A Spoonful of Luger (55 page)

I
was
exhausted,
despising
myself
for
not
having
understood.
Poor
Anne,
dear
Anne,
who’d
not
been
able
to
face
me.
She’d
blamed
herself
for
having
sacrificed
me.

“So
go
think
again,
Frank,”
I
said.
“I’m
tired
and
I’m
disgusted.
And
I
don’t
care
if
you
never
catch
your murderer.
He
deserves
a
medal.
I
only
wish
he’d
done
it
sooner.”

Then
I
walked
out
into
the
rain,
plodding
through
the
mud
with
weariness
dragging
at
my
feet.

“Wait!”
shouted
Bycroft.
“George,
wait.”

I
went
on
walking.
I
heard
him
say,
“fetch
him
back,
Bill,”
and
Sprague
came
splashing
up
behind
me.
He
circled
me
and
turned,
stood
with
his
head
back,
his
hands
on
his
hips,
that
knowing
smile
of
his
just
visible
in
the
dim
light.
I
stopped.

“George,”
called
Frank
from
the
shed.
“Do
you
know
who’s
done
it?”

“I
know.”

“Then
come
back
here,
you
big
fool.”

Sprague
chewed.
“You
heard
what
the
man
said.”

I
hit
him
hard,
catching
the
jaw
as
it
moved
towards
me.
The
best
bit
of
the
day,
that
was.

Then
I
turned
and
went
back.
Nobody
was
going
to
let
up
on Randall,
because
it
needed
imagination
and
feeling,
and
Bycroft
had
intellect,
and
you
can’t
have
everything.

But
there
was
no
heart
in
it,
turning
back
to
what
now
seemed
to
me
to
be
a
betrayal.

13

“ASSAULTING
an
officer,”
said Bycroft
with
dreary
satisfaction.

“In
the
course
of
his
duty?
What
was
he
going
to
do
—
arrest
me?”

“Don’t
imagine
we
couldn’t
for
withholding
information.”

I
tried
laughing
that
off,
but
it
fell
flat.
“You
know
as
much
as
I
do.
It’s
how
you
interpret
the
facts
that
counts.”

Sprague
came
back
into
the
shed,
looking
wet
and
muddy.
I
watched
him
warily.
He
wiped
a
hand
down
his
face.
There
was
murder
in
his
eyes.

“Frank,”
I
said,
“I
could
walk
away
from
here
and
you’d
maybe
never
see
it.
Perhaps
that’d
be
best.
But
you’ll
only
wait
for
my
client
to
recover —
you
or
somebody
else
—
and
start
on
at
him
again.
And
I
can’t
have
that. He’s
going
to
pay
me,
and
I
need
the
money.
Isn’t
it
sad
that
everything
comes
down
to
money!”

“Money!”
Bycroft
said
furiously.
“Do
you
want
paying?”

“Come
to
think
of
it,
why
should
I
do
your
work
for
nothing?”

“All
right!”
he
shouted,
fumbling
in
his
pocket.
“How
much?
A
fiver?
Ten?”

I
laughed
in
his
face.
He
flapped
his
arms
to
his
sides
in
anger.

“Then
what
do
you
want?
How
d’you
expect
me
to
know?”

“I
don’t,
Frank.
That’s
the
point.
Everybody
always
expects
other
people
to
know
things.
It’s
been
happening
to
me.”

There
I’d
been,
assuming
she
knew,
and
all
the
while
she
was
thinking ...
Everything
backwards
—
that’s
life
for
you.

“Here
we’ve
got
a
murder
weapon
locked
in
a
box,”
I
said.
“And
the
victim
had
swallowed
its
key.
It
was
a
kind
of
inversion,
the
one
a contradiction
of
the
other.
I
thought
to
myself:
suppose
the
explanation
for
it
all
comes
from
what
wasn’t
known,
instead
of
what
was.”

“Don’t
you
think
we
could
go
into
all
this
at
the
Station?”
Bycroft
asked.

But
I’d
got
things
as
I
wanted
them.
“A
minute.”
I
held
up
my
hand.
“You
see,
Frank,
once
I
got
on
to
inversions,
it
all
seemed
to
get
clearer.”

“
When
did
you
get
on
to
inversions?”

“When
I
got
Randall
down
off
that
beam.”

He
grunted
disgustedly.

“Well,
it
does
seem
to
me,”
I
went
on,
“that
we
started
off
on
the
wrong
assumption
somewhere.
The
problem
was:
how
did
the
murder
weapon
get
into
the
box,
which
had
to
be
locked
because
the
victim
had
swallowed
the
key?
There
was
obviously
a
fallacy
somewhere,
and
being
a
very
efficient
policeman,
Frank,
you
tried
to
find
it.
The
gun
in
the
box
couldn’t
be
the
murder
weapon,
you
said.
But
it
was.
So
there
had
to
be
some
other
way of
opening
the
box,
you
argued.
But
there
wasn’t.
There
couldn’t
have
been
another
key
made,
and
the
duplicate
could
not
have
been
used.
So
you
have
to
accept
that
there’s
only
one
key
that
could
have
opened
it
—
the
one
that
was
swallowed.”