The Cherry Blossom Corpse (19 page)

“Will you solve it?” she asked.

“Yes, I'll solve it. Whether I'll solve it in such a way that a case can be brought, I'm less sure. The more time passes, the less easy that becomes. You go in, and get something out of the rest of the conference. You'll have other friends.”

“But I'll never have another—Amanda,” she said, and dipped into the dark of the foyer.

The view over the water towards the main part of Bergen, with the little church with the onion dome in the middle of the land mass, was so entrancing that I stood there in the late sun, drinking it in, revelling in the dappled lemon light on the water. As I stood there, breathing in the fresh, hard Norwegian air, I saw coming along the quay from the market Auberon Lawrence, in his element—with a romantic novelist on each arm. He was chortling and shrilling and patting their hands, and they were twittering and making up to him as only authors can make up to their publishers. It seemed a shame to break things up, but when they crossed the road I put myself in front of him and he drew in his breath and regarded me blankly, as if I were some sort of apparition from the future—a child crowned, or an armed head.

“Could I have a word?” I said.

“Oh dear—if you must. Wait for me, dear ladies!” he exhorted them, as they went through the swing doors into the darkness of the foyer. I had always wanted to meet someone who said “dear lady,” and now I had I could forget it. He was really very cross with me. “Is it important? Those are two of my sweetest writers!”

“Not very important, but I wanted to verify something. Did you know that Amanda Fairchild was a lesbian?”

He shrugged.

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Oh dear, why should I? I hate labels. He's black, he's white, she's straight, she's bent. We're all blackish and whitish, straightish and bentish. People can't be card-indexed.”

“Point taken,” I said. “But you did know that, from time to time, she engaged in lesbian activities?”

“Yes. But she did it very discreetly, so we didn't think it any affair of ours. It didn't affect the impersonation.”

“Did she have one main friend?”

“Oh no, I don't think so. Just a lot of quiet friendships that she kept up with over a long period. At least, that was the pattern until this Australian girl came along. That seemed to be more serious. She actually begged for a job for her with our Australian branch, and of course she's here now.”

“I see . . . I think I see . . . How in the straightish/bentish scale would you categorize Amanda?”

“Dear boy, how would I
know?
We didn't bump into each other socially.” He cast longing glances into the murk of the foyer. “Oh well, if you want a guess—I'd say seventy-five bent to twenty-five straight.”

“I see,” I said. That was about all I did see. I didn't see why Robyn Harben had lied about her job. I didn't see why Amanda had confided in her about the impersonation, I didn't see what Robyn had been meaning to say with her last words before she vanished into the hotel. But about Amanda's lesbian nature, at least, she seemed to be telling the truth.

W
HEN I GOT BACK
to Kvalevåg it was past dinner-time. It was also, according to Stein and Svein, time to question the Finn. I did wonder if they were right. It must have been about three when he was locked in his new bedroom. It was now only half past eight. The Finn had been drinking solidly since he had arrived at Kvalevåg. Indeed, he gave every sign of having been drinking solidly for weeks, months, years before that—vodka-sodden æons in the invigorating chill of the passing Finnish seasons. What chance had five or six hours against such a long, pickled adulthood?

At first when we opened the door it seemed as though I was right. Svein went in first, with Stein behind him, and both found themselves the objects of a howling,
incoherent attack—the gaunt, enraged Finn throwing himself upon them, clutching at the scruff of Svein's neck and throwing ill-directed but vicious punches in Stein's direction. Svein's experience with Bergen's drunks proved equal to the occasion: within ten seconds he had him helpless against the wall, and more than a little tearful. Then Stein came up as close as he cared to get, promised him that if he would bath or shower, put on clean clothes, then come and be interviewed—after that he could go back to his old room. A tiny sparkle came to Martti's bloodshot eyes: he nodded, wiped his eyes, and was led off to the bathroom by the stalwart sergeant who had guarded his room before. Soon we heard the sound of much water being run for a bath.

Coming into the room, I could smell why they had insisted on that: the room reeked of stale alcohol and sweat. We opened the windows and let in the glorious Norwegian evening air. We talked about the Finn a bit, and I tried to articulate something that had been at the back of my mind.

“Remember,” I said, with that touch of didacticism that is one of my besetting sins, “that he did take those trips to the lavatory, and probably no one would have noticed if he was a fair bit longer than most people usually are when they go to the loo. They would assume subconsciously that he was taking a long time getting there, or getting back, or maybe that he was throwing up. Remember Wes and Felicity and la Zuckerman had all been drinking themselves, so they're far from perfect witnesses.”

“But the fact that he was drunk
would
mean that he would take twice as long as anyone else to get around,” objected Svein. “Quite apart from the question whether he could have drowned Amanda at all in that condition.”

“If
he was drunk,” I amended. “You can smell like a
brewery and still be perfectly sober. You can soak your clothes in it. It's as easy to act a stage drunk as it is to act a stage Irishman. In fact, looking at some of your Bergen drunks, they remind me of nothing so much as silent film drunks. Imitating one of them would be a piece of cake. All I'm saying is that we should take nothing for granted.”

While I had been talking, something had clicked in my mind—some connection, some neglected fact. When I had finished talking, it had gone, gone beyond recall. Yet . . . there it niggled, still at the back there. Surely it would come back, eventually . . . Meanwhile there was a click of a door from the bathroom along the corridor, and a few seconds later Martti Leino walked in.

It was for the first time possible to consider him as a man. A drunk is just a drunk, he neither rises nor falls to being a person, but a person was what stood before us. Stein and Svein had been quite right about how long it would take him to sober up, but then, they were the ones with the experience of Scandinavian drunks. Martti Leino was rather above average height, cadaverous of face and body, white of skin and with oddly colourless hair that would have been classified as blond, yet was not. His features must once have been strong, even impressive, but self-indulgence had covered them with blotchy, unhealthy skin, and the eyes were cloudy and largely unfocused. But there was no doubt that he was all there, was following things, and had become a real man. Though a decidedly unhappy one.

“Christ,” he said blackly. “Do you have the right to do that?”

He sat down, put his head in his hands, then peeked out and looked around as if he expected us to have brought in a bar.

“We do,” said Stein equably. “Do you imagine that
you have some sort of constitutional or God-given right to be drunk twenty-four hours a day?”

“Yes,” said Martti simply. “If I can afford it.”

“Are you always as drunk as this?”

“If I have the money. When I haven't, I sober up and write a few books. Then I get drunk again.”

“Why?” I asked. He obviously thought it a silly question.

“Why not? It's a way of life. Other people kill themselves with cigarettes, or jogging. Me—I drink.”

“Did you start drinking because your wife left you?” asked Stein, in tones of sympathy.

“Something like that. Or maybe the other way round. No Finn knows when or why he started drinking. What are you so interested in that for?”

We all sighed, and Stein took off on another tack.

“How drunk were you on the night of the murder?”

Martti shrugged.

“Pretty much as usual.”

“Do you remember what you talked about in Mrs. Zuckerman's room?”

He screwed up his face and shook his head.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you remember who was there?”

“That fat old cow in purple, whatever name that was you just said. Her little nurse . . . someone else . . . Oh, that guy from India or somewhere like that.”

“Kenya.”

“That's it. That isn't India?”

“No.”

“I must try and remember that.”

“While you were drinking with that lot, you went out to the lavatory.”

“I imagine so.”

“You don't remember?”

“For Chrissake, don't you realize how often I go to the lavatory in the course of the day? Of course I don't remember.”

“Nor how often you went, how long it took?”

“No. Full stop. NO.”

It really was very difficult to know what to ask him.

“The others went out from time to time,” Stein pressed on.

“I think so. Not the big purple cow, though. She sat there in her . . . barn.”

“You're sure of that? You noticed the whole time?”

“Oh no. I went to sleep now and then. But she's crippled, and she couldn't get around.”

It was enough to make you weep. Stein merely sighed, a quiet, delicate, Norwegian little sigh.

“And the others?”

“The Indian went out. I know that.”

“Kenyan. Yes, we know. Do you remember anything about his going out? How long he was away, for instance?”

Martti shook his head.

“When am I getting this drink?”

“In a minute,” Stein said. He signalled surreptitiously to the stalwart sergeant to go and fetch a bottle from Leino's stock, the collection of twelve half-bottles found under the floorboards in his old bedroom.

“And Miss Maxwell?”

“She fetched the drinks.”

“Did she take especially long over it?”

“Yes.”

“Which time?”

“Every time. I was waiting.”

This time we all three sighed, very audibly.

“Well, I'm not used to waiting between drinks,” Martti protested. “It makes me nervous. I like the new one on
the table as soon as I've finished the old one.” His eyes lit up as the sergeant came in with a half-bottle of Smirnoff.
“And
once the bitch brought me the wrong brand. It's
only
Smirnoff for me. Can I have one? Can I have a little drink?”

“Well,” said Stein reluctantly, “we can't get less out of you than we've got so far.”

Martti Leino grabbed at the bottle, wrenched at the screw top, and then threw back his head and the bottle at the same time and consumed, neat, a good third of the contents. As he came to, shaking his head at the impact, Stein took the bottle from his unwary hand, and managed to avoid Martti's feet as he kicked out.

“For when we've finished,” Stein said.

“Oh, come on, come on,” said Martti urgently. “There's nothing more to tell. I've told you everything.”

“How were you sitting in Mrs. Zuckerman's room?”

“Christ! . . .
she was in front, facing us, like she was some sort of teacher . . . Then we were around her—me in the armchair closest to the window, then the Indian in the other armchair, then the little nurse over on the desk chair.”

“Could you see all the other three?”

“Of course I could—when I was awake.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Markets. I wasn't interested in that. No one's going to translate Finnish romances for the American market. Then trends. That was a bit more interesting. You can get ideas . . . Not that the Finnish market is the same as the international.” He made a little circle with his thumb and third finger, to indicate Finland's uniqueness. “Finland is absolutely on its own!”

He made a lunge in the direction of the bottle, but Stein passed it deftly from one hand to the other behind his chair, and put up his knee in Martti's path. He retired
badly winded, and in a very black mood. Stein and Svein really seemed to have valuable expertise in dealing with people like Martti.

“Don't try that again,” Stein said. “I'm the one who decides when you have your next drink. So did this talk of markets and trends go on all evening?”

“Pretty much so, as far as I remember . . . Then later on, there was noise outside . . . screaming.”

“So what did you do?”

“Took no notice at first. Went on talking. Then we heard a lot of voices from the lawn. The girl goes to the window. ‘I think something's happened,' she says, and she goes out on to the balcony. The window is really a little door, and their sitting-room has the small round balcony in the centre of the house. She calls down to someone in the grounds, and then shouts in to us: ‘I think somebody's dead.' It's only a little tiny balcony, so I leave the room, because my drink was dry and there was no sign of getting another. I collect a half-bottle from my room, and I go downstairs and out to the porch and watch from there.”

“That's right,” I said. “I saw him.”

“Now,” said Stein, speeding up his questionnaire, apparently knowing that this was a crucial time in the Finn's progression from sobriety to haziness, “you went out of the room to go to the lavatory. When? What time?”

“Don't know,” said Martti, faltering. “DON'T KNOW.”

“What about the others? Miss Maxwell, for example.”

“She went to fetch drinks. When my glass was empty I started jiggling it—to remind her, subtly. Three times she did that—once for me alone, otherwise for her and the Indian as well.”