The Stranger - Max Frei [19]
I must say, I understand His Majesty. In the literature of the Unified Kingdom, the detective novel does not seem to exist at all, and newspaper articles and dry accounts of the courtiers about all the other courtiers cannot compete with the juicy worldly gossip of Sir Juffin Hully, Venerable Head of all that transpires.
For my part, I coped fairly well with the loneliness. I walked a lot, gazed at passersby, learned the names of streets. At the same time I inquired about the prices of houses for lease. I was very particular about my choice of a future home. I wanted it to be close to the Street of the Copper Pots, at the end of which stood the House by the Bridge, the residence of the Headquarters of Perfect Public Order. At night I “did my homework”—again and again I grilled the objects of material culture about their past. It was pleasant to realize that I could already perform these tricks without Juffin’s guidance. Objects were increasingly willing to share their memories with me. Only the box from the bedchamber of the late Sir Makluk-Olli held its tongue with the obstinacy of a partisan of the Resistance, we observed no more outbursts of uncontrollable fear in it. Thank goodness for that!
Late on the evening of the fourth day, Sir Juffin Hully returned, laden with royal gifts, fresh news (to me all quite abstract), and problems from work that had accumulated in his absence. In short, neither that evening, nor the next, did we return to the subject of the Mysterious Murder in the Empty Room.
Eventually, life began to resume its normal pattern. Juffin started coming home earlier. We took up our leisurely dinner discussions again, and even our evening seminars. Two weeks had passed since the event of the murder in Sir Makluk’s house. That is to say, two weeks by my count—the locals don’t divide the year into weeks and months. They count days by dozens, and define their temporal coordinates very laconically—around such and such a day in about such and such a year. That’s all. So if we use the local method of calculating time, more than a dozen days had passed since our nocturnal visit to our neighbor’s house. This was too long to sustain the flame of my curiosity: it sparks like lightning, but it dies just as quickly if it finds no immediate sustenance.
Oh, if only the balsam-filled box that I rescued had begun to talk before I forgot about it and turned my attention to more garrulous objects! Then Sir Juffin gradually began to teach me more captivating things. Who knows how humdrum this silly matter could have ended up, had it not been for my own amnesia?
Somehow or other, the next sign of a fast-approaching tempest caught up with me early in the evening of what had otherwise been a delightful day. I was enjoying the masterpieces of the ancient poetry of Uguland, having dared for the first time to drag the weighty folio out of the dust of the library into the garden. I scrambled onto the branch of a spreading Vaxari tree, a wonderful variety of tree exceptionally well-suited for climbing by men of middle age who have fallen back into the habits of childhood.
From this vantage point, I noticed a man in gray hurrying over to our grounds from the direction of Sir Makluk’s house. I remembered immediately the circumstances of our prior visit, and decided to go inside the house just in case. Sir Juffin had still not returned, and I was determined to hear the news firsthand. I descended the tree too slowly for my own taste; but all the same I crossed the threshold before Sir Makluk’s servant reached the home stretch—the path of transparent colored pebbles that led up to the house.
In the hall I ran into Kimpa, who was already