‘Stop it spinning and listen, for this theory of mine may explain a lot. For example, it may just explain why as eminent a literary lion as Slavorigin would accept an invitation from one of the least-known literary festivals in the world. Why, I say? Perhaps because he noticed from the literature he received from Düttmann that one of his fellow guests would be Pierre Sanary, his enemy quite as much as Hermann Hunt V, a man who had already caught him out in two whopping fibs and was now threatening to add insult to injury, intellectual disgrace to social ostracism, by destroying not his life but his reputation.’
‘So you think as Sanary does, that Slavorigin is a serial plagiarist, a cannibal of other writers’ work? A Hannibal Lecter. A Hannibal
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. But I’ve given a lot of thought to plagiarists, and what people fail to comprehend is that, as with theft proper, there exist several categories of the offence. [Anticipating one of Evie’s ‘proverbial’ disgressions, I dreamt, again not for the first time, of attaching a silencer to her tongue.]
‘The easiest to forgive is of course the pickpocket’s petty larceny. What he steals is a noun here, an adjective there, nothing florid or conspicuous and above all no dazzlingly original similes or metaphors, which like expensive jewellery can be too easily traced. Then there are the shoplifters who, systematically combing through some rival’s book, will make off with a few, but never too many, of its shorter and neater phrases. The counterfeiters are those who nick entire paragraphs, type them out on their computers and, a Thesaurus propped up on their knees, painstakingly replace every rare or rarish word with a suitable synonym. Last are the embezzlers. What they have is a word-flow problem. They know precisely what it is they want to say but they can’t find the language in which to say it. Suddenly they recall that X, writing on a more or less identical topic, managed to express a similar sentiment with enviable succinctness. So, but only to get the words flowing again, you understand, they “borrow” the entire passage, intending to return it to its rightful owner when their own little local difficulty has been overcome. Except, of course, that they almost never do.’
‘And Slavorigin?’
‘Well, there’s no way I can be sure as yet, but my instinct is that, if Sanary’s energy and erudition can be trusted, and I believe they can, it’s to that last category that Slavorigin belonged. And considering that he was already on a jinxy streak, it’s by no means impossible that this second threat might have pushed him over the edge.’
‘Might, might, might! Evie, I wish now I’d begun to count from the top the number of times you’ve used that handy but unreliable conditional in your exposition. None of this, clever as it is, amounts to more than pure conjecture, you know.’
‘Of course I know. Just as it’s pure conjecture to attribute Slavorigin’s murder to the presence of some lurking loony on whom none of us have ever set eyes.’
‘True. But go on. You claimed your theory would explain a lot. Surely that wasn’t all of it?’
‘No, it isn’t. When I asked above [above??] how Slavorigin could have let himself be lured unaccompanied out of the hotel, you objected that it might not have happened that way; that, deciding on a whim to pay an impromptu visit to the Museum, he might have chosen for once to dispense with his minders’ irksome vigilance. Well, but what if there was a luring after all, except that it was he, Slavorigin himself, who did it? After all, it was just as possible for him to have inveigled Sanary into meeting him at the Museum as the other way round. As for how he meant to commit the crime, I wouldn’t know. But let’s say a struggle ensued, Sanary eventually gained the upper hand and killed the man who had come to kill him.’
‘By firing an arrow from a bow which has disappeared as mysteriously as it once materialised?’
‘Ah well, Gilbert, that bow remains the unknown quantity of any theory either of us might offer the other. But please don’t forget, when we discovered Slavorigin’s body, it was Sanary who almost at once laid both his hands on it, something he must have been aware he was not supposed to do. Isn’t it possible he wanted to make certain there would be a legitimate reason for his fingerprints being found all over the corpse?’
‘True, true. Yet there’s also the fact that, if it actually turns out that you’re right, it would have been an open-and-shut case of self-defence. Why, then, hasn’t Sanary come forward to explain himself?’
‘Would you?’
‘Well …’
