‘Well, then! Suppose he was the murderer. He didn’t know it would rain. It would have looked pretty fishy for him to put off his appointment for no reason at all.’

‘It would. I wonder why he didn’t tell me this himself.’

‘Because he’s so worried that he’s at the end of his tether. Because you got hold of him last night and deliberately played on his nerves until he couldn’t think. Because—’

‘Hallo!’ said Alleyn. ‘You’ve seen him this morning, have you?’

If Decima was disconcerted she didn’t show it. She blazed at Alleyn:

‘Yes, I’ve seen him, and I scarcely recognized him. He’s a mass of overwrought nerves. His condition’s pathological. The next thing will be a confession of a crime he didn’t commit.’

‘How about the crime he did commit?’ asked Alleyn. ‘It would be more sensible.’

And that did shake her. She caught her breath in a little gasping sigh. Her fingers went to her lips. She looked very young and very guilty.

‘So you knew all the time,’ said Decima.

CHAPTER 15
Love Interest

Alleyn had expected that Decima would hedge, rage, or possibly pretend to misunderstand him. Her sudden capitulation took him by surprise and he was obliged to make an embarrassingly quick decision. He plumped for comparative frankness.

‘We expect,’ he said, ‘a report on his fingerprints. When that comes through we shall have official confirmation of a record that we suspected from the first and of which we are now certain.’

‘And you immediately put two and two together and make an absurdity.’

‘What sort of absurdity?’

‘You will say that because he didn’t come forward and announce “I’m a man with a police record”, he’s a murderer. Can’t you see how he felt? Have you the faintest notion what it’s like for a man who’s been in prison to try to get back, to try to earn a miserable pittance? Have you ever thought about it at all or wondered for two seconds what becomes of the people you send to gaol? To their minds? I know you look after their bodies with the most intolerable solicitude. You are there always. Every employer is warned. There is no escape. It would be better, upon my honour, I believe it would be better, to hang them outright than—than to tear their wings off and let them go crawling out into the sun.’

‘That’s a horrible analogy,’ said Alleyn, ‘and a false one.’

‘It’s a true analogy. Can’t you see why Legge was so frightened? He’s only just stopped having to report. Only now has he got his thin freedom. He thought, poor wretch, that we wouldn’t keep him on if we knew he’d been to gaol. Leave him alone! Leave him alone!’

‘How long have you known this about him?’ asked Alleyn.