Chapter Forty-Five
Herr Voot, when he was brought into the interview room, had lost his former stiff-backed gait. His bottom dropped onto the seat before being so bidden, his head bowed broodingly over his knees, and his fingers interlocked like humbled worms nestling abjectly into nooks.
“Thank you for joining us, Herr Voot!” Pluck loudly greeted him. “It’s been too long since we’ve seen you.”
The man would not answer.
“Tell me,” Pluck went on, “where have you been hiding yourself? What have you been doing?”
His face still pointed at the floor, Voot peered up from under his brows at him—it was a look that could have killed a canary, knocking it right off its perch. “I’ve been imprisoned in my room, on your orders.”
“Ah, yes! I do seem to recollect something along those lines. . .” Pluck looked to the window. His thoughts drifted away. . .
After several minutes of silence, Voot asked him: “Are we through?”
Pluck, blinking, coughing, spluttered, “What, you still here?” He looked around at the room, at Enid and Bartoff and Sam, and remembered. “Ah. . .yes. . . Yes.”
“We’re through?”
“No! No, we’ve only just begun.” He proceeded to consult his notes, for several more minutes. Bartoff yawned, and tickled Sam under his chin. Enid assigned all of her strength to the suppression of an urge to scream, primordially, at the world. Voot rehearsed the image of a Final Judgement, entailing as it necessarily would the annihilation of Pluck, which he’d built up over the days in his room. Finally, Pluck began:
“Well, as you’ve already been irrefutably implicated in the murder—”
“That is not so,” Voot, quite rudely, interrupted. “I had nothing to do with any murder, and, as such, there cannot be any proof of it.”
“Proof or not, we know what we know, and proof will, I have faith, come along of its own accord to confirm it,” Pluck muttered quickly, as if reciting a well-worn dictum. “In the meantime, can you account for the presence of faeces inside Mister Billiams’ rectum?”
“Who is ‘Mister Billiams’?” Voot wanted to know.
“Mister Snede,” Enid explained.
“Oh. What was the question again?”
“How did faeces get there?” Pluck repeated.
“Why are you asking me?”
“I have reason to believe that you secretly retrieved a sample of your cleaning lady’s excrement from her toilet, then methodically inserted it through Billiams’ anus.”
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
“Pardon?”
“I asked why I would want to do a thing like that?”
“Excellent question, Herr Voot! I was wondering that myself. So would you do us the courtesy of answering it yourself, so that we might all enjoy the remainder of our holiday absent the pall of a murder investigation, and, eventually, go home, to live out the balance of our lives and, best of all possible worlds, one day die, aged, in peace, surrounded by snotty grandchildren, in our respective beds?”
Voot stared at Pluck, and, deciding that, if he’d been cast in a farce, he might as well see it through to the end, sat back, now, in his seat, half-closed his eyes, and answered: “Because my rectum was full. And I had to put it somewhere—hadn’t I?”
Pluck blinked. “I. . .yes, I suppose you had, Herr Voot. Thank you for being so forthcoming. You may return to your room.”