“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.
r /> “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 r
oom 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.”