“Maybe you’re right,” said Gregory, blinking his eyes, “but I don’t know if that’s the most important thing about it. Do you really believe that a man alone in a darkened mortuary in the middle of the night would tear apart a cloth curtain with his teeth?”
“Don’t you?” Sheppard interrupted.
“Yes, of course, if he did it because he was nervous or afraid, or if there weren’t any other tools available… but you know as well as I do why he did it. That damned ironclad consistency that we’ve seen throughout this whole series. After all, he did everything to make it look like the bodies had come back to life. He planned everything to achieve that effect, even studied the weather reports. But how could he possibly predict that the police would be ready to believe in miracles? And that’s exactly what makes the whole thing so insane!”
“The kind of criminal you’re talking about doesn’t exist and couldn’t possibly exist,” Sheppard observed indifferently. He pushed the drapes to the side and looked out a dark window.
After a long interval Gregory asked, “Why did you bring up the Lapeyrot case?”
“Because it began childishly, with buttons arranged in patterns. But that isn’t the only reason. Tell me something: exactly what is contrary to human nature?”
“I don’t understand…” Gregory mumbled. He was beginning to get a splitting headache.
“A person manifests his individuality by his actions,” the Chief Inspector explained quietly. “Naturally this holds true for criminal acts also. But the pattern that emerges from our series of incidents is impersonal. Impersonal, like a natural law of some kind. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think so,” said Gregory. His voice was hoarse. He leaned over to one side, very slowly, until he was completely out of the blinding glare of the desk lamp. Thanks to this movement his eyes were soon able to see better in the darkness. There were several other pictures hanging next to the photograph of the woman, all showing the faces of dead people. Meanwhile, Sheppard had resumed his pacing across the room, moving back and forth against a background of nightmarish faces as if he were in the middle of some kind of weird stage setting; no… more as if he were among very ordinary, familiar things. He paused opposite the desk.
“The mathematical perfection of this series suggests that there is no culprit. That may astound you, Gregory, but it’s true…”
“What… what are you…” the lieutenant gasped in a barely audible voice, recoiling involuntarily.
Sheppard stood absolutely still, his face unseen. Suddenly Gregory heard a short, quavering sound. The Chief Inspector was laughing.
“Did I shock you?” the Chief Inspector asked in a more serious tone. “Do you think I’m talking nonsense?
“Who makes day and night?” he continued. There was derision in his voice.
Suddenly Gregory stood up, pushing his chair backward.
“I understand,” he said. “Of course. The series has something to do with the creation of a new myth. An imitation of one of the laws of nature. A synthetic, impersonal, invisible, obviously all-powerful criminal. Oh, it’s perfect! An imitation of infinity…”
Gregory laughed, but not very happily. Then, breathing deeply, he became quiet.
“Why are you laughing?” the Chief Inspector asked gravely, perhaps even a bit sadly. “Isn’t it because you were already thinking along the same lines but rejected the idea? Imitation? Of course. But a perfect imitation, Gregory, so perfect that you’ll come back to me with your hands empty.”
“Maybe,” Gregory said coldly. “And in that case I’ll be replaced by someone else. If necessary I could manage to explain every detail right now. Even the dissecting laboratory. The window can be opened from the outside with the aid of a nylon thread looped around the lock beforehand. I tried it, and it works. But to think that the creator of a new religion of some kind, an imitator of miracles, had to begin this way…”
Gregory shrugged his shoulders.
“No, it can’t be that simple,” the Chief Inspector said. “You keep repeating the word ‘imitation.’ A wax doll is an imitation of a human being, isn’t it? What if someone made a doll that could walk and talk, wouldn’t that be an excellent imitation? And if he made a doll that could bleed? A doll that could experience unhappiness and death, what then?”
“And what does any of this have to… after all, even the most perfect imitation — even the doll you were just talking about — has to have a creator, and the creator can be held responsible!” Gregory shouted, overcome with anger. “He’s only playing with me” suddenly flashed through his mind, and he said, “Chief Inspector, please answer one question for me.”
Sheppard looked at him.
“You don’t really think this case can be solved, do you?”
“Certainly not. I don’t want to hear that kind of talk anymore. Of course there is a possibility that the solution —” The Chief Inspector broke off in mid-sentence.
“Please, sir, tell me everything.”
“I don’t know if I have the right,” Sheppard said dryly, as if displeased by Gregory’s insistence. “You might not like the solution.”
“Why? Please, explain it to me a little more clearly.”
Sheppard shook his head.
“I can’t.”
He walked over to the desk, opened the drawer, and removed a small package.
“Let’s work on the part that pertains to us,” he said, handing it to Gregory.
The package contained photographs of three men and one woman. Commonplace, banal faces, indifferent to everything, stared at Gregory from the shiny little cardboards.
“That’s them,” he said, recognizing two of the photos.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have any pictures taken after death?”
“I managed to get two.” Sheppard reached into the drawer. They had been taken at the hospital at the request of the families.
Both photographs were pictures of men. And it was a strange thing: death seemed to give a new dignity to their rather ordinary features, bestowing a kind of motionless gravity upon them. Dead they looked more expressive than they had while living, as if they finally had something to hide!
Gregory looked up at Sheppard. To his surprise, the Chief Inspector was hunched over, suddenly looking much older than before. He was clenching his lips as if in pain.
“Chief Inspector?” he said softly, with unexpected timidity.
“I would prefer not to give this case to you… but I have no one else,” said Sheppard in a quiet voice. He placed his hand on Gregory’s shoulder. “Please keep in touch with me. I’d like to help you, although I have no idea whether my experience will have much value in a case like this.”
Gregory drew back and the Chief Inspector’s hand dropped. Both men were now standing outside the circle of light made by the lamp, and in the darkness the faces on the wall stared down at them. The lieutenant felt more drunk than he had all evening.
“Please sir…” he said, “you know more than you’re willing to tell me, don’t you?” He was a bit breathless, as if he’d been exerting himself strenuously.
“Sir… are you unwilling to tell me, or unable?” Gregory asked. He wasn’t even shocked at his own audacity.
Sheppard shook his head in denial, watching Gregory with a look of immeasurable patience. Or was it irony?
Gregory glanced down at his hands and noticed that he was still holding the photographs, the ones of the live subjects in his left hands, the dead ones in his right. And again he was inspired by the same mysterious compulsion that had made him direct such an odd question to the Chief Inspector. It was as if an invisible hand was touching him.
“Which of these are… more important?” he asked in a barely audible voice. It was only possible to hear him because the room was absolutely still.
A tight-lipped expression on his face, Sheppard made a discouraging gesture and went over to the light switch. The room was flooded with brightness, everything became ordinary and natural
. Gregory slowly hid the photographs in his pocket.
The visit was obviously coming to an end. During the remainder of their conversation, which concentrated on such concrete matters as the number and posting of the constables guarding the mortuaries, the organization of a cordon around the areas mentioned by Sciss, and the details of the lieutenant’s actual powers, there remained the shadow of something left unsaid.
Again and again the Chief Inspector would fall silent and look at Gregory anxiously, as if uncertain whether to leave these businesslike considerations and resume the previous conversation. But he left well enough alone and didn’t say anything.
Gregory was halfway down the stairs when the lights went out. He managed to feel his way to the door. Suddenly he heard his name.
“Good luck!” the Chief Inspector shouted after him.
The lieutenant walked out into the wind and closed the door.
It was terribly cold. The puddles had all solidified; frozen mud crunched underfoot; in the onrushing wind the drizzling rain was being changed into a blizzard of icy needles that pricked Gregory’s face painfully and made a sharp, paperlike rustle as they bounced off the stiff fabric of his coat.
Gregory tried to review the details of the evening, but he might just as well have tried to classify the invisible clouds that the wind was driving around over his head. Remembered snatches of this and that struggled in his mind, spilling over into images unconnected with anything except a poignant feeling of depression and being lost. The walls of the room had been covered with posthumous photographs, the desk with open books, and he vehemently regretted now that he hadn’t taken a good look at any of them, or at the papers spread out next to the books. It never even occurred to him that such actions would have been indiscreet. Gregory began to feel that he was standing on the boundary between the definite and the indefinite. Each of his thoughts seemed about to reveal one of many possible meanings, then vanished, melting away with every desperate effort he made to grasp it fully. And he, pursuing understanding, seemed about to plunge into a sea of ambiguous details in which he would drown, comprehending nothing even at the end.
Whom was he supposed to catch for Sheppard — the creator of some new religion? Although able to function smoothly and efficiently in routine cases, the machinery of investigation was now beginning to turn against itself. The more meticulously the facts were measured, photographed, recorded, and assembled, the more the whole structure seemed to be nonsensical.
If he’d been asked to track down a completely obscure and unknown murderer, Gregory wouldn’t have felt so helpless. What, he wondered, was that confused anxiety he had seen in the eyes of the old Chief Inspector, who wanted to help him but couldn’t?
Furthermore, why had the Chief, who seemed to think the case was unsolvable, picked him, a beginner, to take it over? And was that really the reason Sheppard had invited him to his house in the middle of the night?
With his fists clenched in his pockets, Gregory walked along the deserted street, not seeing anything in the darkness, not feeling the raindrops trickling down his face, not remembering where he was headed for. He gulped in some of the cold, damp air and again saw Sheppard’s face before him, the little shadows at the corner of his mouth twitching.
How long was it since he had left the Europa? He began to calculate. It was now 10:30, so nearly three hours had gone by. “I’m not drunk anymore,” he said to himself. Stopping in the circle of light around a lamp post, he read the street sign to get his bearings, figured out the location of the nearest subway station, and headed toward it.
The streets became more crowded, brightened now by neon signs and by blinking red and green traffic signals. Once inside the revolving doors at the subway entrance, Gregory was met by a blast of warm, dry air from the heating ducts. He rode downward on the escalator, slowly sinking into the noisy rumbling below.
It was even warmer on the station platform than it had been upstairs. Gregory let the Islington train pass, watching the triangular red light on the last car until it disappeared in the distance. Circling around a newsstand, he leaned against an iron support beam and lit a cigarette.
After a while his train arrived. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. Gregory took a corner seat. The car jerked and pulled out, the station lights flicking by more and more quickly, then disappearing; the train was soon moving so fast that the lights in the tunnel couldn’t be distinguished from each other as they shot past.
Staring blankly at the row of accidental faces sitting opposite him, Gregory again reviewed the meeting with Sheppard. There was more to it than he yet understood, he felt, but he’d only be able to figure out its real meaning if he concentrated.
Gradually he became aware of an uneasy feeling circulating in his consciousness, and finally it formed itself into words: “There’s trouble. Something terrible and irreversible happened this evening… or was it today?” As if cut off by some outside force, this line of thought suddenly came to a dead end.
Gregory closed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had recognized a man sitting at the opposite end of the car, near the door. He took another look. Yes, the face was familiar all right. It seemed eager to tell him something. Gregory tried to concentrate. It was an old man’s face: flabby, with vague, spongy features.
The man was fast asleep, his head propped up against a partition, his hat slowly slipping downward and casting a deep shadow across his face. His body rocked back and forth with the movements of the speeding train, the rhythm intensifying on the curves. After one particularly sharp jolt, the man’s big, pale, swollen hand slipped out of his lap, as if it were a bundle, and dangled lifelessly at his side.
Gregory was sure he knew the sleeping man, but as much as he tried he couldn’t place him. The train moved faster and faster, the jolting increased, and finally the man’s lower jaw dropped open. The lips fell apart…
“He’s sleeping as soundly as a corpse,” flashed through Gregory’s mind. At the same moment he was overcome by a cold, terrifying sensation. For an instant he couldn’t catch his breath. He knew. The sleeping man was the subject of one of the posthumous photographs in his coat pocket.
The train came to a stop. Cross Row. A few people got on. The platform lights started to flicker, seemed to move, then whisked away backward. The train sped on.
Brilliantly lit signs and advertising posters were soon flashing by again. Although it was nearly time for him to get off, Gregory didn’t even bother to glance at the station sign. He sat absolutely still, as if concentrating deeply, his eyes focused on the sleeping man. The doors closed with a hiss; outside the windows a horizontal row of shining fluorescent lights flowed smoothly backward, suddenly disappearing as if slashed away. Steadily picking up speed, the train raced into the dark tunnel.
Gregory’s head began to throb. Oblivious to the noisy clatter of the wheels, he began to feel as if he was looking at the sleeping man’s head through a long, gray funnel filled with flashing sparks. The dark, gaping mouth hypnotized him; he stared so steadily, so unmovingly, so fixedly, that the swollen gray face seemed to transform itself into a circle of iridescent light. Keeping his eyes fixed on the old man, Gregory reached into his coat, unbuttoning it to pull out the photograph. The train hissed to a stop. Where were they? Camberwell already?
Several people rose to get off. A soldier, making his way to the door of the car, tripped over the extended leg of the sleeping man, who suddenly woke up and, without a word, adjusted his hat, arose from his seat, and joined the exiting crowd.
Gregory jumped up, attracting attention by his haste. Several faces turned in his direction. The doors began to close. Forcibly holding them open, Gregory leaped onto the platform from the moving train. Running along the platform, he caught a glimpse of an angry face against the background of the moving cars. “Hey you!” the train dispatcher shouted after him.
A cool breeze met Gregory’s nostrils. He stopped abruptly, his heart beating with excitement.
Along with the rest of the crowd, the man was making his way toward a tall iron exit gate. Gregory drew back and waited. Behind him was a newsstand lit by the strong light of a single naked bulb.
The old man had a game leg. He was limping along slightly behind the crowd of passengers. With the brim of his hat soaking wet and flopping about soggily, his creased coat frayed around the pockets, he looked like the last of the old-time panhandlers. Gregory glanced at the photograph hidden in his palm. There was no resemblance.
He lost his head completely. Was this just an accidental case of mistaken identity, or was it due to his confused state of mind? The dead man was much too young; he couldn’t possibly be the person he’d followed off the train.
Confused and feeling somewhat nearsighted, his cheeks twitching, Gregory looked alternately at the photo and at the old man, whose unshaven gray face sagged over his collar. Finally sensing that he was being watched, the old man turned toward the detective. Having no idea why the latter was so interested in him, his face took on an empty-headed, listless expression, his slack jaw dropped slightly, his slobbering lips parted, and as a result he suddenly seemed to resemble the man in the photograph again.
Gregory extended his hand as if to touch the old man’s shoulder. The old man, terrified, cried out — or, more accurately, uttered a hoarse, frightened sound — and hurried onto the escalator.
Just as Gregory set off in pursuit, a family with two children stepped between him and the old man, blocking his way. Seeing this, the old man slipped through the other passengers and was carried farther and farther upward.
Gregory shoved his way through the crowd of people blocking his path, paying no attention when an indignant woman said something nasty and a few other angry remarks were directed his way. On the street-exit level the crowd was so thick that he couldn’t get through and finally had to give up, letting himself be carried along at the slow pace imposed by the others. There wasn’t a sign of the old man when he finally reached the street. Looking helplessly in all directions, Gregory berated himself for that split second of hesitation — due either to surprise or to fear — in which the old man had made his escape.
The Investigation Page 5