cook up all this bloody nonsense?”
“There’s a woman been killed,” said the sergeant flatly. “You come along here, and you say, yes, I travelled up with her in the train, the evening before she was killed, and she must have been very neurotic, you say, otherwise she wouldn’t have made up some story about me, you say. Right? And when we ask you a few simple questions, what happens? You bang the table. You get all touchy. Why?”
I didn’t answer. When I spoke I looked at the superintendent, as if he had asked the questions.
“I am not getting touchy.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” he said. “Sergeant, Mr. Compton is not getting touchy, why should he be touchy? He just misunderstood you.”
He looked at me with his calm, tired eyes.
“Mr. Compton, I don’t think you quite understand.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I only know what I know, and that’s what I’ve told Sergeant Matthews, and now you, and I called in here voluntarily to try to help you, and you go on at me. You go on at me so,” I added indignantly.
“We’re not going on at you,” said the sergeant, in his rasping voice. “The superintendent here, he’s just trying to clear up a few points. He’s a busy man, you want to understand that. When a case like this happens, he’s a busy man.”
The superintendent said:
“I am going to ask you again a question I asked you earlier, but on a broader basis. I asked you whether you could think of any reason why this woman should have lodged a complaint against you-I now ask you whether you can think of any reason why you should
I stared at him, bewildered.
“Would you mind repeating that?”
“Can you think of any reason why you should imagine that this woman made an allegation against you, Mr. Compton?”
I sat back in my chair and looked at him again.
“Imagine it?”
He had turned half sideways to me and was filling his pipe from a grey rubber pouch.
“That, and other things.”
“What things?”
“Can you think of any reason why two alleged thugs should try to intimidate you?”
“Only in connection with what I’ve told you.”
“Can you think of any reason why a mysterious, unknown man should telephone you.”
“Look,” I said, “it’s no good going on like that-you’ve got to accept the whole story in its entirety or not at all.”
The sergeant had stopped writing shorthand. He was doodling idly. The superintendent had put a second match to his pipe. He said:
“The point is this, Mr. Compton. We cannot find any trace of a woman lodging a complaint against you at this station, or in fact at any station in the Metropolitan area.”
The sergeant said:
“That’s why the superintendent asked whether-”
He stopped speaking, but went on doodling, without looking up.
“Whether what, for God’s sake?” I asked loudly.
“That’s why I asked whether you thought she might have done-even if she didn’t, sir,” said the superintendent.
“Your records,” I said quickly, “your records must be wrong. If you’ll look through your records-”
“The other point is this,” interrupted the superintendent, “we have no Sergeant Matthews at this station. And haven’t had for years.”
CHAPTER 7
It was a pleasant evening outside, warm for October, the sky still blue, and I don’t feel the cold physically as much as some; but in certain circumstances there is a mental chill, a kind of freezing up, which can be equally devastating. This I felt.
You know you are in a police station, and you know you have come there voluntarily; and you touch the chair you’re sitting on, and the table in front of you, and you hear the traffic going past outside, and so you know you are alive; furthermore, you know you are not dreaming, because dreams move faster.
You can hear your heart beating, and feel a stickiness in the throat when you swallow, because if you are not dead, and not asleep and dreaming, there is only one reasonable conclusion at which you can arrive.
You fight against this conclusion; even those who really are mentally sick strenuously deny it, maintaining with a sad, forlorn intenseness that it is they who are sane, the others who are mistaken.
I sometimes wonder if they hear the voices of others as from a distance, echoing distortedly, as I did now.
“What is your job, sir?” asked the superintendent, with surprising gentleness.
“I write, I write books and articles. There’s something wrong,” I added urgently, “there’s something wrong with the system, either that or I am going mad. This Sergeant Matthews-”
“There is no police officer called Matthews who could have called on you, sir,” interrupted the bald-headed sergeant. “That’s what the superintendent has just said, loud and clear, sir. He said there’s no Sergeant Matthews attached to this station or any station near here.”
“Be that as it may,” I began.
“Be that as it isn’t,” said the sergeant. “Facts are facts.”
“Well, somebody calling himself Sergeant Matthews called,” I said angrily, “and I would like to say that I am not at all surprised, upon reflection, that this woman made up a complaint. I am sorry she has ended as she has, but she was in a highly emotional and neurotic state.”
Neither of them was looking at me.
“So I’m not surprised. Not at all surprised. Not really.”
The superintendent got up and walked across the room, and stared at the yellow painted wall. Without turning round, he said:
“I have tried to tell you that there is no record that this woman made any complaint against you. Why do you insist that she did?”
“Because she did,” I replied sullenly. “You’ve got it wrong somewhere. Same as you have about Sergeant Matthews.”
He came back and sat down again and said:
“You realise what you are saying, Mr. Compton?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You are saying that you travelled with an unknown woman who has now been killed?”
“Yes, I am-I’m saying that.”
“You’re saying that although you did not give her your name and address, she somehow knew it?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And laid a complaint against you?”
“And laid a complaint against me.”
“And gave you a message you cannot now produce?”
“I can’t produce it, because I handed it over to a police officer, at his request.”
“You insist that she complained about you, although there is no record that she did?”
The sergeant was taking notes again. I felt an increasing need to be meticulously accurate.
“I insist,” I said carefully, “that a police officer called on me and said she had made a complaint.”
