Chapter Three
Not because it made any sense; not because they thought it would make any difference to anything; but because they were people, and people believe in symbolic gestures, did Enid, Glen, Voot and the coronel, per the coronel’s insistent suggestion, spend an hour in the late afternoon drinking a toast to the late inspector in the manager’s office.
“This, then, is a celebration,” the coronel muttered between sips, “of friendship.”
“Curtis had wanted it,” Enid remembered. To the looks of confusion, she added: “I mean Inspector Pluck.” She smiled. “He always did like the name ‘Curtis’.”
“It was a more innocent time, in a way,” mused Glen, intent on getting as drunk as he could, and to hell with the ramifications as regards his social standing; which was, he considered, non-existent to begin with. “I mean, we each of us stepped into this hotel for the first time with, I’d say, clean hands, more or less.”
“There are different kinds of dirt,” the coronel noted quietly. “Some of it is pale. Some, invisible.”
“Yes, well, it’s a shame what happened,” Voot sniffed. “It really is. That is to say: all of it. A shame.”
The small window shuddered from the wind outside. Voot poured the coronel another drink, which that aged Spanish gentleman duly drew past his lips, and let remain, a still pool in the basin of his mouth, sedate under the firmament of his palate, its flavour seeping into him in slow, steady pulses. “We all have it coming to us,” he opined aloud. “And as such, we all play our roles as instruments of Fate.”
“That’s right,” Voot was quick to agree. “If it hadn’t been us who destroyed him, it would have been the lot he’d antagonise at the next hotel he visited.”
“Don’t we have a choice, then?” asked Stoupes. “If we kill a man or not?”
“How should I know?” mumbled the coronel, staring into the swaying remains of his drink, which collected reflections of the lamps behind him and to the side, reduplicating them into a revolving burgundy starfield. “I don’t know if my excuses for lacking freewill are something I’ve contrived, or whether they’ve popped into my head, uninvited.”
“If we don’t choose to kill,” added Voot, “neither do we choose to scratch our eyes out from guilt.”
When they emerged from Voot’s office—like Venus from the waves, only, instead of one beautiful goddess, there were four of them, all very mortal, and none of them especially beautiful or in any way transcendent, so that, despite this simile, there was little practical danger of their being confused for that Greek deity—they saw, in the warm light of evening, Monsieur Lapin-Défunt, Mister Arthur Drig and some other guests, together with Mifkin, heatedly discussing the same subject (by which I mean, Pluck, not Voot et al’s purported resemblance to Venus).
“Of course Pluck was the murderer,” said Lapin-Défunt, with some authority. “Who else would have done it?”
“The murder was pointless, and idiotic,” added Mifkin.
“Like Pluck!” cried Lapin-Défunt.
“Exactly,” nodded Mifkin. “An idiotic crime requires an idiot for its perpetration.”
“Do you think he was really capable of such an act?” asked Drig. “I mean, getting away with it—wouldn’t that be giving him a little too much credit?”
Lapin-Défunt shrugged. “Maybe he was, in reality, a genius, masked as a buffoon.”
“Or a buffoon playing a genius who convinced us all he was, really, a buffoon,” Mifkin submitted.
“In any event, we’ve now found peace,” sighed a Belgian.
“That’s right,” Lapin-Défunt agreed. “The circus is over, the clown having exited.”
Their comments trailed off in Enid’s ears whilst she ascended the staircase toward her room. She didn’t want to hear it. She would much rather have had, for example, a total stranger accost her on the stairway and scream in her face that she bore no resemblance whatsoever to Venus—as much as such a confrontation would shock and upset her, she would have preferred it to the question that had now infected her thoughts over the true nature of her departed beloved.