Chapter III.V
Vitaly Ivolginsky
Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre)
Third Act — Qualquer ou Uma Grande Recompensa
Chapter III.V
The inspector put his hands in his pockets and, quickening his pace, decided that the dinner was ruined – not so much because of the fettuccine, it was more of a reason to leave the “Orcinus Orca Osteria” – how much from the staff, who behaved very inappropriately, and also because of these beggars… Galbraith wanted to get rid of the disgusting feeling, so he decided to go to a liquor store, which, fortunately for him, turned out to be almost next to this catering establishment – just on the other side of the road.
In this very cramped room, where it was impossible to really walk past the shelves with alcohol, it was not particularly comfortable for him to move around in search of the right bottle. By this time, there was a large line of people at the cash register, and during the entire time that Galbraith was looking for some cheaper drink, not one of these people left the store, which also did not bring any good.. When the inspector finally took the bottle of pink sparkling wine he liked and stood in line, he realized what was going on – the cash register froze after absolutely every item was sold and the cashier had to constantly restart it. Galbraith got tired of waiting, and he, putting the bottle in its original place, left this tiny alcohol market in completely upset feelings.
He returned to the “Stait of Snow Lake” hotel tight and dry. Having climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and entered his room, Galbraith was relieved to take off his jacket, slightly wet from the rain, and went to the bath. Having finished washing, he then went to the bed and, without knowing why, turned the mattress over. This innocent action made him shudder with disgust – underneath him, on the surface of the bed, whole flocks of tiny red bugs swarmed. Without wasting a minute, Galbraith immediately went downstairs and called the concierge. Quite soon a gloomy old man in an old-fashioned blue tailcoat, without a single hair on his head, came out to see him. He looked the inspector up and down.
“The only thing I can suggest to you is to change the room”, the concierge said gloomily, as if thinking about the end of the world.
“Is it really that hard for you to ask me to change my mattress?”, Galbraith, tired after the osteria, was not ready for this.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not much help”, the old man said firmly.
“What about bed linen? My sheet is burned by a cigarette”, said the inspector.
“As compensation, I can ask that fresh fruit slices be delivered to your room”, the concierge answered, continuing to stand like a stick of rhubarb.
“All right, I accept that”, Galbraith answered with a hint of despair.
“At the expense of the establishment, of course”, the old man added.
The rules here are strange, Galbraith thought, climbing the stairs to his room, because the bed and some fruit are disproportionate to each other… The inspector couldn’t help but think that whoever he met in London during this time, everyone who came across his path seemed to be crazy. “Or it’s just me too respectable for this city?” he asked himself as he entered the room. Approaching the bed, he became convinced that it was impossible to sleep on it – the bedbugs he had disturbed were already crawling all over the bed linen. He began to prepare for the fact that he would apparently have to sleep on a shoe bench, which was just long enough for him to lie down on with his legs crossed.
Then the concierge entered the room. He glanced at the tousled bed, did not say a word and, putting a small plate on the table, left. Galbraith came closer – yes, there really were fruits there, but in what quantity. One slice each of apple, pear and orange, and, contrary to the words of the old man in the blue tailcoat, they were far from fresh – the apple and pear darkened, and the orange became weathered in the air. Well, of course, Galbraith thought, taking the plate in his hands, no one was going to feed him – the fruit is just a symbol of the fact that the staff of this hotel is supposedly sensitive to the guests…
The inspector went to the trash bin and sent these fruits there, and, putting the plate on the desk, shuddered – someone had again disturbed him with their visit. Galbraith turned around – it was the scrubwoman, a stout person in a greasy apron, who, having placed a bucket of water on the floor, started wiping the floor with a wet mop. The inspector went to the window so as not to interfere with her cleaning the room. Having nothing else to do, he looked down at the road where the cars were driving. The only sign that an accident occurred in the morning under his window was only a dark spot on the asphalt. Galbraith thought that if so much blood had flowed out, then that poor guy in the convertible had definitely went to the forefathers…
Continuing to look at the road, he heard the creaking of the bathroom door – well, finally, he thought, they would deign to clean the plaque in the toilet… But that was not the case – the scrubwoman left there without spending even a minute there. Galbraith hoped that she at least put new toilet paper there. With these thoughts, he took his eyes off the road and looked at the scrubwoman, who, gloomily looking ahead, was diligently spreading liquid dirt on the floor. Feeling the guest’s stern gaze on her, she straightened her back and, squeezing out the mop, swept away the trash in the corners.
“What a service…”, Galbraith involuntarily burst out when the woman, having taken the bucket, was already leaving him.
The scrubwoman, hearing his voice, jerked her whole body so hard that a couple of drops of dirty water from her bucket splashed onto the door. She threw a frightened look at him and immediately disappeared into the corridor, forgetting about closing the door.
“Oh yes, parsimony doesn’t serve”, the inspector said out loud.
Galbraith closed the door behind the scrubwoman and, sighing, looked at the floor – it did not become cleaner; on the contrary, ugly black wet stains appeared on the linoleum. He approached the bed, where small red insects were swarming with might and main on the blanket, pillow and sheet, because of which this piece of furniture looked as if it had been eaten away by rust, and this rust was alive and was constantly changing its pattern. Standing by the bed and contemplating this mess in a kind of trance, Galbraith breathed slowly and deeply, and the tips of his fingers twitched slightly from the indignation reigning inside.
At another time, the inspector would have happily left not only this room, but the hotel in general, but now he was in a state where he had no choice. Tired after an unpleasant incident in the “Orcinus Orca Osteria”, both mentally and physically, he dreamed of only one thing – to give his body a horizontal position. Therefore, Galbraith, taking a stack of papers with material on the Pharqraut’s case from the desk, kicked off his shoes and collapsed on the bed infested with bugs. The next moment he felt how these parasites clung to his legs and arms, but he no longer cared.
“Magistratus oportet servire populo”, he said quietly out loud with detachment.
He remembered this Latin proverb – because it was precisely what was written on the very agitational banner under which the messenger sat, brought him the news about death of the last scion of the Yonce family. The meaning of this expression seemed appropriate to the inspector in the situation in which he found himself – if only because, having drawn himself into this mysterious matter, he, willy-nilly, was obliged to serve this very people, if only out of a sense of elementary conscience. Galbraith involuntarily remembered the kind-hearted Matt MacLaren, whose exciting story set this whirlpool of events in motion. How he is doing there now? How were things going with his friends in Portland now, while Galbraith, was hanging around here, unsuccessfully trying to find traces of doctor Baselard, who, as he knew, had left for England after that fateful surgery? “To England, on affairs” – these words were forever etched in the inspector’s memory when he came to the apartment of this child murderer…
He remembered that he went to bed precisely in order to continue reading the file of his now deceased friend. Galbraith involuntarily felt pity – no, not Galbraith, although that would be logical – the inspector regretted that there was not a single chair in this room. He brought the stack of sheets to his eyes and, trying to understand where he stopped last time, got ready to read this magnum opus. As a result, he began from the moment when the author of this investigation went to the scene of the death of janitor Theodore Beckel. Trying to keep the entire document in an official tone, Pharqraut, sparing with expressions, dryly wrote that at the pedestrian crossing where the body was found, he was unable to find anything that could arouse suspicion – the only thing is that the paint that was used for the marked crosswalk has worn off over time.
For a moment Galbraith resurrected in his head the appearance of urban roads in Portland. “Yes, this is not London”, he thought… He went back to reading. The document stated that when Pharqraut, not finding anything on the road, went into a public toilet located opposite the shopping center – out of necessity, of course – then there he noticed that in the booth he entered, the Arabic numeral Four was written on the wall. As the author of the investigation wrote, he would not have mentioned this moment if not for several curious details. Firstly, Pharqraut began to list, an unknown vandal was wielding a black Alkyd car enamel – although inscriptions of this kind are usually drawn with ordinary markers.
Secondly, Galbraith’s friend noticed that the numeral was written not once, but four times – and a glance at the inscription was enough to understand that the vandal was applying paint with sweeping movements, as if trying to bring it to the entire wall, but in the end the paint apparently ran out, so he repeated only four times and not five or more. In addition, Pharqraut, out of the blue, felt obliged to write in an official document his thought that it was somehow strange to him that the owner of the toilet did not get rid of the inscription – he could understand, if the toilet was somewhere in the wilderness, but no, this place is used by people leaving the shopping center.
Having read this ode to a public toilet, Galbraith involuntarily thought that his friend did the right thing in not becoming a writer – with this style, his books could of course be bought by inertia – simply because a new author has appeared on the market – but then his works would be avoided, because readers would already know that the language of this writer is boring and difficult to understand. Galbraith took the next sheet of paper, which described the inspection of the place where the janitor’s body lay, how the police took measurements with tape measures and Pharqraut gave them instructions. “Hmm”, Galbraith thought, “It seems to me, or did the author of the document mix up the moments?” After all, when the inspector reported about the toilet, he wrote that he entered it AFTER he examined the dead Theodore Beckel…
Yawning, the inspector simply decided to skip this rather boring passage and changed the page again. Now Pharqraut wrote about the investigation into the death of Penelope Conway, the saleswoman in certain duty-free shop. Unlike Theodore Beckel, where apart from the inscription in the toilet there was nothing interesting to read, the description of Conway’s apartment involuntarily attracted Galbraith, if only because Pharqraut wrote this excerpt in a slightly more lively language. His friend noted that as soon as he entered the saleswoman’s apartment, he immediately drew attention to the mirror hanging in the hallway – the fact was that the glass was covered with a white chintz covering. Pharqraut wrote that he asked the deceased’s aunt if it was her doing, to which the woman replied that she did not touch anything in the apartment and the mirror was covered even when she herself had just arrived at her niece’s apartment. Galbraith’s friend, who apparently thought that the readers would not understand his bewilderment, began to justify his suspicions by saying that a mirror is usually curtained when a person has already died, because there is a belief according to which the spirit of the owner, who has already departed to another world, wanders around the apartment.
“Witless mystical nonsense”, muttered Galbraith, scratching his incredibly itchy leg from bedbugs.
Still, the medic Maurice was right that day when he said “You’re talking about your supernatural rubbish again!”, meaning the circumstance that Pharqraut found meaning in things that in the world of materialism have absolutely no meaning.
“A law enforcement officer shouldn’t believe in miracles”, Galbraith said involuntarily, taking his eyes off the letters and staring at the ceiling.
He always said this to himself when he encountered something that he could not explain in simple words. It just seemed to him that the world obeys physical laws, and any, even the strangest phenomenon, must be approached from the position of a physicist, not a poet. Another thing is that the inspector himself did not have extensive knowledge of either one or the other – being essentially a simple man in the street who, by the will of fate, became a policeman, Galbraith understood that he should not even delve into these things, but his profession, which is conducive to the construction of hypotheses, forced his brain to work in a direction in which he would never have gone in everyday life.
“Oh”, he thought to himself, “Why was I so driven to become a police inspector at one time?”. After all, he could sit in the studio and paint paintings to order, but no, he has to get his hands dirty in the blood of criminal cases… Having pushed away these rhetorical thoughts, he returned to the document. His friend wrote that if we take words of Penelope Conway’s aunt at face value, it turns out that the mirror was actually curtained before the relative entered the apartment. The author of these lines wondered – it turns out that the unknown killer did this on purpose? Pharqraut further hypothesized that perhaps it could have been a strange gesture of respect for the deceased and thought – not without reason – that the killer could have been a person who was not indifferent to the deceased saleswoman.
“Murder out of jealousy”, Galbraith said thoughtfully after reading this.
He involuntarily thought that he himself was driven by this feeling. Only the inspector could not fully understand who he was jealous of and, most importantly, to whom… He continued reading. While inspecting Conway’s apartment, inspector Pharqraut noted the fact that only one shelf was occupied in her bookcase, and there was essentially only one book “Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes”, the author of which was a certain Edith Hamilton. Friend of Galbraith was quite surprised by the fact that an entire shelf was occupied by twenty copies of this very book alone, and even the edition was the same. The inspector again wondered on the pages of his material – maybe the saleswoman bought the books to give them to friends? But why then was there no other book in her apartment, not even a cookbook? The late Penelope Conway didn’t like to read, or she collected all the books that were in the closet before, to sell them and use the proceeds to buy twenty copies of just one book about Greek myths? Having asked these questions to the readers, the author then noted that in the remaining empty space on the bottom shelf, five more books with the same number of pages could fit.
“I wonder how he checked it”, thought Galbraith.
He understood that the profession of a police inspector requires a certain way of thinking from a person, but it was difficult for him to imagine his friend wasting his time on such a stupid task as moving books from one place to another. Galbraith involuntarily remembered how, even before the death of the pharmaceutist’s young daughter, he was visiting mister chief inspector, drinking Pimm’s with him. In the tone of a professor speaking about a favorite student, Schaeymoure praised Pharqraut’s ability to pay attention to things that would seem completely meaningless to another person. Then, pouring myself a glass of English fruit liqueur, Galbraith thought that mister chief inspector had always dreamed of sitting down at the same table with Pharqraut and writing a joint material on a topic that interested both of them. It’s just that something didn’t allow him to do it. Galbraith suggested that the problem was, firstly, that Schaeymoure was busy, and secondly, that such behavior simply somehow did not fit into the relationship between master and servant.
He suddenly woke up and remembered that it was time to finish reading – if only because angry bugs were already crawling on his skin with might and main. Therefore, then Galbraith simply skimmed the text with his eyes, without really trying to delve into the essence. Now the document contained a description that in addition to identical sets of white dresses, in the deceased’s wardrobe at the very bottom there was a box in which lay – the inspector’s friend then listed the items – a leather collar with spikes, a tape for tying hands, a tickler and gag. Further, Pharqraut wondered whether the deceased had a boyfriend, because, as he wrote, he was confused by the fact that miss Faye had always had a reserved character and, as far as the inspector himself could judge, she had never really fallen in love.
“Wait, who is miss Faye?”, Galbraith exclaimed in bewilderment.
A second later it dawned on him that this piece of text did not agree with what had been written earlier. He ran his eyes over the paper – the names of the pimpf Alexander O’Brent and Eugene Woods – his killer, were already there. It turns out that when Galbraith dropped this stack of sheets, he collected them without any system, which is why it was now almost impossible to read the case of his late friend – because without observing chronology, the connection between hypotheses and facts was lost.
“What could it be, great reading”, Galbraith sighed and threw the stack of papers up in grief.
Materials of Pharqraut’s case fell to the floor again, like leaves in autumn – only these were strange leaves, not yellow and red, but white and with black lines of letters. The inspector felt as if he had been deceived. “Well, of course”, he thought, “I’m himself made a mistake, and himself is reaping its fruits…” Here he completely out of place remembered that in Pharqraut he was always surprised by the fact that when asked if he had a girlfriend, his friend answered that this did not apply to his person, because he adheres to the idea that fate itself measures, who will continue their family line, and who will die without offspring.
“Very strong word”, Galbraith said loudly and clearly, feeling his skin burning because of the insects.
