“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 room 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.”
“Okay. And after that?”
“After that…? After that I went into the bathroom. I washed myself thoroughly from the waist up and then dried off thoroughly with a towel. I shaved thoroughly with an electric razor… I dressed, thoroughly…” More and more sarcasm was emerging from his annoyingly puckish voice. However, he felt immediately how inappropriate such a tone was and corrected himself. “In short, the next time I looked at my watch was when I left the bathroom. It was around ten thirty. Give or take two or three minutes.”
“You stayed in the bedroom?”
“Yes, I got dressed in the bedroom. But I didn’t hear anything else. Or if I did hear anything, I didn’t pay attention. Once I’d gotten dressed, I went into the living room and sat down to wait. And I solemnly swear that I never laid eyes on Olaf again after the party.”
“You already solemnly swore that Mrs. Moses was dead,” I pointed out.
“Well, I don’t know… I don’t understand what happened. I promise, Peter…”
“I believe you,” I said. “Now tell me, when was the last time you spoke with Hinkus?”
“Hm… To tell you the truth, I can honestly say I’ve never spoken to him. Not once. I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.”
“And when was the last time you saw him?”
Simone’s eyes narrowed as he tried to remember.
“Outside the shower?” he said with a questioning intonation. “No—what am I thinking? He had dinner with everyone, you brought him down from the roof. After that… he disappeared somewhere, who knows where… What happened to him?”
“Nothing special,” I said casually. “One more question. Who, in your opinion, has been playing all these practical jokes? The shower, the missing shoes…”