Chapter Twenty-Eight
Pluck slept in the following morning, and roused himself for lunch. The lunchroom was full of activity, but Pluck, resplendent in smoking jacket and slippers, noticed none of it. Aloysius, having drawn the shortest stick a few moments before, came over to inquire as to the inspector’s wishes. Pluck ordered orange juice, eggs, toast, sausages, crepes, fruit, fish and cheese, and proceeded to leave it untouched, save for the toast. He’d brought with him a children’s magazine, with amusing drawings, silly witticisms and the odd sanitised limerick. He chuckled in whimsy, munched his toast and bothered not a soul.
In the corner of the room, Betsy Drig leant over her table, pen in hand, mouth screwed up in concentration, as she added to her scroll. She shouted to her brothers, now and again, who were playing a few feet away, for help, but they ignored her.
Aloysius and two other waiters served customers, steering clear of Pluck’s table.
The Lapin-Défunts dined in silence. Madame had perfected the art of lowering her teacup to its saucer without the slightest clank, and was practising this talent. Monsieur pretended to study some official documents, but was really lamenting his conjugal state and lusting after Rosella, the back of whose head at the next table over was visible to him each time he shifted his papers.
Rosella nibbled on a thin wafer, shifting her other hand further along the table each time Genevra, across from her, sought to brush her own fingers against it. The model stared at the window, which was nigh-filled with snow, and thought on death, and how a death that came with one’s frozen carcass in the snow might prove one of the pleasanter paths to oblivion.
Bartoff, baby-cooing enthusiastically, was trying to feed Sam a grapefruit, but the dog was having none of it.
Four businessmen who had finished their dining now played a hand of cards. Each devoted the greatest concentration to his task. Nearby, their wives gossiped euphemistically about how feeble was each of their husbands in bed.
At the other end of the room, a middle-aged Portuguese flipped casually through a Bible, his droopy-lidded eyes threatening sleep at every turn.
Frau Hühnerbeinstein consumed a whole loaf of bread, two plates of meats and half an orange, and yet, satisfaction made no inroads into her soul.
The coronel had got up when Pluck had entered, then hid behind a pillar and exited without being seen.
It was a peaceful, civilised lunch for all concerned. No one was tripped, or injured, or threatened, or confined to one’s room. It would have constituted a holiday bordering on normality, at some other hotel in some other land, where the guests did not include a Mister Thaddeus Pluck, who had been kept in Greece on police business, or even had not been born at all; it was a scene indicative of a world turning round with nary a bump, and thus not a suitable subject for this book.