“It is, sir.”
“A bit of treatment, and they’re free of it all. No more radio sets in their heads, no more voices out of the ether, no more feeling that the whole world’s against them, spying on them, and all that lark. They’re happy.”
“But they won’t go, sir. They won’t go, not voluntarily,” said the sergeant regretfully.
I felt that if I didn’t leave at once that very instant, the pressure building up inside me would burst, and I would jump at the door, and push them aside, and run out, though I knew I wouldn’t get far.
They were too cautious, too experienced, to say what they meant openly to me. They accepted that I had been in the same train as sad Bunface. They had to, because I had described her so minutely.
But they didn’t accept anything else.
They thought I heard voices, and dreamed dreams, and saw visions. One had the impression that in a long career of interviewing all sorts and kinds of people, they had formed mental patterns of how people behaved in certain circumstances, and what could happen and what could not.
“It’s been a waste of time,” I said bitterly. “Your time and mine. You can’t cope, and I suppose I don’t blame you, because you’re faced with a situation you’ve never experienced before.”
“Oh, yes, we have,” said the sergeant defensively.
“There’s just one last question, sir,” said the superintendent, making no move from the door.
I was wondering when they would ask it.
“Go on,” I said, “I can guess it.”
“It’s just a formality, Mr. Compton, nothing for you to worry about. More a question of tidying up loose ends, if you know what I mean, seeing that you’ve come forward and admitted to an encounter with this Paradise Lane woman, which we didn’t know about-and seeing that you got the idea she laid a complaint against you. If we can just clear it up now, then there won’t be anything more to worry about.”
“No, nothing more to worry about,” I muttered.
“Where were you between say eleven-thirty last night, and one-thirty this morning, sir? That’s putting it a bit baldly, of course, but it’s just for the record. You’re an intelligent man, and-”
“Am I,” I interrupted sharply. “Am I indeed? Just now you were saying I needed mental treatment.”
I saw them both stiffen, suddenly look less relaxed, more alert. When the sergeant spoke he could have been addressing a child of ten. He didn’t exactly pat me on the head, but his tone was patient and coaxing.
It nearly made me sick.
“Now, now, now, sir, the superintendent wasn’t saying any such thing, were you, sir? Nor was I.”
“We were just making a few general remarks, Mr. Compton. I don’t think you have any call to suggest we meant them personally.”
“No call at all,” said the sergeant.
I turned away from them and walked to the opposite side of the room. As I did so, I heard the superintendent say:
“I have to inform you, Mr. Compton, that if you would rather say nothing, and await the arrival of a legal adviser, that is your right.”
I swung round and looked at them, the tall, grey one, and the shorter fawn one, so different in appearance, so different in manner: one apparently kindly, one mostly harsh and rasping. A good orchestration. Lifting you up and slapping you down. But both tired and over-worked. I think it explained a good deal.
I shook my head.
“I know all that. I don’t need a legal adviser to recall to me what I was doing for a couple of hours last night.”
“Well, let’s have it then,” said the sergeant with surprising directness. “Let’s have the times and places, then we can pack it up for the moment.”
He went over to the table by the window, sat down briskly, and flipped open his notebook.
“At eleven-thirty, I was still talking to my future father-in-law.”
“Okay,” he said. “At eleven-thirty you were still with him.”
“At eleven-forty-five, I left him and walked down Kensington Church Street. At around midnight, or a bit before I was here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here waiting around, making out a statement for some plain-clothes police officer. It took about an hour. Just before one o’clock I was with your officers at my house.”
“Not our officers. Kensington officers. We’re Scotland Yard.”
“Well, police officers.”
“Finding nothing and nobody?”
“Finding nothing and nobody.”
“And after that?” asked the superintendent, in his quiet voice. “After that, what?”
“After about one-thirty, nothing. I was in bed. But that covers the period, that covers me till one-thirty in the morning.”
“That’s right,” said the sergeant, looking up from his book. “That covers you till one-thirty in the morning, that’s okay, sir. That covers the gentleman till one-thirty in the morning,” repeated the sergeant, looking at the superintendent.
I should have let well alone, but I can never resist a crack. It’s probably the Irish streak in my blood, not the Dutch or the English.
“So you can go and see them and check up,” I said coldly. “Apart from a few minutes walking down Church Street when I was observed by two men you don’t think exist, you can go and see them. Ask them more questions, check the times again, get more signed statements, do what you damned well like.”
“We’ll do that thing,” said the sergeant, cheerfully. “We’ll do just that thing, sir.”
But I still couldn’t let well alone, because I was still resentful of their implications.
“Unless you think the plain-clothes officer in this station who took my statement was a figment of my imagination? Unless you think the uniformed officers who searched my flat at my request are non-existent?” I said sarcastically. “And the patrol car was a sort of ghost car? I’m going now,” I added. “I came here with goodwill, but I would have done better to stay away.”
The sergeant got up hurriedly from his chair, and moved to the door. His purpose might have been to open the door for me, but I knew it wasn’t. If anything, his object was to keep it closed.
“And at three o’clock this morning?” asked the superintendent quickly. “Say between one-thirty and three o’clock?”
“What’s three o’clock got to do with it, superintendent?”
“That’s about when she died-give a bit, take a bit, sir.”
“He’s been edging up to it, so as not to tax your memory too much at one and the same time,” said the sergeant.
CHAPTER 8
You’re all right between eleven-thirty and one-thirty, now what about one-thirty to three o’clock? What about then?”
“I was in bed, in bed and probably asleep.”
“Anybody else in the flat, Mr. Compton?”
“No.”
“Anybody to support that statement?” asked the sergeant.
“Probably.”
“Name? And address, if you know it?”
I shook my head, and began to walk towards them, towards the door. I had come of my own accord, I could go of my own accord, unless they were going to arrest me on the spot and prefer a charge. I knew it, and they knew it. More important, they knew that I knew it.
“I don’t know the names and addresses. The witnesses I mean are the people who have got me under
