Chapter Eleven
The following morning, in a glorious rebirth of the investigation, the doors were once again thrown open, and Pluck and Bartoff strode magnificently into the interview room. An unbroken table with a fresh cloth and supply of sweetmeats and canapés awaited them, although not exactly with bated breath; it had been managing quite well in dreamless slumber, injuring none, demanding nothing of no one; a sparkling tribute to tasteful personification. The windows, meanwhile, were relieved of their drapes, exposing a blurred white rush of snow compounded with snow. There were a couple of lamps, and a rug rolled up in the corner, and that was it. Pluck sat down, naturally, in the seat at the centre of the table; Bartoff sat to his right. There was a seat on the other side of the table, for the suspect, but another bare chair remained on Pluck’s immediate left. Pluck stared at this chair, for some time; for enough time that Bartoff eventually asked him:
“Is all well, my friend?”
“Pardon?”
“Is all well, my friend?”
“Hmm.”
“. . .I trust all is well?”
Pluck had already sounded out his good friend Eyague about the critical contribution to the investigation the coronel’s martial shrewdness, in addition to the wisdom Pluck assumed the old fool would have amassed simply by virtue of having grown so old without dying, would provide, but the Spaniard begged mercy, professing a sudden illness, a barefaced lie to which he stuck even when Pluck repeatedly offered to insert a thermometer into the distinguished soldier’s hindquarters to ascertain the true extent of his complaint. After many hours of ear-splitting cajolement, bribery and threats, Pluck relented, concluding that, after all, it would be better for the preservation of their friendship not to subject it to the incandescent stress which collaboration, side by side, in a gruelling criminal investigation would necessarily entail.
Bartoff asked once more: “Of course, all’s well?”
“We need a third man,” Pluck suddenly decided, and jumped up from his seat and strutted out to the lobby. He stood in the doorway, fists on his hips, looking about: there was Poor Larry, there was an old lady with a dog, there were a couple of other characters neither Pluck nor I could be bothered to describe. But there, quietly descending the staircase, with a simple, unarguably graceless step, wrapped with an offensive casualness in an unflattering, ill-fitting cardigan of several seasons’ antiquity, came Miss Enid Trojczakowski, who, upon seeing Pluck, issued effortlessly, as a matter of course, a cheerful, all-forgiving beam of a smile.
Pluck plumped for her.
“Mademoiselle,” he bowed. “Would you do me, and us all, the honour of assisting with our investigation in the capacity of deputised junior investigator?”
“Forgive me, Mister Pluck—whatever do you mean?”
“If she were only younger,” Pluck mused—silently, obviously—“with about triple her weight, and an altogether different face. . .” But he shook himself back to the business at hand. “I mean, of course”—now aloud—“that you will help me solve this mystery.”
She demurred, annoyingly, wasting his valuable time, until she said yes. “Excellent,” judged Pluck. “And now, we will break for lunch.”
“It’s only nine-thirty,” Enid pointed out.
“Snacks, then,” agreed Pluck. “We’ll reconvene at two.”