Chapter Forty-Three
Neither guests nor staff, similarly, paid much heed to the most recent murder, and the murders before that had rather washed out with the tide and sunk before the hem of the sea swished back towards shore. This despite the fact that, as Gangakanta, with his sheets of papers bearing scrawled numbers could tell you, if the population of the hotel had dwindled, and there was still present, one might assume, a murderer harbouring murderous intent, then the chances of each guest ending up on the receiving end of a blunt instrument could only have risen. Enid and Gangakanta, when they chanced to meet, did, out of duty, conjure up theories, hold them up on the wall to see how they would look amongst the furnishings, then discard them.
“I bumped into Herra Brotherus,” Enid informed him.
“Oh?” Gangakanta was trying, out of courtesy, to appear interested, but was at the same time devoting the best part of his brainpower to a secret calculation which had become something of an obsession for him: the probability that the universe would implode within his own lifetime. Try as he might to compute this, he came up against the fact, time and again, that he lacked utterly the required amount of data. Still, he made his best guesses, and the tentative results were encouraging: that is, that the universe would, indeed, end, within, he felt modestly confident in predicting, the week.
“Yes,” continued Enid, staring at the wall, recalling the taste of Rosella’s underarm. “I asked him a few questions about the murders.”
“And?”
“He could barely recall there had been any.”
“Ah.” What could it possibly matter, when the universe will soon be kaput?, he wanted to add, but did not.
“Then I had a few words with Monsieur Bartoff, in the corridor.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. He had his own theory about them.”
“And what was that?”
“That there was no murderer as active agent, but that, rather, we have been visited by a disease—a strange, mutating disease, the symptoms of which are severed heads, smashed bones, and so on.”
Gangakanta nodded, wondering if this would be the last time he and Enid would meet. “An interesting idea.”
Enid sat back in her chair and recalled the almost balletic elegance with which Rosella had extended her feet, in line with her shins, on either side of her, Enid’s, head.
“What do the four victims have in common?” she felt the need to ask.
“Four?” queried Gangakanta.
“Well—Snede, Pluck, Sanns. . .who was the fourth?” She couldn’t remember.
“You are including Inspector Pluck amongst the victims? When we know very well who was responsible for his death?”
“Do you think we should not? There might be a connection.”
Gangakanta shrugged. “If you wish.”
“No, no, you’re right. Three murders, then—setting the inspector to the side, for the time being.”
“So who are the three?”
“Snede, Sanns. . .dash it, I can’t remember!”
They both thought for some time, visions of cosmic disaster and female flesh somewhat forestalling their success.
“The coronel!” Gangakanta eurekaed.
“Yes! Of course. I’m a little ashamed I so soon forgot.”
“Never mind. He’s not here to take offence, after all.”
“So. . .what was I saying, before?”
“Before what?”
“I was asking some question about the victims. . .the three victims. . .remember?”
Gangakanta thought. “Yes. . .yes, yes, I do recall you asked something, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.”
They sat in silence.
Should I try to kiss her? Gangakanta thought. Will I allow myself to be wiped from existence without ever having kissed a woman? Even when I find the idea repellent? When all womanhood is a sickly, slimy thing? What would she think of me, if I tried to put it in these terms? Oh, what’s the point, anyway. . .?!
Enid wanted to be disrobed before Genevra again. She wanted to be touched by her. What am I doing here in this mathematician’s room? she asked herself. When will she call for me? Will she call for me? I don’t think I’d want to go on living if she didn’t. I feel like. . .I’m in love. This must be love—that thing with Thaddeus, that was just. . .some stupid—I don’t know—some stupid romanticisation of pity? But this—can this be love? I’ve never felt love before, I realise now. . .after so many years of believing—perhaps foreordaining—that I never would. Is this love? Or just an inflammation of the flesh? I want to find out. I want to push on through this tunnel to the end, and see just what colour of light, if any, shines on the other side.
“You were asking what these three victims have in common,” Gangakanta remembered.
“Ah. . .yes. So, then: what do these three victims have in common?”
“You mean, aside from their all being dead?”
“Yes.”
“Because, that much is obvious.”
“True.”
“And, therefore, falls rather under the rubric of hardly needing to be said.”
“That’s right. Thank you, Aadi.”
He shrugged. “I hardly think it a profitable contribution. But, you’re welcome.”