The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (19 page)

Feeling hopelessly tired, I made my way to the lobby and sat down next to the owner to rest. I shook my head, trying to drive out the awful sight of that horse-whip that was still hovering in front of my eyes. It was none of my business. It was a personal matter, of no concern to me … My eyes felt
like they'd had sand thrown in them. No doubt I needed to get some sleep—even just a couple of hours. I still had to question the stranger, and the kid again, and then interrogate Kaisa, all of which would take strength, which meant that I had to go to sleep. But I had the feeling that I wouldn't be able to sleep right now. Hinkus's doubles were wandering the inn. Du Barnstoker's kid was lying. Not to mention the fact that everything wasn't exactly right with Mrs. Moses. Either she slept like the dead, in which case I didn't understand why she'd lied and said that she barely slept, or she hadn't been sleeping, in which case I didn't understand why she hadn't heard the avalanche, or the fracas in the neighboring room. And I absolutely didn't understand what had happened to Simone … There were too many crazies wrapped up in this, I thought dully. Crazies, drunks and fools … But maybe I was going about things the wrong way? How would Zgut have proceeded in my place? He would have immediately picked out all those who had the strength to twist a two-meter-tall Viking's neck and then set to work only on them. Meanwhile I was wasting my time on a feeble child, Hinkus the decrepit schizophrenic, Moses, that old alcoholic … No, that wasn't the way to do it. Well, but I might find the killer. And then what? A typical case of a murder in a closed room. I would never be able to prove how the killer came in and how he went out … Too bad. Maybe I should get some coffee …

I looked at the owner. He was diligently pressing the adding machine's keys and writing in his account books.

“Listen, Alek,” I said. “Is it possible that someone looking exactly like Hinkus could be hiding undetected in your inn?”

The owner raised his head and looked at me.

“Someone looking exactly like Hinkus?” he said in a businesslike manner. “Not someone else?”

“Yes. An exact double, Alek. Hinkus's double is living in
your inn. He is not paying his bill, Alek. Probably he's been stealing food. Think of it, Alek!”

The owner thought of it.

“I don't know,” he said. “I haven't noticed anything like that. To tell you the truth the only thing I feel, Peter, is that you're going about this all wrong. You're following the most natural roads, and for that reason you've ended up in particularly unnatural places. You're exploring alibis, gathering clues, looking for motives. But it seems to me that, in this particular case the usual terms of your art have lost their meaning, the same way that the concept of time changes meaning at speeds faster than light …”

“That's your feeling?” I asked bitterly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, all this speculating about alibis at faster than light speeds. My head starts to feel like a balloon, and god only knows what you're talking about. Better bring me some coffee.”

The owner stood up.

“Your understanding of this is still in its infancy, Peter,” he said. “I'm waiting for you to finally ripen.”

“Why wait for that? I'm ripe enough as it is—I'm practically falling off the branch.”

“You aren't going to fall off anything,” the owner said soothingly. “Anyway, you've still got some ripening to go. But when you are ripe—when I see that you're ready, then I'll tell you something.”

“Tell me now,” I said feebly.

“There's no point telling you now. You'd only shake it off and forget it. I want to wait until the moment when it'll be clear that my words are the only thing capable of unlocking this mystery for you.”

“Good lord,” I muttered. “One can only imagine the truths you've got in store!”

The manager smiled condescendingly and got up to go to the kitchen. On his way out the door he stopped and said:

“If you want, I'll tell you why our great physicist was so surprised?”

“All right, try me,” I said.

“When he got in bed with Mrs. Moses, our great physicist found, not a living, breathing, woman, but an unliving, unbreathing mannequin … A doll, Peter. Cold as stone.”

He stood there, grinning at me from the doorway.

“All right, then, come here,” I said. “Tell me.”

“What about the coffee?”

“To hell with the coffee! I can see you know something. Don't play games with me, spit it out.”

He came back to the table, but didn't sit down.

“I don't know what's going on,” he said. “All I can do is draw certain conclusions.”

“How did you know what Simone found?”

“Ah! My guess was correct, then …” He sat down and made himself comfortable. “Though, to be fair, I could see I'd guessed right by how blown away you looked, Peter. You must agree, that was a pretty effective delivery …”

“Listen, Alek,” I said. “I like you, I admit it.”

“I like you too,” he said.

“Shut up. I like you. But that doesn't mean anything. I don't think you're a suspect, Alek. I don't, unfortunately, have any reason to think you're a suspect. But in this regard, you're no different than anyone else … I don't have any suspects. But I need one—it's high time for me to start suspecting somebody.”

“Try to restrain yourself!” the manager said, lifting a fat finger.

“Didn't I tell you to shut up? Anyway, if you start fooling
with my head, then I'm going to start suspecting you. You'll be in trouble, Alek. I'm very inexperienced when it comes to these sorts of things, which means that you could get in quite a bit of trouble. You have no idea how much trouble an inexperienced policeman can cause a good citizen.”

“In that case,” he said. “Of course I'll tell you everything. Let's start with how I knew what Mr. Simone saw in Mrs. Moses's bedroom …”

“Yes,” I said. “How did you know that?”

He sat there in his armchair, broad, heavyset, jovial, unbearably pleased with himself.

“All right, then—let's start with a theory. The witch doctors and folk healers of certain little-known central African tribes have known for some time now how to return their dead fellow-villagers to some semblance of life.”

I groaned, and the owner raised his voice:

“This type of real world phenomenon—that is, a dead person who has the appearance of a living one, and who can execute, at first glance, quite rational and independent actions—is called a zombie. Strictly speaking, zombies are not dead …”

“Listen, Alek,” I said wearily, “none of this interests me. I understand: you're rehearsing the speech you intend to give in front of the newspaper reporters. But none of this interests me in the least! You promised to tell me something concerning Mrs. Moses and Simone. So tell me!”

He stared at me sadly for some time.

“It's true,” he said finally. “I thought as much. You're not ripe yet … Well, all right, then.” He sighed. “Let's put theory aside and look at the facts. Six days ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Moses flattered my inn with a visit, the following event took place. After making all the necessary marks in the passports of the aforementioned gentlefolk, I made my way back to
Mr. Moses's room with the object of returning their passports to him. I knocked. I was slightly distracted, which is why I opened the door without waiting for permission. My punishment for this transgression against social norms came immediately. In the armchair in the middle of the room I saw something that one might call Mrs. Moses, if they wanted to. But it wasn't Mrs. Moses. It was a large, life-sized, and beautiful doll, which resembled Mrs. Moses very closely and was dressed exactly like her. Now you're going to ask me how I am sure that it was a doll, and not Mrs. Moses. I could list some concrete specifics for you: the unnatural pose, the glassy eyes, the absolute immobility of the features, and so on. But in my opinion this isn't necessary. It seems to me that any normal person is capable of recognizing, in the course of a few seconds, whether he's looking at a model or a mannequin. And I had a few seconds. After which I was rudely grabbed by the shoulder and shoved out into the hallway. That impudent but completely justified action was executed upon my person by Mr. Moses, who'd apparently been looking over his wife's room and attacked me from behind …

“A doll …” I said pensively.

“A zombie,” the owner gently corrected me.

“A doll …” I repeated, ignoring him. “What kind of luggage does he have?”

“A couple of the usual suitcases,” the owner said. “And this huge, iron-bound, antique wooden trunk. He brought four porters with him, and the poor fellows exhausted themselves trying to get it into the building. They made a wreck of my door post …”

“Well, so what?” I said, after I'd thought it over. “At the end of the day, it's his business. I've heard of a millionaire who dragged his collection of chamber pots around with him wherever he went … If it pleases a person to have a full-size
mannequin of his spouse … no doubt he has time and money to burn … By the way, it's completely possible that he noticed what our Simone was up to and slipped him the doll instead of his wife … Hell, maybe he carries that doll around with him just for that purpose! Judging from the behavior of Mrs. Moses …” I imagined myself in Simone's place and shuddered. “Good god, now that's a first-rate joke,” I said.

“There you go: now everything's been explained to your satisfaction,” the owner said quietly.

I didn't like his tone. We watched one another for a few minutes. I still liked him. But damn it all, why did he have to do this—to clog my brain with all this African nonsense? I wasn't a reporter, after all, and had no intention of advertising his establishment to the detriment of my own reputation … No, I'd had enough. I was done talking with Mr. Alek Snevar about these things. If he wanted to throw me off the scent, he wasn't going to succeed. He was only making his situation worse. He didn't want me paying that much attention to him.

“Look, Alek,” I said. “You're messing me up. Sit here for a while; I'm going to go to the den. I have to think this over.”

“It's quarter to five,” the owner reminded me.

“So what? We're not sleeping today anyway. Keep in mind, Alek, I don't think this is over yet. So stay here in the hallway and be ready.”

“All right. I suppose you've got to do what you've got to do,” the owner said.

I went into the den (Lel snarled at me again), picked up the poker and proceeded to jumble the embers. So, the incident with Simone had been more or less explained, and I could put it out of my head. Or was it the other way around, since if that had been a doll in the Mrs. Moses's room at eleven o'clock, then where had Mrs. Moses been? A first-rate joke, of course … But there was something too cumbersome about
it … Was it really a joke? Maybe an attempt to establish an alibi?… Not much of an alibi: it was night, dark, the only way anyone would have known it was her was by touch, and with touch it turned into a joke, not an alibi. Maybe what they were thinking was that poor Simone's nerves would snap, he'd yell out in horror, get to his feet, stir up a scandal, a hullabaloo … and then what? Most importantly, what did the doll have to do with it? All this could have been done without the doll. So what, essentially, was bothering me about it? Only one thing: that Simone's room was located next to Olaf's. This allowed one to suppose, say, that the Moseses needed Simone's room to be empty for a span of time after eleven o'clock. That's what was bothering me. But they wouldn't have needed a doll to distract Mr. Simone. Of course, hypothetically speaking, the doll could have caused Simone to fall into a long and deep faint … but then, to distract Simone, all you needed was Mrs. Moses. That would have been the most natural way, and the one with the greatest hope of succeeding. The only reason to resort to such an unnatural and unreliable method as a doll would be if Mrs. Moses had to be somewhere else. Mrs. Moses … a fragile socialite, pampered to the point of imbecility … No, this wasn't getting me anywhere. It could still have just been a first-rate joke, after all, though I didn't see how this story fit yet …

It was a particularly sticky situation. None of the strands led anywhere. First, there wasn't a single suspect. Second, I had absolutely no idea how the crime had been committed. I didn't understand the most important thing. Forget about the killer—how had it been done? How? An open window, but no traces on the sill, no footprints in the snow on the ledge. No way to approach the window from below, the right, or the left. That left only one way: from above. From the roof, using a rope. But then there would be traces on the edge of the
roof. Of course I could go back up and examine it again, but I remembered it exactly: the snow had been disturbed only around Hinkus's lounge chair. Of course there was always the possibility that the killer had stuck a propeller in his ass like Karlsson-on-the-Roof. He took off, snapped his countryman's neck, flew away … So I had only two lousy possibilities. The first were secret passages, hidden doorways and double walls. And the second was that some genius had invented a new technological device that allowed one to turn a key from the outside, leaving no trace behind …

Both propositions led, among other places, directly to the owner of the house and a mechanical inventor. Well, all right. And how does this man's alibi look to us? Until nine thirty he'd been sitting continuously at the card table. From five to ten until the moment the body was discovered, he had been either where I could see him or within earshot. That left only twenty to twenty-five minutes for him to commit the murder, during which he either hadn't been seen, or had been seen only by Kaisa, who, according to his own testimony, he'd been yelling at. Hence he could, theoretically, be the killer, if he knew of a secret passageway or had the means to turn a key from the outside without leaving any trace behind … I couldn't understand what the motive behind all this completely psychologically unjustified behavior might be (definitely not publicity!), but, I repeat, theoretically he could have been the murderer. Let's make a note of this and move on.