Chapter Thirty-Two
“What a waste of time!” Stoupes remonstrated, striding down the corridor in his robe, Poor Larry struggling to keep up by his side.
“I’m so sorry, monsieur, but you see it couldn’t be helped.”
“The very idea! A valise of papers hinting that I’m some sort of traitor to the international order—why, it’s the most clear-cut case of forgery one could imagine. As if I were a spy!”
“I’m devastated to have woken you with a sense of alarm over nothing, monsieur.”
Stoupes, reaching the door to his room, shrugged. “It’s all right, really. I know it wasn’t your fault. I can guess quite well who was behind this latest scene in this ongoing farce.” He blinked, remembering something. “And I had just stumbled upon a most delicious dream, too. . .”
He shut the door in the face of the bowing Larry, and proceeded into his bedroom, where, after nearly colliding with a chest of drawers which stood almost in the centre of the room, he found a tall, muscular figure in attire traditionally ascribed to the female identity. This being an epoch well in advance of the most microscopic antenatal figment of a gender studies department, Stoupes had no reason to dissociate the notion of female identity from that of a creature biologically nominated a female, but all the same, he was no idiot and so laughed on the instant.
“Pardon me, monsieur—I seem to have wandered into the wrong room!” spoke the delicate lady in ill-disguised stentorian tones.
“No, no, mademoiselle, pardon me; the fault is mine. This is your room, and I was just leaving.” He turned to do so.
“I beg you, monsieur, not to leave a poor, feeble, fragile, aroused creature such as myself all alone.”
Stoupes laughed; his fellow dialogist appeared to take umbrage.
“Is something amusing, monsieur?” His/her lips, violently red, curled up almost into a sneer; his/her beard, pricking through the clumsily applied layers of white face paint, shuddered in inchoate rage.
“No, no, mademoiselle. Pardon me; I’d just remembered a joke a friend of mine told me.”
His guest, resuming their former gaiety, bounced delightedly. “Oh goody! I do love amusements. What was the joke, pray tell?”
“Well—it was actually some time ago when it was told, and I couldn’t promise to accurately remember it, now that I think about it.”
“No, no, monsieur, I insist!” one said. “It’s surely bad enough that you enticed me to your room for, oh, who knows what nefarious purposes, but now to refuse me a giggle!”
“Very well, very well. Please, mademoiselle, won’t you be seated?”
One lowered one’s posterior onto a chair. “Thank you, monsieur,” sie smiled. “Pray continue.”
“Well, I guess I was seven or so when the joke was told me. The sophistication of the joke in question rendered it unintelligible at the time, but just now, having dwelt on it for a couple of decades, I’ve come to understand it.”
“I can see you’ve had a lot of time on your hands!” ze giggled. “But don’t let me stop you.”
“Well, I believe it began with two children climbing a hill to fetch a pail of—water, I suppose.”
“Ah!” ip ejaculated. “Jack and Jill, surely!”
“No, no, it wasn’t quite Jack and Jill. This is quite different, as you’ll soon see. Now. . .where was I, again?”
“The two darlings were headed up the hill.”
“Exactly. The two darlings were headed up the hill—oh, excuse me, I’ve neglected to offer you a drink, Mademoiselle. . .what was your name again?”
“Mademoiselle. . .” thon struggled a little, here. “—Erbershot, of course.”
“‘Mademoiselle Erbershot’, yes, of course. I think I have a little brandy. . .”
“Ooh, yes, please!”
Stoupes poured ver a brandy and offered a cigarette, which tey declined. (tey itself, it should be noted, declines as tey, ter, tem, ters and terself—but you already knew that.)
“Now—you’ll have to keep forgiving me: I’m still a little bleary-eyed, this hour of the morning. As a matter of fact, I was rather rudely woken from bed for—”
“Oh, go on, it doesn’t matter,” e interrupted. Zie crossed eir legs, which rather resembled an extensively arranged series of feline hairballs matted together for some unknown purpose. “And I’ll forgive you anything.” Ou winked, to accentuate the meaning, in case Stoupes could have possibly missed it.
“So, if I’m not mistaken, I was at the part of the tale when the two children had reached the top of the hill. Yes?”
“Quite.” Co downed co’s drink in one.
“Er—would you like another drink?” Stoupes asked the carbon-based Terran with whom he was communicating.
“Please,” jhey replied, holding out xyr glass. Stoupes promptly did the deed (in this context: poured out another drink).
“Anyway, to cut a long story short—”
Bored with the story, and with a cry of desire pitched somewhere between the tonal strata traditionally, and for that reason discriminatorily, segregated into “male” and “female”, the gender-indeterminate individual suddenly leapt up and tried to grab his (Stoupes’) groin.
“Mademoiselle! Please!” Stoupes protested, throwing the personage against the wall. “I flatter myself that I’m a man of some honour, with some understanding of propriety!”
The other person in the room—the one who wasn’t Stoupes—adjusted that person’s (own) dress, and shouted, a little brusquely: “Kindly undress yourself, monsieur, indulge in passionate intercourse with me, and, and. . .” Here mae looked a mite confused, and quickly reached into kirs dress, pulled out a paper, and read therefrom: “‘Kindly undress yourself, monsieur, indulge in passionate intercourse with me, and, while so doing, regale me with details of the murder of Lawrence Wede Snilliams which you are reputed to have committed.’” That said, jee returned the paper to its compartment and adopted a pleasant smile which involved the explicit licking of hume lips with zan tongue.
“That all sounds perfectly delightful, Mademoiselle Erbershot—”
“‘Carolyn’, actually.”
“Mademoiselle Carolyn, but. . .is that your. . .”
“Yes? What is it?”
“You seem to be suffering some. . .some degree of. . .movement. . .there.”
Mademoiselle Carolyn followed Stoupes’s gaze to thaers chest, and couldn’t help but notice one of sheers bosoms moving about. Recalling that this was not a usual phenomenon, lee panicked, and, placing feyr hands upon it, sought to continually shift it back into place. Kye (the person, not the breast) smiled, and explained: “I’ve been having a problem with gas.”
“Ah,” Glen sympathised.
Then, a bark.
“Pardon me, mademoiselle—”
“Yes? Yes? What is it? Yes?” jam asked.
“Was that your breast which just barked?”
Fir giggled, wiping sweat off kyne face; the white face paint peeled right off and stuck to neir hand. “My b-breast? Barking? Ha-ha—don’t be silly, sir! Of course, it was my vagina.”
Stoupes made a decision: he would confess; he would confess all.
“Darling!” He seized the walking ambiguity in his arms. “Of course I killed Snede-Willaims-Sheed-Charles-Villiams-Peed! Isn’t it obvious? I shot him in the elbow, then cut off his head, then sewed it back on and smashed it with a tuning fork, then cut it off and dunked it in a vat of poison I happened to have to hand, then sewed it back on and fed him spoilt milk, and, darling, would you believe it—it was the milk wot did it!”
“Fascinating, fascinating, tell me more!” The object of his affection, whilst moaning under Stoupes’s caresses, scribbled down his disclosure in handsome, non-binary penmanship.
“Will you forgive me my senseless act of homicide, darling? Will you love me after all? Will you make tender, brutal, ferocious, loving love to me, in spite of my sociopathic shortcomings?”
Stoupes, grabbing a buttock in each fist, moved in to ostensibly consummate his threat, when the lovers were interrupted by a sudden noise emanating from behind the chest of drawers. Stoupes pulled aside that object to reveal Pluck, who had, absolutely unplanned, ejaculated—sexually, now, not conversationally—in his trousers, absent any manual stimulation. The inspector leapt out from behind the drawers and, immediately, accused Stoupes thus:
“Mister Stoupes, or, should I say, ‘Mister Murderer’!”
“Forgive me, but what has happened to your trousers, Inspector?”
“I have been having issues with an unpredictable prostate of late—not that it’s any business of yours, you perverted peeping Tim!”
“By that, do you by any chance mean ‘peeping Tom’, Inspector?”
“The Christian name of the peeper hardly makes a meaningful difference, sir!”
“And in what way can I be described as a peeping Tim, pray tell?”
“‘In what way’?! Cannot a gentleman masturbate in his own room without being interrupted by a clumsy farce such as the one you’ve been enacting with that dignified lady over there?!”
“But this is my room, Inspector.”
“Very well! We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt! So, then, the question becomes: ‘Cannot a gentleman masturbate in somebody else’s room without being interrupted by that room’s rightful occupant and his mistress?!’”
For some reason, with a mighty rip in Madame Tautphoeus’s dress, Sam chose that moment to leap out of his master’s bosom, lick his master’s face clean of most of the paint, tear the wig off with his teeth and deposit it proudly at Bartoff’s feet. (So now we can, with the greatest relief, revert to offensive, stereotypical pronomination.)
“Mister Bartoff—pleasure to see you,” greeted Stoupes. The two gentlemen shook hands. “Can I offer you a drink?”
Bartoff looked to Pluck, for permission. Pluck, though fuming, nodded.
“Don’t mind if I do, sir.”
“Inspector?”
Pluck, looking away, nodded.
Stoupes poured, then one more for himself, and the three friends sipped. There was silence for a time, before Pluck came up with:
“Nasty weather.”
“Yes,” Stoupes agreed. “What with being snowed in and cut off from civilisation and all.”
“What do you say, Mister Bartoff?” Pluck inquired.
“Pardon?”
“About the weather,” he clarified.
“Oh. Um. . .rotten.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Stoupes agreed.
“Indisputably,” Pluck full-stopped, and then there was little more to be said.
Pluck and Bartoff thanked Stoupes for the drink, and departed.