‘But surely there isn’t any mystery as to who did it?’
‘Oh really?’
‘We’re all aware that Slavorigin’s life was under threat from some nitwitted survivalist sects whose members, even if we leave aside their hatred of everything he stood for, must have entertained the odd fantasy about how much comfier Armageddon would be if cushioned by a buried stash of a hundred million dollars. It’s evident that one of these loonies pursued Slavorigin here to Meiringen and shot him through the heart. A bow and arrow, after all, the survivalist’s favourite choice of weapon.’
‘Maybe, maybe. Except that your theory, which is all it is, begs a few questions.’
‘For instance?’
‘Well, one, how would such a loony, as you call him – or her – know that Gustav Slavorigin was due to make an appearance in Meiringen at all?’ I was about to parry that question with its logical answer when she held her splayed right hand up to my face, all but blotting out her own, to advise me of the fact that she had not yet completed what she wished to say. It was a tic I thought I had invented for her, but perhaps I had half-consciously recalled her behaving so at Carmen’s little supper. She continued:
‘Since he was the Festival’s Mystery Guest, after all, there was no indication of his identity in the programme. Then two, is it probable that a rabid rightwing fanatic from some one-horse burg in Texas or Kansas or Oklahoma, armed with a great big bow-and-arrow and probably even sporting a coonskin hat, could pass unremarked by any of us, including Slavorigin’s minders, in a town as small as Meiringen? Three, how did he – or, I repeat, she – succeed in luring Slavorigin unaccompanied into the Museum? And four, and last for now, who’s to say your so-called loony isn’t actually one of the Festival’s official guests?’
That final question threw me, being the only one I hadn’t expected. Yet, even if I was by no means convinced I could knock down all four of her objections one after the other, I decided to take up the challenge.
‘In the first place, Evie, Slavorigin’s presence here was one of those secrets that could never be held secret for long. This Festival of ours, you’d agree, is a pretty amateurish affair – also the very first of its kind – and the last too, I fancy, after such a hoohah – and you don’t suppose, no, let me continue, you’ve had your say, you don’t suppose that, when they all heard to their stupefaction, if I’m not mistaken, that Slavorigin had actually accepted their ludicrously quixotic invitation, all those sweet, bungling young people who hand me your gin-and-tonic and you my whisky-on-the-rocks, you really don’t suppose that, even if sworn to silence on pain of the rack, they would have been capable of keeping so enthralling a piece of news to themselves? A word here, a word there, and it would have been all over the blogosphere.
‘Two, rabid rightwingers they may be, but I really do think that these bounty-hunters – and what a bounty! – would be savvy enough to disguise themselves before setting off on the great crusade. In fact, considering the average American’s ignorance of how we Europeans live, like something out of an episode of The Simpsons, I would guess, the kind of stranger I’d tend to look at twice is one wearing a Tyrolean hat and lederhosen instead of one in a Davy Crockett cap and leather britches.
‘Three, we have absolutely no cause to assume that our murderer needed to “lure” Slavorigin at all. We’ve all had to pay a dutiful visit to the Museum, but he arrived too late to join us. What could be more natural than for him to take a solitary stroll there, a matter of a few hundred yards from the Hilton, and also to be surreptitiously tailed?’ It was now my turn to ward off an impending interruption with a raised hand. ‘Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say. His bodyguards. Thomson and Thompson, as I call them. Why didn’t they insist on accompanying him? That is queer. Except that Slavorigin is, was, a spoilt brat, accustomed to getting his way in everything, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have wanted to shake off his twin shadows for a blissful half-hour or so on his own. After all, he must have said to himself, what could possibly happen to him in a sleepy hamlet like Meiringen?
‘As for your hunch – which is all it is, if I may take the liberty of quoting you – that one of the Festival’s guests could have been responsible, the problem as I see it is crucially one of motive. The motive of, let’s say, an ideological murderer positively screams out at us whereas, as far as our co-festivaliers are concerned, I have to admit to not having heard so much as a whisper.
‘Finally, let me raise an issue that you appear to have overlooked.’
‘Oh yes?’ she said, ever ready to bristle at the faintest hint of criticism.
‘What’s today’s date?’
‘The twelfth of September.’
‘Right. Which means that yesterday was the eleventh.’
‘I’m quite aware of that, Gilbert. How could I not be after all that’s happened here?’
‘Ah yes, but do you know – or do you remember – Gustav Slavorigin’s birthdate?’
‘Course I don’t. I met the man for the first time two days ago, and in the Festival’s booklet there was obviously no mini-bio of its Mystery Guest.’
‘Well, I do. He was born, wait for it, on July 4.’
‘Ah …’
‘Born on the Fourth of July, died September 11, exactly ten years to the day after the attack on the World Trade Center. Added to which, this is the year 2011. 2 equals the Twin Towers of 1 + 1 and 20 minus 11 equals 9. The numbers, Evie, the symbolism! For Hermann Hunt’s henchmen it would have been what Düttmann calls the “clincher”. Don’t forget, these are neanderthals who claim to detect a daffy significance in the fact that Manhattan Island was discovered on September 11, 1609, by Henry Hudson, whose name has eleven letters, that the first Tower collapsed at 10.28am and 1 + 0 + 2 + 8 = 11, that 119, 9/11 in reverse, is the area code for both Iraq and Iran (I and I) and 1 + 1 + 9 = 11, that the first of the two attacking planes was American Airlines Flight 11, number 1-800-245-0999 and 1 + 8 + 0 + 0 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 0 + 9 + 9 + 9 equals 47, which two numbers combined also equal 11, that, standing side by side, the Twin Towers themselves resembled the number 11, that Hermann Hunt’s initials, like Henry Hudson’s, are HH, twin sets of Twin Towers – and I can assure you there’s a lot more gibberish out there where that came from.* If Slavorigin was to be murdered, yesterday was the day it had to be done. I rest my case.’
‘Well, Gilbert,’ Evie opined – said, goddamn it, said! – after a moment of reflection, ‘I can see that, despite your professed indifference to this crime, you have after all given it some thought. And I’m prepared to endorse your objections one, two and three. Yes, quite so, a Festival of this type would have been so leaky from the start that a lot of outsiders were bound to have had advance knowledge of Slavorigin’s attendance. And, yes, my caricature of a typical crazed crusader was crass in the extreme. And, yes again, although I’d very much like to have been the proverbial fly on the proverbial wall when they endeavoured to justify their negligence to the authorities, I can well imagine how easily those two brawny pin-heads, Thomson and Thompson, could have been outfoxed by somebody whose mind was set on it.
‘Furthermore, for your information, I had not at all overlooked the numerological symbolism of yesterday’s date. Good grief, Gilbert, even without the extra coincidence of Slavorigin having been born on America’s national holiday it was staring us all in the face. What isn’t staring us in the face, though, is how it undermines my theory that the murderer might have been one of the official invitees, two of whom, let me recall the fact to your attention, are Americans themselves. But any one of them might have been what you’ve just described as an ideological killer. More than once I’ve heard you make disobliging comments about this Festival. Has it never struck you as odd that it managed none the less to attract a not altogether undistinguished guest-list?’
‘Yes,’ I replied thoughtfully, ‘I confess it has rather. Yet writers, you know, will go anywhere if offered a freebie. Four days in the Swiss Alps, all expenses paid, an
d only a lecture to deliver for one’s supper. I can see how that might appeal.’
‘To Meredith van Demarest, who flew here all the way from California?’
‘Ah, but you’re forgetting that she also has plans to call on Agota Kristof in Zurich and pay homage to Nabokov in Montreux or wherever it is his remains are buried. She almost certainly regarded the Sherlock Holmes Festival as no more than a handy means for her to make the trip gratis. Anyway, what possible motive could she have?’
‘What motive? You surprise me. Putting to one side the ideological motive you mention above [above?], let me draw your mind back to the revelation that she and Slavorigin had, if only for a single night, been an item.’
‘Which revelation means for you that she must have murdered him?’
‘Don’t be silly, please. I merely register the fact that they knew each other better than she was initially prepared to let on, a fact she may have had her own good reason for withholding from us.’
‘Perhaps so, yet I still can’t help thinking you’re pointlessly looking for any motive other than the glaringly obvious one. Remember Occam’s Razor. Don’t postulate the existence of an entity if you are able to get by without it. In other words, where there are several conceivable solutions to a problem, it makes sense, and it saves time, to opt for the simplest one, for nature never needlessly complicates.’
‘Pshaw!’ she exclaimed.
‘Evie,’ I said, smiling, ‘no one in the real world actually says “Pshaw!”.’
‘I do,’ she answered doughtily. ‘As for Occam’s Razor, we’re not dealing with nature but with human nature, of which the need to needlessly complicate has been, since the dawn of time, one of the defining characteristics. And since you’ve just quoted Occam to me, let me now quote my dear friend Gilbert to you.’
I should explain. This Gilbert was not me but G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton. In The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, set as it was in some unspecified year of the nineteen-thirties, I had Evie, as a fictional member of the Detection Club, allude to one of its genuine members, Chesterton, as Gilbert or, more familiarly, as ‘my dear friend Gilbert’. How tiresome but typical of her that she should continue to perpetuate a now totally anachronistic affectation in order to aggrandise her own lonely and uneventful existence. It reminded me of another woman’s delusions of grandeur, a woman whose identity I was at first unable to pin down. Then it came to me: Margaret Thatcher’s references to Churchill, a statesman she couldn’t possibly have met, as ‘dear Winston’. Rewind the tape.
‘And since you’ve just quoted Occam to me, let me now quote my dear friend Gilbert to you.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said wearily.
‘“Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”’
‘I’m sorry, Evie, I’m not with you.’
‘There’s a price on Slavorigin’s head, an astronomical price which has tempted who knows how many hit men – and, quite possibly, the odd hit woman. That’s the forest. Meredith van Demarest has, let’s say, her own private and personal motive for doing away with him. That’s the leaf. Naturally, whoever does succeed in murdering him, everybody’s initial assumption is that it must have been one of Hermann Hunt’s bounty hunters. Don’t you see? What could be more cunningly Chestertonian than for her to hide the leaf of her individual motive in the forest of their collective one, this human forest which was edging ever closer to him like Birnam Wood to Dunsinane?’
‘H’m. And the ideological motive?’
‘Ideological motive?’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I hear you imply that Meredith might also have had an ideological motive for doing away with Slavorigin?’
‘In spite of their one torrid night of passion, Meredith loathes Slavorigin. Loathes his arrogance, his preening vanity, his sneering macho boorishness, but perhaps more than anything else loathes his visceral anti-Americanism. She may be the ungiving, unforgiving kind of feminist who wants to prohibit the teaching of Dead White Males and rename Manchester Womanchester – or Womanbreaster, ha ha! But she is, through and through, an American and, like all of her fellow citizens, whatever their ideological differences, a true and intractable patriot. And if, as a radical left-winger, she spent most of her adult life alienated from all her native land’s populist rites and rituals, the shock of September 11 brought her back in a panicky rush to the soft, fleshy twin towers, as it were, of the maternal bosom, no questions asked, no apologies tendered, and to this day, and with all that’s happened since, she can no longer look on America’s enemies with the complicit or half-complicit eye of an old lefty. Did you, perchance, observe the brooch on the lapel of her jacket?’
‘Actually, since you ask, I did. I remember it had four or five words written on it. Something about American womanhood?’
‘You really must learn to be more attentive to details, Gilbert. It read: “For All The Women of America”.’
‘An obscure feminist clique, I dare say.’
‘Possibly. But now I want you to spell out the first capital letter of each word as if it were an acronym.’
‘F. A. T. W. O. A.’
‘The “o” of “of” was lower-case.’
‘F. A. T. W. A.’ (Gasp.) ‘Oh my God, fatwa!’
‘Fatwa, precisely. “Simple chance!” the pedestrian reader may cry. Especially as one would hardly expect a would-be murderess barefacedly to advertise her homicidal designs. Not, to be sure, that the advertisement was so very barefaced. The lettering on that brooch was awfully hard to decipher, even for my famous gimlet eye.’
With her spoon she scooped up her cappuccino’s thin chocolaty dregs and swallowed them.
‘Then there’s the money,’ she continued, smacking her lips. ‘We mustn’t ever forget the money, Gilbert. One hundred million dollars. That’s big change – please note, by the way, how even a fuddy-duddy like me, the me of your books, is capable of mastering modern slang. Poor dear Cora, who didn’t have a truly criminal bone in her body, was prepared to take her life in her hands by blackmailing Rex Hanway.* And for what? For nothing more than a role, a secondary role, mind you, in his film. Just imagine how some normally high-principled, law-abiding individual, someone like Meredith van Demarest, to look no further, might be tempted to murder by the prospect of dosh so unimaginably large it boggles the mind.’
‘Cora Rutherford, you’re forgetting,’ I answered, ‘was merely a character in –’
‘Yes,’ Evie interrupted me, ‘it’s true, she was a character, an eccentric, the kind of person who refuses to believe that society’s codes and conventions ever apply to her. My point is that, where a hundred million dollars are involved, all the moral imperatives which dictate the way we conduct our private and professional lives are suspended. This Hugh Spaulding, for instance. I may be slandering him – like a lot of writers, he may be just as much of a character as Cora – but he does strike me as a man in urgent need of money.’
‘Funny you should say that.’
‘Why so?’
‘Well, only yesterday he asked me if I would lend him some. A tidy amount it was too, considering we barely know each other.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten thousand pounds. Though he said he’d settle for seven.’
‘Ten thousand! Blimey! Did he tell you what it was for?’
‘He’s being pursued by the Inland Revenue for years of unpaid back taxes. It appears he moved to London in the nineties when his books were bestsellers but never paid a penny in tax. And now that his thrillers have gone out of fashion, or else he’s running out of sporting milieux to write about, the British tax authorities have caught up with him and he no longer has anything like the necessary wherewithal to pay them. He also squandered his royalties a few years back on some hilarious show-business venture, Doctor Zhivago on Ice, I kid you not. But, please, you mustn’t ever let him know I told you.’
‘Mum’s the word. You didn’t lend it to him, I suppose?’
‘What do you think?
The only money I’m ready to lend, even to close friends, is money I can afford to lose, and I certainly can’t afford to kiss goodbye to ten thousand pounds. There’s something else, though, which may be worth mentioning. As we were all waiting to go into dinner, I saw him attempt to ingratiate himself with Slavorigin. I too may be slandering him, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he had tried to touch him for the same amount. Slavorigin may have been an arch-meanie, the man we loved to hate, but at least he had it to spare.’
‘Interesting, very interesting. But you mentioned sporting milieux?’
‘You don’t know his thrillers? Each of them is set in the world of a different sport. He’s apparently written scores of the things, about soccer, cricket, tennis – that’s the only one I read. He used to be a decent all-rounder himself, I believe, before he took to drinking heavily.’
‘Soccer, cricket, tennis … Archery, anyone?’
It took me a few seconds to understand what she was driving at.
‘H’m, I see what you mean. Well, let me think. It’s true, I’m not all that au fait with the Spaulding oeuvre. But Hugh did tell me once, when he was in his cups, that his big mistake as a writer was switching sports with each thriller instead of, like Dick Francis,* sticking with a single one, soccer ideally, and that he was so prolific that, in his later books, he found himself reduced to writing about motocross and curling, for God’s sake, and darts and the tedious Tour de France and … and yes, bullseye!’
‘What?’
‘I said Bullseye! That’s the title of one of his books.’
‘Great Scott Moncrieff!’ exclaimed Evie. ‘You may be on to something there.’
‘Evie,’ I said tetchily, ‘must you keep exclaiming “Great Scott Moncrieff!”? The joke’s long since worn off.’
She looked back at me in reproachful surprise, but retained a dignified silence.
‘Oh well, never mind. To return to what we were talking about, I suppose it’s not wholly out of the question that Hugh possesses some small degree of skill with a bow and arrow, if that’s what you’ve been waiting to hear me say.’
And Then There Was No One Page 15
