Meanwhile the shower water continued to beat down, though the singing had been replaced now by unintelligible muttering. From the top of the stairs, Mr. Moses descended with heavy steps, hand in hand with the day’s hero and victim of canine disgrace, Olaf. When they got to the bottom, they parted ways. Mr. Moses took his mug behind the door-curtains, sipping as he went, while the Viking took his place next to us in line without uttering a single unnecessary word. I looked at the clock. We’d been waiting for over ten minutes.
The front door slammed. The kid ran past us without stopping, leaping quietly up the stairs and leaving behind a smell of gasoline, sweat and perfume. I realized immediately that I could hear the voices of the owner and Kaisa in the kitchen, and a sort of strange suspicion dawned on me for the first time. I stared indecisively at the shower door.
“Have you been standing here a long time?” Olaf asked.
“Yes, quite a long time,” Du Barnstoker said.
Suddenly, Hinkus muttered something unintelligible and, shoving Olaf’s shoulder, rushed into the hall.
“Listen,” I said. “Did anyone else arrive this morning?”
“Only these gentlemen,” Du Barnstoker said. “Mr. Andvarafors and Mr.… um… the little fellow, who just left…”
Olaf objected. “We arrived last night,” he said.
I already knew when they had arrived. For a second, the image of a skeleton purring out songs beneath the stream of hot water as it washed its armpits flashed across my mind. I lost my temper and shoved the door. It opened, of course. And of course, no one was in the shower. The stream of hot water (which had been left at full blast) was making a lot of noise, there was steam everywhere, the Dead Mountaineer’s infamous tarpaulin jacket was hanging from the hook, and beneath this, on the oak bench, an old transistor radio was whispering and muttering.
“Que Diablo!” Du Barnstoker cried. “Where’s the owner? Come here at once!”
A ruckus erupted. Heavy boots thumped as the owner ran to us. Simone emerged as if sprung from the ground. The kid leaned over the railing with a cigarette dangling from its lower lip. Hinkus watched cautiously from the hall.
“Unbelievable!” Du Barnstoker exclaimed heatedly. “We’ve been waiting and waiting, for no less than a quarter of an hour—isn’t that right, Inspector?”
“And someone’s been lying in my bed again,” the child reported from above us. “And the towel’s completely wet.”
Simone’s eyes flashed with impish glee.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen…” the owner said, offering a series of appeasing gestures. Before doing anything else he ducked into the shower and turned off the water. Then he took the jacket off the hook, picked up the radio and turned to us. His face was solemn. “Gentlemen!” he said in a low voice. “I can only speak to the facts. This is HIS radio, gentlemen. And HIS jacket.”
“Exactly whose…?” Olaf asked calmly.
“HIS. The dead mountaineer.”
“What I meant was, whose turn is it exactly?” Olaf asked, as calmly as before.
I silently maneuvered the owner out of the way, went into the shower and locked the door behind me. After I’d already taken my clothes off I realized that it wasn’t my turn, but Simone’s—but I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty. That was probably one of his, I thought furiously. Well, let him wait. The hero of national science. What a waste of water… No, jokers like him should be stopped. And punished. I’ll teach you not to play tricks on me…
When I left the shower, the people gathered in the hall were still discussing what had happened. No new theories had been offered, so I didn’t stick around. On the stairs I ran into the kid, who was still hanging over the railing.
“Madhouse!” it said to me defiantly. I passed without a word and went straight to my room.
The shower and a pleasant exhausted feeling soon caused my temper to disappear completely. I pulled the armchair up to the window, picked up my fattest and most serious book and sat down with my feet propped on the edge of the table. Before I’d finished the first page, I was asleep; by the time I woke up, maybe an hour and a half later, the sun had shifted considerably, and the shadow of the inn was lying beneath my window. I could tell from its silhouette that someone was sitting on the roof, and I decided sleepily that this must be Simone, the great physicist, hopping from chimney to chimney and chortling over the entire valley. I fell asleep again, waking finally with a start when my book slipped off onto the floor. Now I could distinctly see the shadows of two people on the roof: one appeared to be sitting, while the other was standing in front of him. Tanning, I thought, and went to wash up. While I was washing, it occurred to me that a cup of coffee might be nice, a good pick-me-up, and that a snack wouldn’t be a bad thing either. I lit a cigarette and stepped into the hallway. It was already almost three.
I met Hinkus on the landing. He had just come down the attic stairs, and looked strange for some reason. He was naked to the waist and shiny with sweat; his face was so white it was practically green; his eyes weren’t blinking; he was clutching a ball of crumpled clothes to his chest with both hands.
Catching sight of me, he shuddered visibly and stopped.
“Tanning?” I asked, out of politeness. “Don’t get burned. You look ill.”
Having expressed in this way concern for my fellow man’s well-being, I walked past him downstairs without waiting for a response. Hinkus clonked his way down the stairs behind me.
“I need a drink,” he said hoarsely.
“Hot up there?” I asked, without turning around.
“Y-yes… Very hot.”
“Watch out,” I said. “March sun in the mountains is a bad idea.”
“I’m okay… I’ll have a drink, and then I’ll be okay.”
We went down to the lobby.
“You should probably get dressed,” I advised. “What if Mrs. Moses were there…”
“Right,” he said. “Sure. I completely forgot.”
He stopped and began hurriedly putting on his shirt and jacket; I went down to the pantry, where I procured a plate of cold roast beef, some bread and coffee from Kaisa. Hinkus, dressed and looking much less green, joined me and demanded something stronger.
“Is Simone up there too?” I asked. The idea of whiling away some time with a game of pool had floated into my head.
“Up where?” Hinkus asked sharply, carefully bringing a full snifter to his lips.
“On the roof.”
Hinkus’s hand trembled, scattering drops of brandy on his palm. He took a quick gulp, stuck his nose into the air and, after wiping his mouth with his hand, said:
“No. No one else is up there.”
I looked at him with surprise. His lips were pursed; he poured himself a second glass.
“That’s strange,” I said. “For some reason it seemed to me that Simone was up there with you—on the roof, I mean.”
“Take a deep breath the next time anything ‘seems’ to you—you’ll make fewer mistakes that way,” the youth counselor replied, and drank. And then he poured himself another one.
“What’s got into you?” I asked.
He stared at the full glass silently for a little while, before suddenly saying:
“Listen: do you want to suntan on the roof?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m afraid of getting burned. Sensitive skin.”
“You never go tanning?”
“No.”
He thought about this, grabbed the bottle, screwed the cap back on.
“The air’s great up there,” he said. “And the view’s gorgeous. The whole valley in the palm of your hand. The mountains…”