a gas oven, and my tongue-tied inadequacy in the face of her distraught pleas for reassurance.
I saw the significance of her longing for an assurance about life after death and about whether she would see her friend again. Inadvertently, I had taken the wrong line.
By assuring her that she and her friend would survive the grave, and that she would see her friend again, I had given her the arguments she needed, the confidence which had been in the balance, about what would happen if she took her own life. If I had told her there was no life after death, she would have fought on, struggling to maintain the Awareness, which is life, against the Dreamless Sleep, which the atheists consider to be death.
It is surprising how fast such thoughts can pass through the mind. They flash between the time it takes to lift a milk jug and pour some drops into a cup; or during the time it takes to add two lumps of sugar. One moment you are happy, or if not happy, you are at least stabilised in the general turmoil of life, and the next you are sick with guilt and with a hopeless feeling of your own inadequacy to lead and inspire.
I felt sure, and still feel sure, and always will feel sure, that her emotions were genuine, even though the sergeant now said:
“At about eleven-thirty last night, a person of the above description called at Kensington Police Station and laid a complaint against a person of your name, sir, of this address, alleging that you had made improper and indecent suggestions. She declined to give her own name and address, sir, or to make a formal statement.”
He was reading from his piece of paper, so as to get the exact wording right.
“I have to inform you, sir, that in the circumstances, and failing further evidence, it is not the intention of the police to take further action. It is felt that you should nevertheless be informed of this matter, and should you wish to make any statement I am authorised to take it down.”
He folded up his sheet of paper and replaced it in his tunic pocket. I could almost hear him sigh with relief. We looked at each other awkwardly, in silence.
“We get this sort of thing now and again, sir,” he said, in a soothing, matter of fact tone. “I take it you completely deny the allegation, and do not consider it necessary to make a formal statement in rebuttal?”
Short of nudging me in the ribs or kicking me on the shin, he could hardly have given a broader hint. But I couldn’t take the opening.
I kept thinking of the two sides of her, the shapeless bundle which was her body, the red chapped hand dabbing at the tears with a grubby handkerchief, the childish apology for her whimpers; and on the other hand, the instructions she had been given and carried out. I doubted if they meant anything to her, or if she even knew what was in the envelope, or what was going on at all, except that she was wallowing in misery.
“I had a description of her from the desk sergeant, sir. They get hallucinations at certain times of life. Dentists suffer from the same sort of accusation sometimes, sir, when they give anaesthetics. That sort of thing. Well, I’ll report back now, unless you have something to say.”
He picked up his helmet from a chair.
“You don’t wish to make any statement, I take it, sir? Except an oral denial?”
I shook my head, but he misunderstood me, and began to put on his helmet. He thought his job was finished.
“Yes, I do want to make a statement,” I said.
He looked at me and shook his head.
“You don’t need to, sir, in my view of present police intentions, of which I have informed you.”
I got up and walked to the window, and said:
“It’s not as simple as that. This woman you called about, this woman who made a complaint about me, there’s something odd going on, and I don’t understand it.”
He nodded in an understanding way.
“You don’t need to worry, sir, like I more or less said, we get these cases now and again. If she pesters you, sir, and if she goes on pestering you, and becomes a real nuisance, you want to get a Court injunction against her. It usually works. Frightens some sense into ’em, as it were.”
He began to move towards the door again.
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said again. “It’s difficult to explain. I travelled down with her and listened to a lot of emotional trouble, and she talked of suicide.”
“A bit unstable mentally, I suppose, like they thought down at the police station, between you and me. I mean, she wasn’t no beauty, I’m told, and directly I saw you, and this flat, if I may say so, I thought ‘Well, if he wanted to start any nonsense like that he would choose something a bit different from her.’ Not that you can always tell, of course.”
He had reached the door and had his hand on the door knob. He had a fixed idea of how things were, and he wasn’t interested, and I felt I had to talk rapidly to detain him.
“She gave me a note in a buff envelope. Just before we parted in Victoria Station. I want to show it to you. There’s a very odd thing about it.”
I picked up the note on my desk, and he came over reluctantly.
“You don’t want to give your name and address to odd people you meet on trains, if I may say so, sir, not if they seem a bit cranky. It always leads to trouble of some sort. I suppose you felt sorry for her.”
I handed him the note, and said:
“I didn’t give her my name and address-that’s another point I might mention. But read that, and then I’ll tell you about it.”
He stood by the window, holding the note a long way from his face, as long-sighted middle-aged people do when they can’t be bothered to get out their spectacles, and when the telephone rang I left him frowning down at it.
It was Juliet’s father, again, confirming that I was going to meet her at the airport at four-thirty that afternoon, and not at the air terminal. I listened to the man’s snuffly voice droning on about the evening’s arrangements.
“So you’ll be back here about six o’clock, old man?”
“That’s right, squire,” I said.
“Then we’ll go straight out to dinner, after a drink, old boy?”
“Splendid.”
“Look forward to seeing you, old boy.”
“Me too,” I said.
He always called me “old boy.” He tagged it on at the end of almost every sentence he spoke to me.
“That was my future father-in-law,” I said, as I put the receiver down. “He doesn’t like leaving things to chance. He’s a great organiser. He’ll tell you so himself, if you ask him, or even if you don’t ask him.”
I didn’t think the remark witty, but I thought it merited a polite smile. However, he didn’t smile.
“This note you’ve shown me,” he said. I could detect the awakened interest in his voice. “This note you said she gave you, sir. I’ve been looking at the type and I happened to glance at the type of this bit of writing you’ve left in your typewriter, and at the typing paper.”
I nodded eagerly.
“That’s right. It’s the same. So is the typing paper, and so is the envelope. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“What did you want to tell me, sir?”
“That the note she gave me was typed on my machine, and on my typing paper, and put into one of my envelopes.”
He looked at me, puzzled, trying to sort out the implications.
“That’s what’s so odd,” I added.
“This message you typed,” he began, but I cut him short.
“I don’t think you quite understand what I’m getting at. I didn’t type it.”
“You didn’t say that when you gave it to me to read, sir.”
“I was going to but the ’phone rang.”
He picked up the piece of paper again, and glanced at my typewriter again, because I think he felt he ought to do something. He said gloomily:
“Well, I don’t know what you’re getting at, sir. Are you suggesting that this lady who complained about you somehow got into this flat, got hold of your name and address, typed this stuff out, took it all the way down to the
