‘Shall we proceed now, Mr Bentink?’
I shook off my mood of abstraction and took the proffered chair. Melton smiled at me, placed the fingertips of his hands carefully against one another and stared down at the resulting pinnacle.
‘Now, Mr Bentink,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about the deaths of Miss Olga Lindstrom and Miss Sarah Herbert?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said.
There was a long pause. I began to feel rather embarrassed for Melton, who was waggling his fingers around now as if rather uncertain how to go on.
Finally he took a deep breath and spoke.
‘Obviously I did not get you to come all this way, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, just so that you could tell me absolutely nothing.’
‘Obviously,’ I agreed.
‘Then why did I fetch you?’ he asked.
‘You tell me,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You tell me. You did come, after all. Voluntarily. Why did you come?’
‘Why, to help you with your enquiries.’ I cursed myself for mouthing the well-worn phrase. He smiled.
‘And did you feel you could help?’
‘No,’ I began, but was quickly interrupted.
‘Then I am indeed grateful that you’ve come all this way despite your conviction that your journey was useless. That was very good of you.’
I began to grow angry.
‘Look, Superintendent, if you want to translate cooperation with the police as a confession of guilt, that’s your business.’
Again he interrupted me.
‘Forgive me, Mr Bentink. I was just interested to know if there was anything relevant to the case which you felt you yourself would like to mention. That’s all. We don’t encourage amateur detectives but the ideas of intelligent men, especially those who have been on the spot at important times, are never ignored by us. I’m sorry you feel suspicious of my motives. All I want is information. All the information. All the little bits you might have stored away, quite unknown to your conscious mind. I set no traps. I just want to help you remember.’
‘Remember what?’
‘If I knew that, I would not need to trouble you any further. Perhaps a little confirmation to start with. You are Henry Aldgate Bentink of Flat 67, Montagu House, W.C.I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Splendid. It’s not often that people are so precise or legible in their entries in hotel registers.’
‘A mark in my favour?’
‘It depends where in your scale of values you put precision and legibility, Mr Bentink. You are at present on a walking holiday with Peter Charles Thorne, you arrived at the Derwent Hotel last Monday evening and stayed there till Wednesday, that is yesterday morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you stay there till yesterday morning, rather than, say, this morning? Or tomorrow morning?’
I did not understand his motives for this line of questioning and this worried me. What on earth could the length of our stay at the Derwent have to do with the case? I decided to be as unforthcoming as I could till he had revealed his hand.
‘No reason in particular.’
Melton stood up and took a turn round the room.
‘Mr Bentink, I take it you are an intelligent man, probably a University man.’
‘Yes.’
‘One of the penalties of intelligence is the difficulty of simulating unintelligence. It is so incongruous. Why will you not attempt to be frank with me? Either it was part of your overall holiday plan or it was an improvisation, a whim, a decision taken at the hotel. Whatever it was, there was a reason. No one suggests it was a sinister reason. Ninety-nine per cent of the people I talk to look for sinister reasons for all my questions when there are usually none. I know what it feels like. But let me repeat, I set no traps.’
He sat down again and looked at me almost pleadingly. I began to feel more at home, not because I believed a word of his protestation, but because this was a kind of tablemanship I was used to. Much of my working day was spent in just such confrontations and I mentally reviewed the list of preliminary self-questionings which I had learnt almost literally at my father’s knee. The main question was usually whether to attack or defend. Or rather, when to attack.
Well, I did not know Melton well enough yet to decide who was stronger, but I felt reluctant to commit myself to the truth. I gather that this is a not uncommon phenomenon in criminal cases and perhaps the reason is what I felt on that day. I felt myself somehow threatened and the truth was a final and impregnable bastion of defence. I did not wish to come to it too soon. Do not think I felt any serious concern for myself. The crime was a dreadful one, but I had nothing to do with it. And I was rational enough to recognize my own irrationality. And also my one real reason for holding the superintendent at arm’s length. This was my ignorance of what Peter was saying downstairs. He had implied that he was going to claim we had only seen the girls once, very briefly, in the hotel bar. Why?
‘Well, Mr Bentink. The hotel,’ he said gently.
He must know why we left when we did. He must have talked to Stirling and everyone else at the hotel. Questions about guests, time of alibis, recent departures.
I could not see any harm in his knowing, or anyone’s knowing, as long as Peter was telling it too. And there was no reason why he should not be.
‘We decided to leave yesterday morning because we thought we’d head across to the coast and spend some of this fine weather by the sea. We had decided this the previous night, but there was an unfortunate incident during the night which, though it did not make up our minds for us, certainly prevented us from changing them. But that can have no bearing on the case.’
‘I gather Mr Stirling was not amused.’
‘You knew,’ I said accusingly.
‘Ah yes. But you knew I knew. What interests me is why you bothered to work it out. Do you often get as drunk as that, Mr Bentink?’
‘Not often.’
‘Had you been celebrating anything special?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
The stress was on the ‘I’. He took off his spectacles and rubbed them on his sleeve. Then put them back on and looked at an open file which lay on the desk before him. What the hell could he need time to think about, I wondered.
‘It was during this celebration that you exchanged words with the deceased girls, I believe. Would you tell me about that.’
‘It was nothing really. I just asked them if they were coming back to their seats or leaving. They didn’t reply, just jabbered away to each other in Swedish, then off they went.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
‘Do you speak Swedish? Could you understand what they said?’
‘No. No.’
‘But you knew it was Swedish?’
‘Well no. It sounded vaguely Scandinavian, if you know what I mean. And they looked Swedish.’
‘I see. Did you see them again?’
This was the crunch. I postponed the moment of positive decision by attempting to imply rather than state outright