You.
Yes, you, reading this.
How would you like to be a character in this story? Take a deep breath. It's a murder mystery. If you suffer from nightmares, nervous rashes, or have a dicky heart, better turn to something less dangerous. But if you think you can take it, read on. Now step into the story. Someone speaks your name. Cautiously you answer, "Yes?"
You find yourself in an office furnished simply with a desk and two chairs, the sort of room universally used for interviewing purposes. It might seem totally impersonal were it not for the glass-fronted case mounted on the wall in front of you. Inside is a large stuffed fish.
"You may sit down. This will take a little time." Although the bearded man behind the desk isn't wearing a uniform, authority is implicit in his voice and manner. He is broad-shouldered, with a thick neck. His head is bald at the crown, with a crop of grizzled hair at the sides and back as compensation. His age would be difficult to estimate, but he is obviously a long-serving officer who gives the impression that he knows everything about you and is interested only in having it confirmed. He spends a moment looking at the papers in front of him. You are not deceived by the humorous sparkle in his brown eyes. You sense that it may shortly turn into an accusing gleam. But at the beginning he doesn't threaten. He starts in a quiet, disarming monotone, his eyes on his notes. "Have you any idea why you are here?"
"Well," you say, "I was reading this crime story—"
He looks up with more interest. "So you read crime stories?"
"Sometimes, yes."
"Do you ever get ideas from what you read?"
This sounds like a question to duck. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"It's obvious what I mean," he tells you sharply. "So-called ingenious methods of murder. Anyone who reads crime stories knows how devious they are. Writers have been concocting murder mysteries for at least a hundred and fifty years, ever since Edgar Allan Poe. What was that one of his in which an orangutan turned out to be the killer?"
" 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'? "
"Right. I don't get much time for reading in this job, but I know the plots. Years ago in those country-house murders it was sufficient surprise for the butler to have done it. Most of them are a sight more ingenious than that, of course. There was the mad wife in the attic. There was the postman nobody noticed, who actually carried the corpse away in his sack. Did you read that one?"
"I may have done."
"Chesterton. I met him once, many years ago. I've met them all. It dates me, doesn't it? Dorothy L. Sayers. Agatha Christie. She was a fiendish plotter. Sweet lady, though. Rather shy, in fact."
Not only does it date him, you think to yourself; it takes some believing. G.K. Chesterton must have died fifty years ago, at least. Theoretically it's possible that they met, but it seems more likely that he is making it up.
"You sound like a real enthusiast," you venture, still unsure where all this is leading. Is he doing this to make you feel inferior?
"The Agatha Christie story that impressed me most," he says, "was the murder that turned out to have been committed by the narrator of the story."
"Yes, clever."
"I came across one in which the detective did it. There's no end to the twists in these stories. One of these days I fully expect to find out that the reader did it. Not so much a whodunnit as a youdunnit."
You smile nervously. "That would be stretching it."
"Oh, I don't know."
He eyes you speculatively. "You didn't answer my question just now. Do you get ideas from crime stories?"
"Not that I'm aware of," you say. "I don't know what use I could make of them."
He fingers his beard. "That remains to be discovered. Let's talk about you. Shall I lay out the essential facts? I want to ask you about a Saturday evening towards the end of last summer."
"Last summer?" Your hand finds the edge of your chair and grips it. This isn't going to be easy. Last summer was a long time ago. You have sometimes wondered how reliable a witness you would be if you were ever called to testify to something you saw the same day. But last summer ...
"To be precise, the last Saturday in August. You were expecting a visitor, a rather special visitor, so special that you'd put a bottle of champagne on ice and ..." He looks up and arches his eyebrows, plainly inviting you to continue.
You frown and say, "There's obviously some mistake."
He stares back. "What's your difficulty?"
"What you just said. It has nothing to do with me."
"Are you certain?"
"Absolutely."
He folds his arms. "What exactly is your difficulty? Remembering the day? It was an unusually warm, still evening. Still as the grave. Days like that deserve to be remembered. You do remember it?"
"The day?"
"The last Saturday in August."
"It isn't so simple. I suppose I could if something were to jog my memory."
He says with faintly sinister sarcasm, "If necessary, I can arrange that. Let's get to the bubbly, then—the champagne. More up your street than trying to remember which day it was, I dare say."
"What do you mean? I'm not in the habit—"
"I didn't say you were. But you wouldn't object to a glass of fizz on a sweltering Saturday evening in summer?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He presses on, unperturbed. "We're simply establishing the possibility of the scenario I gave you. It could have happened to anyone."
"Not to me."
"Let's put it to the test. You have drunk champagne at some time in your life? You don't deny that?"
You give a shrug that doesn't commit you to anything.
"Presumably you prefer it cooled?"
"Most people do."
"So if you did have a bottle of champagne—a good champagne, a Perrier Jouet '79, shall we say—you'd have sufficient respect to put it on ice?" He spreads his hands to show how reasonable the proposition is.
You refuse to be lured into some admission that will incriminate you. "Listen, it's becoming more and more obvious that you are talking to the wrong person. I'm not in the habit of drinking champagne on Saturday evenings."
"Pity. It would make you more cooperative. However, the point is immaterial. As it turned out, nobody drank the champagne."
A pause.
"As what turned out?" you ask.
He gives you a long, level look. "We're coming to that. Let's stay with the champagne a moment. You wouldn't drink it alone, would you? It isn't the sort of drink you have alone. Champagne is for lovers."
You stare at him and say, "This is getting more and more ridiculous."
"Is there someone in your life?"
"If there is, it's no concern of yours."
"Correction," he says before you have got out the words. "It is my concern. It assuredly is."
You press your lips together and shake your head.
He continues to probe. "Don't tell me you haven't a lover. Look, I may seem old-fashioned to you, but I know what goes on."
"Not in my life, you don't," you tell him firmly. "That's becoming clearer by the minute."
"All right, if it's the term 'lover' you object to, let's settle for friend, then. Intimate friend. Someone who makes your heart beat faster. This is a crime of passion—I'll stake my reputation on that."
"A crime?" Now is the moment to make a stand. "You're talking about a crime?"
"That's what I said."
"Involving someone I know?"
"Involving you."
You are silent for a moment. Then, with an effort to stay in control, you say, "If you are serious, I think I'd better ask for a solicitor."
His face creases into a pained expression. "Don't spoil it," he tells you. "We were getting on so well. Let's leave the love angle for the present. We'll go back to Saturday evening. No more beating about the bush. It was about nine. You were at home, alone. But your, em, visitor was expected any minute, so you had the champagne ready in a bucket of ice."
"All of this is rubbish."
He lifts a warning finger. "Have the goodness to hear me out, will you? You're getting the kid-glove treatment, but there are limits. You had the house to yourself because your spouse, is it?—or partner, is that more accurate?—was away for the weekend."
You sigh loudly and say nothing. Might as well let him continue. He's making a total idiot of himself.
"A romantic evening was in prospect. Soft music in the background. The Richard Clayderman album."
"I can't stand Richard Clayderman."
"Your lover can. The candles were lit. After your bath you'd put on something cool and sexy, a white silk caftan."
You roll your eyes upwards. "Me in a caftan?"
"Some kind of robe, then. We won't argue over that. Suddenly the doorbell chimed. You went to the front door and flung it open and said, 'Darling .. .' Then the smile froze on your lips, because it wasn't your lover on the doorstep. It was You Know Who, back unexpectedly from that weekend away."
"You're way off beam," you say. "This didn't happen to me. This is someone else you're talking about."
"You don't remember?"
"I haven't the faintest recollection of anything you've said. What's supposed to have happened next?"
"A blazing row. There was hell to pay with all that evidence of infidelity around you. Champagne and soft music wasn't the norm in your house. You just admitted that."
"Did I?" You feel your mouth go dry. You thought you'd admitted nothing, yet there's a disturbing logic in some of what he is saying.
"You protested your innocence vigorously. You're pretty good at that. And all the time that this row was going on, you dreaded hearing the doorbell again, because you knew this time it would be your lover. Zap! You'd be finished, the pair of you. So what did you do?"
"Don't ask me," you say acidly. "I wasn't there."
"You panicked. You snatched up the full bottle of champagne and swung it with all your strength. Crashed it into You Know Who's skull. Murder."
"Untrue."
His eyes open wider. "How can you say it's untrue if you don't remember anything?" He leans towards you again. "You dragged the body across the room and shoved it into the cupboard under the stairs."
You're sweating now. It's apparent that he's speaking of something that really happened. A murder was committed and you're in grave danger of being framed, or stitched up, or whatever the expression is. But why? What has he got against you? Is there some piece of evidence he hasn't brought up yet? So far it's all been circumstantial. They need more than that to secure a conviction, don't they?
You decide to change tack. "Listen, it's clear to me that I need some help. How can I convince you that all this absolutely did not happen? Not to me."
He leans forward and fixes you with his dark eyes. "You really know nothing about it? You'd swear to that?"
You nod and look earnest.
At last he seems willing to reconsider. "In that case," he speculates, "perhaps I got it wrong. You were struck with the bottle. You were concussed, so you remember nothing."
"Would that explain it?" you blurt out thankfully.
"So it appears."
"I'm innocent, then?"
He hesitates. "How's your head? Does it feel sore?"
You rub it, pressing hard with your fingers. "That part is tender, certainly."
"At the back?"
"Yes."
He starts writing in his book, speaking the words aloud. "A blow on the back of the head, causing concussion and loss of memory."
You start turning mental cartwheels. "May I go, then?"
He looks up, grinning faintly. "No, I can't allow that."
"Why not?"
"Because there was a corpse found in that cupboard and it wasn't yours."
"A corpse in my house? That isn't possible. Whose corpse, for heaven's sake?"
His tone alters. "Watch it. You're in no position to talk like that. You asked whose corpse it was. I told you. It was the corpse of the person I referred to as You Know Who."
"And you hold me responsible? I thought we just agreed that if I was there at all I was out cold."
He shakes his head. "You regained consciousness after a minute or two and picked up the bottle and struck the fatal blow—a much harder one. Your victim's skull was heavily impacted. There's no doubt that the bottle was the murder weapon."
"I deny it."
"I wouldn't, if I were you." He closes his book. "It's my duty to caution you now." He presses his hands together and stares at you solemnly. "Speak that which thou knowest and no more, for by thy words shalt thou be judged."
You gape at him. 'That isn't the proper caution. Those aren't the words."
"They are in this place."
You stare around you at the walls, blank except for the stuffed fish above his head. "Where am I, then?"
He gives you a look with genuine pity in it. "This will come as a shock. You were found unconscious in your house. There was a box of pills beside you. That is to say, a box that had contained pills. Sleeping pills. You swallowed the lot after committing the murder. You've been in intensive care for months, in a coma."
"A coma?"
"I'm afraid you never recovered consciousness. You died in hospital twenty minutes ago."
With heavy irony you say, "Oh, yes, and I suppose you're St. Peter."
But your words are lost in a vaporous mist that swirls over you. The floor sinks away, and you find that you are almost weightless. As you drift lower you glimpse the sandaled feet of your inquisitor. You recall his strange claim to have met Chesterton and the others, all dead writers. Then a man in a red uniform takes a grip on your arm and starts to draw you firmly downwards.
Yes, youdunnit.