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.”
“And that the officer’s name was Matthews?”
“And that he said his name was Matthews.”
“And that somebody phoned you in the night?”
“Yes.”
“Twice?”
“The second call might have been a wrong number.”
“And that you were, in your view, menaced on a public footpath at night?”
“In my view, yes.”
“And that on the self-same night a person or persons entered your flat, although a search revealed no signs of intruders?”
“Correct.”
“You think you are being followed all the time?”
I shook my head. A feeling of helplessness came over me.
“Not all the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“Probably most of the time. I don’t know. How should I?”
“You feel your flat is under observation?” asked the sergeant.
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“You think that all this elaborate business is just to frighten you out of investigating the background of another lady, this Mrs. Dawson?” asked the superintendent.
“This Mrs. Dawson, as you call her, yes, I do.”
“Who was also murdered?”
“Who was also murdered,” I muttered.
“His lady friends seem kind of accident prone,” murmured the sergeant, looking up, looking at the superintendent, not looking at me. The superintendent said:
“Can you suggest any other reason why all this rigmarole should be organised against you?”
I banged the table with the palms of both my hands and stood up, looking down at the superintendent and the sergeant.
“Look, I have had enough of this!” I said, and almost shouted the words. “I’ve just about bloody well had enough of this!”
“I expect you have,” said the superintendent, and nodded.
“Too bloody true, you have,” said the sergeant.
“I’m an ordinary citizen, leading an ordinary life, and I’m being persecuted, and when I seek the assistance of the police, what bloody well happens?”
“Imaginary policemen call on you with imaginary complaints, voices ring you up in the early hours, that’s what happens,” said the sergeant abruptly, tapping his protruding lower lip with his Stationery Office Pencil.
“You mustn’t take too much notice of the old sergeant, here, he’s a down-to-earth character,” murmured the superintendent.
He looked at the sergeant expressionlessly, neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. He looked as though he had heard it all before, not once, but many times.
“Women in trains give him messages typed on his own typewriter, and footpads menace him,” muttered the sergeant. “And thieves break into his flat and steal nothing, and quietly make off. What a life!”
The superintendent took no notice. He said:
“Have you been victimised much in your life, Mr. Compton? Had much bad luck, one way and another? Made a lot of enemies, through no fault of your own? That sort of thing?”
I shook my head and gathered my packet of cigarettes and lighter from the table and put them in my pocket. There was nothing more I could say.
I was feeling the heat from the electric lighting, and the voices of the superintendent and sergeant were not so clear, and the noises of the traffic outside had grown dimmer. I had a feeling of panic, an impression that I was indeed losing my grip on reality.
“I can describe him,” I heard myself say.
“Describe who?” said the sergeant. “The unknown voice who rang you up?”
“He was a middle-aged sergeant,” I went on doggedly, “with a fresh complexion, and a bald head, and he was rather stout, and he had brown eyes.”
They were looking at me placidly, as people look at a child reciting a poem. But I forced myself to go on.
“He came on a bicycle, and wore bicycle clips on his trousers. And he said his name was Matthews, Sergeant Matthews, of Kensington Police Station. You say he doesn’t exist and couldn’t have brought a complaint. Can’t you suggest something? Can’t you help me? What am I to think?”
I rubbed my forehead with the fingers of my right hand, and looked down to where the superintendent was still sitting at the table, and saw him watching me with more attention.
“Why did you go to Italy, where this Mrs. Dawson was killed?” he asked quietly.
“I’d had a car accident and was a bit run down. My legs had been slashed a bit,” I said indifferently, and moved to the door.
“They say car accidents can make you sleep badly,” he said, getting to his feet.
“Yes, I was sleeping badly. I’m all right now, though.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“Nasty shock, a bad car accident,” said the sergeant mildly.
The superintendent asked:
“Did you sleep well in Italy?”
“After the first few days.”
“Chap I knew was in a car accident,” said the sergeant. “Went round for some time afterwards thinking he’d got a radio set in his head. All right now, though. Still, it just shows.”
I paused and stared at him.
“That’s usually a sign of schizophrenia. That’s not delayed shock. That’s got nothing to do with car accidents,” I said quickly.
“Hasn’t it, sir? Well, maybe he was schizo anyway. Better now. They cure all sorts of things these days.”
He had dropped his hectoring tone. He got to his feet, and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me one.
The three of us stood near the closed door of the waiting-room. Almost like three acquaintances who had satisfactorily concluded a difficult business deal, except that my stomach muscles were still contracted and I wanted desperately to get out of the place. But the superintendent was leaning against the door, and the sergeant was near him, and I was on the inside of the room.
“Well, I must go now,” I said firmly, and walked towards them, but they didn’t move. I had to stop. The grey superintendent glanced casually at me, and then back to the sergeant. They began talking between themselves, as if I wasn’t there.
The superintendent said, yes, of course, it was a question of early diagnosis, and early treatment, like everything else in medical matters. The sergeant said, “well, yes, sir, but that was the whole difficulty, getting people to have treatment, especially in certain cases.
“You can’t get ’em certified,” he said in a low voice, “unless they’re right round the bend, I mean, so long as they can look after themselves, more or less-and probably less than more-and so long as they’re not causing what you might call a public nuisance, you can’t do anything about it. And that’s the trouble.”
The superintendent said:
“And more’s the pity, both for their sakes and everybody’s.”
“They’ve got to go voluntary,” said the sergeant.
“Doctors are reluctant to certify,” said the superintendent, “and it’s not surprising-one mistake, and bingo, they’re sued for damages. It’s a pity, really.”
“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.