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

7.

By midnight the owner and I had a pitcher of hot port already under our belts, and had moved on from discussing how best to notify the guests that they had been buried alive to more universal questions—for example, Is mankind doomed to extinction (Yes, doomed, but we won’t be around when it happens); Is there a force in nature that the human mind cannot fathom (Yes, there is, but we’ll never know anything about it); Is Lel the St. Bernard capable of sentient thought (Yes, he is, though convincing scientific dolts of this is impossible); Is the universe in danger of succumbing to so-called “heat death” (No, it is not in danger, due to the existence of perpetual motion machines of both the first and second type in the owner’s barn); Was Brun a boy or a girl (Here I was unable to come to any conclusion, but the owner put forward the odd idea that Brun was a zombie, that is, a sexless creature animated by magic)…

Kaisa was cleaning in the dining room; she had washed all the dishes and presented herself to ask if she could go to bed. We let her go. Watching her as she went, the owner complained about his loneliness, and the fact that his wife had left him. That is to say, she hadn’t left him… it wasn’t as simple as that… but, in a word, to speak plainly, he was currently wifeless. I told him not to marry Kaisa, first because it would hurt business, and second because Kaisa loved men too much to make a good wife. The owner agreed that this was true, he had thought about it a long time himself and come to the same conclusions. Still, he said, who am I supposed to marry now that we’re going to be buried in this valley for the rest of our lives? I was unable to give him any advice on that score; all I did was admit that I was on my second marriage, and therefore had probably already taken more than my share. It was a terrible way to think about it, and although the owner forgave me immediately, I still felt like an egoist and bad Samaritan. In order to repay him in some way for all my awful attributes, I decided to school him in the technicalities of forging lottery tickets. He listened attentively, but this didn’t seem like enough to me, so I demanded that he write it down. “You’ll forget!” I repeated despairingly. “You’ll sober up and forget all about it…” The owner grew terribly afraid that he really would forget it, and demanded that we give it a practice run. I think it was around then that Lel the St. Bernard suddenly jumped up and gave a deep bark. The owner stared at him.

“I don’t understand!” he said sternly.

Lel barked twice and went out into the lobby.

“Aha,” said the owner, standing up. “Someone’s arrived.”

We followed Lel. We were flush with the spirit of hospitality. Lel was standing by the front door. Strange scratching and whining sounds were coming from the other side. I grabbed the owner’s hand.

“Bear!” I whispered. “A grizzly. Do you have a gun? Quickly!”

“That’s no bear, I’m afraid,” the owner said in his dull voice. “It’s HIM. At last. We need to unlock it.”

“We do not!” I said.

“We do. He paid for two full weeks, but only stayed one. We have no right. They’ll take away my license.”

The sound of scraping and whimpering came from behind the door. Lel was acting strangely: he stood with his side to the door, staring at it with an inquisitive expression, and giving the air a big sniff from time to time. In my opinion, this was exactly how a dog would behave when confronted with a ghost for the first time. While I was searching agonizingly for a good reason not to open the door, the owner came to his own decision. He bravely reached out and slid the bolt open.

The door opened, and a snow-caked figure slowly collapsed at our feet. All three of us rushed towards him, dragging him into the lobby and turning him onto his back. The snow-caked man groaned and stretched out. His eyes were closed and his long nose was white.

Without losing a second, the owner burst into a frenzy of activity. He woke up Kaisa, ordered her to heat up some water, poured a glass of hot port down the stranger’s throat, rubbed his face with a wool mitten, and then announced that we needed to get him in the shower. “Peter—armpits,” he ordered. “I’ll get the legs.” I carried out his order, experiencing no small shock when I saw that the stranger was missing an arm, his right one, up to the shoulder. We dragged the poor guy into the shower and lay him on the bench, at which point Kaisa ran in wearing only a nightgown, and the owner told me that he would take it from here.

I went back to the fireplace and finished my port. My head was totally clear; I was capable of analyzing and comparing events with unusual speed. The stranger’s clothes were out of season. A short jacket, flared pants and dress shoes. Only someone who was traveling by car would wear something like that to a place like this. Which means that something had happened to the car, and he’d been forced to make his way to the inn on foot. No doubt over quite a distance, considering how exhausted and cold he looked. Then I understood. It was obvious: he’d been coming here by car, and got hit by the avalanche at Bottleneck. So this was Hinkus’s friend! We had to wake up Hinkus… Maybe there were still people back at the car, who’d been wounded and couldn’t move. Maybe they were already dead… Hinkus had to know…

I ran out of the den and up to the second floor. As I passed the shower, I heard the water gushing fiercely and the owner chastising Kaisa for her stupidity in a fierce whisper. The hallway light was out; I spent quite a while finding the switch, and then even longer knocking on Hinkus’s door. Hinkus wasn’t answering. Well, then, he must still be on the roof! I was horrified. Had he fallen asleep up there? What if he’d frozen! I rushed frantically up the attic stairs… there he was, sitting on the roof. He was sitting in the same position as before, bundled up, with his head hidden in the huge collar and his hands pulled into their sleeves.

“Hinkus!” I shouted.

He didn’t move. I ran up to him and shook his shoulder. I couldn’t believe it. Hinkus collapsed, gently giving way beneath my hand.

“Hinkus!” I cried in agitation, involuntarily trying to catch him.

The coat opened, and out fell some clumps of snow and the fur hat; only then did I realize that this wasn’t Hinkus: it was just a snowman with his fur coat wrapped around it. That was the moment when I sobered up at last. I looked quickly around me. The small bright moon was hanging directly over my head, and I could see everything, as if it were day. There were many sets of footprints on the roof, but they were all the same: it was impossible to tell whose was whose. The snow beside the chaise longue had been trampled, scattered and dug through—maybe because of a scuffle, maybe in order to gather snow for the snowman. The snow-covered valley was white and clear as far as the eye could see, the dark stripe of the road led north before disappearing in the blue-gray fog that was hiding the mouth of Bottleneck.

Stop, I thought, attempting to get a hold of myself. Let’s try and figure out why Hinkus needed all these props. He wanted to make us think he was sitting on the roof, of course. Meanwhile, he’d been somewhere else, doing something completely different… the tuberculosis was fake, he wasn’t such a sad-sack… But what was he doing, and where? I examined the roof again thoroughly, attempting to make some sense of the footprints, but I couldn’t understand anything; I searched through the snow but found only a pair of bottles—one of which was empty, and the other of which still had a little brandy in it. It was the undrunk brandy that really got to me. I knew that things had to be really serious if Hinkus was willing to throw away five crowns’ worth of brandy. I slowly went back down to the second floor; I knocked on Hinkus’s door again, and again no one answered. Just in case, I tried the handle. The door opened. Ready for anything, and with my hand held out in front of me in order to ward off any possible attacks from the darkness, I went in and, after fumbling hurriedly for the switch, turned on the light. Everything in the room looked the same as it had been before: the trunks stood in their old places, though both of them were open. Hinkus wasn’t there, of course: but I hadn’t expected to find him here. I sat down next to the trunks and carefully went through them again. They were also exactly as they had been, with one small exception: the gold watch and Browning were both gone. If Hinkus had fled, he would have taken the money. It was a good-sized wad, heavy. That meant he was here. Or, if he’d left, that he intended to return.

One thing was clear to me: a crime was about to be committed. What kind of crime? A murder? Burglary? I quickly rejected the idea of murder. I simply couldn’t imagine anyone killing anybody here, or think of why they’d do it. But then I remembered the note that they’d slipped Du Barnstoker, and began to feel sick. Though it was clear from the note that they would only kill Du Barnstoker if he tried to run away…

I turned off the light and went out into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I went to Du Barnstoker’s room and tried the handle. The door was locked. Then I knocked. No one answered. I knocked a second time and put my ear against the keyhole. Vaguely, an obviously half-asleep Du Barnstoker’s voice called back: “One minute, I’m just…” The old man was not only alive, he wasn’t preparing his escape. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to him, so I jumped into the stairwell and pressed myself against the wall beneath the attic stairs. A minute later I heard the key snap, and the door creak. Du Barnstoker’s voice said, in amazement, “Strange…” The door creaked again, the key clicked. Everything was okay—at least for now.

No, I decided finally. Murder was impossible, of course, and the note had been planted either as a joke or as a red herring. But what about robbery? Who was worth robbing here? So far as I could tell, there were two wealthy people in the inn: Moses and the owner. Okay. All right. Both lived on the first floor. The Moseses’ room was in the southern wing, the owner’s safe was in the northern one. They were divided by a lobby. If I set myself up in the lobby… Then again, you could get to the owner’s office from upstairs, by coming down from the dining room into the kitchen, and then the pantry. If I secured the pantry door… It’s settled then: I’ll spend the night in the lobby, and tomorrow we’ll see. Suddenly I remembered the one-armed stranger. Hmm… Now that I think about it, being a friend of Hinkus’s, he’s probably in on it. Maybe he got in a real accident, but maybe this is all a farce, like the snowman on the roof… No, you won’t fool us, sir!

I went down the hall. Nobody was in the shower, but Kaisa was standing in the middle of the lobby with an addled look on her face, wearing her nightgown (the skirt of which was wet) and holding the stranger’s wet and crumpled clothes in her arms. In the corridor of the southern wing a light was on; from an empty room opposite the den I could hear the muffled bass voice of the owner. He had apparently set the stranger up in here, which was probably just what the one-armed man wanted. It had been smartly done: nobody would drag a half-dead man up to the second floor…

Kaisa came to herself finally and started making her way off to the owner’s quarters, but I stopped her. I took the clothes from her and searched through the pockets. To my great surprise, there was nothing in the pockets. Absolutely nothing. No money, no identifying documents, no cigarettes, no handkerchief—nothing.

“What’s he wearing now?” I asked.

“How do you mean?” Kaisa asked. I didn’t press it.

I gave the clothes back and went to see for myself. The stranger was in bed, wrapped in blankets up to his chin. The manager was feeding him something hot with a spoon, saying, “You have to work up a sweat, sir, you have to, you have to get a good sweat going…” In all fairness, the stranger looked terrible. His face was blue, the end of his pointy nose was white as snow; one eye was squinting painfully, the other was shut completely. With every breath he let out a feeble moan. If he’s someone’s accomplice, he’s not doing a very good job of it. Still, I had a few questions to ask him. Just in case.

“Did you come here alone?” I asked.

He looked at me with his squinting eye, and moaned quietly:

“Is anyone still in the car?” I asked, enunciating my words. “Or were you traveling alone?”

The stranger opened his mouth, took a small breath and then closed his mouth again.

“He’s weak,” said the owner. “His body’s like a bundle of rags.”

“Dammit,” I muttered. “And now someone has to go to Bottleneck.”

“Yes,” agreed the owner. “What if someone was left behind… They might have gotten trapped under the avalanche.”

“You’ll have to go,” I said decisively, and at that moment the stranger spoke.

“Olaf,” he said expressionlessly. “Olaf And-va-ra-fors… Get him.”

I felt another shock.

“Aha,” said the owner and set the mug of liquid on the table. “I’ll get him right away.”

“Olaf…” the stranger repeated.

When the owner left, I took his place. I felt like an idiot. At the same time, I was pretty relieved: the depressing plot that I’d worked to a point of believability had collapsed.

“Were you alone?” I asked again. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“One…” the stranger groaned. “An accident… call Olaf… where is Olaf Andvarafors?”

“He’s here, he’s here,” I said. “He’s coming soon.”

He closed his eyes and grew quiet. I leaned back in the chair. Well, all right. But then what had become of Hinkus? And how is the owner’s safe doing? My brain had turned to mush.

The owner returned with his eyebrows raised and his lips pursed. He leaned towards my ear and whispered:

“Peter, it’s the strangest thing. Olaf isn’t answering. His door is locked, there’s a draft coming from underneath it. And my spare keys seem to have gone missing somewhere…”

I quietly took from my pocket the bunch that I’d stolen from his office, and handed them to him.

“Ah,” the owner said. He took the keys. “Well, anyway. You know, Peter, maybe we should go together. Something doesn’t seem right to me…”

“Olaf,” the stranger groaned. “Where’s Olaf?”

“Soon, soon,” I told him. My cheek had started to twitch. The owner and I went out into the corridor. “Here, Alek,” I said. “Call Kaisa. Have her sit next to this guy and not move until we come back.”

“Ah,” the owner said again, wiggling his eyebrows. “So that’s how it is… Something’s afoot…”

He jogged down to his quarters, and I slowly made my way to the stairs. I’d already gone a few steps when the owner said sternly behind me:

“Come on, Lel. Sit here… Sit. Don’t let anyone by. No one.”

I was already in the second floor hallway by the time he caught up with me, and together we went to Olaf’s room. I knocked, seeing just as I did so a note pinned to the door. The note was stuck with a pin right at eye level. “I WAS THERE, AS WE ARRANGED, BUT YOU WERE NOT. IF YOU STILL DESIRE REVENGE, I AM AT YOUR DISPOSAL UNTIL ELEVEN O’CLOCK. DU B.”

“Did you see that?” I asked the owner quickly.

“Yes. I just didn’t get a chance to tell you.”

I knocked again and, not waiting for a reply, grabbed the bunch of keys from the owner.

“Which one is it?” I asked.

The owner pointed it out. I stuck the key in the keyhole. Just my luck: the door was locked from the inside, and someone had left the key in it. While I worked at it, pushing, the door to the next room over opened and a sleepy and calm-looking Du Barnstoker came out into the hall, tightening the belt of his bathrobe.

“What’s going on, gentlemen?” he asked, “Is it now prohibited for the guests to get some sleep?”

“A thousand apologies, Mr. Du Barnstoker,” the owner said. “But events have occurred that require decisive action.”

“Is that so?” Du Barnstoker said with interest. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

I managed to make a clear path for the key, and straightened up. From beneath the door a winter chill emerged, and I was totally sure that the room would be empty, just like Hinkus’s. I turned the key and opened the door. A wave of cold air washed over me, but I hardly felt it. The room was not empty. A man was lying on the floor. The light from the hallway wasn’t enough to see who it was. All I saw were the soles of two gigantic shoes on the entryway threshold. I stepped into the entryway and turned on the light.

It was Olaf Andvarafors, manly god and descendent of ancient Scandinavian kings. He was clearly, utterly dead.