Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dance that had begun the previous evening, but which had been interrupted at an early stage by the accidental bloodbath occasioned by Pluck’s cane, resumed that night. Into the glittering ballroom, serenaded as if personally for him by a violinist and a violist (Herr Voot and a couple other instrumentalists were confined to their chambers, accounting for the clipped composition of the ensemble), strode our lionheart (I mean Pluck), top-hatted, tailed and this time having left his cane behind.
The room unfolded into great waves of movement, as the beautiful and not impecunious people swept, with the nonchalance and sense of fated purpose of a flood over a shantytown, from one end to the other, chins pointed to the chandeliers, brushing of soles on polished wood and swishing of gowns expanding rhythmically upon the song.
Pluck watched from the side for some time, bored, in all honesty, out of his mind. He craved a canapé he spied on a tray held level by Aloysius across the room, and, without my indulging in unnecessary detail, by the time he’d gone over to grab it and returned to his position by the door, the choreography of the dance had been completely corrupted, a third (I’m estimating here) of the dancers were on the floor—by which I mean, face-down or on their bottoms (yes, “bottoms”)—and Pluck had enjoyed his last morsel of picked crab and was busily licking his fingers. The dance was called off, for the present, and the guests took to milling about, trying to drift away from Pluck, glaring at him and willing him to leave.
But he did not leave. He would not deprive his fellow guests of his conversation and so mingled about, nodding at a gentleman here, bowing to a lady there, shooting an enemy an evil lour or eyeing an acquaintance with renewed suspicion. He chatted, about the weather (more snow), politics (he was years out of date and referred to long-deceased ministers as if they were alive and vigorously conducting foreign affairs) or aesthetics (mispronouncing terms he in any event did not understand, and exhibiting an utter misinterpretation of writers’ and artists’ intent). He dispensed his conversation like bird shit amongst statuary. The statues, it need hardly be said, gained nothing.
Pluck approached Mifkin and interrupted a conversation the manager was having with a septic-mawed old lady. “I wonder, Monsieur Mifkin, why the number of guests seems to have dwindled. Please don’t tell me the divine art of dance is in decline amongst these, the most cultured of the cultured?”
“As I explained earlier, Inspector, many of the guests are confined to their rooms. On your orders.”
“Oh, but I don’t see why they should miss out on the festivity, just because of the case. Why don’t you let them out—just this once?”
“Are you in earnest, monsieur?”
“Well—no, on second thought, we’d better not. We’re talking about vicious murderers, conspirators and assassins here, not your local market pickpocket, after all, ha ha! No, my first instinct, as always, was correct: let them rot.”
Pluck moved on to Bartoff, who had taken his dog as his date, and was now, even in the absence of music, stooped over, holding Sam upright, its hind paws on the large man’s shoes, waltzing him about and loudly humming.
“Bartoff, my good man—enjoying the dance?”
“That I am, Inspector! You see me instructing my son in the ways of the waltz. I came on holiday in search of escape from stifling domesticity, and will return a devoted father! Ha!”
The string players were doodling with some melodies again, and a few couples renewed their dance. Mister and Missus Digby were practising a simple step, counting in tandem under their breaths; a short man with a pointy beard in mis-tailored trousers danced with Frau Hühnerbeinstein, to Pluck’s visible irritation; Rosella, her hand oozed into a long pale glove over the shoulder of Genevra Bergamaschi, who wore a suit, glared at Pluck defiantly. Pluck stared, flabbergasted—there were more than enough unpartnered gentlemen about. Two women. . . When they swivelled, Pluck noted the position of Genevra’s left hand on Rosella’s back, further down than etiquette prescribes, well onto the curvature of her partner’s lower anatomy. A certain vigour amassed in the vicinity of the inspector’s thighs; Genevra, spotting this over Rosella’s shoulder, smirked.
Flush-faced, Pluck turned about to find himself confronting Enid Trojczakowski conversing with Glen Stoupes. Enid glowered at him, while Glen seemed to gain amusement from looking in the direction of the inspector’s groin.
“Good evening, Inspector,” Stoupes said. “Is anything the matter?”
“Why do you ask that, monsieur?”
“It’s just that your tailor seems to have let out your trousers a bit too much. Or are you concealing a rather miniscule policeman’s baton, with which to beat confessions out of your suspects?”
Casually covering his crotch with a plate he whisked from a nearby table, in the process dumping its turkey, potatoes and carrots to the floor, Pluck replied, “I’m afraid that, as usual, I have not a wisp of an idea as to what you are referring, monsieur; but if I may infer from your remarks that you are anxious for your own chance in the suspect’s seat—well, I will see you tomorrow morning.”
“I look forward to it, monsieur.”
“Wait a moment. Did I say ‘tomorrow morning’?”
“You did.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I meant in the afternoon. Or about midday. No, after lunch, whenever that is. When is lunch usually served?”
“Lunch is served promptly at one, monsieur.”
“One in the morning, or in the afternoon? Be clear when you speak to me, cretin!”
“It goes without saying that I mean one in the afternoon, monsieur.”
“It might go without saying to one who shares the same haphazard fund of references as yourself, monsieur, but if the fund of references in question is in fact one affiliated with morons and scoundrels—in a word, with you—then it is a fund of references of which I, for one, wish to have no part,” Pluck spat.
“I understand your feelings entirely, Inspector. But the question remains. . .”
“Yes?! What question is that?! Come—out with it!”
“Well, simply this: At what time do you wish to interrogate me tomorrow?”
“I will see you, promptly, at two!”
“Very good. Is that two in the morning, or afternoon?”
“Argh!” Pluck seriously considered ripping his (Pluck’s) hat from his (Pluck’s) head and starting to chew on it, but recalled at once that it was the only formal hat he’d brought, and its mangled disfigurement would render it truly ridiculous at the next festive engagement—he could imagine his adversaries’ insolent chortling at the bite marks, and his own clumsy fabrication about a mythical bird which crashed through his bedroom window and attacked his eveningwear—while the paperwork which would attend his commandeering of a fellow guest’s top hat, for official police business as it would no doubt be, filled him with greater dread than a hundred Glen Stoupeses could marshal. No, on second thought, he would simply leave his hat where it was—on top of his head.
“Two in the afternoon,” Pluck chose, randomly, then watched his foe’s reaction, on tenterhooks, in case he should have guessed wrong.
“Very good, monsieur,” Stoupes approved, gifting Pluck an enormous sense of relief.
“Very good, indeed. I will bring my baton—and my handcuffs.” Pluck turned to go, placing the plate now over his behind, in case some accident of which he was unaware should have occurred, meaning that his undergarments, or even a portion of his buttocks, was exposed. (They were not.)
He walked away, but Enid came up to him.
“Inspector Pluck,” she began with a formality which injured him.
“I thought you were through with him,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” Pluck hissed, keeping his eyes scanning the room, smiling as if nothing were the matter, “your infidelity.”
“There is nothing of that sort between us, and besides, neither of us is married.”
Pluck shrugged. “You invoke the letter of the law, while I, as always, its spirit.”
“I want to beg you to call off your investigation.”
“And let a kidnapping go unpunished? Ha. I can see that you, like many here, hold justice in contempt.”
“Do you mean the killing?”
“Yes, of course I meant the killing. Why wouldn’t I?”
“But you said ‘kidnapping’.”
“I know what I said, and I know what I mean, which is more than I can say of you, Miss Trojczakowski.”
“I think it would be best if we wait for the snow to clear, and the proper authorities to arrive.”
“But I am the proper authorities, mademoiselle.”
“I think the case might be too much for you to handle on your own.”
“But I have Monsieur Bartoff to assist me. And. . .”
“Yes?”
“Well—I had you.”
Enid peered deep into his little dead-ant eyes, and could not be sure what it was she saw. “If I could have some mediating input. . .I would very much like to rejoin your investigation.”
Pluck’s lip curled. “Is that your version of an apology, Miss Trojczakowski?”
“Call it what you will, Curtis. But I expect my opinions and objections to be taken seriously, and into account. We need to keep the rest of the hotel on our side, you know.”
“I disagree. Villains must be destroyed, and their accomplices whipped.”
“You know it’s not as simple as that. We might very well have but a single criminal amongst us, and the rest are as baffled as we are.”
Pluck laughed. “You have no idea of what you speak. I’ve got the entire case wrapped, saving one or two minor details. It is to the resolution of those details that I turn, and I freely admit that the softer, more emotional and perhaps more subtle, because more devious, approach of a woman might be just the trick to clear it all up.”
Enid broke down her language into chunks, and spoke slowly and clearly, as she did with her students. “I do not want you to need my help because I am a woman, Curtis. I don’t want you to see me as a dress and hair ribbons, floating about without an inhabitant. I want to you recognise me as a human being with a mind, and an ability to speak respectfully and productively with people, an ability which you yourself quite possibly might lack.”
“Er, yes, yes, all that too, of course,” Pluck grumbled, analysing a spot on his shoe that hadn’t been there when Bartoff had shined them yesterday. He’d have to give that man a talking to.
She squeezed his arm, causing his whole body to tense up and freeze into a plank, and whispered: “Then I’ll see you tomorrow at two—partner.”
She went off, and Pluck could relax. He moved on, in a cheerful mood, now, and stopped suddenly before an aged old Spaniard in his military uniform sitting at his table, mouth agape, staring at nothing.
“Eye-Goo, my old friend!” Pluck exclaimed. “Where have you been hiding yourself? I haven’t seen you for ages!”
The inspector, in his excitement at seeing his comrade once again, rushed to extend his hand for hand-shaking purposes, but evidently misjudged the distance and miscalculated the trajectory his hand would take, and thus our hero’s forefinger and middle finger thrust into the coronel’s open mouth; the coronel, alarmed at this unsolicited introduction of a part of Pluck’s anatomy into his orifice, protested, albeit unintelligibly, due to the aforementioned impediment.
“Gldagudaadfhgh!”
“What’s that, you batty, illiterate old fool?” Pluck laughed, and, with his left hand, slapped the coronel amiably on the back, thereby jamming the fingers of his right hand down the pensioner’s throat, where they stuck; the distinguished old gentleman rose, stumbling out of his chair and gagging, retching, exclaiming insensible, semantically implausible scattershots of phonemes, drawing further laughs from his intimate companion. The coronel staggered in an anticlockwise arc, whilst Pluck, playing along, danced in the same direction; round and round they wheeled, like a cog in an intricately designed Swiss watch exploited by theologians for purposes of proving the actuality of the Almighty, the coronel slapping feebly, pathetically, at Pluck’s arm, whilst the strings took up Strauss’s Where the Lemon Trees Bloom, and guests, clapping in festive rhythm, drew near to admire the footwork. But it was over all too soon—too, too soon—as the esteemed old soldier collapsed to the floor, face a dramatic, sublime shade of purple, like that of an autumn dusk slowly shrouding a gathering of mountains, obscuring the lone traveller’s path, clouding the penetration of stars, and distantly hinting at the forthcoming ruthless wrath of the Lord upon His wayward progeny; that, then, was the colour of the coronel’s face as he slipped into unconsciousness and his teeth bit instinctively down upon Pluck’s poor knuckles.
“Ow!” screamed Pluck. “Ow! What the fuck are you doing?!” He appealed to the growing crowd of witnesses: “He’s biting my fingers! He’s trying to sever them from my hand, the villain!”
Pluck kicked impulsively at the heap of unconscious man that was the coronel; he pushed the sole of his shoe against the Spanish gentleman’s reposed face and in that manner tried to leverage his hand out of the coronel’s locked jaws. “Cut off his head!” Pluck screamed. “Cut off his head! It’s the only way!” The inspector wriggled and writhed in pain, tears sprinkling the bystanders, spewing forth a ceaseless stream of profanity at the dastardly coronel whom he’d thought was his friend.
Monsieur Lapin-Défunt, Mifkin, Mister Digby and a few other kind-hearted friends of Pluck stepped in to assist. After huddling for a few moments, they arrived at a plan: a couple held down the coronel to the floor, while the others grabbed Pluck by the waist and shoulders and heaved him back, with force. The jaws held; the fingers remained down the coronel’s throat; the coronel, while still unconscious, vomited, but only thin streaks of his supper (devilled wether lamb’s kidneys) made it past Pluck’s fingers, out of his mouth and onto the floor, Pluck and the gentlemen who were helping; most of it backed up in his throat and caused him to choke and shake violently.
“He’ll die!” a lady screamed.
“I won’t die,” admitted Pluck, “but it’s awfully embarrassing, all the same.”
“He’ll choke to death!” shouted another.
“I’m not choking!” corrected Pluck, a little exasperated, by now, at his fellow guests’ inability to correctly diagnose his concerns. “It’s my fingers that are stuck in this barbarian’s throat! Look closely!”
Despite the valiant exertions of all, the coronel’s head sank limply to the floor.
At once, Bartoff came running up, shoving bystanders aside, and dealt the recumbent head of Coronel Eyague Feosalma such an explosive kick that Pluck’s fingers burst out, the remaining vomit projected onto everybody, the coronel’s teeth fractured into tiny shrapnel which likewise scattered onto everybody, and the aged gentleman was restored to the land of the living.
Amidst general cheers of self-congratulation among the guests, the coronel, head cradled in the exquisite lap of Madame Lapin-Défunt, opened his eyes upon the indignant face of Pluck, and promptly closed them again, begging Death to hurry on its inexorable course to his door.