the doorway that led to the stranger’s room, muttered threateningly at us. Simone trotted after me, sighing dejectedly from time to time.

I pushed the door to Mrs. Moses’s room open authoritatively, and stood dumbfounded. The pink lamp in the room was switched on, and on the divan directly across from the door, striking the pose of Madame Récamier, lay the charming Mrs. Moses, in silk pajamas, reading a book. She raised her eyebrows in surprise upon seeing me, but then immediately flashed a sweet smile. Simone behind me let out a weird sound—something like “A-Ap!”

“I beg your pardon,” I said, my tongue barely moving in my mouth. I closed the door as quickly as I could. Then I turned to Simone and grabbed his tie.

“I swear!” he mouthed. He was on the verge of fainting.

I let him go.

“You were wrong, Simone,” I said dryly. “Let’s go back to your room.”

We started back the way we came; but along the way I changed my mind and led him to my room. I had suddenly realized that my door wasn’t locked, and that I had evidence in there. Also, I thought it might not be a bad idea to show that evidence to the great physicist.

After he’d made it through the door Simone ran over to my chair, covered his face with his hands for a moment, and then began hitting himself on the skull with his fists like an excited chimpanzee.

“I’m saved!” he muttered with an idiotic smile. “Hooray! I can live again! No need to lurk and hide! Hooray!…”

He put his hands on the edge of the table and stared up at me with his round eyes. He whispered:

“But she really was dead, Peter! I swear to you. She was dead, someone killed her, and not only that…”

“Nonsense,” I said coldly. “You were drunk as a skunk, that’s all.”

“No, no,” Simone said, shaking his head. “I was drunk, that’s true, but there’s something not right about it, something strange… It feels more like a nightmare, delirium… like a dream… Maybe I really do have a screw loose, eh Peter?”

“Maybe,” I agreed.

“I don’t know, I just don’t know… My eyes were open the whole time, I took my clothes off, put them back on… I even wanted to run… especially when I heard you walking down the hall, and when you started speaking in that muffled voice…”

“Where were you at that time?”

“I was… what time do you mean exactly?”

“When you heard our muffled voices.”

“In my room. I didn’t leave.”

“In precisely what part of the room were you?”

“All over the place, really… To be honest, while you were questioning Olaf, I sat in the bedroom and tried to listen in…” His eyes suddenly began bulging back out of his head. “Wait a minute,” he said. “But if she’s still alive, then what’s all the fuss about? What happened? Is someone sick?”

“Answer my questions,” I said. “What did you do after I left the pool room?”

He was silent for a while, looking at me with his round eyes while he chewed his lower lip.

“I get it,” he said finally. “That means something did happen. Well, all right, then… What did I do after you left? I shot pool by myself for a while and then went back to my room. It was about ten, I had planned to make my attempt at eleven, and I needed to get myself ready, to freshen up, shave, etc.… I did this until around ten thirty. Then I waited around, looking at my watch, staring out the window… You know the rest…”

“You say you went back to your room around ten. Can you be more specific? You had an appointment to keep, you must have been looking at your watch a lot.”

Simone whistled softly.

“Ho-ho,” he said. “A real investigation. Can you at least tell me what’s happened?”

“Olaf’s been killed,” I said.

“Killed—how is that possible? You were just in his room… I heard you talking to him in there myself…”

“I wasn’t talking with him,” I said. “Olaf is dead. So please, try to recall precisely what I’m asking you about. When did you get back to your room?”

Simone wiped his sweat-covered forehead. He looked miserable.

“This is crazy,” he muttered. “Madness… First that, now this…”

I used an old and reliable trick. Looking fixedly at Simone, I said: “Stop trying to wiggle out of it. Answer my questions.”

Put abruptly in the position of a suspect, all of Simone’s sentiments vanished. He stopped thinking about Mrs. Moses. He stopped thinking about poor Olaf. Now he was only thinking about himself.

“Why do you say that?” he muttered. “What does that mean, ‘stop trying to wiggle out of it’?”

“It means I’m waiting for an answer,” I said. “When, exactly, did you get back to your room?”

Simone shrugged his shoulders with exaggerated sulkiness.

“All right,” he said. “It’s funny, of course, absurd even, but… as you wish. As you wish. I left the billiard room at ten minutes to ten. Give or take a minute, to be precise. I looked at my watch and understood that I had to go. Ten minutes to ten.”

“What did you do, once you’d gotten back to your room?”

“I went into the bedroom, undressed…” Suddenly he stopped. “You know, Peter, I think I understand what you’re looking for. At that point Olaf was still alive. Then again, for all I know that might not even have been Olaf.”

“One thing at a time,” I said.

“There’s nothing to tell… Behind the bedroom wall, I heard furniture moving. I didn’t hear any voices. There weren’t any voices. But something was moving. I remember, I stuck my tongue out at the wall and thought: that’s right, you blond beast, you go to bed and I’ll go to my Olga… Or something along those lines. It was around five to ten at that point. Give or take three minutes.”

“Okay. And after that?”

“After that…? After that I went into the bathroom. I washed myself thoroughly from the waist up and then dried off thoroughly with a towel. I shaved thoroughly with an electric razor… I dressed, thoroughly…” More and more sarcasm was emerging from his annoyingly puckish voice. However, he felt immediately how inappropriate such a tone was and corrected himself. “In short, the next time I looked at my watch was when I left the bathroom. It was around ten thirty. Give or take two or three minutes.”

“You stayed in the bedroom?”

“Yes, I got dressed in the bedroom. But I didn’t hear anything else. Or if I did hear anything, I didn’t pay attention. Once I’d gotten dressed, I went into the living room and sat down to wait. And I solemnly swear that I never laid eyes on Olaf again after the party.”

“You already solemnly swore that Mrs. Moses was dead,” I pointed out.

“Well, I don’t know… I don’t understand what happened. I promise, Peter…”

“I believe you,” I said. “Now tell me, when was the last time you spoke with Hinkus?”

“Hm… To tell you the truth, I can honestly say I’ve never spoken to him. Not once. I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.”

“And when was the last time you saw him?”

Simone’s eyes narrowed as he tried to remember.

“Outside the shower?” he said with a questioning intonation. “No—what am I thinking? He had dinner with everyone, you brought him down from the roof. After that… he disappeared somewhere, who knows where… What happened to him?”

“Nothing special,” I said casually. “One more question. Who, in your opinion, has been playing all these practical jokes? The shower, the missing shoes…”

“I understand,” said Simone. “In my opinion, Du Barnstoker started them, but then everyone joined in. The owner more than anybody.”

“You too?”

“Me too. I looked into Mrs. Moses’s windows. I love jokes like that…” He started to launch into his morbid laugh, but then caught himself and quickly made a serious face.

“Is there anything else?”

“Well, why wouldn’t there be? I would call Kaisa from empty rooms and arrange one of my ‘wet walks.’”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning I ran through the hallways with wet feet. Then I was going to indulge in a little haunting, but I never got around to it.”

“Lucky for the rest of us,” I said dryly. “And Moses’s watch—did you do that?”

“What about Moses’s watch? The gold one? The one shaped like a turnip?”

I wanted to hit him.

“Yes,” I said. “The turnip. Did you steal it?”

“What do you take me for?” Simone said, outraged. “What do I look like to you, some kind of hoodlum?”

“No, not a hood,” I said, maintaining my self-control. “You took one as part of a joke. You staged a ‘visit from the Thief of Baghdad.’”

“Listen, Peter,” Simone said, turning very serious. “I can see that something must have happened with that watch. I didn’t touch it. But I did see it. Everyone did, I’m sure. A huge turnip, which I know because one day Moses dropped it into his mug in front of everyone…”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s put this aside for a moment. Now I have a question for you as a specialist.” I laid Olaf’s suitcase in front of him and opened the top. “What could this be, in your opinion?”

Simone quickly examined the device; he pulled it carefully out of the suitcase and, whistling through his teeth, began looking it over from all sides. Then he hefted it in his hands and put it just as carefully back in the suitcase.

“This isn’t my field,” he said. “Judging by how compact it is, and how well made, I’d say it’s either military or space-related. I don’t know. I can’t even guess. Where did you find it? On Olaf?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Who’d have thought!” he muttered. “That big oaf… Excuse me. What are the damned verniers for? Well, these are obviously connection jacks… A very strange aggregator…” He looked at me. “If you want, Peter, I could push the keys here and turn these wheels and screws. I’m a risk taker. But remember, this isn’t a healthy thing to be.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “Give it to me.” I closed the suitcase.

“You’re right,” Simone said approvingly, and leaned back in his chair. “It requires a specialist. I don’t even know who… By the way,” he said. “Why are you doing all this? Do you love your job that much? Why don’t you call in the experts?”

I told him briefly about the avalanche.

“It never rains…” he said morosely. “Can I go?”

“Yes,” I said. “And stay in your room. The best thing would be to go to sleep.”

He left. I took the suitcase and looked for a place where I could hide it. I couldn’t find anywhere. Military, or space, I thought. Just what I needed. A political assassination, a spy, sabotage… Come on! If they’d killed him for the suitcase, they would have taken the suitcase… Where was I supposed to put it? Then I remembered the owner’s safe and, sticking the suitcase under my arm (just to be safe), I went downstairs.

The owner had set himself up at the coffee table with his papers and an old-fashioned adding machine. His Winchester was leaning up against the wall, ready if he needed it.

“What’s new?” I asked.

He stood up to greet me.

“Nothing particularly good,” he answered with a guilty look on his face. “I had to explain to Moses what happened.”

“Why?”

“He rushed after the two of you with murder in his eyes, hissing that no one was going to break in on his wife. I didn’t know how to stop him, so I told him what was going on. I decided that would be less noisy.”

“That’s not good,” I said. “But it’s my fault. What did he do?”

“Nothing really. Bugged his eyes out at me, took a swig from his mug, didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and then began to shout—who had I lodged in his section, and how did I dare… I barely managed to get away.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Here’s what we’ll do, Alek. Give me the key to your safe, I’ll put the suitcase in there, and the key—you’ll have to excuse me—I’ll keep with me. Second, I need to question Kaisa. Bring her into your office. Third, I could really use some coffee.”

“Come with me,” said the manager.