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

9.

I drank a big cup of coffee and went to question Kaisa. The coffee was excellent. But I got almost nothing out of Kaisa. First off, she kept falling asleep in her chair, and when I woke her up, she immediately asked, “What?” Second, it seemed she was completely incapable of talking about Olaf. Each time I said his name, she blushed red, began to giggle, made a complicated movement with her shoulder and covered herself with one hand. I was left with the unshakable impression that Olaf had been naughty here, and that it had happened almost immediately after dinner, when Kaisa had been clearing and washing the dishes. “But he took my beads,” she said, twittering and mooning. “He said they were a souvenir. Something to remember me by. What a troublemaker…” In the end, I told her to go to bed, and then went out in the lobby to make my way to the owner.

“What do you think about all this, Alek?” I asked.

He pushed his adding machine out of the way with relish and stretched his powerful shoulders until they cracked.

“I think, Peter, that pretty soon I’m going to have to give this inn another name.”

“How so?” I said. “And what name are you thinking of?”

“I don’t know yet,” the manager said. “But it’s bothering me a little. In a few days, this valley of mine will be swarming with reporters; I’ve got to get all my ducks in order before that happens. Naturally, everything depends on what conclusions the official investigation draws, but then the press will have to listen to the proprietor’s thoughts on what happened…”

“Does the proprietor already have thoughts on what happened?” I said, surprised.

“Well, maybe it’s not quite accurate to call them thoughts… In any case, I have experienced certain feelings that you yourself, in my opinion, haven’t arrived at yet. But you will, Peter. I have no doubt events will present themselves in the same way to you as you dig deeper into the case. You and I are just built differently. I’m a mechanic, self-taught, which means that I tend to have feelings instead of conclusions. And you—you’re a police inspector. Feelings for you arise as a result of your conclusions, when the conclusions you draw are unsatisfying. When they discourage you. That’s how I see it, Peter… So now, ask your questions.”

At that point—because I was very tired and very discouraged—I did something I hadn’t expected to do. I told him about Hinkus. He listened, nodding his bald head.

“Yes,” he said, when I had finished. “You see, even Hinkus…”

Having made this mysterious remark he told me, thoroughly and without any undue emphasis, what he’d done after the card game was over. However, he didn’t know much—for example, he’d last seen Olaf around the same time I had. At nine thirty he had gone downstairs with the Moseses, fed Lel, put him out for his walk, told Kaisa off for her tardiness… at which point I showed up. The idea to sit by the fireplace with some hot port came up. He gave Kaisa her orders and made his way to the dining room to turn off the music and lights.

“Of course, I could have then made my way up to Olaf and wrung his neck, though I’m not totally sure Olaf would have let me do that. But I didn’t even try it; I just went downstairs and turned off the light in the lobby. So far as I can remember, everything was as it should be. All the doors on the top floor were closed, it was quiet. I went back to the pantry, poured the port, and at exactly that minute the avalanche occurred. I brought you the port, thinking to myself, ‘I should go call Mur.’ I already had the feeling that something bad had happened. After I’d called, I joined you again by the fireplace, from which point on we were together the whole time.”

I watched him through half-closed eyelids. He was a very strong man, no doubt about it. Strong enough, probably, to twist Olaf’s neck, especially if Olaf had been poisoned ahead of time. After all, as the owner of the inn, he really could have poisoned any of us. Not only that, but he could have had a spare key to Olaf’s room. A third key—any of this was possible. But one thing he couldn’t have done: he couldn’t have left the room through the door and then locked it from the inside. He couldn’t have jumped out the window without either leaving marks on the windowsill or the ledge or a trace—a very deep and clear trace—beneath the window… So far as I could figure it, no one could have done all that. Which meant that there had to be a secret passage leading from Olaf’s room to the room currently occupied by the one-armed man… though at that point the crime became highly intricate, which means that it would have had to be planned a long time in advance, in detail, and with absolutely no comprehensible goal… Well, hell, I had heard him turn off the music, and walk down the stairs and reprimand Lel. A minute later there was the avalanche, and then…

“If you’ll indulge my curiosity for a moment,” the owner said. “Why did you go with Simone to see Mrs. Moses?”

“No reason really,” I said. “The great physicist had drunk too much and was imagining god knows what…”

“You won’t tell me what it was exactly?”

“It’s all nonsense!” I said angrily, trying to catch the tail of the curious idea that had floated into my head a few seconds earlier. “You’ve clogged my brain with your garbage, Alek… Well, all right, I’ll remember it later… But anyway, back to Hinkus. Try to remember who left the dining room between eight thirty and nine.”

“I can try, of course,” the manager said casually. “But after all, it was you yourself who drew my attention to the fact that Hinkus was insanely frightened by whomever—or should I say whatever—had tied him up.”

I stared at him.

“What are you getting at?”

“What are you getting at?” he asked. “If I were in your place, I’d be thinking about this quite seriously.”

“Are you joking?” I said irritably. “I don’t have time right now for mysticism, science fiction or any of your other philosophical fancies. What I think is that Hinkus is…” I tapped the side of my temple. “It seems inconceivable to me that someone could have been hiding in the inn without us knowing about it.”

“All right, all right,” the manager said graciously. “We won’t argue about it. So: who left the dining room between nine thirty and ten? First of all, Kaisa. She was going in and out. Second, Olaf. He was also going in and out. Third, Du Barnstoker’s child… But no. The child disappeared later, together with Olaf…”

“When was that?” I asked quickly.

“Naturally, that’s the part I can’t remember, though I do recall that we were playing cards and kept playing for some time after they’d left.”

“Very interesting,” I said. “But we’ll get to that later. Who else was there?”

“Indeed, yes, only Mrs. Moses is left… Hmm…” He scratched his nails deeply against his cheek. “No,” he said decisively. “I don’t remember. As the owner I generally keep track of my guests and therefore, as you see, have quite a good memory about certain things. But you know, I had a pretty lucky stretch there. It didn’t last long, maybe two or three hands, but as for what happened during that run…” The manager’s hands shot up. “I do remember that Mrs. Moses danced with the child, and I remember that afterwards she sat down with us and even played. But whether she left or not… No, I didn’t see. Unfortunately.”

“Thanks anyway,” I said distractedly. I was already thinking about something else. “So the child left with Olaf, and they didn’t come back, right?”

“Right.”

“And that was before nine thirty, when you got up from the card game?”

“Precisely.”

“Thank you,” I said, and stood up. “I’ll go now—just one more question. Did you see Hinkus after dinner?”

“After dinner? No.”

“Oh right, you were playing cards… How about before dinner?”

“Before dinner I saw him a couple of times. I saw him that morning, at breakfast, then in the yard, when everyone was playing and frolicking around… Then he sent a telegram to Mur from my office… After that… right! After that he asked me how to get up on the roof, he said he wanted to get some sun… That’s about it, I think. No, I saw him once more during the day, in the pantry, when he was occupied with a bottle of brandy. Other than that I didn’t see him during the day.”

I thought I’d caught my escaping thought.

“Listen, Alek, I completely forgot,” I said. “How did Olaf sign himself in?”

“Should I bring you the book,” the manager asked. “Or just tell you?”

“Tell me.”

“Olaf Andvarafors, civil servant, on vacation for ten days, alone.”

No, that wasn’t it.

“Thanks, Alek,” I said and sat down again. “Now keep doing what you were doing, I’ll just sit here and think.”

I put my head in my hands and started to think. What did I have? Not a lot, not a damn lot. I knew that Olaf had left the dining room between nine and nine thirty, and had not returned. I’d discovered that Olaf’s companion had been none other than the kid. Which meant, so far as I could see, that the kid was the last person who had seen Olaf alive. If I didn’t count the killer, of course. And assuming that everyone I’d interrogated was telling the truth. That meant that Olaf had been killed somewhere between nine and soon after midnight. That was quite a gap. On the other hand, Simone had said that at five minutes to ten he could hear some kind of movement in Olaf’s room, and at around ten minutes to eleven Du Barnstoker’s knock had gone unanswered. But that still doesn’t mean anything, Olaf could have left at that point. I pulled at my hair in frustration. Olaf could have been killed somewhere other than his room… No, no, it was too early to draw conclusions. There was still Brun’s involvement in Olaf’s case to deal with, and Mrs. Moses’s involvement in Hinkus’s case… But then what could she tell me? That I went up on the roof, darling, and then I saw Hinkus… But why did she go up on the roof? Alone, without her husband, with her décolletage… Right. Question: who do I start with? Since Olaf was dead, not Hinkus, and since Mrs. Moses had probably already heard about the murder from her spouse, let’s start with the kid. People say some interesting things when they’ve just woken up. Besides, I thought as I stood up, I might be able to determine what gender it is.

I had to knock long and loud on the door to the kid’s room. Then bare feet shuffled to the door and an angry husky voice demanded to know what the hell I wanted.

“Open the door, Brun, it’s me, Glebsky,” I said.

A short silence followed this. Then a frightened voice asked.

“Are you, crazy? It’s three in the morning!”

I raised my voice. “I told you to open up!”

“What’s this about?”

I said the first thing I thought of. “Your uncle doesn’t feel well.”

“Is this a joke? Wait a second, let me get some pants on…”

The slapping bare feet retreated. I waited. Then a key turned in the lock, the door opened, and the kid stepped over the threshold.

“Not so fast,” I said, grabbing it by the shoulder. “Back in the room, if you please…”

The kid was obviously not fully awake yet and for that reason didn’t put up much of a fight. It willingly went back into the room and sat on the rumpled bed. I sat in the armchair across from it. The kid looked at me for a few seconds through its huge black glasses. Suddenly its plump pink lips began to tremble.

“Is it bad?” it asked in a whisper. “Don’t keep quiet, tell me something!”

It was no small surprise for me to discover that this wild creature apparently loved its uncle and was frightened that something might have happened to him. I took out a cigarette and lit it.

“Your uncle’s fine. We’ve got other things to talk about.”

“But you said…”

“I didn’t say anything, you were dreaming. So tell me quickly, don’t hesitate: when did you and Olaf go your separate ways? Come on, quick!”

“Olaf? What do you mean? What do you want from me?”

“When and where was the last time you saw Olaf?”

The kid shook its head.

“I don’t understand any of this. Why are you talking about Olaf? What happened to my uncle?”

“Your uncle’s sleeping. He’s alive and well. When was the last time you saw Olaf?”

“Why do you keep asking me about that?” the kid said, outraged. Gradually, it came to its senses. “And why did you burst in on me in the middle of the night?”

“I’m asking you…”

“Screw your questions! Shove off, or I’ll call my uncle! Damned cop!”

“You were dancing with Olaf, and then you left? Where did you go? Why?”

“What’s it to you? Jealous about your bride?”

“Quit the nonsense, you pathetic little waif!” I barked. “Olaf has been killed! I know that you were the last one to see him alive! When was it? Where? Quick! Well?”

I must have looked scary. The kid drew back and put its hands out, palms forward, as if to protect itself.

“No!” it whispered. “What are you saying? What…”

“Answer me,” I said quietly. “You left the dining room with him and went… where?”

“N-nowhere… We just went out into the corridor…”

“And then?”

The kid was quiet. I couldn’t see its eyes, which was unusual and unsettling.

“And then?” I repeated.

“Call my uncle,” the kid said firmly. “I want my uncle here.”

“Your uncle won’t be able to help you,” I said. “Only one thing can help you: the truth. Tell the truth.”

The kid didn’t say anything. It sat there, huddled up on the bed beneath a large handwritten sign that read “Let’s get violent!” and was quiet. Tears began flowing down its cheeks from under the sunglasses.

“Tears won’t help either,” I said coldly. “Tell the truth. If you lie and try to twist things around,” I put my hand in my pocket, “I’ll put you in handcuffs and send you to Mur. There you’ll be interrogated by complete strangers. We’re talking about murder here—do you understand?”

“I understand…” the kid whispered, so softly I could barely hear it. “I’ll tell you…”

“Good choice,” I said approvingly. “So, you and Olaf went into the hallway. Then what?”

“We went into the hallway…” the kid repeated mechanically. “And then… and then… I can’t really remember, I have a lousy memory… He said something, and I… He said something and left, and I… that…”

“This isn’t working,” I said, shaking my head. “Let’s try again.”

The kid sniffled, wiped its nose and put its hand under the pillow. It pulled out a handkerchief.

“Well?” I said.

“It’s all… it’s all so embarrassing,” the kid whispered. “And horrible. And Olaf is dead.”

“A cop’s like a doctor,” I said portentously, feeling very awkward. “Words like ‘embarrassing’ aren’t in our vocabulary.”

“Well, all right,” the kid said suddenly, defiantly raising its head. “Here’s what happened. At first it was a joke: bride and groom, girl or boy… Anyway, that’s about how you treated me… He probably felt the same way too, who knows what he took me for… And then, after we’d left, he started pawing at me. It was disgusting, I had to give him one… right in the face…”

“And then?” I asked, not looking at it.

“And then, he was offended, he cursed me out and left. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me, maybe I shouldn’t have hit him, but he was wrong too…”

“Where’d he go?”

“How should I know? He went down the hallway…” the kid waved its hand. “I don’t know where to.”

“What about you?”

“Me? What about me? The mood was ruined, gross, boring… Only one thing to do: go back to my room, lock myself in and get drunk as hell…”

“So you got drunk?” I asked, sniffing carefully and looking furtively around the room. The mess was awful, junk was scattered everywhere, things were piled up who knew how, and there were long strips of paper on the table—signs, so far as I could tell. To be hung on the cop’s door… I could actually smell the alcohol, and on the floor next to the head of the bed, I noticed a bottle.

“I told you.”

I bent down and picked up the bottle. It was almost empty.

“Someone needs to give you a good spanking, young man,” I said, putting the bottle on the table, right on top of the placard bearing the slogan “Down with generalizations! Meet the moment!”

“So you were sitting here the whole time?”

“Yes. What’s a… person supposed to do in that situation?” The kid was apparently still trying, as if by force of habit, to avoid giving itself away.

“When did you go to bed?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Okay, then, so be it,” I said. “Now, can you give me a detailed description of everything you did from the moment you left the table to the moment you and Olaf went out into the hallway.”

“Detailed?” the kid asked.

“Yes. As detailed as possible.”

“Okay,” the kid agreed, showing its small sharp teeth, which were so white they looked blue. “There I am finishing dessert, when a drunk police inspector sits down next to me and starts going on and on about how much he likes me and how he would like us to become engaged as soon as possible. At the same time, he keeps shoving my shoulder with one of his paws, saying, ‘Get out of here, get, I don’t want anything to do with you, I’m talking to your sister…’”

I swallowed this tirade without batting an eye. Hopefully, I managed to remain sufficiently stone-faced.

“Then, as luck would have it,” the kid continued, wallowing now. “Up swims a she-Moses to pounce on the inspector for a dance. They muck it up, with me watching, and the place starts to look like a harbor bar in Hamburg. Then he grabs the she-Moses somewhere under her back and drags her behind a curtain, and now it’s looking like a completely different type of Hamburg establishment. And there I am staring at the curtain feeling awfully sorry for the inspector, because all things considered he’s not a bad guy, he just can’t hold his liquor, and there’s old Moses also staring predatorily at the very same curtain. Then I get up and ask the she-Moses to dance, which makes the inspector about as happy as can be—apparently he sobered up behind the curtain…”

“Who was in the room at that point?” I asked dryly.

“Everyone. Olaf wasn’t there, Kaisa wasn’t there, Simone was playing pool, feeling sorry that the inspector had stood him up.”

“Go on,” I said.

“All right, so I’m dancing with the she-Moses, she’s pressing herself to me greedily—because who cares, really, so long as I’m not Moses—and then something snaps on her dress. Oh, she says, pardon me, I’ve had an accident. Well, it’s all the same to me, so off she sails with her accident, into the hallway, at which point Olaf swoops down on me…”

“Hold on a second—when was that?”

“Come on—why would I have been wearing a watch in there?”

“So Mrs. Moses went out into the hallway?”

“Well, I don’t know about the hallway, maybe she went back to her room, or to an empty room—there are two empty ones close by hers… Do you want me to go on?”

“Yes.”

“So Olaf and I are dancing, he’s pouring out various compliments—what a figure, he says, what posture, what a gait… and then he says: ‘Let’s get out of here, I’ve got something interesting to show you.’ And what do I care? All right, let’s go… I don’t see anything else interesting in the room anyway…”

“And Mrs. Moses, did you see her in the dining room at this time?”

“No, she was in dry dock, sealing up the crack… Well, by now we’ve made it to the hallway… you know the rest.”

“And you didn’t see Mrs. Moses again?”

I glimpsed a quick hesitation. It was tiny, but I caught it.

“N-no,” the child said. “How would I have? I had other things to think about. Like for example drowning my sorrows in vodka.”

Its dark glasses were blocking me completely, and I decided firmly that during subsequent interrogations I would take them off. By force, if necessary.

“What were you doing on the roof during the day?” I asked sharply.

“What roof?”

“The roof of the inn,” I pointed a finger at the ceiling. “And don’t lie, I saw you up there.”

“Like hell you did!” The kid bristled. “What do you take me for, some sort of lunatic?”

“Okay, so that wasn’t you,” I said appeasingly. “Very well. Now, about Hinkus. Remember, he’s the little guy, at first you confused him with Olaf…”

“I remember,” the kid said.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“The last time?… The last time, I guess, was in the hallway, when me and Olaf left the dining room.”

I practically jumped out of my seat.

“When?” I asked.

The kid looked alarmed.

“Why?” it asked. “There wasn’t anything wrong… We’d just made it out of the dining room, I looked—there was Hinkus making his way towards the stairs…”

I frantically thought this over. They slipped out of the dining room no earlier than nine o’clock; at nine they were still dancing; Du Barnstoker remembers them being there. But at eight forty-three Hinkus’s watch had been crushed, therefore at nine o’clock he was already lying under the table…

“Are you sure it was Hinkus?”

The kid shrugged.

“I thought it was Hinkus… Then again, he immediately turned left, towards the landing—but still, it was Hinkus, who else would it have been? It’s impossible to confuse him with Kaisa or the she-Moses… or anyone else. Short, slouching…”

“Stop!” I said. “Was he wearing a fur coat?”

“Yes… in his stupid toe-length fur coat, with something white on his feet… What is this anyway?” The kid switched to a whisper. “He’s the murderer, right? Hinkus?”

“No, no,” I said. Could Hinkus really have been lying? Was it a hoax after all? Break the watch, move the hands back… and there’s Hinkus sitting under the table giggling, and now he’s played me and is back in his room still giggling… And somewhere his accomplice is giggling too. I jumped up.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “Don’t you dare leave this room. I’m not finished with you yet.”

I went towards the door, then came back and took the bottle from the table.

“I’m confiscating this. I don’t need a drunken witness.”

“Can I go see my uncle?” the kid said in a trembling voice.

I hesitated for a second, then waved my hand.

“Go on. Maybe he can convince you that it’s important to tell the truth.”

After dashing into the hallway, I went back to Hinkus’s room, unlocked the door and ran inside. All the lights were on: in the entryway, the bathroom, the bedroom. A wet and grinning Hinkus was squatting behind the bed. In the middle of the bed lay a broken chair, and Hinkus was holding one of its legs in his hands.

“Is that you?” he said hoarsely, straightening up.

“Yes!” I said. His appearance, crazy expression and bloodshot eyes again shook my conviction that he was lying and attempting to deceive me. He would have had to be a great artist in order to pull that kind of a role off. Nevertheless, I said sternly, “I’m tired of hearing lies, Hinkus! You’re lying to me! You said that they caught you at eight forty. But you were seen in the hallway after nine. Are you going to tell me the truth or not?”

Confusion flashed over his features.

“Me? After nine?”

“Yes! You were in the hallway and stepped on the landing.”

“I did?” He suddenly chuckled convulsively. “I was walking in the hallway?” He giggled again, and again, and once more, and suddenly his whole body shook with hysterical laughter. “I?… Me?… You’ve got it, Inspector! That’s it exactly!” he said, gagging. “I was seen in the hallway… and I also saw myself… And I grabbed me… and tied me up… and I bricked myself up in the wall! I—me… do you understand, Inspector? I—me!”