‘My dear fellow, third degree? You’ve been watching too many old movies on the TV. The police don’t use strong-arm methods in this country.’
‘They’ve been pretty brutal with some of our students who have been on demos,’ Braintree pointed out.
‘Ah, but students are quite another matter and demonstrating students get what they deserve. Political provocation is one thing but domestic murders of the sort your friend Mr Wilt seems to have indulged in come into a different category altogether. I can honestly say that in all my years in the legal profession I have yet to come across a case in which the police did not treat a domestic murderer with great care and not a little sympathy. After all, they are nearly all married men themselves, and in any case Mr Wilt has a degree and that always helps. If you are a professional man, and in spite of what some people may say lecturers in Technical Colleges are members of a profession if only marginally, then you can rest assured that the police will do nothing in the least untoward. Mr Wilt is perfectly safe.’
And Wilt felt safe. He sat in the Interview Room and contemplated Inspector Flint with interest.
‘Motivation? Now there’s an interesting question,’ he said. ‘If you had asked me why I married Eva in the first place I’d have same trouble trying to explain, myself. I was young at the time and…’
‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I didn’t ask you why you married your wife. I asked you why you decided to murder her.’
‘I didn’t decide to murder her.’ said Wilt.
‘It was a spontaneous action? A momentary impulse you couldn’t resist? An act of madness you now regret?’
‘It was none of those things. In the first place it was not an act. It was mere fantasy.’
‘But you do admit that the thought crossed your mind?’
‘Inspector,’ said Wilt, ‘if I acted upon every impulse that crossed my mind I would have been convicted of child rape, buggery, burglary, assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm and mass murder long ago.’
‘All those impulses crossed your mind?’
‘At some time or other, yes,’ said Wilt.
‘You’ve got a bloody odd mind.’
‘Which is something I share with the vast majority of mankind. I daresay that even you in your odd contemplative moments have…’
‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I don’t have odd contemplative moments. Not until I met you anyhow. Now then, you admit you thought of killing your wife…’
‘I said the notion had crossed my mind, particularly when I have to take the dog for a walk. It is a game I play with myself. No more than that.’
‘A game? You take the dog for a walk and think of ways and means of killing Mrs Wilt? I don’t call that a game. I call it premeditation.’
‘Not badly put,’ said Wilt with a smile, ‘the meditation bit. Eva curls up in the lotus position on the living-room rug and thinks beautiful thoughts. I take the bloody dog for a walk and think dreadful ones while Clem defecates on the grass verge in Grenville Gardens. And in each case the end result is just the same. Eva gets up and cooks supper and washes up and I come home and watch the box or read and go to bed. Nothing has altered one way or another.’
‘It has now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Your wife has disappeared off the face of the earth together with a brilliant young scientist and his wife, and you are sitting here waiting
