Chapter Fifty-Two
They next dragged themselves to Herra Brotherus’s room. Voot knocked on the door—what else could he do; stand there in silence, attempting to telepathically will the room’s occupant over to open it?—and they were at once treated from within to solicitous promises of the door shortly being opened. Brotherus being, if nothing else, a man of his word, the door was, duly, soon opened, and there he stood, in a rumpled suit, smiling complaisantly.
“I’m sorry I took so long to answer the door, mademoiselle, monsieur, monsieur.” He bowed to each. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“We wanted to ask if you were the murderer,” said Enid. Voot looked on her a little disapprovingly, having hoped they might have gone about the matter with a little more slyness and tact.
“M-m-murderer?” He looked from one to the other.
“Perhaps we should explain,” said Voot. “May we come in?”
“Oh! Of course, of course, how rude of me, heh-heh!” Here Brotherus slapped himself violently on his cheek in self-reproach. “Please do!”
He sat them down round his coffee table and made quite a fuss over them, offering tea (declined) and slices of cake (accepted by Gangakanta, only to be hastily retracted with a sheepish smile and admission that there was no actual cake to be had; Brotherus, you see, had only been trying to be polite).
Finally, he sat down across from them, and began: “Do any of you follow the horses?”
“Horses?” asked Enid.
Brotherus nodded, eagerly. “Racing horses. Betting! Do you?”
“The reason we’ve come,” Voot interrupted him, “is because of this.” He handed Brotherus the letter, which was folded in half.
Brotherus took it, thanking him profusely, held it delicately in his hands, and stared at it.
“You’ll have to open it up,” Voot explained.
Brotherus looked at him blankly.
“The note. It’s folded. You’ll have to open it up, in order to read it.”
Brotherus returned his gaze to the note in his hands, stared at it, then back to Voot.
“Why don’t you help him?” asked Enid, of Voot. “After all, it would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”
Shamed into action, Voot leant forward, in order to retrieve the note from Brotherus, and either open it for him, or educate the gentleman in how to do so himself (this latter option, Voot reasoned, being preferable, in that in future, similar scenarios, when confronted with a folded note, and Voot nowhere in the vicinity, Brotherus might put to good use that which he was now on the verge of learning, and be able to read that future note successfully, to the satisfaction of all). But Brotherus sprang back from him, shielding the note in his cupped palms, a look of primal distrust disfiguring his face, like an early man whose half-gnawed bison bone had been snatched at by a Neanderthalic rival.
“Here,” Enid soothed him. “Why not let me?”
Brotherus chirped frightened little peeps as Enid slowly and encouragingly drew open his fingers and unfolded the note—at seeing this revelation of text, and on a page twice the size it had been, shining up at him, he emitted a cry of wonderment.
“Now you know how to unfold a piece of paper,” said Enid with pedagogical pride.
Brotherus looked to Voot. “What would you have me do now, sir? I have opened the letter—have I not?”
“Be so kind as to read the letter, now, sir,” requested Voot.
The little man closed his eyes and appeared to wince.
“It will be fine,” Enid promised him, patting his hand. “Just do your best.”
“Then can we have sex?” he asked with hope.
“Certainly not.” She sat back. “You’re a revolting worm. Just concentrate on the task at hand.”
He snapped his fingers with a good-natured aw shucks, but I tried my best! expression and began to read the letter. Voot nodded approvingly at the manner in which he was following instructions. Gangakanta stared at the wall, finding it far more enriching an object for his perusal than the scene before him. When Brotherus had finished reading the note—twice, to make sure he’d gleaned every iota of implication—he carefully folded it back along the same crease, and announced: “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I did not write this letter, and don’t know who did.”
“Are you sure?” asked Voot, for neither Enid nor Gangakanta seemed especially interested in the proceedings. “Perhaps as a jest? Or to help the investigation, in your own unique way?”
“I’m afraid not, monsieur. I truly wish that I had, for in that case, I suppose I’d be better placed to assist you.”
“Then can you speculate, perhaps, as to why the writer of this letter, whoever he may be, chose to sign it with your name?”
“Whose name?” Brotherus asked, seeking clarification.
“Yours, monsieur.”
“My name?”
“That is right, monsieur.”
Brotherus stared at an unlit lamp. “I did notice that, yes. . .”
“I must admit to you, monsieur,” said Voot, when the content of his conversational partner’s speech had trailed off, “that I am not a detective. I am only the lowly manager of a hotel.” The other three began to protest at the low esteem in which he appeared to hold his position, but he cut them off: “But if I were a detective, then I imagine that—and you must forgive me for any perceived yet, I assure you, unintended slight to your honour—I would not be able to simply take you at your word that you did not write this note, when the very presence of your name thereupon, although, I admit, perfectly capable of having been there inscribed by a third, malicious party; perhaps, indeed, a party harbouring some secret malevolent intent towards yourself, stemming, it might be, from a longstanding grudge he or she has nurtured in the most private unseen sanctuary of their breast, a tiny bird’s nest lovingly ensconced in a crack in a crumbling, ivy-drenched brick wall long forgot, spurned as would be a particularly unsightly leper, fingers dripping from his hands, toes scattered across the grass behind him like breadcrumbs left for beasts, a wall exiled to some unsunned corner of a weed-usurped garden into which no two-footed contrivance of our Lord could be bothered to peek, over an affront, trivial or profound, real or presumed, you are supposed to have inflicted upon their sense of honour, in so doing earning their rabid, undying hatred of you, your kith and your kin; or then again, a party with no grievance against you in the least, your presence in this hotel, as your presence on this earth, having barely registered in their consciousness as worthy of consideration, as the featureless faces of the multitude, filthy, slimy, pock-faced serfs en masse, trampled underfoot by an obscenely insouciant king, but rather having selected your name, with all the deliberation of a famished tamandua inhaling entire colonies, whole civilisations, of ants, from a list of the hotel’s guests, and thereby framing, with terrifying randomness, a thoroughly innocent man—all this intending to convey the truth, monsieur, that the presence of your name on this letter means that you must remain, at least tangentially, a suspect.”
“Pardon?” asked Brotherus.
Voot took a breath. “I will not repeat myself, monsieur. I have every confidence that you heard what I said to you.”
“Just now?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, what you said to me just now?”
“That is what I mean.”
“But—and pardon my rudeness in seeking to point out to you what you no doubt already know so well, and which is, after all, your business and not mine—but when you compared the handwriting of this note to the samples of my handwriting you already possess—on the hotel register, the letters I sent to the hotel in advance of my visit, etcetera, etcetera—did you find them, monsieur, to be the same?”
Enid, Gangakanta and Voot looked to each other in embarrassment.
“If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion?” Brotherus went on.
“You may be so bold,” answered Voot, relieved to be off the hook.
“Well. Do you think—now, please tell me to just shut up at any time, if I’m being absurd, because I know that I can be!” Here he uttered an irksome little bark of a laugh. “But, do you think there could be any possibility of Larry the bellhop having written the note, and having made a mistake?”
“What mistake?” asked Voot.
“Perhaps—forgive me if I’m not making any sense—but perhaps he meant to list ‘Brotherus’”—here he patted himself on the chest, in mock-arrogance, as if to modestly excuse himself from any accusation of pride—“in the list of victims, and to sign the note as ‘Larry’.”
“Meaning that you’re intended to be the next victim?” asked Enid.
“And that Larry is too stupid to sign his name in the right place, at the bottom of a letter?” asked Gangakanta.
“Precisely!” Brotherus sat back, clasping his hands on his knees, more than a little pleased with his theory, and the ardency with which it was already being taken up.
“Larry is an idiot,” Voot agreed, “but I’d not have thought to that extent.”
“Perhaps he craves the company of men—sexually, I mean,” Brotherus proposed.
“Why do you say that?” asked Voot.
Brotherus shrugged. “Just a thought.”
Voot looked to Enid—lost in daydreams—and to Gangakanta—who was trying to pierce through the solid object of the coffee table, with his eyes, with, so far, no success—and rose.
“Thank you for your time, Herr Brotherus,” he said. “I hope we haven’t wasted too much of it.”
“Oh, don’t go—please!” The last word, “please”, he fairly shouted.
“No, no, work calls!”
Enid and Gangakanta, realising that they were leaving, stood up too.
“I’ve really enjoyed our conversation!” cried Brotherus. “Please come again soon. Say—at five o’clock?” Appealing to Gangakanta: “I promise to have acquired some cake by then!”
Voot made their excuses, and the three left the suite. At the door, Brotherus looked to Enid: “I do wish I could have been of more help.”
“That’s quite all right. I wish you a good day,” she said.
“And I do hope we can still have sex, of one sort of another, together, someday.”
“No, that’s not going to happen. But have a lovely afternoon nonetheless.”