anthropoid ape in me asserting its territorial imperative in the only way possible.’
‘In the only way possible?’
‘You haven’t met Eva,’ said Wilt. ‘When you do you’ll see that assertion is her forte not mine.’
‘You feel dominated by Mrs Wilt?’
‘I am dominated by Mrs Wilt.’
‘She bullies you? She assumes the dominant role?’
‘Eva is, Dr Pittman. She doesn’t have to assume anything. She just is.’
‘Is what?’
‘Now there’s the rub.’ said Wilt, ‘What’s today? You lose track of time in this place.’
‘Thursday.’
‘Well, today being Thursday, Eva is Bernard Leach.’
‘Bernard Leach?’
‘The potter, Dr Pittman, the famous potter,’ said Wilt. ‘Now tomorrow she’ll be Margot Fonteyn and on Saturday we play bridge with the Mottrams so she’ll be Omar Sharif. On Sunday she’s Elisabeth Taylor or Edna O’Brien depending on what the Colour Supplements have in store for me and in the afternoon we go for a drive and she’s Eva Wilt. It’s about the only time in the week I meet her and that’s because I’m driving and she’s got nothing to do but sit still and nag the pants off me.’
‘I begin to see the pattern.’ said Dr Pittman. ‘Mrs Wilt was…is given to role-playing. This made for an unstable relationship in which you couldn’t establish a distinctive and assertive role as a husband’
‘Dr Pittman,’ said Wilt, ‘a gyroscope may, indeed must, spin but in doing so it achieves a stability that is virtually unequalled. Now if you understand the principle of the gyroscope you may begin to understand that our marriage does not lack stability. It may be damned uncomfortable coming home to a centrifugal force but it bloody well isn’t unstable.’
‘But just now you told me that Mrs Wilt did not assume a dominant role. Now you tell me she is a forceful character.’
‘Eva is not forceful. She is a force. There’s a difference. And as for character, she has so many and they’re so varied it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Let’s just say she throws herself into whoever she is with an urgency and compulsiveness that is not always appropriate. You remember that series of Garbo pictures they showed on TV some years back? Well, Eva was La Dame Aux Camelias for three days after that and she made dying of TB look like St Vitus’ dance. Talk about galloping consumption’
‘I begin to get the picture,’ said Dr Pittman making a note that Wilt was a pathological liar with sado-masochistic tendencies.
‘I’m glad somebody does,’ said Wilt. ‘Inspector Flint thinks I murdered her and the Pringsheims in some sort of bloodlust and disposed of their bodies in some extraordinary fashion. He mentioned acid. I mean it’s crazy. Where on earth does one get nitric acid in the quantities necessary to dissolve three dead bodies, and one of them overweight at that? I mean it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘It certainly doesn’t,’ said Dr Pittman.
‘In any case do I look like a murderer?’ continued Wilt cheerfully. ‘Of course I don’t. Now if he’d said Eva had slaughtered the brutes, and in my opinion someone should’ve done years ago, I’d have taken him seriously. God help the poor sods who happen to be around when Eva takes it into her head she’s Lizzie Borden.’
Dr Pittman studied him predaciously.
