“Moreover,” went on George placidly, “the removal of Helmut might have been expected to have a very good effect indeed. He was like a penknife, chipping away industriously at the mortar between the stones of a perfectly good, serviceable wall—picking away at it and prising it apart bit by bit, for no positive purpose in the world, only for the love of destroying things. Nobody likes to feel the roof being brought down over his head, in my experience.”
Chad turned his head suddenly, and looked along his thin shoulder with a small movement of such desperation and pain that even George was startled. “If you mean this damned inadequate society that’s supposed to keep the rain off us, what makes you think I’d be sorry to see it go? What gives you the idea I’ve found it weatherproof, these last few years? Wouldn’t I be more likely to forgive him the rest, if only he could bring this down on the top of us, and force us to put up something better in its place?” He drew a breath that hit George’s consciousness like a blow, and caused him to flinch. No doubt of the hurt here, no doubt of the bitterness. He tried to close the door on it again, but his voice was labored. “Never in my life,” he said deliberately, “did I strike a solitary blow for English society, and make no mistake, I’m never likely to start now.”
“Perhaps not,” said George, clairvoyant, “but for something bigger you might, or for something smaller. For the idea of human decency and dignity, for instance—”
“By reducing something human to an indecent and undignified mess in a ditch?”
“Something which had already offended so far that it had become a sort of renegade from its own kind. Perhaps! More is required to make up humanity than two arms, two legs, and all the rest of the physical catalogue. But far more likely, for the peace of mind of a very small unit of society—about as large as Comerford. I’m not sure that the disintegration of this one little community would leave you so completely cold.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Chad, “that it would. But haven’t you seen already, and don’t you suppose I could have seen in advance, that Helmut dead is a more effective agent of disintegration than he was alive? My God, do you suppose you’re still the same person you were ten days ago? Do you suppose I am? They talk, oh, yes, they shout over the garden fences just as usual, and talk their little heads off, and even enjoy it in a way. But they can all feel the ground quaking under them, just the same, and they can all see, now, that the bloke next door is just about as near to them as somebody from the moon. It’s beginning to crumble apart, faster than one rather nasty young man could have prised it while he was alive. And the only way of stopping it is by catching and hanging some poor devil who probably meant well by all of us. Nobody could possibly deserve to die merely because he smashed Helmut’s head in, but I’m not all sure that he doesn’t deserve it for his damned stupidity, for what he’s done to Comerford. While he was alive, Helmut was never quite real, but, by God, he’s real enough now he’s dead!”
“You have,” allowed George ruefully, “very definitely got something there.”
“I thought by the sound of you that you had it, too. Not a nice job, yours,” he said more quietly, and even smiled in a wry, grudging way. But he had said too much already for his own peace of mind, and the less he added now, the better. He lifted his head with a gesture of putting something from his back, not without effort. “This is all a little in the air. Shall we touch down again? I loathed Helmut Schauffler, but I didn’t kill him. I object to killing, for one thing, and for another, in this case it would have been the worst possible policy, and I think there never has been a moment in my dealings with him when I failed to remember that. But you don’t, of course, have to believe me. Go ahead and ask me things, what you like!”
The voice in which he answered questions, George noticed, was not quite the same voice, but carefully flattened into a level of indifference, a witness-box voice. He had nerves which needed to be steadied by these little extra attentions; one does not drag one’s life suddenly through half a dozen phases of chaos and emerge impervious, it seems one may even come out of it with sensitivities more acutely tuned than before to the vibrations of danger and exasperation.
“You were at the Shock of Hay last Wednesday evening about the usual time for a call. When the nine o’clock news was on you were there. Any idea what time you left?”
“Not exactly. I wasn’t noticing time very much. Well before closing time, though, it was just getting really full —and a bit noisy. I’d say about twenty to ten, but somebody else might know more about it than I do. Charles might—I’d just called him something not very complimentary—and not particularly usual. In certain circumstances I tend to become polysyllabic—especially on brandy.”
“So I’ve heard,” said George. “What time did you get home?”
“You could, of course, get that from my mother. She always knows the time when everything happens, especially if the routine goes wrong.”
“I’m trying,” said George gently, “to get it from you.”
“Clever of you,” said Chad, “to be so sure I should know. She called my attention to it directly I came in. Oh, not in any very censorious manner, merely as you point out a slight error in the pence column to a junior clerk toward whom you are, on the whole, well-disposed. It’s a habit, actually. I suspect she tells the cat when he’s ten minutes late. One isn’t, of course, expected or required to take very much notice of the small reproof. It was twenty-five minutes to twelve.”
“And what happened to the two hours in between?”
“I spent them sobering up, and walking off a pretty evil temper. I bring enough moods home as it is—this one I preferred, to leave somewhere in the Comer.”
“You didn’t go swimming?”
“I did. Half-tight—rather more than half—but I could still swim. It wasn’t a cold night, and the pool’s safe as houses if you know it well. I’m not saying I’d have done it if I hadn’t been rather beyond myself, as a matter of fact—but something had to be done! I didn’t go straight there, just walked; keeping off the roads. Over the mounts, through the larch plantation, down the woods the other side. Went a long way toward the bridge along the water- meadows, then changed my mind and came back to the pool, and bathed. After that I didn’t linger, I was too damned cold, I came back into Comerford the same way, only dropped down from the mounts by the steep path through the quarry. Home—exactly twenty-five to twelve.”
“Meet anybody anywhere along this route?”
“At that hour, along this route, I wouldn’t expect to. And beyond that, I took good care not to meet anyone, that was the last thing I wanted. Nobody who isn’t drunk or in love walks by the river at eleven o’clock at night, and the lovers choose the less exposed bits, even when there are no other people there. I did pass one boy pushing a bike when I crossed the lane on top there—we swapped good-nights, but I didn’t know him, and don’t suppose he knew me from Adam. After that it was fine, I never saw a soul.”
“Might be finer for both of us now if you had,” said George. “Why did you have to choose that night to be difficult? And come to think of it, when you crossed the mounts toward the larches you must have been fairly near
