At long last we finished our work, gradually preparing for the meeting during which we wanted to inform the general public about our results. We also wanted to warn everyone about the murderer and to explain to them his peculiar habits, for he was very likely still at large in the district. As far as this was concerned, my frustrations reached no end. Although we turned up many long-term residents, none of them could seriously be considered suspects. Either they were old hags whose chief occupation in past years had been bringing forth whole generations, or they turned out to be granddaddies of evident senility who didn't even understand what we wanted to know from them. Then again there were others who had suffered Bluebeard's sad fate, who could be ruled out right away for not having had the physical prerequisites to commit deeds requiring such agility and energy. To my great annoyance, in the end we had to fall back upon Joker as the only likely suspect, which, however, made the whole affair rather obscure. Bluebeard had snuck around the porcelain house several times, made inquiries with the neighbors, and even kept the building under intermittent surveillance, but Joker still seemed to have disappeared into thin air, and the hope that he would ever turn up diminished daily. Who knows, I thought sometimes with a bitter smile, while we were here struggling with his murderous past, Joker might well have long since departed for Jamaica as a stowaway and was now amusing himself there with the local ladies.
Although we were extremely proud of our work and were all too ready to pretend to ourselves that we had accomplished a lot through our scientific procedure, in the back of our minds a sense of failure lurked. After all, from a purely objective point of view, had we achieved anything of consequence? Absolutely nothing, in my opinion! We had no murder motive, no murderer, not even a plausible theory. We were still groping in the dark, and whenever a match sputtered into flame somewhere, we would persuade ourselves that its wan glow was the sun. We simply didn't have the glue to cement the countless broken pieces and reveal the true form of the antique vase.
The date for the meeting of all the district inhabitants was set for Christmas Eve. At this point in time, our owners would have more than enough on their hands with the festivities, and we could escape their supervision more easily. The dilapidated second floor of our Villa Frankenstein was chosen as the meeting place, a location that everyone knew, because it was there that those repulsive ceremonies had taken place. On the day before the meeting, Bluebeard went from house to house and from backyard to backyard distributing invitations among the people. I had one undisclosed wish, that at the climax of the meeting Joker would turn up just like the villain in every Agatha Christie mystery who always appears when all the participants gather together. However, I had to smile at this wish, because a picture-postcard scene inevitably popped up in my imagination when I thought of it: Joker, jubilantly roaming a Caribbean beach and fishing out delicious seafood from the waves.
And then it was time at last, and I woke up on the morning of December 24 from a restless sleep filled with a sort of potpourri of all the terrifying impressions of the past weeks. In a bad mood, and sleepy-headed, I began to arch my back listlessly, not knowing that this day would be one of the most important in my life, a day on which I would learn more about myself, my kind, and the white, black, but ultimately, invariably gray world than I ever had in those days when I had concerned myself with highfalutin philosophical matters. I was about to learn all this unbelievably quickly, for I had an excellent teacher—the murderer.
On the said morning, I was woken up by roaring laughter from the adjoining room, and the clinking sounds caused by glasses during a toast. I looked around, perplexed, because I had returned home so exhausted and depleted from the last work session the previous night that I didn't even know where I had lain down afterwards.
My eyes now perceived a bedroom, but it was a bedroom that made me wonder whether I was in the right house. But then I noticed the samurai on the walls, which had been filled in with color since I last saw them, and guessed what I had missed out on during the computer games. The renovation of our little haunted castle had been concluded. The place where I had settled down to sleep turned out to be a so-called futon, which is supposedly similar to the mattress Japanese usually sleep on (if they ever get around to sleeping, given their incessant production of Walkmans and CD players). Asia had invaded other areas of the room as well. Along the wall were screens covered with silk paper and, casting a meditative glow, Chinese lanterns with dragon motifs on bamboo stools. What did all this mean? Had Gustav gone completely out of his mind? Would a gong wake us in the future? Or the murmuring singsong of a geisha?
Archibald! Yes, of course, it
