Chapter Fifty-Eight
He strode down the corridor, up the stairs, around the bend, got confused, asked a porter for directions, and arrived at Frau Hühnerbeinstein’s door. He knocked, as a method of communicating to the occupant of said room that a visitor wished to be admitted. (It was a tried and true method, for, I don’t know, probably millennia. And Pluck, a card-carrying member of the human race for as long as he could remember, had learnt this method from an early age; not having been taught it explicitly, but merely through his keen observation of the actions of others. And then, when he’d grown old enough to attempt it himself, one evening, at the age of seven, in a village in Tuscany, where he’d been holidaying with his parents, he formed a purposeful fist, readied his knuckles, and rapped on the door of a farmhouse where he knew a girl his age, to whom he’d taken something of a schoolboy fancy, resided. In this instance, the girl’s mother opened the door, questioned the future detective on his intentions, and called her husband, who informed the child in no uncertain terms, as they say, that his daughter had better things to do than play with a halfwit like him—Pluck—and when Pluck insisted on seeing her, even going so far as to try to push his way past the fellow, the burly farmer took up Pluck in his arms, threw him against the ground, boxed his ears, and in sundry other ways thrashed the lad. Pluck was disgraced; soon, the whole village heard of it. Young Pluck vowed to return to that village, one day, when he was older and strong, and exact revenge against him whom he had hoped to have for a father-in-law, but his life sailed in a myriad other directions, and he had yet to make good on his promise. Nevertheless, he had knocked, and the door had opened, and so one lesson had been learnt: If you want somebody inside a place to know you are outside, it’s simple: knock on the door.)
So, keeping that backstory in mind, you’ll understand why and how Pluck now knocked on Frau Hühnerbeinstein’s door: for the simple purpose of wishing to let her know he was there.
(Frau Hühnerbeinstein, too, understood this social contract. When she had been seven, Gilda—for that had been, and remained, her Christian name—had witnessed a happy family meal round the table be interrupted by a frightful, commanding knock on their front door. Her father, a large, rosy-cheeked, good-natured man, put down his napkin, looked his wife in the eye, kissed his daughter’s forehead, and went to open it. From her corner of the table, through the small width of the opened door, Gilda could see only some boots and brightly polished buttons without, and the occasional glint of the last ray of the day’s sun off a rifle. Ever since that day, when she had trouble falling asleep, Gilda would, eyes closed, feel still that last scratchy kiss of her father’s bristly lips upon her forehead.)
She did so, now, where our narrative resumes, until a knock resounded through her hotel room door.
“Who is it?”—not the most original line, perhaps, but faultlessly suited to the purpose.
“It is I, Inspector Pluck.”
“Oh, good God.”
“Pardon?”
“I was just falling asleep, Inspector. Whatever it may be, could it not wait till morning?”
“Pardon? Forgive me, Frau Hühnerbeinstein, but it’s awfully difficult to make out what you’re trying to say with this obstacle of a vertically installed slab of wood between us.”
Muttering curses, she arose from bed, put on her bathrobe and went to the door. She opened it a crack. “What is it, for Heaven’s sake?”
“You look positively ravishing.”
She emitted an ejaculation of disgust, up her throat, from somewhere deep and essential inside her. “Is there something to do with the investigation, Inspector?”
“Pardon?”
“Why have you come?”
“Where?”
“Here! To my door! Do you have a reason for disturbing my sleep, or not?”
Pluck, bashful now, shrugged. “Not really. No.”
She closed the door and went back to bed.
A little while later, another knock. She’d been just in the middle of a dream in which she was playing Turandot to an ecstatic reaction from the stalls of La Scala. “Go away!” she screamed, fortissimo.
“Pardon, madame, but I have instructions for you.” It was not Pluck’s voice, and was thus a little less irritating. She got up, put on her bathrobe and opened the door. It was Poor Larry, the bellboy.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Inspector Pluck wishes to see you on important case-related business, madame.”
“I’m sure that he does. What’s that there?”
Larry handed over the note. It was a series of instructions, insisting she should shower, and stipulating in revolting, intimate and offensive detail how she should sanitise and perfume herself.
“He’s a boor, and a madman. I will not go.”
“As you wish, madame.” Larry turned to go.
“Wait a moment.” She had a second thought. Perhaps this madness could all end tonight. “I’ll be up at his room shortly. What room is it?”
Larry told her; I’m not going to tell you. When he’d departed, Frau Hühnerbeinstein, ignoring Pluck’s instructions, dressed in full, regal evening dress, complete with sinuous gloves up to her armpits. She fortified herself with a drink; then, feeling the need for additional fortification, another; then, because those two drinks in quick succession on an empty stomach had made her legs a little jiggly, she realised that she was now in real need of fortification, so downed three more. She now found herself in a quandary: the more she drank, the more she needed to drink her way out of it; as if the alcohol were a well, and her increased imbibition filled the cavity and caused her to ascend with elegant buoyancy to the surface, the sunshine and, well, life—life!—once more.
While she was incapacitated with confusion, the problem was solved for her once both her bottles were dry. She raised herself up off the floor where she’d been sitting, exited her room and, after some missteps, found her way to Pluck’s chambers. Remembering the communicative code we’ve already discussed in some detail, she knocked. Pluck, alerted by this sign to the presence of another without, opened the door. A beautiful smile passed over his face, banishing the clouds—metaphorical clouds, you understand—that had coalesced there. With a slight movement of his hand, he invited her inside; they both understood this invitation without a word needing to be uttered; that, Reader, is how deeply they had each drunk from the basin of inter-human semiotic discourse.
The investigator (Pluck) closed the door, and locked it. He lit a candle, switched off the lamp, and lay down on his side on a settee.
“I believe you have some business about the case you wished to discuss, Inspector?” Those were the words—it was Frau Hühnerbeinstein who said them.
“I’m sorry?” asked Pluck, erotically removing his cufflinks from his cuffs.
“I was told you have some business about your murder investigation to discuss with me,” she repeated.
“Is that a question?” Pluck asked, unfastening his sleeves and thereby revealing some few strands of arm hair, rife with virility. “I did not hear a question mark at the end of it.”
“What business about the murder investigation did you wish to discuss with me?”
“Was that a question?” asked Pluck, unbuttoning the buttons from his neck downwards, eyeing Frau Hühnerbeinstein a little more intently with each button thus undone. “I ask because I believe I detected a question mark at the end of it.”
“It was,” she confirmed.
“Very good. . . .What was it again?”
“What do you want to say to me about the murder?”
Pluck had by now fully unbuttoned his shirt—his fingers, set in the pattern of their exercise, continued further downwards in blind search of buttons, but hit upon his belt buckle, so stopped there. “Pardon?”
Frau Hühnerbeinstein had to sigh. “You silly man! Can’t you hear me? What is the problem?!”
Through a series of undulating rolls of his shoulders, Pluck freed himself of his shirt, and was left in his vest; two scrawny arms were thus revealed. “But can you not see, madame, that I have almost rendered myself nude from the waist up?”
“That’s neither here nor there. What about the investigation?”
“The investigation is complete. I merely wanted to engage in sexual relations with you—that is all.” And on that beat, he twisted his vest up over his head, but, somehow, got his raised arms tangled up in the neckhole, and, the vest swaddling his head like an upside-down ghost, his tiny pink nipples blinking in innocent bafflement out of his emaciated frame, the blind inspector jumped up and started stumbling about the place, knocking into his bureau and tripping over a stool.
“Frau Hühnerbeinstein! Frau Hühnerbeinstein! Where are you?”
“You idiot!” she replied.
“I hear you! I hear your voice!” he called, and, in a feeble attempt at echolocation, ran straight past her into a wall and fell down, out cold.