Chapter Thirteen
Pluck hadn’t much liked the looks Poor Larry had cast his way when the inspector had questioned him in detail about how he had gone about the cleaning and disposal of Mister Snede, and so, when it came time to select the second interviewee, he naturally turned the guest list face-down on the table and announced, “Larry the Idiot Bellhop.” Larry, who had been standing before the table in the interview room to await the name of the next guest to be summoned, stood still, evidently in some confusion.
“That’s you,” Pluck explained.
“That’s you!” Bartoff shouted.
“So sit down.”
“Sit down! Now!”
Larry took the seat across the table from the three investigators. The flickering light from the fireplace shook thin frightened shadows on every side of him.
“Where were you at the time of the murder?”
“I was—”
“Look me in the eye when you answer me, please.”
He held himself still and tried to look Pluck in the eye. In fact, he stared at Pluck’s eye with curiosity.
“Pardon me, monsieur.”
“Yes, what is it?!”
“What do you want?!” screamed Bartoff.
“Has something happened to your eye?”
“This? This is per the latest fashion, you ignoramus,” Pluck fobbed him off.
“Don’t you know anything about fashion?!” Bartoff screamed.
Addressing Bartoff’s inquiry, Larry replied, “No, sir, I guess I don’t.”
“Quiet!” Bartoff screamed, with a violence that made Larry quake and, indeed, remain quiet, until Pluck saw fit to ask him:
“Without further attempts at distraction, tell us, plainly, in your own words, where you were, and what you were doing, at the time of the murder.”
“Well, I was—”
Pluck cut him off: “What is your full name?”
“Tell us your name!” shouted Bartoff.
“‘Lawrence—’”
“Your name!” Pluck repeated.
“Tell us your name, or so help me God—!” Bartoff made to strike him across the table.
Larry leapt down underneath it. Bartoff threw back his chair and readied himself for a fray. Enid deterred him with a soft entreaty: “Mister Bartoff, please. Let the boy speak.” She bent down to speak to Larry under the table. “It’s all right,” Enid sought to soothe him. “The inspector is following the normal line of inquiry. As long as you answer promptly and truthfully, you need have no fear.”
“That’s right,” agreed Pluck, “unless, of course, you’re the murderer!”
“Murderer!” screamed Bartoff.
Larry tried to crawl from under the table straight under Enid’s dress; she gently pushed him away. With an aw-shucks snap of his fingers, he returned, droop-headed, to his seat, and turned to face them, lower lip eclipsing the upper.
“Now, for the last time,” Pluck resumed—“What is your name?”
Larry waited a moment, in case Bartoff should take it into his head to shout something or attack him, but when that didn’t happen, he cleared his throat and answered: “‘Lawrence Bipp Williams’.”
“What was that?” asked Pluck.
“What?!” shouted Bartoff.
“‘Lawrence Bipp Williams’,” the poor boy quivered.
“‘Lawrence Bipp Williams’?” Pluck laughed. “Really? And not, by any chance—‘Charles Snede’?”
“Charles Snede!” shouted Bartoff, rising and pointing at Larry.
Pluck rose as well. “Mister Snede, I accuse you assuming the name of Charles Snede the first, then murdering Charles Snede the second, then framing Charles Snede the third, then plotting to change your name legally, by deed poll, at the first opportunity to travel to town, to—‘Snede Charles’!”
“Conspirator and scoundrel!” Bartoff spat.
“Please, gentlemen,” Enid implored them. “Might I ask the boy a question?”
“I hardly think, now that we’ve solved the case, there’s any need,” Pluck demurred.
“Just one, please, for my sake?” Pluck could not refuse that beseeching smile, and gave her a curt nod. She turned to Larry, who was hugging himself in fright: “Larry—”
“‘Snede’,” Pluck corrected her.
“You were the one to find the body, weren’t you?” she went on.
“Body?! What body?!” demanded Pluck.
“The body of Mister Snede,” Larry explained.
“I wasn’t asking you!” Pluck shouted.
“The body of Mister Snede,” Enid told him.
“But—but—. . .” Pluck stopped, stroked his chin, as one would a lover’s buttock, and thought. “Body. . .murder. . .? Yes, of course. . .but Snede?” He shook his head. “No, no—it was Snede, the third, who murdered Lawrence Bipp Williams, the second! Or was it Lawrence Bipp Williams, the fourth, who murdered Charlie Snede the negative second?”
Larry ignored him and narrated to Enid: “I was moving some of the seltzer bottles to the pantry—”
“Seltzer bottles—likely story,” Pluck murmured out of the side of his mouth to Bartoff.
“Lying idiot!” Baroff screamed, more openly.
“—and another porter asked me to restock the papers in the reading room,” Larry went on.
“Which porter?” asked Enid.
“Curtis,” Larry answered at once.
Pluck, Enid and Bartoff looked at each other: they had not heard of him. Pluck scoured the register. There it was: “Curtis Vacaresteanu”.
“Surely that’s not his real name?” asked Pluck.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Enid.
“Well. . .”
Enid turned to Larry: “Why would you need to restock the papers?”
Larry shrugged; a fool question from a woman, after all. “So that the guests might have the pleasure of reading the most recent news, madame.”
“You refer to the papers which are delivered every day?” she asked.
“Yes, madame.”
“At what time in the day?”
“At four o’clock, madame.”
“Four in the afternoon?”
“Naturally, madame.”
“Hm. I see.”
Pluck yawned. “Now, if you don’t mind, Miss Trojczakowski, I would like to continue with the interrogation.” Addressing Larry: “Mister Snede—”
“Pardon me, monsieur,” Enid interrupted him, “but I just have one further question I’d like to put to Mister Williams, if I may.”
“Really, Miss Trojczakowski—must we all of us play inspector, this day?”
“Indulge me, please, Mister Pluck.”
Pluck shrugged, and let her play inspector. She turned to Larry:
“Mister Williams—did any new papers arrive that day, given the fact that by the time four o’clock came and went, the hotel had already been snowed in?”
Larry stared at her.
“Yes, yes, very good, we’ve established that we hadn’t any new papers, now let’s move on,” said Pluck. “If you look at the names ‘Lawrence’ and ‘Snede’, as I’m sure you already have, many a time, my dear boy, you’ll find that both have two e’s and no z’s.”
“But Mister Pluck, don’t you see?” Enid asked.
“Look!” Pluck’s patience was wearing thin. He jumped up and strode out of the room. A few moments later, he returned, with a porter in tow who wheeled in a large blackboard. After it was set up in front of the table, Pluck waved the porter away and took up a piece of chalk. He wrote on the blackboard, in large letters:
LAWRENCE
and
SNEDE
“Now. See these e’s?” He circled the e’s. “See these z’s?” He waved the chalk around in mock-dismay. “No z’s! Oh, dear me, dear me—no z’s! Whatever shall we do?”
“What shall we do?!” Bartoff thundered, failing to appreciate the irony.
Pluck threw down his chalk to the floor, as a means of emphasis. “My good man, I shall tell you what we shall do—if you would be so kind as to ask Mister Mifkin to come in with two able-bodied porters.”
“Surely the boy can do it?” Bartoff suggested softly, not wishing to surrender his pride as a gentleman in assuming the duties, even temporarily, of a hotel clerk whilst any other possibility lay untested.
“For reasons relevant to the investigation, I should like the boy to remain within my sight before my announcement is made.”
Bartoff looked to Enid, then sighed, and walked to the door. Opening it, he called out: “Mifkin! Come here at once, and bring two porters!”
“Two able-bodied porters,” Pluck reminded him.
“Two able-bodied porters!” Bartoff yelled, then held the door open, utterly shamefaced, while those three gentlemen entered.
“You may close the door, now,” Pluck instructed. Bartoff, disgraced, imagining his poor mother being informed of her son’s decline, did so.
Pluck smiled at Manager Mifkin and the two big porters. “Gentlemen—thank you for accepting my invitation.” They waited. “. . .Welcome to the interview room! And welcome. . .er. . .to the investigation.”
“Can we help you with something, sir?” inquired Mifkin.
Pluck stared back, darkly. “Must you debase everything with which you come into contact with professional motives?”
“I’m sorry, monsieur?”
Pluck sighed, and sought to explain. “I have invited you three here to partake in a celebratory. . .um. . .celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?” asked Enid.
Pluck stared at the floor, fed up with being interrupted. He twisted his lips back into a smile, raised his face, and continued with what he was saying to Mifkin: “As I was saying, monsieur, I have invited you three here to partake in a. . .let’s just call it a ‘celebration’.”
“What are we celebrating, monsieur?” Mifkin, face not betraying a molecule of his contempt (which stretched beneath his surface like a vast volcanic landscape beneath the sea), asked.
“Excellent question!” Pluck responded. “Bravo! I congratulate you, monsieur, on an excellent question.”
The porters, well-trained as they were in attending without remark the mindless drivel of the higher classes, waited in silence.
“And may I be privileged with the answer, monsieur?” Mifkin asked.
“Pardon?”
“May I—?”
“Have you any champagne?” Pluck asked.
“Champagne—your finest!” Bartoff shouted, seizing upon a plank of the conversation which he finally understood.
Mifkin bent to instruct one of the porters, when Pluck cut him off:
“No! Not—yet.” He turned, and began pacing, thoughtfully, before them. “Not yet.”
Enid, Bartoff, Larry, Mifkin and the porters waited whilst Pluck paced. A wind shook the window; the snow had not ceased to fall. Pluck suddenly whirled and pointed at Larry. “Take that boy into custody!” he screamed.
“Grab him!” thundered Bartoff.
“Wait!” shouted Enid.
Larry got up and hid behind Mifkin.
“What for?” Mifkin asked.
“What was that?” asked Pluck.
“I asked, ‘What for?’” Mifkin said.
Pluck shrugged. “I can’t say I know what you mean.”
“Of what are you accusing him?” Enid translated.
“Of what am I accusing whom?” asked Pluck, turning to her with some irritation.
“Larry,” quoth Enid, Bartoff, Mifkin, and each of the porters; “Me,” squeaked Larry.
Pluck stood, taking his time to breathe in the discordant vibrations in the room; he’d had this sensation before, in cases of this kind: the sensation that a revelation, which would upend his entire outlook on the case, was about to occur.
“And who. . .is Larry?” he asked quietly, knowing that the answer to this question might very well solve all.
“I’m Larry,” said Larry.
Pluck nodded, then quietly laughed. “Indeed,” he murmured. Then, to the others: “Gentlemen! The case is closed; the investigation is complete.”
“You have solved the mystery?” Mifkin asked.
“Yes; and to that end, I hereby accuse this boy”—finger pointed once again at Larry—“of the murder of Lawrence Bipp Williams!” Then, after a pause: “Hang on—that’s absurd. I meant to say: the murder of Lawrence Wipp Billiams! Take him away!” He beamed in triumph.
“Mister Pluck—” Enid began.
“Of course,” he answered. He tore a page from the notepad on the table, scrawled his autograph and handed it to her—then, seeing that he’d made a slight error, he scribbled it out, wrote it again, and handed it to her once more.
“Thank you,” she said, taking it, “but I beg to remind you that Lawrence Bipp Williams—”
“Ah, you mean ‘Wipp Billiams’!”
“Yes, well, he’s the bellhop here, alive and, more or less, well, while Charles Snede—”
“You mean, ‘Charles Williams’.”
“No, Charles Snede is the dead man.”
“Dead man?!”
“Dead?!” Bartoff shouted.
Pluck seized his magnifying glass and rushed over, pushing the porters to either side, to grab Larry by the back of his neck and shove his implement against his nose. He looked him all over the face, then threw him to the floor, turning and declaring: “This boy is alive!”
“This boy is Larry, Lawrence, Williams!” Enid cried. “Charles Snede is the dead clerk!”
Pluck looked at Larry, aghast. He turned to the others; then to Bartoff, seeking some sympathetic face. Bartoff smiled; Pluck smiled back. He strolled over to that gentleman, grasped his hand, and they shook, to acknowledge the mutual understanding they enjoyed; an understanding at once deep, poignant—and humane. The others in the room delighted in this expression of friendship. Then Pluck turned, walked magnanimously over to Larry, drew him up off the floor, and shook his hand—with the very same hand.
“I congratulate you, my young foe,” Pluck said. “You’ve had wits enough about you to avail yourself of a technicality—and thereby evade the firing squad. Very good. In other words, you’ve bought yourself a few more hours this side of the grave. I advise you seek to enjoy them.” He turned to his co-investigators: “We will reconvene tomorrow at dawn. No, not dawn; let’s say ten AM. Make that eleven—sharp.” And he turned, opened the door, and bore his dignity out of their presence.