Chapter Sixteen
Pluck’s mid-morning nap bled into the afternoon, and after an argument with the waiting staff that necessitated several re-orderings of his meal, the intrepid investigators—Miss Trojczakowski, Mister Bartoff and our hero himself—reassembled in the interview room. Enid handed Pluck the register of guests, as if to say, “Whom shall we summon next?” But Pluck looked at the paper, held it away from himself and asked, in distaste: “What am I expected to do with this?!”
“I thought you might like to choose the next guest to summon,” Enid explained.
“Ah! Very good idea.” He took her hand, which had been minding its own business on the table, gave it a friendly squeeze, then returned to the business to which they were so eminently suited. “There is an old lady—” he began.
“‘From Doncaster’?” Bartoff cut in. “I think I know this one!”
“No, there is an old lady, in this hotel, wily and bearing about her body an odour which is extremely offensive to the cultivated nostril, abetted by a vicious clump of fleas she calls a dog, an anarchist, in fact—the lady, I mean, not the dog, though it’s only to be presumed that it’s in on it too—”
“Do you mean the lady who embarrassed you last night in the ballroom?” Enid asked.
“I hardly think she embarrassed me!” Pluck begged to differ. “Although I’m not too proud to admit that she has, for the moment, escaped my clutches. That will end now. What is her name, please?”
“I believe she is Madame Tautphoeus,” said Bartoff.
“Highly unlikely, given that she’s really a young lad of, say, twelve, but it does not surprise me that she’d be bold enough to go by such a tasteless alias. Ring for my mate Larry, and have her shown in.”
The lady in question shortly arrived, sweeping into the room with a dramatic show of dignity. Her face was long, and frankly boring. She boasted an improbable mane of soot-black hair. A network of fat-folds drooped from her cheeks, jowls and underarms like hammocks sagging with the weight of obese sheikhs belching forth the gaseous spirits of semi-digested chickens. She wore an intimidating business suit, with the barest hint of fringe suggesting a feminine tenant. Her hand had been re-bandaged; the other held an ear-trumpet to her distinguished ear. She held herself erect, like a swollen penis, as if prepared for battle.
“Kindly do not take that tone with me, madame,” said Pluck in a most refined fashion.
“I have not said a word,” she protested with practised calm.
“Still. I beg you to preserve the proprieties of civilised discourse.”
“I do not believe I have violated those proprieties,” she insisted on contradicting him.
“All the same. I trust you will take care not to do so in the future—or else, and this I promise you: it will go very, very, very, very, badly. For you. Very.” After a pause of some seconds, he concluded: “Very.”
“Are we through, then, monsieur?” inquired the formidable lady, eyes ablaze.
“Yes. Have a good day,” said Pluck; the lady exited, and he returned to his papers.
Enid whispered to him: “Are you sure you don’t wish to question her?”
Pluck considered. “Perhaps that would be for the best.” To Bartoff: “Bring her back.”
Bartoff leapt up, bounded to the door, tore it open and returned in a trice with Madame Tautphoeus by the arm.
“Unhand me!” she requested.
“Please shut up,” said Pluck.
“Shut up!” shouted Bartoff.
She shrugged him off and resumed her dignified posture before them, raising the trumpet to her ear. Bartoff wiped the sweat off his face with the collar of his jacket and sat down again next to Pluck.
“You may sit,” said Pluck.
“Pardon, monsieur?”
Pluck sighed.
“Sit down!” Bartoff thundered.
The lady sat.
“Now—” Pluck began, but was interrupted by a scratching from the door. “Is that a ghost?” he wondered aloud; an unease crept visibly over his features.
“I suspect that is this lady’s dog,” suggested Enid.
Pluck nodded to Bartoff: “Kill the dog.”
“No!” screamed Madame Tautphoeus, rising at once, after she’d just settled herself so comfortably in that nice chair. Bartoff stormed past her, knocking her to the floor, reached the door, pulled it open, picked up the Pekingese, took one look at it, and—fell in love.
“Little sweetie!” he beamed, and buried his face in its fur. The dog, forming an equally immediate infatuation, requited his love unconditionally. The sight of the big bearded man and the tiny fluffy creature mutually nuzzling each other infused delight into the hearts of Enid and Madame Tautphoeus, but a black dagger into Pluck’s.
He rose. “I said ‘kill it’!” he commanded.
“No!” shouted Bartoff, and the whole room fell silent at this unprecedented breach of discipline.
“Did you say ‘No’?!” asked Pluck in disbelief.
“No,” growled Bartoff, licking the dog’s face.
“Yip!” yipped the dog, as if in firm support of the ethical stance adopted by his new best friend.
“Very well.” Pluck lowered himself, with precision and control, back into his seat. “We shall revisit this issue one day, my friend. And of the three of us, only two shall remain this side of the Styx.”
Pluck, Enid and Madame Tautphoeus watched Bartoff chase the little dog around the room, giggling hysterically, then switching round so that the dog chased him. An hour passed while the big man taught the little dog to sit up and shake his hand. Bartoff laughed, delightedly, each time this was achieved, no matter how often. The others grew bored, Madame Tautphoeus included. She, Pluck and Enid ended up playing several rounds of whist before Bartoff and the dog, both exhausted, lay on their backs on the floor, side-by-side, panting and smiling at each other.
“Are you quite through?” asked Pluck.
Bartoff did not answer.
“Mister Bartoff?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon—I thought you were speaking to Sam.”
“Who is Sam?”
Bartoff laughed. “Why, Sam is my friend—the dog!”
“Her name is Millicent,” Madame Tautphoeus corrected.
“I say ‘Sam’,” Bartoff growled at her. He turned to the dog. “Are we through, then, Sam? Hm? Are we quite through?” He nuzzled its nose with his own.
The three others sighed, to no avail. Bartoff hugged his friend; a tear trickled down the man’s cheek. He muttered words of love.
“Whatever happened to your eyelashes?” Madame Tautphoeus suddenly asked of Pluck.
“It’s no business of yours!” Pluck retorted, and dramatically swept the cards off the table (he’d been losing). “Mister Bartoff, will you please resume your seat, and your duty.” Bartoff reluctantly went back to his chair, carrying the dog and placing it in his lap. He stroked it lovingly throughout the following.
Pluck cleared his throat, twice. “Madame.” He stared at her. She held the trumpet to her ear, so there could be no question of her not having heard. He saw he had no choice but to clear his throat a third time, and repeat: “Madame.”
“Yes?”
“Have you no answer to my question?”
“I was not aware you had posed a question, monsieur.”
He shrugged, and looked to the others with a sly smile. “I presumed my question was implicit, madame.”
“I’m afraid your nuances are too subtle for my understanding, monsieur.”
“By that you mean to imply that you are an idiot, madame?”
“If you wish to believe that, monsieur, I cannot stop you.”
“You certainly cannot stop me from thinking you an idiot by babbling such incoherent stupidity as that, madame; you are perfectly correct.”
“So will you do me the honour of stating your question explicitly, monsieur?”
“Eh? What’s that—what did you say?”
Madame Tautphoeus pursed her lips, then repeated: “I asked if you would state your question explicitly.”
“And what question was that, madame? Pray hold your tuba tighter to your ear so that you might glean at least a modicum of our conversation, and thereby strive to waste a little less of my time than you already have, if you please.”
“You implied that you had a question to ask me, monsieur.”
Pluck shrugged and looked to the others with a laugh; but Enid was shaking her head and looking at the table, while Bartoff was tickling the mutt under its chin. “I implied no such thing, you old bat,” Pluck replied with perfect politeness. “Are you sure you have that saxophone facing the right way?”
“To what do you wish me to respond, then, monsieur?”
“What’s that?”
“What do you want to know?!”
Pluck smiled at the old woman. “Losing our temper, are we, Madame Towfeese?” To Enid, he leant and whispered: “We’ve got her now.” He then addressed the old woman again, saying, looking down at his shirt cuffs, which he pulled out a bit from his jacket while speaking, “Since you mention it, I do have but one question for you.”
“And what is that, monsieur?”
“Why did you murder Lawrence Ipp Illiams?”
“Murderer!” Bartoff screamed, and threw the dog at her; it hit her in the face, then tumbled, unhurt and rather amused, to the floor, where it dashed right back over to Bartoff and back onto his lap.
“Who is Lawrence Ipp Illiams?” she asked.
“Not ‘Ipp Illiams’, you cretin!” Pluck sneered. “I said ‘Gipp Gilliams’!”
“Well then who is Lawrence Gipp Gilliams?”
“Don’t you mean ‘Charles Snede’?” Enid gently intervened.
“Ha! Don’t be absurd!” laughed Pluck.
“Absurd!” shouted Bartoff.
“Charles Snede is my friend the bellhop,” Pluck continued, “and, when all this nonsense is over, my apprentice, and, I hope, I dare to hope, one day, my adopted son.”
“I fear you have it backwards,” Enid smiled kindly at him.
“He’s going to adopt me?”
“No—I meant you have the names backwards.”
Pluck looked at her in some dismay. “You mean. . .?”
“That’s right.”
“His name is really. . .?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“‘Snede Charles’?”
“May I be excused?” asked Madame Tautphoeus.
Pluck sighed, and turned to her with a great show of impatience. “If you need to relieve yourself, madame—as it seems you endlessly, tirelessly need to do—I suggest you use the carpet in that corner of the room. Practically everybody else does.”
“I meant that as I clearly have nothing worthwhile to offer this investigation—”
“Madame,” Pluck began in an oft-assumed tone of patronising explanation to those untrained in the criminological sciences, “the legal name of the victim of a murder makes no substantive difference to the case. I am still waiting—we are all waiting—” Here the dog yapped, as if to include itself in Pluck’s statement. “—Thank you, yes—we are all waiting for you to confess to the murder and explain your sordid motives, which presumably involve, because it seems to be a continuous motif running through your life, the toilet.”
The light from the fireplace sank her face into a series of shadows underpinning her various folds of flesh, and yet, whilst wilting under Pluck’s imperial gaze, she returned him glare for glare with a repugnant impudence. “Monsieur, I have not understood a word you’ve said.”
Bartoff took that as his cue to hurl the dog to the floor, jump up, knock over the table, seize the end of Madame Tautphoeus’s trumpet and shout therein: “You’re always in the toilet and you’ve killed a bellhop! Now ’fess up!”
The pop that resulted first caused Enid and Pluck to recoil, assuming it to have been Madame Tautphoeus’s flatulent reaction to her precious ear-instrument having been thus molested, until the lady’s screams, and the blood which proceeded to pour from her ear, down the tube of the trumpet and onto Bartoff’s just-polished shoes (black, dandy, bought one grey afternoon in Minsk’s answer to Saville Row), convinced them that the pop had in fact been the explosion of her ear drum. Enid, anyway, explained this to him.
“A drum and a trombone—half a band, that,” Pluck smiled to Enid, upon turning to her chair, but she had already hopped up and was tending to the weeping old woman.
“Pathetic!” Bartoff was screaming down at the rumpled heap that she now was on the floor.
“You beast!” Enid cried to him.
“She’s never deserved the likes of Sam!” he shot back. “Sam’s mine! He’s my boy!”
“He’s a girl!” the good lady Tautphoeus wept, huddled ignobly on the floor, blood ejaculating out of her ear.
Enid stroked her hair—on the side of her head whence blood was not flowing, of course—and looked from Bartoff to Pluck. “You’re cruel, both of you!” she cried. “How could you be so horrible?”
“She insulted me first!” Pluck protested, now standing on the table for some reason. “She called me a Snede!”
“She did not! Snede is the dead man!”
Pluck looked thunderstruck—he fell from the table and struck the floor on the side of his head, reopening his gash; the blood spurted into the pool of Madame Tautphoeus’s ear’s blood, two streams ferrying genetic material from two very different people into the one, collective ocean of humanity.
“Larry is dead?! My apprentice—my child?!” He ran to the snacks table to find a knife with which to avenge himself on the dastardly Madame Tautphoeus, could find none, so grabbed a loaf of bread and hurled it with all his might at the foul creature on the floor; it missed, and hit Enid in the face.
“Miss Trojczakowski—I beg your pardon.” Pluck bowed. The dog, Millicent/Sam, had found where the bread had bounced and nibbled it. Ever loyal, it dragged the loaf to Bartoff, who received it gratefully and took a bite.
“Lovely,” Bartoff opined. He broke off a hunk and proffered it around. “Inspector? Miss Trojczakowski? Murderess? Anyone?”
Pluck marched over to Madame Tautphoeus and yanked her up off the floor. “You did this as revenge, didn’t you?” he snarled. “To punish me for exposing your disgraceful sojourn in the men’s room! You figured you’d hurt me where I’d feel it most, my sole point of weakness—my child!” He was foaming at the mouth.
“Leave her alone, you brute!” Enid pushed him away. Paying her no mind, he reached down, grabbed a handful of half-chewed bread and shoved it into the dignified old woman’s mouth; she spat it back onto his face; he felt unexpectedly aroused. “Again!” he ordered, shoving more bread in her mouth; she complied, and when this second lot of saliva-soaked gluten adorned his face, he smiled with glee at the discovery of a new fetish. His mind reeled with visions of fat ladies rolling around in the nude in the friendly company of our dashing hero, all of them covered in soggy bread. “The world truly is a wondrous thing,” he mused aloud. He turned to Enid: “Don’t you think?” He turned to Madame Tautphoeus: “Don’t you agree?”
She returned him a glare of resentful (for some reason) determination: “When we are free from this farce, I shall have the police on you!”
Pluck stood up and dusted himself off with his palms (though he left the wet bread on his face just where it was). “You shall have every opportunity of finding yourself in the company of the police, madame. For I shall see you under arrest for the murder of Larry Bipp Snede.” To Bartoff: “Take her away.”
Bartoff handed Enid the dog. “Here, watch Sam.” And he hauled the dignified gentlewoman over his shoulder and out the door.