The Tenth Interview by John Wainwright

Author:John Wainwright [Wainwright, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
Published: 2012-06-22T18:58:15+00:00

VI

The detective chief inspector pressed the light switch and the strip-lighting hissed and flickered for a moment before flooding the Interview Room with bluish-white light. It seemed a very appropriate light, in that it cast few shadows. Like the Interview Room—like the man conducting the interview—it had no time for dark corners.

The detective chief inspector returned to his chair, then asked, “What was in the study?”

“I’ve already told you. A desk. A couple of chairs…”

“What was it you didn’t want your wife to see?”

“Nothing.” The man’s eyes widened in amazement. “I’ve already explained. Just privacy. That’s all I sought.”

“A bolt?” suggested the detective chief inspector, mildly. “They come far cheaper than Chubb locks.”

“When I wasn’t there, you see,” explained the man. “When I was at the shop. I didn’t want her nosing around.”

“So, it was rather more than privacy?”

“What?”

“When you weren’t there—when you were at work—privacy didn’t come into it. You weren’t in the study. No privacy to interfere with… surely?”

“She was—she was looking at my things. ”

“What things?”

“My papers, my books, my stamp collection. Everything.”

“You didn’t even want her to look?” The detective chief inspector raised an eyebrow.

“I’m—I’m a very private man. I’m sorry if that sounds peculiar, but…”

“You were also a married man.”

“Yes.” The man nodded, as he tried to follow the detective chief inspector’s line of conversation.

“Share and share alike… all that sort of thing.”

“We’d little in common.”

“On the contrary.” The detective chief inspector smiled. “You were very much like each other.”

“You—you didn’t even know her.” The man stared.

“According to your father.”

“What?”

“Before you married… remember? The suggestion that you were too much like each other. You agreed… didn’t you?”

The man frowned.

“Didn’t you?” pressed the detective chief inspector.

“In some ways.” It was a reluctant admission.

The detective chief inspector took the packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He opened it and this time offered the packet to the man.

“I don’t smoke,” said the man.

“I do.” The detective chief inspector placed a cigarette between his lips. “I claim the right to kill myself.”

“And others? Those who don’t smoke, but are obliged to breathe your cigarette smoke, second-hand?”

“And that, from a poisoner?” The detective chief inspector touched the flame of a match to the cigarette. He continued, “Let’s talk about music. You like music?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“What you would call ‘good’ music?”

“Classical music. Real music.”

“But not your wife?”

“I don’t doubt that she would have called it ‘music’. The candy-floss tunes played at the pier pavilion.”

“Not Mozart, for example?”

The man smiled a condescending smile, and that was answer enough.

“And yet,” said the detective chief inspector, gently, “you refused to listen to a Mozart symphony.”

“When?” The impression was that having asked the quick question the man’s mind flipped back a few years, and he added, “Oh, you mean Mozart’s ‘Prague’?”

“You were reading Hardy at the time,” said the detective chief inspector, gently.

“It was television,” muttered the man.

“It was an olive branch. You even recognised it as such, and you rejected it.”

“I do not like watching a televised symphony concert. The man responsible for the cameras never credits the viewer with—”

“You don’t like strolling along the promenade.

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