The Dead Mountaineer's Inn

  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 b
eing 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 …”