Chapter Twenty-Five
“After that pointless conversation with the manager, I’m afraid we’ll only have time for one more interrogation before this evening’s festivities,” Pluck informed Enid and Bartoff once he’d returned to the interview room. Bartoff, who had reclaimed his mutt, licked the dog’s fur and whispered sweet notions in its ear, while Enid related to Pluck a disturbing event:
“Inspector, I was loitering in the lobby just now, and I came upon a most unsavoury character.”
“By ‘character’, Miss Trojczakowski—”
“He was in the uniform of the hotel. A porter, I think, though I had not seen him before.”
“Can you describe him to me, please, Miss Trojczakowski? Spare me no details, and take as long as you need.”
Enid launched into a forensically precise visual chronicle of the man’s face, figure, mannerisms and expression. In her excitement, her mouth destabilised into a lopsided O, Pluck noticed, revealing disturbingly wonky teeth. It was these details—the awkward shape of her mouth, and the off-putting alignment of her teeth—which captured Pluck’s complete attention.
When she finished, she closed her mouth, in order to signal to her interlocutor that it was his turn to respond, and this clamping-shut of the object of his meditation reminded Pluck that, indeed, she would be awaiting a reply.
“Pardon, Miss Trojczakowski. Could you repeat what you just said, please?”
Enid looked at him for a moment, then repeated her remarks in their entirety, with the addition that, now that she’d rehearsed them, some minor, less salient details which had escaped her conscious attention upon viewing the individual she sought to portray peeped out like bubbles of mortar from between heavy bricks, as it were, in the description she was eagerly erecting, and made themselves known; she duly related these too. But this time, Pluck could not keep his eyes off a certain patch of fuzziness he discerned on the surface of her tongue, as it flapped within her open mouth. It must have been some effect of the firelight, he reasoned, which hit a pasty coating over that organ and rendered it rather woolly.
“What do you think?” she concluded. “Should we try to determine who this man might be? So that we may interview him, as soon as we can?”
“I must apologise, Miss Trojczakowski, but I haven’t heard a word you’ve said, preoccupied as I have been with the shape of your mouth, the disarray of your teeth and a certain fuzziness that appears to be covering your tongue.”
Her mouth shut on the instant, with a rapidity to rival the instantaneous closing of a bear trap—only, in this case, to be absolutely precise with my metaphor (or is it rather a simile? With “rival”, as with “appear”, “resemble” and the like? It appears to me to stumble somewhere in the no-man’s-land between the two, perhaps; you’re no doubt expecting me to know, and I can feel your scalding, contemptuous judgement from all this way away, fictitious narrator or not, but I’m a writer, not a university professor, for God’s sake, having plumped for the politically incorrect kayak foundering forgot in tempest-toss’d seas over the alumni-endowed luxury liner cruising smoothly ’twixt triggers through safe-spaced straits. So I’ll duly pass the ball—which is it? Qualified readers, please write care of the publisher and confirm); that is, to be absolutely precise with my instance of figurative language, I was saying, make it a bear trap closing with no bear in it; perhaps tricked by the wind, or tripped by an invisible fairy, or some such; in this, as in most things, I simply do not know.
“Ahh!” realised Pluck, who, applying his masterful deductive faculties, perceived at once his colloquist’s embarrassment. “You are uneasy with the perspicacity of my remarks! I see. But fear not, my dear: there’s no need for you to apologise. As a woman, you naturally aren’t used to hearing plain truths, perennially absorbed as your sex is in face powder, stupidly frilly undergarments and other solipsistic means of cloaking reality.”
“You, sir, are a swine!”
Pluck stepped back, as if he’d been struck. “I feel duty-bound to inform you, mademoiselle, that in Greece, it is considered an insult to compare a gentleman to a pig. If I weren’t certain you hadn’t understood that—”
“A swine and an idiot!”
Pluck stepped back again. “You might also be intrigued to learn, mademoiselle, that in most countries that employ ‘idiot’, its cognates or some term of similar meaning, it, too—”
“And a bastard!”
Pluck stepped back again, this time tripping over the dog, who’d been scampering about with Bartoff; Pluck collapsed to the floor, earning an angry yip from Sam and a reopened gash on the side of his face. Blood burst onto the floor and the dog.
“Forgive me,” said Enid from above him, “but I realised I’d forgotten to add ‘scoundrel’!”
“There is no need to apologise, mademoiselle,” Pluck insisted, clambering to a stand and attempting to stem the streams of blood, “as we’ve already established that you certainly have no idea what it is you are saying.”
Enid stormed out of the room, with a couple of thunderbolts hurled over her shoulder, and slammed the door. Pluck sighed, and looked over to Bartoff, who was feverishly licking the blood off his beautiful boy. “Sam! Sammy! Are you all right?” the big man asked. The mutt yipped playfully, having a grand old time.
Pluck had his wound seen to by several members of staff, then, bearing a new bandage, he resumed his duties in the interview room, explaining to Bartoff, who was half-listening whilst stroking Sam, that he, Bartoff, would have to redouble his vigour in assisting with the case, for the duration of Miss Trojczakowski’s indisposition.
Pluck had Benjamin MacBitty, a small Scotsman with a patchy beard and a suspicious frown, brought in.
“Mister MacBitty,” Pluck began.
“What happened to your eye?” queried the gentleman.
“You refer to the absence of lashes on one side, I presume?”
“Aye! How did it happen, I’m wondering. Were you born that way, did Fate deal you an accident, or is it just a trick of the light?”
“To tell you the unvarnished truth, Mister MacBitty, I burned off all my eyelashes some years ago whilst flying too close to the sun, and have only, on my modest inspector’s salary, managed to save enough for one side’s worth of false lashes for the time being. Now please, take a seat.”
“But why didn’t you wait till you’d saved for the lot? It looks pretty queer the way you’ve got it now, I’ve got to tell you.”
“I’ve always operated on the principle that some eyelashes are better than no eyelashes. If you devote some thought to it, monsieur, I’ve no doubt that you, as a man of the world, will reach the same conclusion.” As if it had needed to be proved that Pluck was a master of subterfuge, here was the proof. “Please, sir, won’t you sit down?”
But MacBitty remained standing, leaning this way and that, peering with undisguised curiosity at Pluck’s eyes—first the left, then the right, then, naturally, the left again. It went on that way for some time.
“Please sit,” repeated Pluck.
“Sit down!” Bartoff finally interpreted, at his usual volume, necessitating the interviewee’s immediate occupation of the seat.
Pluck looked through his papers, moving his eyes over the words without reading any of them, before raising his face and asking: “Did you kill Charles MacWilliams?”
“No, sir, I did not.” The flickering light of the fire enhanced the dignity of his small frame, investing his arms with a round solidity, and his torso with a taut toughness. His jaw was set in an uncompromising rigidity, indicative of a man who knew himself, knew his past, and could not have forgotten if he had of late taken another man’s life.
“Are you certain?” Pluck persisted, in order to strain every last possibility.
“I am,” MacBitty confirmed.
Pluck nodded. “Then I am satisfied.” He rose. “You may go—and I hope you will enjoy the remainder of your holiday.”
MacBitty stood, bowed to Pluck, bowed to Bartoff, and left the room.