Fell of Dark

He cracked his hand sharply on the desk.

I viewed him warily. I felt it was important to discover exactly how much this was a genuine display of indignation, how much a carefully controlled performance to lead me – where? My main feeling in any case was one of relief. This particular lie was not too difficult to account for. In fact, its discovery seemed to offer a new line of defence, though I did not take kindly to having to recognize I was now on the defensive.

‘Look, Superintendent, as far as I could see – in fact, can see – Mr Thorne’s illness has got no possible bearing on the case. I wished to save him embarrassment, that’s all. As it is, now you have found out, I take it that you have instructed Copley to stop badgering him?’

‘Badgering? No one is badgering. Inspector Copley is questioning a member of the public who has come voluntarily to the station to assist us. That is all.’

His recent emotion had gone and he was once again the rather dry, nervous, bird-like figure I had first acknowledged. But I knew him better now. I’m not very good on first impressions and people often exist in my mind as their own caricatures long after I first meet them. But I was quickly beginning to recognise the quality of this man.

‘Fair enough, Superintendent. As for Mr Thorne’s sex life, I did not know things had gone as far as you say with Marco. But if anything, surely this indicates the impossibility of his being connected in any way with a rape? You can’t have it both ways.’

Melton smiled at my phrase. Encouraged, I pressed on.

‘There’s nothing illegal about Mr Thorne fancying a young man. Nor anything morally reprehensible, no more so than if you or I should cast a lecherous glance at a couple of …’

I let the sentence fade away, but Melton finished it for me ‘… Teenage girls. No, you’re right. As long as it ends there. But your theory of sexual exclusiveness interests me. Your friend had the misfortune to fall out with young Marco. He was still very angry when we got him here and he was very ready to talk. Among other interesting things, he reported to us a rather curious remark passed by Mr Thorne as they talked, or rather as Mr Thorne indulged in a kind of meditative monologue which Marco only half heard and half understood. Mr Thorne commented that he found it a terrible physical strain to have a relationship with a woman. To make it at all viable, he needed some extraordinary or dangerous circumstance. What do you make of that?’

Frankly, I had not got the faintest idea what I should make of it. It referred to no part of Peter’s experience with which I was at all concerned. I smiled in as superior a fashion as I could assume.