Strike Out Where Not Applicable by Nicolas Freeling Page A

had a reason – maybe a good reason, which we don’t know. That person banked on the large probability that it would be seen as an accident. Plenty of possibilities. He was overweight and had a congested look, so he might have got dizzy and fallen off, or even collapsed from some sudden effort like doing up the saddle. Or he was bending and lurched clumsily into the horse. Whatever happened, he hurt it or startled it, so that it lashed out and clipped him. I haven’t looked at any statistics – distrust them anyway – so I don’t know how likely such things are. The point is that an ordinary person would accept it as likely.’
    â€˜You want to know why I didn’t,’ slowly. ‘What cast the little seed of doubt? I don’t know myself, exactly. It’s true that anybody would have accepted the accident – I would myself. Just that I’d given him quite a thorough check not three months ago, when he took this riding up. He came after some pushing from his wife, with moans about his liver, and I gave him a lecture on alcohol – but he had an amazing constitution! Anyone else would have had cirrhosis – think of the horrors waiting for the man who abuses eating and drinking to that extent – and his tension and cholesterol figures were virtually normal! Healthy as a Tyrolean wood-chopper. Oh, he had some slight congestions … but heart and lungs – a channel swimmer.
    â€˜What’s more, I don’t believe in the clumsiness theory either. I can understand Francis putting it forward – someone from a town, nervous of horses and making a horse nervous, fair enough. But this chap – when he was a child his father had carthorses, and he was saying Wo and Shtiddy to them when he was five years old. Nobody’s going to tell me he was that awkward – Francis says anyway it was a thirteen-year-old Hanoverian with a placid temperament.’
    â€˜You’re doing my homework for me,’ said Van der Valk.
    â€˜Haversma’s findings confirm mine, do they? And that leaves you with the hypothesis of a criminal in our midst? And now you’ve got to catch him.’
    â€˜That’s how it goes in the book. I don’t believe in criminals much.’
    â€˜You don’t believe in the book?’
    â€˜What about your big eater and drinker that defies convention? People are like that. People who ought by all accounts to be criminals and aren’t. Other people who obviously aren’t – and commit crimes …’
    â€˜Now come. Criminals exist.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m not talking about squalid crimes. Though even then …’
    â€˜But there is a criminal type, surely.’ Doctor Maartens was rather shocked. ‘Without any metaphysical nonsense – I mean the fellow distorted right from the start – bad home, unlucky childhood, wet the bed and so on, twists of environment, the whole lot fixed and crystallized by an early prison sentence.’
    â€˜That is just what I don’t like,’ said Van der Valk gloomily. ‘Wet the bed – anxiety symptom. Bad home – or over-rigid home. Early delinquency – and so on. All neatly pigeon-holed. Tick where applicable, strike out where not applicable – form-filling!’
    â€˜But there must be some standards, man, by which you decide. And anyway, it’s not decided finally – that’s the precise function of the assize court.’
    â€˜Yes – and there’s two sorts of assize courts, or if you like two systems. Ours, where everything is cut and dried beforehand, and the English kind, where everything relevant is suppressed because of “prejudicing the accused”.
    â€˜A criminal is a criminal and must be judged accordingly,’ said Maartens primly.
    â€˜Quite so. Always provided he is a criminal. The assize court is admirably equipped to handle anyone who is a criminal and singularly inept with