Authors: Stanislaw Lem
“White Horse?” asked the bartender. Gregory nodded.
The bottle tinkled as if there were a glass bell hidden inside it. Gregory drank quickly. The White Horse was acrid; it tasted something like fuel oil and burned his throat … he hated it. It so happened, however, that several times in a row he had stopped at the Europa with Kinsey, a young colleague at the Yard, and each time he’d had a drink of White Horse with him; from then on the bartender had considered Gregory a regular customer and made a point of remembering his preferences. Actually, Gregory had only been meeting with Kinsey in order to put the finishing touches on an apartment exchange. He really preferred warm beer to whiskey, but was ashamed to order it in such a fashionable place.
Gregory had ended up at the Europa now simply because he didn’t feel like going home. Meditating over the shot glass, he decided to see if he could organize all the facts of the “series” in some kind of systematic pattern, but found that he couldn’t remember a single name or date.
He downed his drink, tilting his head back with an exaggerated gesture.
He flinched. The bartender was saying something to him.
“What? What did you say?”
“Do you want supper? We have venison today, it’s in season.”
“Venison?”
He couldn’t understand a word the bartender was saying.
“Oh, supper,” it finally dawned on him. “No. Please pour me another.”
The bartender nodded. He rinsed out the glass at a silver-colored tap, rattling the faucets as if he wanted to smash them into little pieces, then raised his reddened, hard, muscular face to Gregory, and, watching through beady eyes, whispered.
“Are you looking for a—?”
There was no one else near the bar.
“No. What the hell are you talking about?” Gregory added indignantly, as if that had been his real purpose and he’d been caught in the act.
“No, nothing. I thought that you … for service,” the bartender mumbled, withdrawing to the other end of the bar. Someone touched Gregory’s arm lightly. He whirled around in a flash and was unable to hide his disappointment: it was a waiter.
“Pardon me… Lieutenant Gregory? Telephone for you, sir.”
Walking as quickly as possible to avoid being jostled, Gregory made his way through the crowd on the dance floor. The light in the telephone booth was burned out, so he stood in darkness, except when an occasional flash from the revolving light over the bar streamed through the booth’s little round window.
“Hello, Gregory speaking.”
“This is Sheppard.”
At the sound of the Chief’s far-off voice, Gregory’s heart began to beat faster.
“Lieutenant, I want to see you.”
“Of course, Chief Inspector. When should I…”
“I’d rather not put it off. Do you have time?”
“Naturally, yes sir. Tomorrow?”
“No. Today, if you can. Can you make it?”
“Yes sir, of course.”
“That’s fine. Do you know where I live?”
“No, but I can—”
“Eighty-five Walham Street, in Paddington. Can you come over now?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you’d rather come in an hour or two.”
“No, I can come now.”
“All right, I’m expecting you.”
The receiver jangled when Gregory hung up. He stared at the telephone in confusion. How in God’s name did Sheppard know he was at the Europa, a place he only went to occasionally to find an outlet for his penny-ante snobbism. Had the Chief been so eager to find him that he’d systematically phoned around from bar to bar? The very thought made Gregory turn red. He walked out into the street and ran to catch a passing bus. From the bus stop it was a long walk. He chose a roundabout route through back streets where there weren’t too many people. Finally he found himself on a deserted side street lined by small old houses. Here and there a puddle shimmered in the light of the antiquated gas lamps illuminating the street. Gregory had never imagined there was such a seedy little neighborhood buried in the middle of this part of the city.
He was surprised again at number 85. In a garden behind a low brick wall, at a considerable distance from any of the other houses, there stood a massive building. It was completely dark, as if dead. Taking a good look around, Gregory finally spotted a weak glow coming from one of the upstairs windows.
The spiked gate made a creaking sound when he swung it open. Forced to grope in the darkness to get his bearings because the brick wall cut off the light from the street, Gregory used the tip of his foot to feel his way along a flagstone walk to the solid black door of the house. Instead of a bell there was a knocker. He pulled it gently as if afraid to make too much noise.
He had a long wait, occasionally hearing the dripping of an unseen rainspout or the sound of a car whizzing by on the wet pavement at the intersection. Finally, and soundlessly, the door opened. Sheppard was standing in the doorway.
“You’re here already? That’s fine. Please follow me.”
The hall was completely dark. Farther inside the house, a weak glow streaked the stairs in a trail of light, beckoning upward. An open door on the second floor landing led into a small foyer. Gregory noticed something staring at him from overhead—it was the skull of some kind of animal, its looming, empty eye sockets clearly standing out from the yellowed bone.
He took off his coat and entered the room. The long walk in the fog had irritated his eyes and they still burned a little.
“Please sit down.”
The room was almost dark. There was a lamp on the desk, but it was pointed downward toward an open book, its light reflected onto the wall and ceiling from the flattened pages. Gregory remained on his feet. There was only one chair.
“Please sit down,” the Chief Inspector said a second time. It sounded like an order. The lieutenant sat down reluctantly. He was now so close to the source of the light that he was almost unable to see. A few blurred spots that were actually pictures were barely visible on the walls; under his feet he felt a deep rug. Opposite him was a long bookshelf. A television set glistened in the middle of a dull whitish area.
Sheppard walked over to the desk, pulled a black metal cigarette box out from under some books, and slid it over to his guest. He lit one himself and began pacing back and forth between the door and the window, which was screened by a heavy brown drape. The silence lasted so long that Gregory, who had nothing to do but watch the pacing figure, soon began to feel bored.
“I’ve decided to give you the case,” Sheppard said all of a sudden, not losing a step.
Gregory didn’t know what to say. He could feel the alcohol in him and took a deep drag on the cigarette as if tobacco smoke would restore his sobriety.
“You’ll be on your own,” Sheppard continued in a decisive tone of voice. Still pacing back and forth, he glanced obliquely at the figure seated in the circle of light next to the lamp.
“Don’t think I picked you because you have any special ability as an investigator, because you don’t. Furthermore, your methods are completely unsystematic. But it doesn’t make any difference. You have a great personal interest in this case, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Gregory answered. He sensed that an uncomplicated affirmative reply would be best.
“Do you have any theories of your own about it? Something personal that you didn’t want to mention in my office today?”
“No. That is…” Gregory hesitated.
“Go on.”
“This is just an impression. It’s not based on anything,” said Gregory. He spoke with some reluctance. “But it seems to me that this case really isn’t about bodies. I mean, they play a definite role, but not in this thing,”
“In what thing?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Really?”
The Chief Inspector sounded almost cheerful. Gregory wished he could see his face. This was a completely different Sheppard from the one he’d occasionally met at the Yard.
“In my opinion this is a lousy case,” Gregory suddenly blurted out as if talking to a friend. “There’s something about it … something peculiar. It’s not that it’s difficult, but there are details that don’t fit … not for material reasons but because the only connecting links are all psychological nonsense. It all builds up to nothing and leads to a dead end…”
“Yes, go on,” Sheppard chimed in attentively, still pacing back and forth. Gregory was no longer watching him. Unable to tear his eyes from the papers on the desk, he began speaking excitedly.
“The idea that this whole case is based on some kind of insanity, mania, or psychopathology is almost irresistible. No matter where you start, no matter how anxious you are to avoid it, everything leads you back to it. But as a matter of fact that’s our out, because it only seems that way. All right, let’s say it was a maniac. But everything was so carefully planned and methodical… I don’t know, do you see what I mean? If you went into a house and found that all the tables and chairs had only one leg, you’d probably tell yourself that it was the work of a madman, that some maniac had decided to furnish his house that way. But if you went from house to house and found the same thing all over town? I don’t know what any of this means, but it just couldn’t be … this is not the work of a madman. I think we have to go to the other extreme. Someone very intelligent who is using his intellect for a purpose we don’t understand yet.”
“What else?” Sheppard asked quietly, as if he didn’t want to do anything to intrude on the fervor which had quite obviously seized Gregory. Sitting behind the desk, still staring blindly at the papers, the younger man was silent for a moment, then answered.
“What else?… Nothing very good. Nothing very good at all. A series of acts without a single slipup, that’s pretty bad… In fact it appalls me, it’s absolutely inhuman. Human beings don’t work that way. Human beings make mistakes, it’s in the nature of things that they miscalculate from time to time, make mistakes, leave clues behind, change their plans in the middle of everything. But from the very beginning these bodies … the ones that were moved … if that’s the right word for it… I don’t agree with Farquart that the perpetrator ran away because he was frightened. It wasn’t anything like that. At the time all he wanted was to move them. Just a little at first. Then a little more. Then, still more … until finally a body disappeared altogether. That’s the way it had to be, that’s the way he wanted to do it. I thought… I’m always thinking about it, why he … but I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Are you familiar with the Lapeyrot case?” Sheppard asked. Standing in the back of the room he was almost invisible.
“Lapeyrot? The Frenchman who—”
“Yes. In 1909. Do you know the case?”
“It sounds familiar, but I can’t remember. What was it about?”
“About too much evidence. At least that’s what they said at the time, unfortunately. On a beach along the Seine River, for a certain period, they kept finding buttons of various kinds arranged in geometric patterns, as well as belt buckles, suspender clasps, and small coins. Always arranged in polygons, circles, or other shapes. There were also handkerchiefs knotted together.”
“Wait a minute. I remember something now. I must have read about it somewhere. Two old guys in a garret who … right?”
“Right. That’s the very case I’m talking about…”
“They used to search out young people who were trying to kill themselves—they’d bring them home, revive them, cheer them up, and have them tell what it was that had driven them to attempt suicide. That’s the way it was, right? And after all that … they strangled them to death. Right?”
“More or less. One of the pair was a pharmacist. After the murders they got rid of their victims with the aid of some acid and a fireplace; then they’d amuse themselves by playing a little game with the police with the buttons, buckles, coins, and other odds and ends that were left over.”
“I don’t see the connection. One of the Lapeyrot murderers was insane. He completely dominated his accomplice, who was regarded as a victim of
folie à deux.
The two of them devoted most of their energy to the button puzzles because that’s what really excited them. The case may have been hard to crack, but basically it was quite commonplace: there were murderers and victims, there were clues. What difference does it make if the crime was committed with a few theatrical flourishes—”
Gregory stopped short, an incomprehensible smile suddenly appearing on his lips. He looked at the Chief Inspector, trying to get a glimpse of him in the dim light.
“Wait, I think I see…” he said, his tone indicating that he had just made a startling discovery. “So that’s it.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Sheppard answered, resuming his pacing.
Gregory bowed his head, tapping on the edge of the desk with his fingers.
“Theatrical,” he whispered. “An imitation … but an imitation of what?” he said, raising his voice. “A sham, but to cover what? Insanity? No, it can’t be anything like that. The circle is closing again.”
“It’s closing because you’re going in the wrong direction. When you talk about shammed insanity you’re looking for a close analogy to the Lapeyrot case, in which the murderers, if I may put it this way, had a particular audience in mind all along: they purposely left clues to give the police a puzzle to solve. In our case there’s nothing to indicate that any of this is aimed at the police. In fact, I doubt it very much.”
“Yes, well in that…” said Gregory. He felt downhearted and stifled. “So we’re back where we started. The motive.”
“No, not at all. Look over here, please.”
Sheppard pointed to the wall, at a small circle of light that Gregory hadn’t noticed before. Where was it coming from, he wondered. Glancing at the desk, he saw a cut-glass paperweight standing next to the reflector of the desk lamp; a narrow beam of light, refracted in its crystalline depths, was escaping into the room’s dark interior to shine on the wall.
“What do you see here?” asked Sheppard, moving to the side.
Gregory leaned over to escape the lamp’s blinding glare. There was a picture hanging on the wall, almost invisible in the darkness except for one of its corners, which was lit by the single beam of light. Within this tiny space, not much larger than two coins placed side by side, he saw a dark spot enclosed by a pale gray, slightly curved border.