31st Of February by Julian Symons

not called upon to express an opinion.” Anderson spoke a little huffily.
    “But I’m interested” – the Inspector’s great head nodded in puzzlement – “to know what you think. An intellectual man like yourself; you’d call yourself an intellectual now, wouldn’t you?”
    “An advertising man merely.”
    “Those verses he writes – you couldn’t call them great art now?” Anderson shook his bead. “But they help to increase friendliness between human beings, don’t they? Isn’t that a good thing?”
    With complete self-possession Anderson smiled at the heavy face opposite him. “The verses Fletchley writes are in every way contemptible. They pander deliberately to the vulgarian who lives in all of us. They exploit the lowest depth of public taste. That’s what is wrong with Fletchley’s rhymes.”
    With clownish pleasure the inspector said: “I do admire the way you talk, now. But tell me – as a plain man now – if there’s a demand for something, can it be wrong to supply it?” The vacant eye rolled round the room. “You don’t have a woman in,” he added. Anderson was taken aback.
    “What?”
    “Dust.” The great bald head was slowly shaken. “You’re letting things go, Mr Anderson. This room looks altogether different from the way it did when I first saw it. That was three weeks ago. Your wife kept it very nice, if I may say so. Not my own taste, of course, but –” The great flat hand moved embracingly to include carpet, curtains, chairs, lamps, everything. “Very nice. And now look.” One great finger moved on the red table, sketched a face in dust, skirted the bowler hat and picked up the pot. “Preparation Number One,” he read as slowly as a peasant. “Preparation for what, if it’s not a rude question?”
    Anderson leaned forward again, pleased that the conversation had moved away from his wife. “That little pot, Inspector, contains a cream designed to eliminate shaving from our lives forever. It is a small part of the twentieth-century revolution.”
    “And what might that be, when it’s at home?”
    “Hygiene, asepsis, artificial insemination.”
    The lines on the great blue-white face deepened as the Inspector laughed. “You’re in favour of modernity, though, Mr Anderson. How about the refrigerator in the kitchen? And” – his hand moved embracingly again – “all this.”
    Anderson said stiffly: “My wife furnished this flat.”
    “Ah, she was a modern,” the Inspector said sepulchrally. “I’m old-fashioned. But hygiene and asepsis – I’m modern enough to believe in them.”
    “But don’t you see that they’re unimportant?” Anderson cried. He was moved suddenly by the need for explanation.
    “Unimportant?”
    “When a doctor saves human lives he is committed to the belief that they are valuable. But be may be quite wrong. It’s only during the past few hundred years that we’ve come to assume that there is something intrinsically important about the fact of life itself, and now soil conservers are telling us that the world’s population is too large for the amount of food available, that we are slowly starving to death. Improved maternity statistics and better dental treatment have no importance in themselves. The important thing to find out about any man or woman is whether he’s preserved his soul alive.”
    The Inspector looked at Anderson. Anderson looked at the Inspector. “Have you got a match?” the Inspector asked vacantly. Anderson gave him a box of Swan Vestas, and the Inspector lighted a cigarette. “Matches,” he said absently. “That’s what I was going to say.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” The vacant eyes rested on Anderson. “Have you got any enemies?”
    “Enemies?”
    “We have received a letter – in fact, we have received two letters.” Suddenly two pieces of paper were in the great hand. “We don’t pay much attention to such things in general, but just in this case we’d like to know who sent them.”