Murder Most Stupid by David Brooklyn - HTML preview

Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Five

Orell Tschäppät was getting himself drunk in the tavern. A brawny, no-nonsense sort of fellow, he sat, hunching his huge torso over his drink, enjoying the spuming beer-head tickle his beard. On the floor, his pickaxe and bag leant against his chair, minding their own business. His yellowy eyes picked out all the weak points in the bodies of his fellow men around the room. He’d killed before, sure, but he’d never enjoyed it. And he’d kill again, if provoked. The regulars here knew enough not to provoke him.

He paid his bill and walked outside. The sun was gloating in its victory over the snow, which had almost entirely cleared away. Orell even took off his heavy coat and slung it over his shoulder. It was actually tolerable, being out here, away from others. Alone, with the mountains. All he’d ever dreamt of was such peace. Now that he was confident they’d never find him, never trace him back to those two knifed sailors in Lyon, both of whom, it should in fairness be pointed out, had definitely had it coming, he felt he could relax, subsist on meagre earnings, grow old, and die.

There was noise up ahead. Laughter. Inane giggling. He gripped his pickaxe handle and moved toward the sound: a group of chipper tourists, from some far-off land, were evidently discussing how best to ascend that mountain. Completely unprepared for it.

One of them, brandishing a truly revolting smile, approached Orell, and asked him something in some unknown tongue.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Orell replied. “But that mountain’s much too dangerous. You’ll never make it up and back by dusk. And you haven’t enough supplies. I can see that.”

The man laughed and said something else that held no meaning for Orell.

“Do you speak English?” Orell asked, in English. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Parla l’Italiano?”

The man turned to his companions and shared some joke, looking over to Orell now and again. Everyone guffawed.

Orell smiled back. “Glad to have been able to help.” He nodded, and went on his way. They laughed behind his back. He needn’t kill them, he thought. God would do that for him.

Let them die, he thought. Let the morons die, laughing.

Orell would go on to have many exciting adventures, none of which I’m going to bother you about.

As for the troupe of would-be mountaineers: they would, as Orell predicted, die that night, a quarter the way up the mountain. In anguish, and in crushing self-realisation.

But before that, just as they were preparing their ascent, they noticed a small man approach, limping, wheezing. This man had fled across the snowy expanse from far beyond the mountains, only to arrive, starved, frostbitten and snow-blind, here. The tourists stopped what they were doing and held the poor man before he collapsed; they asked him all manner of questions, some sexually explicit and therefore completely out of place, but he did not understand a word. Through the cracked-glass cheeks, the ghostly eyes, the blood-crusted lips, we, Reader, you and I, can make out Poor Larry. But he meant nothing to these clowns.

“I beg of you,” Larry whinged, “listen to my tale.”

One of the team made a joke, and the others, attesting to the craftsmanship of the teller, laughed.

“Please!” Larry persisted, clearly untrained in reading the mood of a room. “Hear my tale! Pass it on! Don’t let it be lost! Don’t let us all have died in vain.”

They all nodded and smiled.

“Do you. . .” Larry discerned a shadow begin to close in, from the sides of his eyes, slowly towards the centre. “Do you understand anything I’m saying?”

They smiled still, but did not speak.

They would not get what he would tell them; and further, they did not care.

Larry died.

But he might have died a little happier, had he known (he didn’t) that there were other survivors from his beloved hotel. Just after the goddess Nisaba had completed her slaughter, she descended back down through the floor, to travel to another planet boasting another hotel boasting a new litter of idiots to decimate. Outside, holding hands, the Drig kids, in a chain, emerged from the rubble of the destroyed building. They were cut, and bloody, but alive. They had been minutes away from launching their well-planned attack on the adults when the devastation started. Now, huddling in the snow, three women saw them and ran over. It was Enid, Rosella and Genevra, similarly bruised and bleeding, but whole.

“We’re all that’s left,” Enid confirmed. “We’ll have to take care of each other.”

Then, just under their feet, was warmth, and movement. They quickly jumped aside, in the fear that Nisaba was returning for another rampage. But it was a small, frosty-skinned man, saint-faced and pure-eyed, who uncurled himself, stood up out of the snow, brushed himself off, and looked at everyone, bewildered.

“That’s what I prayed!” Betsy exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” asked Enid.

“At the funeral! I prayed for this!”

The little man, who was shorter than she, turned to her with a baffled look.

“Prayed to Whom?” asked Enid.

“God! The real God!”

The little man squinted his eyes at her, as if he could understand the feeling, if not the content, of her words, and smiled a cherubic little smile.

“You don’t mean. . .” whispered Genevra.

“I asked God to make Inspector Pluck into a snow sprite!” cried Betsy. “I pictured him exactly like this!”

The little man was feeling the hair on the tops of all the children’s heads. Bo grinned up at him, thrilled with his new friend. The little man knelt down in front of him and gave him a hug.

“It’s as it should be,” Rosella realised. “We’re all going to live—happily ever after.”

The little man took Enid’s hand in his right, and Betsy’s in his left, and the whole group started off. Millicent/Sam yipped and ran up from somewhere and joined them. Miss Trojczakowski smiled at Signora Bergamaschi and Mademoiselle Rosella, and at all the children, and at the funny little man beside her, who was trying to mimic Millicent/Sam’s yipping, delighting the children and himself.