Chapter Forty-Nine
They had the pleasure, after a short break for tea, of interviewing Madame Pétunia Lapin-Défunt, who glided into the room, flashed them all a smile striking for its enchanting demureness, and, at Pluck’s silent request, settled her insubstantial frame onto the seat, without making so much as a crinkle in its cushion. The firelight shimmered around her slim, elegant outline, but appeared frightened to brush too closely, in case this fragile beauty should be somehow singed, or overexposed, and, like photographic film, drowned in the light.
“Your eye, monsieur.”
“Yes, madame?”
“It lacks its lashes.”
Pluck bowed at the consideration revealed by the observation. “An accident, madame. Nothing more.”
“And that awful cut, on your cheek. And another, on the other!” Her gloved hand went to her own cheek, in unconscious sympathy.
“You are too kind to notice my blessures de guerre, madame, but I assure you I am well, and, in fact, have never been better.”
She stared at his slight face, into his tarpit eyes.
“You are a deeply troubled man, Inspector—aren’t you?”
There was something about the woman that drew Enid’s highest aesthetic esteem, and even Bartoff’s attention from his dog. She seemed to possess as it were a spyglass into people’s souls, and, being an exceedingly feeling woman, was wounded when what she saw was pain; and always, always, she saw pain.
Pluck shrugged, and looked away. “No more than the next, I suspect.”
She shook her head. “No, Inspector: much more than most. You have a vortex inside you—a raging, annihilating vortex, that drowns all sentiment that might otherwise arise.”
“I thank you for your attention,” he said softly, tracing his fingertip along his fingers, “but I am afraid I must put to you some questions for our investigation.”
“Of course. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uneasy. I’m eager to help in any way I can.”
Pluck cleared his throat, and began. “On a scale of one to fourteen, how large would you estimate your husband’s copulatory organ to be?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“His penis, if you insist on it being so called, madame. How big?”
She appeared unsure whether to giggle or take offence.
“I should point out that fourteen is the largest—elephantine, rather—with one being the smallest, Manneken Pis-like,” Pluck clarified.
Her jaw solidified and set. “I—I—I really could not say, Inspector.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that I don’t believe you, madame. No matter; let’s move on. Have you ever enjoyed the act of sodomy?”
“Really, Inspector!”
“I must protest, on behalf of madame—” Enid began.
Pluck continued over both of them: “Has your husband ever, to your knowledge, extracted, or sought to extract, from your rectum—perhaps, if it’s decent-sized enough, via a coating on his penis—faecal matter of any amount, no matter how seemingly negligible?”
“Answer the question!” Bartoff screamed.
Madame Lapin-Défunt rose, and spoke, still in a soft voice, “I find your questions outrageous, monsieur. I am sorry to have to admit that my husband was right about you.”
“The husband of which you speak is most probably a murderer, madame, and the only question we have now is to what extent you can be proved to be his accessory. So I’ll ask you only one time: Has excrement born of the cleaning lady Cranat ever troubled your own nether canal, and if so, have you reason to believe that your husband extracted it and transported it—perhaps, if not as a film over his penis, then via the tip of his tongue—into the rectum of Charles Lipp Lilliams?”
“You have gone too far, monsieur!” was madame’s sole response. Tears flashed firelight in the corners of her eyes.
“I must agree with madame,” Enid put in. “You may insult the guests, not to mention the proprieties of civilisation, all you want, Inspector, but it will lead us no closer to the truth of this murder.”
“Madame,” Pluck addressed his guest for the final time, “Answer me this, and we will be through here.”
Madame Lapin-Défunt, head thrown back, stared with growing contempt at Pluck’s little face. Her sympathy for his inner pain had been entirely snuffed out.
“Would you be willing for my assistant, Monsieur Bartoff, to examine your fingernails with scientific precision?”
“For what?” she demanded.
“For traces of the cleaning lady Cranat’s faeces; for, madame, I submit that you inserted them into the victim yourself.”
“You did it with your fingers! Your fingers!” Bartoff shouted.
Blaze-eyed, madame stared at Pluck. “You are a revolting exhibition of humanity, monsieur. And I wish never to speak to you again.”
The lady turned, marched to the door and left them, without another word.
Pluck bowed his head. He whispered to Enid: “You must think me an unfeeling man.”
“I think you a scoundrel,” she answered honestly.
Pluck nodded. “I may be that, indeed. But I have done what I had to do. I am sorry to have dragged madame through that sewer-sludge, but its object has been accomplished: we know that she, for one, is not guilty.”