31st Of February by Julian Symons Page B

water, Anderson shook himself. “Inspector Cresse, are you insinuating that I killed my wife?”
    The Inspector looked astonished. “Why, what a question to ask! I came here about those anonymous letters.”
    “Then why did you ask about the insurance? You know perfectly well that we each had an insurance on the other’s life. I am not short of money, Inspector.”
    “Now now, Mr Anderson.” The meaty hand was raised, soothingly. “Nobody said you were. You don’t get the point. Nothing was mentioned about that insurance at the inquest. The person who sent that letter must know you pretty well. You might think it over and see if you can identify him or her. But the whole affair, that unfortunate business about the light that fused, and so on, raises what you might call a moral problem.”
    “Oh yes, a moral problem.” Shall I say it? Anderson wondered, and then gripped the arm of his chair and spoke earnestly. “Tell me, Inspector, if I told you that I killed my wife, would you arrest me?”
    “Ah ah.” Like gigantic scissors the Inspector’s legs shifted and were crossed from right to left instead of from left to right. “Precisely the moral problem.” Anderson poured out fresh drinks for both of them. When he passed the Inspector’s glass, however, some of the whisky splashed on to the hard, fleshy thigh. Anderson exclaimed in dismay, drew out his handkerchief and rubbed the offending spot. The Inspector, apparently unconscious of these ministrations, stared ahead of him at the pentagonal looking glass fixed over the fireplace. “Precisely the moral problem. You killed your wife, Mr Anderson.” Anderson sat perfectly still, holding his own glass, staring. “You killed her, I mean, in the sense that had you pursued some other course of action she would not now be dead. You might have taken her out to dinner. You might have gone down into the cellar in her place, might you not? And then perhaps when you found it in darkness, you might have mended the fuse – you are a handy enough electrician for that? Or perhaps you might have accompanied her to the head of the cellar stairs instead of reading the paper in the sitting room. Then you would have cautioned her, doubtless – you would have said: ‘Be careful of that slippery step halfway down.’ And then, who knows – perhaps she wouldn’t have slipped.”
    “You attach blame to me? You think me guilty?”
    “Ah ah,” the Inspector said again. He drank three quarters of the whisky in his glass. “That question is not for an ignorant policeman, but for an intellectual. A man like yourself. It is a problem of morals.” He spoke with gravity to which Anderson, his partner in this curious verbal knockabout, responded with restrained jocosity.
    “So you will not arrest me?”
    “Arrest you?”
    “Even though I said ‘Mea culpa, I confess my guilt.’”
    Anderson beat his breast in mock despair. “What do you propose to do about it? Supposing I said that – just supposing!” With a revival of his earlier gadfly spirit, Anderson walked mincingly across the room to straighten a picture.
    “What do you propose to do?” The Inspector’s features had lost altogether their joviality. The strong lines threw into prominence the great blunt nose; the loose lips were joined in an appearance of resolution. “We can do nothing without you.” He stood up and clapped the bowler hat on to his bald head. It was like the curtain coming down on a play.
    “Nothing!” Anderson echoed triumphantly.
    “Nothing.”

The 26th of February
    The sickly light of morning, filtering through pink curtains, illuminated Anderson asleep in a double bed. He slept in a position curiously contorted, one arm thrust over his head like a signal, the other holding a pillow tightly to his chest. His knees were drawn up like those of a man making a jack-knife dive. His yellow face looked younger in repose. The top of his pyjamas, opened, revealed a body surprisingly white.
    An