Chapter Forty-Two
Into the room shuffled the other cleaning lady, the one who was younger and more militant and who, despite her innermost anathema towards the male half of the human race, adhered more rigidly to society’s conventions on the proper time and place for relieving oneself of one’s food waste; the one we took it upon ourselves to dub “Maisie”, but who, it turns out, according to the staff list on the table in front of Pluck, and to the surprise of all, including, astonishingly enough, your usually omniscient narrator, was really named “Annette Godefroi”.
“Thank you for coming. Sit down, now, girl,” Pluck said anyway, seeing no point in over-embellishing the modest dignity of a servant with so ostentatious an adornment as a legal name. “Please state your duties in this hotel.”
“I clean.”
“Very good. Do you enjoy your job?”
“No.”
“Very good. What is your favourite colour?”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
She appeared hard, in the firelight: the flickers continually ventured to dance upon her, but were repulsed, as if by some forbidding pith within her, and so seemed to shudder away, vanquished yet nursing a serious case of sour grapes, leaving her solidly in the dark.
Pluck leafed through his papers, and settled upon something written on one of them. “What is the sum of one thousand six hundred and thirty-seven and one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six?”
Her eyes darted quickly to the cheese knife on the snacks table, then back to him. “I don’t know.”
“But you could work it out,” Pluck led her on.
“I suppose.”
“But you don’t want to?”
“No.”
“I see.” Pluck watched her glance jump to the knife again, then back. He turned to see where she’d been looking. “. . .What was the name of the first Merovingian emperor?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t care?”
“Both.”
“Would you say he was an emperor, or merely a king?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t care?”
“Both.”
“Mm. What if I were to tell you that his name was ‘Snede’?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Okay—we’ll test that. Girl, the name of the first Merovingian king was ‘Snede’.”
She shrugged.
“Now then, tell me: do you care?”
“No.”
“I see.” He watched her eyes flick once more to the knife—but this time, they rested a fraction of an instant longer. (And a fraction of an instant, you don’t need me to tell you, is a very short time indeed.) “What was the name of your first Snede?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“Your first—I’m sorry, did I say ‘Snede’?”
“You did.”
“A thousand pardons! I meant to say, ‘your first lover’.”
“I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.”
“Ah, but this is a criminal investigation into a murder. Were you not aware of that?”
“I was.”
“Very well, then: what was the name of your first Snede?”
“Do you mean, my first lover?”
“Yes, that is what I meant; for that is what I said.”
She shrugged. “I haven’t had any lovers.”
Pluck laughed, loudly—Bartoff echoed it in a roar—and opened his arms expansively, as if to embrace the world entire. “Come now, girl! You’re no simpering lamb, are you? Why, you must have had dozens!”
“Hundreds!” shouted Bartoff.
“Millions!” laughed Pluck. “At least!”
“These questions seem most inappropriate,” Enid protested.
Pluck, laughing, made a gesture with his open hand, as if to say, “Very well, calm down, you pathetic prude, we won’t go any further in that direction,” nodded to the table, and asked, aloud, of Maisie/Annette: “How many times did you enjoy sexual relations with Mister Williams?”
“Who’s ‘Mister Williams’?”
“‘Who’s “Mister Williams”’!” Pluck laughed. “Priceless! Why, Mister Williams is the dead man with whom you slept! —When he was alive, of course.”
“That’s a lie.”
“When he was dead, then?”
“No—all of it. It’s a lie.”
“No, it is a fact. We’ve established it mathematically from the analysis of your colleague’s faeces inside the rectum of the corpse in question.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’d better take it back.” She spoke calmly, but with a rising intensity; Pluck noted it. He had read the tales of Pompeii. He scrutinised her glare, which was resting, unbudgingly, on the cheese knife.
He closed his legs: his kneecaps kissed, like unassuageable lovers. “I declare this suspect cleared. I beg you to have a good afternoon, mademoiselle. Say, does anybody know what’s on for supper?”