“I suppose you feel now you can’t discuss the case any more with me?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s more a question of whether you’ll want to discuss it with me when you know who I am.” I told him then my name, adding: “I think we met — years ago. At children’s parties.”

He nodded with a heightening of what seemed a purely abstract interest. “Yes, I remember. And after that you were the star witness for the prosecution.”

“Don’t hold that against me. I was too young to know what it was all about.”

“Do you mean you no longer believe he was guilty?”

He shot the question at me so abruptly that its awkwardness came as a challenge.

“Will you take my word if I answer that I really don’t know?”

He smiled. “Why, surely … What about another drink?”

“I think it’s my turn,” I said, calling for Brierley.

When we were left alone again I went on: “The evidence I gave was true enough, as far as it went.”

“Yes, of course. I never doubted it. You saw my mother going into the house at a certain time, and you saw the other two leaving the house at a certain time. Ample opportunity. And a surgery full of poison. Logic. What more could you ask? Especially after the letter he’d written to the girl.”

“Yes, it all pointed one way.”

“And it all pointed wrong.”

“Really?” (What else could one say? Well, there was one thing I could repeat.) “I must admit that if I’d known what use was going to be made of my evidence I’d have kept it to myself.”

“But why?”

“Because I always liked the little doctor.”

“Yet you don’t feel certain that he wasn’t guilty?”

“I don’t feel certain of anything. How can I? Something mysterious and terrible happened over twenty years ago when I was a boy — why expect me to fix blame? Maybe the court was right, maybe not. The thing looked possible — more than that — even probable. After all, we do know that murder is something that men will commit for love.”

“So you think he was infatuated?”

“Call it that if you like the word.”

“I don’t, particularly. ‘Love’ is better.”

“That’s the word I used.”

“Maybe they mean the same.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think you understood my father?”

“Well, hardly — how could I? I was only a boy.”

“There was something boyish in him. Childlike, almost. I once wrote a poem about him — perhaps I can remember it.” He paused a moment and then recited, rather well:

“Both youth and age were his

With no more change of scene

Than from the blue of mountains

Down to the level green.

“And in that blue-green land

Where English sons were bred,

He knew the dead were living

And saw the living dead!”

I said: “I rather like that. And I think I understand what you’re driving at.”

“The thing I’m driving at is that he wasn’t guilty.”