And Then There Was No One полностью

He explained, superfluously for Hugh but not for me, since I hadn’t been listed in the Festival’s emailed flyer as one of its speaking guests, that I would be ‘on’ that very evening, Hugh the next day after lunch. So far, he said, his eye blinking softly, it had all been a great success. And since we had quite a lot of free time before the evening’s events, possibly we would like, once we had checked in and freshened up, to visit Meiringen’s famous Museum.

‘It is a must. Near the hotel and displaying choice exhibits which will please you both, I am sure.’

Staring moodily out of the window at an unending succession of mountainside chalets – I reckoned he already had a craving for another cigarette – Hugh offered a grunted affirmative, while I, a tactful old pro who knew what was expected of me, said that that sounded a very nice idea.

‘But, Herr Düttman –’

‘Please call me Thomas.’

‘Thomas. I wondered when we’d be able to see the Reichenbach Falls.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon, sir. We shall go together after Mr Spaulding’s talk. A grand excursion has been arranged and the Mayor of our town has consented to make a speech.’

‘Just one thing more. I noticed you referred to this evening’s “events” – events in the plural. Does that mean another writer is also due to give a talk tonight?’

He shook his head. Immediately following my reading there would be a special screening of Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman, a film with ‘the immense British actor Basil Rathbone’, which neither of us was obliged to attend. ‘Indeed,’ he added, ‘I am afraid you will be obliged not to attend for, while it is being shown, we plan a dinner for all our guests in a fine restaurant, followed by some nightclub dancing.’

I replied that I had seen the film, and it was evident that Hugh, who had ceased to contribute much to the conversation, cared only for a fag.

‘Has the Mystery Guest arrived?’ I asked.

‘Not yet. We have not been informed exactly when he [so it was a he] is due. But we have organised a formal reception in his honour tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock in the Kunsthalle. Our Mayor will again be in attendance.’

‘And Umberto Eco?’

The tic again.

‘Unfortunately, he could not be among us. An illness in the family, I believe.’

‘H’m,’ I muttered to myself as our car squeezed through the mountains. ‘He’s not at all superstitious, I see.’

‘What’s that you say, Mr Adair?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I replied.

*

The Sherlock Holmes Hilton turned out to be far more gemütlich than Düttmann’s bet-hedging phraseology had intimated. Although not inspiring when we first glimpsed it on the drive which led up to its forecourt – an anonymous-looking, not especially lofty skyscraper that I guessed had once been an apartment complex – it had an airy, high-ceilinged lobby that, in Britain, would certainly have earned it a fourth star. And, as comic relief, the reception desk was manned by a prissy middle-aged queen who at once trained his Gaydar eye on me when opening my passport at my name and birthdate in order to copy them into the register.

Also to my pleasant surprise, my room was actually a suite, its furniture pale and beigey, smelling immaculately of lavender soap and flowers. From its tiny balcony was visible, in one direction, the town of Meiringen itself and the mountains beyond; in the other, just about, the Reichenbach Falls. It had, moreover, that absolute essential, a deep full-length bathtub, in which I hurriedly showered before rejoining Düttmann and Spaulding downstairs for our visit to the Museum.

The only drawback as I could see at short notice, but it was one I had anticipated, was the bed. It was of the Continental bolster-and-duvet type, and I also anticipated an ordeal of tossing and turning even before I managed to fall asleep, as my blind limbs tried to find just that posture that would allow them to make sense of their surroundings during the night. Incidentally, on each of its two rock-hard bolsters – it was a double bed – a gift-wrapped sweet had been laid. When I unwrapped one of them, I found a small meringue inside it. I at once thought ‘meringue’ and ‘Meiringen’ and how coincidentally close to anagrams of one another they were. It was no coincidence. According to the tourist booklet I leafed through before I finally quit the room, meringues had been invented in Meiringen. I live and learn.