Chapter Twenty-One
Chaos notwithstanding, the evening entertainment carried on unabated. The number of partaking guests had considerably thinned, owing to the increasing number of suspects incarcerated in their rooms, plus those in fear of bumping into the dutiful inspector and suffering the volatile brunt of his lust for justice. As in times of war, there could be felt in the air of the ballroom a maniacal casting-off from the pier of the known, a bonfire of inhibition; to confuse the metaphors a little more, we might say that the guests’ only recourse in finding themselves coughing blindly in this smoke of unbearable tension was to lash out a grasping hand, into the murk, in the hope of coming into contact with another sufferer and thereby effecting a sort of fellowship—if they were to be lost forever in the fog, at least they could draw some comfort from the reflected horror in each other’s eyes, whilst they drift off into the cackling jaws of oblivion.
Nota bene that we might say that; in fact, we do not.
In any event, Pluck, to the strains of a small quartet, entered the ballroom in top hat and black evening dress, twirling a cane which took no time at all in smashing several glasses full of champagne on several waiters’ trays, the shards from which glasses streaked across the room, puncturing various body parts, drawing screams in tandem with blood, with the result that only a few seconds after Pluck’s elegant entrance, most of the guests were huddling on the floor as if in the aftermath of a bomb blast. A pool of communal blood mixed with champagne expanded across the dance floor. Profane invective was shot back at Pluck, in lieu of glass shards, as guests and staff saw to the wounded. Pluck, still standing in the doorway, viewing this writhing, bubbling bloodbath before him, turned around and headed back to his room, his cane having missed not a twirl.