“What are you doing here?”
I leaned my head backward to see behind me. It was the son.
“Um… We’re just sitting around,” I told him. He didn’t look happy. He looked upside-down.
“But I told you to wait in the Thing Room!” His eyes were wide and shaky, like Peter Lorre in Casablanca when he’s about to get caught. He looked pretty pissed.
“You should go,” the woman whispered to me. She slunk down into the pool.
“But what about you?” I asked her.
“I’ll be okay.”
“What about your problem?”
“It’ll be okay, too. I’ll find someone else to tell. You should go catch that plane back to somewhere else entirely. Worry about your own problem.”
Her eyebrows had the mischievous wrinkle again.
“You must come with me now,” the son said.
I frowned up at him—though I suppose it looked like a smile from his angle—and then I turned over to lift myself out of the steam pool. “What about her?” I asked.
“Hey, don’t drag me into this!” She widened her eyes at me.
“She is an honored guest here,” the son told me. “But my father did great amounts of niggling to gain your entrance… And you should not frown at me, but you should frown at yourself, for it is you who caused this trouble.”
I was trying to pull my thermals on over my wet body, now, and I could tell that I was going to be cold quite soon.
“It is for your own good that I found you when I did,” the son continued as I wormed my way into my jeans. He kept tapping his foot, trying to look impatient. “You must understand that this pool is sacred to the Refurserkir.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“And so you should be sorry. It does not matter what you did or did not know.” He kept looking all around. I could tell now that he was more nervous than mad.
The woman was just sitting there not saying anything, but every time I glanced over at her she was smiling right back at me from beneath her mischievously wrinkled eyebrows. I knelt down to tie my bootlaces.
“Um… Well, good luck with whatever it is,” I said to the woman.
“Yeah, you, too.” She was still smiling, and I suddenly realized that I had no idea what it was that so amused her. And I didn’t know what else to say, either.
I got up and followed the son out of the room, then, but I shot one last glance backward before we turned the corner. Steam had already obscured everything, and I couldn’t even see where she was. “Thanks a lot for everything,” I called out. I listened closely, but if she responded I couldn’t hear.
“You must be quiet,” the son muttered without turning. “The Refurserkir do not take kindly to trespassers.”
“What are you doing here?” the woman asked us, stowing her crescent-shaped knife in some inner recess of her robes. She spoke with a stilted deliberateness.
“Please be more specific with your query. If you question the general significance of man’s presence in the universal scheme of things, then we—aah!”
“Why are the two of you in this house, right now? For what reason are you in New Crúiskeen, today?”
“We are investigators. We—”
“And what are you currently investigating?”
“The case is the world. We merely—argh!”
“As you asked of me a moment ago, please be more specific.”
“We are in search of certain… documents.”
“And precisely what are these documents that you are in search of?”
“We cannot say with precision, but—urgh!”
“I urge you to make an attempt. I understand that precision may not be your dominant virtue, and you have my assurances that I take no pleasure in causing you pain. However, my attendants have been trained to note the slightest fluctuations in my mood and to respond accordingly; if you continue to frustrate me with your answers, I must warn you that they will be compelled to further vent that frustration. Now, I ask again: What are these documents that you search for?”
“Hamlet. We labor under the hypothesis that the object of our search is an attempt to re-create the Hamlet of Thomas Kyd. We are not entirely certain of this, but we—aiyee!”
“Forgive my attendants. They mistake my lack of comprehension for annoyance. But how is it possible that you do not know for certain the object of your own search? I suggest that you make your answer as comprehensive as possible, thus sparing all of us the pain that will undoubtedly accompany any necessary follow-up questions.”
We preceded our response with groans of affirmation. “When first approached, we were given only the vaguest of instructions regarding sensitive documents that we would need to retrieve in the event of Shirley MacGuffin’s death. During the course of our investigation, we discovered that she had been working for some time on an approximation of Thomas Kyd’s hypothetical Hamlet, but that she was only recently nearing its completion. Our most sound hypothesis is that her drafts of this project constitute the object of our search.”
“I see…” her voice seemed to convey some confusion and a great deal of dissatisfaction with our answer, though no physical agony ensued. “But you still have not answered my initial question. What led you here, to this house?”
“Of course. Please pardon us… We began this case under the assumption that Ms. MacGuffin was murdered by fanatical Shakespeareans fearful that the publication of her Hamlet would undermine the primacy of Shakespeare’s text as one of the defining master narratives of the western world… Yet additional information that we have accrued suggests, perhaps, the opposite. It is now our belief that the murderer plans to pass off Ms. MacGuffin’s version of the play as the authentic work of Thomas Kyd—rather than as a work of art in its own right—precisely in an attempt to dislodge Shakespeare from his throne atop the canon. We believe that she was killed in order to ensure her silence. Hubert Jorgen is a well-known expert on the subject of forgery, and it is for that reason that we have come to his home. Additionally—”
“You search for a play, then? Is this something that you are certain of?”
“As we have already informed you, we are not certain in the least; it is merely our most sound hypothesis. Do you suggest that we should not search for a—ack!”
“You are to infer nothing from my questions! Do you understand? Answer me!”
Through aching larynxes, we answered. “We do. We understand.”
“Good. You have given me much to think on. I shall leave you in the company of my attendants for a while longer to ensure that you have much to think on, as well. You will not see me again.”
She turned and swept from the bedroom in one fluid motion. Typography cannot convey the essence of our subsequent screams.
“What?” I yelled. “Where were you? What did I let you stay here for, anyway? God… How could you let this happen?”
“Now, I realize that this isn’t doing much to assuage your feelings of masculine abandonment, and I’m truly sorry for that, but you must understand that this wasn’t my fault; I was locked in the bathroom.”
“You were locked in the bathroom? You do know that the bathroom door locks from the inside?”
“Yes, I admit it’s curious, but I just couldn’t get it open. It was stuck, somehow. In fact, as I’m certain you’ll notice, I eventually had to remove the—”