Chapter Twenty-Three
When the room had been cleaned, the air freshened and smelling salts shoved against Mister Bartoff’s discerning nostrils, Pluck was sent for. He hadn’t wanted to be disturbed from his meditation on large, naked ladies, but his devotion to his profession was consummate, as anyone lucky enough to have known him would tell you—if you found them, and asked them, and they weren’t busy with something else, and could be bothered, I mean—and so he trudged through the hotel, through the lobby, where various guests, scratching at their bandages, shied away, and into the interview room.
“I trust you’ve recovered from this latest public excretion, Bartoff, eh?” he queried whilst taking his seat.
“Yes, thank you, Inspector.”
“Hm. Perhaps you might like to apologise, to Miss Trojczakowski and myself, for impeding the progress of this investigation through your womanish aversion to what is, after all, a natural bodily function?”
“I apologise.”
“Mm. One might even call it ‘the most natural bodily function’—were one so inclined.”
“Indeed.”
“How one is expected to rank the naturalness of one bodily function vis-à-vis another, exactly, I wouldn’t know. But the fact remains that your cowardly propensity to swoon at the sight of—”
“You are absolutely right, and I apologise.”
“I was not finished, you oaf. The very idea that—”
“Shall we move on, now, Inspector?” wondered Enid.
“No, no, I think I’ve hit on something here, as evidenced by my colleague’s visible discomfort in addressing this issue. Tell me, Bartoff, my good man. . .”
“Yes, Inspector?”
“Curtis, please,” Enid attempted to intervene, though she might as well have saved her breath.
“Do you regularly swoon whilst on your own toilet? After committing the act of expulsion, and rising, and looking down to confirm that, indeed, your own faeces have successfully exited your anus? Tell me, man, tell me!”
“Curtis, please!” begged Enid, but he waved her away behind him, maintaining his bellicose glare at his friend.
Bartoff, scrutinising the polish of the table, beard trembling as his teeth gritted, admitted in a low voice: “I don’t look down.”
“You what?!”
“I never look down.”
Pluck enjoyed a deep sigh of satisfaction, then nodded. “Then it is as I have thought.” He rose from his chair. “Charles Bartoff, I accuse you of the murder of Pierre Emile L’Angelier!”
“Of whom, sir?!” Bartoff wondered.
Pluck whirled to Enid: “Whom did I say?”
“You said ‘Pierre Emile L’Angelier’.”
“Strike that!” he shouted to the non-entity who wasn’t making a non-record. “I meant to say: I accuse you of the murder of Eliza Grimwood!”
“Of whom, sir?”
“Whom did I say?”
“‘Eliza Grimwood’,” Enid answered.
“Arrgh!” Pluck’s fingernails tore into his scalp, scraping off flakes of dandruff which puffed into the air about them. “All right! All right!” He dropped, exhausted, into his chair. “Let’s just forget it. You’re cleared, damn you—you’re cleared.” He picked up the register and, without looking at it, dropped it in front of Enid. “Whom shall we interrogate next? You decide. I don’t care.”
“If it’s up to me, I say we interview Curtis. The porter.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Give me the register!” Enid handed it back, and Pluck let fall his finger onto the name of Aloysius Delphi, waiter.
In seconds, the suspect was before them. The young man stood with professional composure, hands clasped behind his back, his uniform’s buttons straight and shining, his blond, curly hair floating uneasily atop his head, with only an undetectable, sliver’s increase in the latitude of one eyebrow to suggest insubordination (undetectable, but I’m telling you here, so you’ll know).
“What’s your real name?” Pluck began.
“Begging the inspector’s pardon, but ‘Aloysius Delphi’ is my real name.”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear the question. I’ll ask it again: What is your real name?”
“Begging the inspector’s pardon, but perhaps he didn’t hear the answer: It is my real name.”
Pluck nodded. “I see. I see that we’ve chosen not to understand each other. Very good.” He nodded again. “Very good.” Another nod, then: “Well, reasonably good, at any rate.” He nudged Enid. “Hand him a pad of paper.” She did so. “And a pen.” She did so. “And a pencil, in case he prefers pencils to pens.” She did as she was asked. Pluck then commanded the waiter: “Kindly write down on that paper a list of all the people you’ve murdered over the past thirty-six months.” He winked at Enid: “If any of the names on his list match any of the names on this hotel register—we’ve got our man.”
“Pardon me, Inspector,” begged Aloysius.
“Yes?! What is it?!”
“Whatever happened to your eye?”
“I was born eyelash-less, then, a month ago, I rubbed an experimental miracle cream on one lid, and hence, the miraculous results! Now get on with your list!”
“I have completed my list, sir.”
“Eh? Already? Very good—give it here!”
Aloysius handed over his paper, as asked. Seizing it from his hand, Pluck slapped it on the table before him and scuttled his eyes over it eagerly. “What’s this?! There’s nothing written on this paper—it’s blank, man!”
“Yes, Inspector.”
In order to make a display of the extent of his rage, and his contempt for his interrogatee, Pluck swept the paper off the table: it hung for an instant in the air—all watched it with a shared sense of the tragic ephemerality of life—before floating peacefully to the carpet, where it landed without so much as a whisper. In order to now render that rage and contempt into words, so that Aloysius would have no excuse for failing to understand him, Pluck enunciated: “You didn’t write anyone’s name on that paper!”
“That is correct, Inspector.”
“But—why?!?”
“Because I have never murdered anyone, Inspector.”
“Don’t be preposterous!”
“Nevertheless, it is true.”
“But—but—what about Pipp Snede, for one?!”
“Alas, Inspector, that was not I.”
Pluck rose, magnificently. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve never murdered anyone?!” And, to make perfectly clear, he added: “Anyone at all?!”
“That is correct, Inspector.”
“And why not—if it’s not too intimate a question, that is!”
“Certainly not. Put simply, I have never murdered anyone because to do so, even when compelled by one’s primitive urges, which might or might not correspond to diabolical instigation, would be contrary to the law of the land, to millennia-old civil covenant, and to the commandment of our Lord. At least, that is how I was raised to think. I cannot answer for how any other man was raised—Inspector.” It took some effort to keep up such a formal demeanour, when what he really wanted to do was to bugger off and flirt with the female guests; in particular, a suicidal beauty he’d noticed moping around in want of, he presumed, a good helping of the male member. But he tried to imagine what some tiresome ass like Voot would say, and how he’d say it, and affected that he really cared.
Pluck snorted. “I don’t wish to wound your evidently delicate, if not positively effeminate, sensibilities, monsieur, but if I’m going to be honest, I’m forced to inform you that I simply don’t believe you.”
Aloysius nodded his head, once, with a certain briskness, as if acknowledging an expertly articulated order of bloated ortolan stuffed with pickled goose foetus whilst in his day employ as waiter, rather than in his amateur capacity of moralist, then replied: “That is your prerogative.”
Pluck came back with: “I don’t agree that it is.”
“No, Inspector?”
“No. I do not.” Pluck found himself incessantly scratching a space on his neck, although it did not itch, and he could not have told you, had you asked him, why he did so.
“Well, then,” Aloysius reasoned, in a tone quite distinct from that employed when gossiping with his colleagues behind, say, Herr Voot’s back, “if you don’t agree that you have the right to disbelieve me, it would seem to follow that you’re obliged, by whatever rhetorical force to which you pay obeisance, to believe me, after all.”
“If you insist on speaking gibberish, I might as well pair you with Sam and set the two of you the task of talking through the political issues of the day!”
“Pardon me, Inspector, but who is Sam?”
“What?! What’s that?!”
“Who is Sam?”
“Monsieur Bartoff’s dog—obviously!”
“Oh.” Aloysius turned to Bartoff. “Pardon, monsieur.”
“Think nothing of it,” Bartoff muttered, wont as he was to devote his attentions wholly to his aforementioned playfellow, extending a finger with the loving intent of smoothing Sam’s ear. But he looked down: his lap was bare.
Aloysius let his eyelids droop and pictured Bartoff stroking his mutt, then found himself unable to stifle a boyish smile; he wished he could have a dog of his own—someone to love him for who he was, without questions, without conditions, without expectations. Didn’t he deserve that? Would he ever deserve that? What would he have to do? Through how many more hoops would he—Aloysius—have to jump before he’d be rewarded with a tiny crumb from the overstuffed buffet of happiness attended by so many others in the world of a less punctilious mindset than he?
Pluck turned away and gestured unclearly with his hand in Aloysius’s general direction, informing Bartoff in disgust: “The content of his speech indicates without equivocation a toxic degree of criminal insanity. As well, the imprecision of his language suggests a warped and corrupted mind. Plus, I find his manners vulgar. Have him taken away and confined to his room until he sees fit to produce a proper list of his victims.” Then, to the waiter: “That will be all, cretin. Go burn in Hell, and leave me in peace.”
“Where’s my dog?!” Bartoff suddenly screamed.
“Eh?” asked Pluck. “What’s that?”
“What have they done with my dog?!”
“Larry’s taking care of him,” Enid explained.
“But Larry’s dead!” Pluck protested, in sudden alarm.
“They buried Sam with a bellhop?!” screamed Bartoff in disbelief. As a means of expressing his displeasure, he leapt up and punched Aloysius in the face.
“Take him away,” Pluck commanded with the coolest casualness, referring, of course, to the waiter. “And ask that cleaning lady to sweep up the boy’s teeth. The one who doesn’t take shits in corners.”