And Then There Was No One полностью

‘Look, Hugh, I insist I’m in no position to lend you anything close to ten thousand pounds, and I don’t fool myself that the counter-offer I’m about to make will compensate for that, but there’s a cashpoint machine right here in the hotel lobby and I’d be happy to withdraw, shall we say, five hundred Swiss francs? Would that go any way to easing your situation?’

He perked up like an infant handed a plaything which has been teasingly withheld from him. ‘Jesus, Gilbert, it’d be just the ticket!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got this idea, etc, for a new thriller. Don’t know yet what I’ll call it, either Murder Off-Piste or Death Slalom, but I had the brainstorm staring out at those fucking Alps every day. I thought if I got a little recce in before going back to Blighty, maybe stop over in St Moritz, etc, for a few days, not the season, I know, but your – your how much did you say? Five hundred pounds?’

‘Francs.’

‘Five hundred francs’ – a mental yet visible shrug of regret – ‘yeah, that’ll really do the trick. And it is only a loan, you know. Don’t you be worrying about that. I’ll pay you back just the moment I get the advance.’

‘I know, I know.’

He noisily scraped the palms of his hands together, a nervous habit I’m afraid I’ve never been able to stomach.

‘So where exactly is this cashpoint machine?’ he asked, looking around him.

‘Let me finish my breakfast first, Hugh,’ I replied, ‘if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh, sure, sure. Take your time. No rush.’

Once our business had been done with, I recalled that I had hoped to take advantage of the hotel’s wi-fi Internet connection, whose cabin happened to be next door to the cashpoint machine. It had been empty when I withdrew Hugh’s money, but we had carried on talking for a while afterwards in the foyer, and when I eventually shook free of him I cursed inwardly to note not just that the cabin was occupied but that its occupant was, of all people, Evie.

Ironically, it was because of her that I desired to go online. I own that, unsettled as well as completely mystified by that newspaper ad that Slavorigin had shown us, it was my intention, an intention of whose fundamental fatuousness I was very much aware, to Google ‘Cora Rutherford’ to find out whether anything else was listed but the odd tangential allusion to her as a literary character. Actually, I felt a queasy kinship with Max Beerbohm’s doomed poetaster Enoch Soames who, having sold his soul, literally, in order that he be granted advance knowledge of posterity’s judgment on his verse, discovers to his chagrin that the sole reference to his name in the British Library catalogue is precisely as the fictional protagonist of Beerbohm’s short story.

I cooled my heels in the lobby for nearly fifteen minutes waiting in vain for Evie to re-surface, before taking the stairs back up to my room. In the hope of catching a news item on Slavorigin’s murder, I started zapping the multi-channelled television set but came up empty-handed. Like the giant timepiece it is, the world was already moving on. Instead, for half-an-hour or so until a chambermaid knocked on the door and asked if she might do my room, I found myself vaguely watching an old Hollywood parody-western, Son of Paleface, with Bob Hope, Jane Russell and, a boyhood idol of mine, Roy Rogers, once an even more famous singing cowboy than Gene Autry, all dubbed into German.

When I returned to the lobby (it was now close to noon), Evie was still, incredibly, squatting inside the wi-fi cabin. What was she up to? I wondered whether I should tap on the semi-frosted glass door and make a pointing gesture at my wristwatch, but thought better of it. Still uncertain how to occupy the hours ahead of me, I caught sight of Meredith window-shopping in the lobby’s glossy arcade of duty-free boutiques. She also spotted me. Yet she at once – and, I knew, deliberately – turned her face away and pretended to study a display of cashmere sweaters in the nearest window. So it was like that, was it? Perhaps, thinking only of getting out of this godforsaken dump and back to the humdrum dissatisfactions of our ordinary lives, none of us was any longer up to making the usual meaningless hotel-lobby chitchat.

I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette on the forecourt, taking the air as I polluted it, and almost tripped over Sanary’s suitcase. He had managed to book himself onto the afternoon express to Geneva. A hired car was due to take him to the station via the Kunsthalle, where he meant both to thank Düttmann and advise him that he was leaving Meiringen today, not tomorrow as planned, and therefore wouldn’t be attending the last-night gathering. We conversed for a few minutes about this and that until, on a whim, I decided I would pop the question I’d been aching to put to him from practically the first day.

‘Tell me, Pierre,’ I said, ‘why is it, when you speak to Evie, you start to sound just like a Frenchman from one of her whodunits?’