Chapter Nineteen
Sure enough, Mister Drig came in, about the height of his wife, somewhat stout, and accompanied by an unwarranted grudge. Pluck immediately noticed that this man’s mouth was not the sort about which a poem would ever threaten to be composed. Hence, Pluck reasoned, the grudge. Here was a man, he nodded sagaciously to himself, who truly felt his inadequacy when compared to his wife, whether in the realm of ethics, strength of will, or oral beauty.
Pluck decided to ask him outright: “Will you seriously have us believe, sir, that a poet has ever scribbled the barest verse on the pitiable subject of your mouth?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Did any bloke ever write a poem about your mouth?!” Bartoff shouted.
“Er. . .no. Why do you ask?”
“What was that?” asked Pluck, already weary of this man’s incessant questions.
“Why do you ask?” Drig repeated.
Pluck struck the table with the flat of his hand, as if to say: What did I tell you?! “A meaningless question,” he judged, “with no grammatical or semantic sense whatever.”
“But, didn’t you say something about a poem?”
“Enough!” Pluck shouted. “Kindly sit down.”
Drig did so, to Pluck’s annoyance. This annoyance spread over his face, perfectly visible to Drig, and so, as Pluck declined to say any more for some moments—let’s say, half a minute to forty-five seconds—Drig felt himself justified in asking, “Is something the matter, Inspector?”
“Eh? What’s that—what did you say, man?”
“You seem a mite perturbed, sir.”
Pluck stared at him, hard—as he had once done, when a lad, in a concentrated, but ultimately failed, attempt to move the urn containing his grandfather’s ashes, by thought alone, from one end of the parlour to the other—then shook his head, and admitted, with some nostalgia: “Grandad will never budge without two hands to move him. Stubborn as a constipated mule in death, as in life.”
“I’m sorry?”
“What did you say?”
“I said that you seem a mite perturbed.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir. Just what are you trying to get at?”
Drig leant forward—he was intent on seeing this thing through, no matter how unpalatable to all. “An annoyance, sir—you look like you’re exceedingly annoyed, and I just wonder if it’s on account of something I’ve done.”
“Well, since you mention it, mmmbmbmbmm”—the rest of what Pluck had to say was mumbled so low that no one could catch it.
“Come again?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t hear what you said,” Drig explained.
“What who said?”
“You. Inspector.”
“Ah. Me. I see.” Pluck leant back in his chair and sized this fellow up. “. . .I see. . .”
Drig crossed his legs and looked back. “What do you see?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“What do you see?”
Pluck looked a little put out by the question. “. . .I’m not going to tell you,” he finally said. “And I can’t say that I know why I’m even putting up with this line of questioning from you—after all, I’m not the one under investigation for murder here.”
“Who’s under investigation for murder?” asked the impudent man.
“Ah—wouldn’t you like to know!” cried Pluck, looking with significance at Enid, whose face was buried in her hands, then at Bartoff, whose face was buried in his dog. With nobody left to face but Drig, Pluck duly looked in that direction, and said to him, “You said a moment or two ago that you thought you saw a pall of annoyance cross my face—is that right?”
“It is.”
“Could you please answer the question.”
“Yes.”
“Please answer the question.”
“Haven’t I?”
“Haven’t you what?!” Pluck was growing exasperated.
“Haven’t I answered your question?”
“What question was that?!”
“Whether I said that you looked annoyed?”
“Well what about it?!”
“I said that I had.”
Pluck balled his teeth and gritted his fists—sorry, I got that wrong-way round. Enid placed a hand on his arm to steady him, wholly without, I can tell you plainly, erotic intent. With magnificent self-control, Pluck took a deep breath, relaxed his hands, and held up his unfisted fingers, palms-out, then palms-in, for all who wanted to see, to see. “I was annoyed,” he finally confided, “because you saw fit to sit yourself down without having been invited to.”
“But you did invite me to,” Drig protested, pointlessly. “I distinctly remember you asking me to sit down.”
“Well, you may have thought that’s what you heard, but did it ever cross that thick Cro-Magnon skull of yours that I might have been speaking to somebody else?”
“No, as a matter of fact, it didn’t, seeing how all the other people in the room were already seated.”
That was about as much as Pluck could stand. He stared at the man, hard; he gave him a good, hard stare; good and hard, I say, like a sock in the jaw, only instead of a fist, he used his eye, and instead of contact, there was no contact, and instead of damage being done, no damage was done, and instead of something being accomplished, nothing was accomplished, etcetera, etcetera. He even stood up, a little, from his seat, so as to be able to crank up the ferocity of his stare all the harder.
“Do I look like I’m sitting?” he finally asked.
“Not now,” returned Drig, “but we were talking about earlier on.”
Drig sat in a glow of ostensible calm. The light from the fire tickled his rather imposing moustache, amplified the natural ruddiness of his bulbous cheeks, and jabbed, in rhythm to the crackling of the logs during the interminable pauses between Pluck’s outbursts, at his expansive hips.
“And so time is a simple, linear thing to you, is it, you muck-headed dolt?!” Pluck shouted. The inspector’s small head was shaking with indignation; Enid, looking on, feared it would get swallowed up by his neck.
Drig squinted at Pluck, and asked, “See here, my good inspector—what’s going on with that eye o’ yours?”
“What do you mean?” asked Pluck in a sudden panic. He blinked, first one eye, then the other, then both in tandem, and then neither, to ensure that both of the vessels for the miracle of sight with which he’d been blessed at birth remained in the sockets for which they were intended.
“Where’d your eyelashes go? You’ve got ’em on the other side—why haven’t you got ’em here?”
Pluck sat back down. “In Greece,” he patiently explained, “all children are required by ancient law to sacrifice the lashes of one of their eyes, through the first half of their life, and then, at the exact midway point of their allotted span, sacrifice the other. I am pleased to inform you that I am not yet at the crest of my hill.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t believe you, but it’s an amusing tale, anyway.”
“Have you any proof of your marriage?! No?! Why not?! Why not?!” Pluck hurled these interrogative bombs at his opponent with merciless precision.
“I have our marriage certificate, of course.”
“That’s no proof! Where’s the proof?! The proof?!”
“Where’s your proof?!” Bartoff finally shouted, having looked up for the first time in a while when he heard raised voices.
“Curtis, remember your promise,” Enid whispered.
“This blackguard is masquerading as a married man!” Pluck explained to her eagerly. “It’s all a lie! He hasn’t even met Miss Drig, let alone usurped her at the altar and committed conjugal intercourse with her!”
“I have a marriage certificate,” Drig repeated, “but not with me, of course.”
This was a detail upon which Pluck seized. “And why not?! Why not?!”
“Why not?!” thundered Bartoff.
“I wasn’t aware it was necessary to take on holiday.”
“Liar!” screamed Pluck.
“Curse you!” screamed Bartoff.
“Well, if you really want proof, just take a look at my children,” offered Drig.
“I’ll require proof of the paternity of each of your alleged children,” Pluck spat with distaste.
“I’m afraid I carry no such proof in my wallet.”
“All the worse for you, then, my friend.”
“All the worse for you!” echoed Bartoff.
“Tell me about your wife’s mouth.” Pluck thrust that question at him like a kick at one’s opponent’s legs to sweep him to the floor before proceeding to crush him.
“Pardon?”
“Her mouth: its uses: respiratory, cibarious and amatory.”
“Look here, sir!”
“Where else would I look, my good man?”
“I don’t like the tone of your questions!”
“And I don’t like the tone of your murder. I charge you with the unlawful killing of Lawrence Dripp Drig, a crime of revenge you committed, as you’ve just now managed to prove, when you discovered he had enjoyed the sensual discharge of his procreative fluid down the gullet of your so-called wife.”
“Heathen!” boomed Bartoff, who, by Pluck’s order, took Mister Drig away.