seaside, came up in the train with you, then gave it to you at Victoria Station, and then came and complained about you at the police station? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Well, not necessarily.”
“What do you mean, not necessarily, sir?”
“What I say, not necessarily. Maybe she did get into this flat and maybe she didn’t. Personally, I don’t think she did.”
“Then who are you suggesting did, sir?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know-that’s the point.”
The thing was beginning to resemble a bad cross-talk act.
I was getting irritated, and he saw it, and that is bad when you are dealing with the police. He passed his tongue over his lips and said:
“There’s no need to get annoyed, sir. You raised this matter, I didn’t.”
“I’m not getting annoyed.”
“We were quite content to take your word in this other matter against hers-failing independent evidence, and in view of other circumstances. There was no call to show me this piece of paper.”
In effect, he was telling me that he thought I had faked the whole thing in order, in some obscure way, to discredit the woman.
“Of course there was a reason to show you the paper!” I insisted loudly. “It shows that some unauthorised person has been into this flat. If that’s not a matter for the police, perhaps you’ll tell me what is?”
He stiffened, but to do him credit he kept his temper. Police get accustomed to dealing with excited citizens.
“Anything stolen, sir?” he asked mildly.
“Nothing.”
“Anything disturbed-contents of drawers on the floor, cupboard doors open, anything like that, sir?”
I shook my head.
“Any signs of a forcible entry by the door or windows?”
“No.”
“Anybody have a key of the flat apart from yourself, sir?”
“Only the woman who cleans the flat-and she wouldn’t write that pompous sort of stuff, why should she? And my fiancee, she’s got a key, but if you want an alibi for her, she’s been in America for a month.”
“This Mrs. Dawson mentioned in the note, was she known to your daily woman or to your fiancee?”
“Of course she wasn’t.”
“I was only asking, sir.”
“Yes, well, she wasn’t.”
“That’s all right then,” he said in the patient tone of one who was not only keeping his temper but wanted you to realise it. “Who is this Mrs. Dawson, anyway?”
“She was murdered in Italy recently.”
“Murdered, was she?”
“It was in the papers at the time.”
“I don’t read the newspapers much-except the football pages. Was she a friend of yours?”
“No, she wasn’t. But I’m preparing something about the case. I write crime articles and crime novels. I’ve been trying to find out something about her background, and it’s been hard work. I’ve had the idea that people have been trying to obstruct me, but it was just an idea. Now comes this note. So I was right.”
“Who would try to obstruct you, sir, as you call it?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point, I don’t know who-or why. And another thing-somebody unknown to me rang me up early this morning and asked if I’d got that note, and then tried to badger me along the same lines.”
“I see, sir.”
He looked down at his blue helmet, and began to polish the badge with his right thumb. Then he said:
“You write what you call crime novels-thrillers, as it were, mystery stories?”
“Yes, I do.”
I saw what was in his mind. He had changed his ground, or at least extended it. He was now fumbling towards some theory that I might have typed the note myself and created some mystery for some obscure reason connected with a thriller story. But he was too punctilious to say so. He just nodded his head thoughtfully and said, “Ah.” Then he straightened himself up.
“Well, sir, in regard to the other matter, I will report that you categorically deny the accusation. In regard to the matter we have just discussed, I take it you wish me formally to report your own complaint? Or do you wish to reconsider it?”
He was offering me a let out.
I replied obstinately.
“I would like you to report it. I realise that little can be done, but I would like it reported.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll take this message you say was typed by some unknown intruder, and I will formally report the matter, as you wish.”
He folded the paper up neatly and placed it in his notebook. He didn’t sigh resignedly, but it was the loudest non-sigh I’ve ever heard.
“Good day, sir.”
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Matthews, sir, Sergeant Matthews, but you don’t need to worry about me not reporting what you want. That’s what we’re paid for, sir.”
“I wasn’t worrying.”
“That’s all right then, isn’t it, sir?”
He put on his helmet and let himself out without turning round. I felt he considered me to be a disappointment, a man towards whom the Force had adopted a tolerant attitude, towards whom he, in particular, had assumed a kindly, avuncular role; a man who had invented a silly story, and persisted in it, despite a chance to retract with good grace.
I heard the street door close downstairs, and walked to the window, and saw him cycling off towards the police station.
The pigeon, which I had nicknamed Tommy the Hen, because I did not know its sex, was back on the roof guttering opposite, staring across with beady eyes.
I guessed that Tommy the Hen was not the only one observing me, but I felt some relief because I had reported matters to Sergeant Matthews. He had taken my story with about a pound of salt, but at least I had lodged it with him.
As to the sad sack in the train, whom I now thought of as Bunface, the reason for her actions completely eluded me.
Quite clearly the police were wrong in their estimate of her.
Her thoughts, conscious and subconscious, were concerned with death and self-destruction and the hereafter, not with men and sex fantasies and wishful imaginings.
She was not neurotic in the way they thought. Her grief was genuine. Therefore she had lodged a complaint because she had been ordered to do so. And yet I could swear she had liked me and had been grateful to me for listening to her woes.
I imagined her checking my name and address from some scruffy piece of paper she had been given, dragging it out of her shabby handbag, holding it with her coarse, red hands in the light of a lamp standard near the police station, peering myopically at the writing.
Then, reluctantly, and because she had to, she would have gone in, well knowing what the station sergeant would think.
Poor embarrassed Bunface, I thought, poor pathetic victim.
But whose victim?
I spent part of the day trying to work, and part of it trying to puzzle out another problem. Whoever had
