Free Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley Page B

from the stairs—had been
    tagged and bagged and placed in a row on the floor against the wall where Ingrid Bergman had been sitting when he
    first looked in through the doors. There was a candle on her table. Annie had put it there.
    Freyberg had given him charge of the corpses. Perhaps
    because he was such a good shot—and the corpses needed protection. Annie had kept the silver pencil in his pocket, together with the Iron Cross from that Colonel he’d shot in the latrine at Innsbruck and the one and only piece of “precious”
    jewelry he’d managed to collect thus far: a ruby ring
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    (or just red glass) in an antique setting taken from the woman who had died on the road to Umhausen. That was all. But the pencil was the best—because it was famous.
    And every minute the pencil got more and more famous.
    Every time Quinn or Freyberg or Rudecki came down the
    stairs, there was some new development, shocking and intriguing.
    More and more writing was appearing on the walls.
    Its content seemed to be more and more “alarming” (to
    Quinn), “damning” (to Freyberg) and “fuckin’ fantastic” (to Rudecki). Freyberg had ordered the whole Elysium Hotel off limits except to classified personnel, and he was moving Quinn and himself into rooms on the second floor.
    But Annie was the Keeper of the Morgue.
    His only fear was that Freyberg would tell him to take the bodies out and burn them, like he had the dogs at Dachau.
    No one could be buried yet. The snow was still too deep up here and the ground still frozen. But maybe if he got lucky (for a change) someone would come and take the bodies
    down the mountain into the valley where they could be
    given some kind of so-called decent burial. Churchbells and stuff and someone saying-prayers. There hadn’t been too much of that with all the dead he’d seen. Mostly it was just the dogtags looped on some guy’s arm. He’d tip them all into a cardboard box and hand them to the Chaplain, twenty, thirty or forty at a time—and a truck coming and the bodybags all driven off, looking so lumpy and strange and not
    as if there were human beings inside at all.
    Annie looked over at the candle on Ingrid Bergman’s table and began to hum “As Time Goes By.”
    Freyberg had started negotiations for a generator. It was promised for tomorrow or the day after. This was standard vocabulary for “when we get to it,” meaning: “okav, let’s bargain.” The way was now open for communications between Freyberg’s Quartermaster and the Quartermaster down
    in the town. Freyberg’s QM came up with one case of Scotch for two cases of Liebfraumilch: twenty Panalellas for five
    hundred Camels; six jars of Vaseline (no questions asked) for eighteen gallons of kerosene. And finally; “your Betty Grable for my Rita Hayworth.” Result: “An absolute guarantee, sir. We’ll have a generator tomorrow.” Meaning the
    day after.
    In the meantime: candles.
    Immediately after Freyberg had left, Quinn and Rudecki had discovered two more rooms—all the rooms with the writing sharing the opposite side of the corridor to the suite where Mauberley’s corpse had been found.
    Quinn had put his cot in the room with the gramophone
    and the candelabra; moving in with a sense of relief and exhilaration. He was absolutely certain he would exonerate Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. Freyberg simply didn’t understand.
    It was a question of interpretation, and this was Quinn’s forte.
    Evening was upon them.
    Down in the valleys Quinn could see green, heightened
    by the vivid emerald overlay of water on the ice of the Otztalsee. Here, however, on the heights the wind and the cold prevailed. There was frost on the windows, sparkling now in the increasing light as Quinn lit more and more
    candles to augment the single kerosene lamp he had been allotted.
    Taking the last of his candlesticks, Quinn went over and opened the door between this room and the next. He could still not believe what Mauberley had done: