"And your memory has come back now, I hope?" the little man asked sharply, with a touch -- a very faint touch -- of sarcasm.
"I can remember something, but not much."
"A very convenient sort of memory."
"I am trying," Rowe said with a flash of anger, "to tell you all I know. . . In English law isn't a man supposed to be innocent until you prove him guilty? I'm ready to tell you everything I can remember about the murder, but I'm not a murderer."
The plump man began to smile. He drew out his hands and looked at his nails and tucked them back again. "That's interesting, Mr Rowe," he said. "You mentioned murder, but I have said nothing about murder to you, and no paper has mentioned the word murder. . . yet."
"I don't understand."
"We play strictly fair. Read out his statement so far, Beavis."
Beavis obeyed, blushing nervously, as though he were an overgrown schoolboy at a lectern reading Deuteronomy. "I Arthur Rowe, have made this statement voluntarily. Last night, when I saw a photograph of myself in a newspaper, I knew for the first time that the police wanted to interview me. I have been in a nursing home kept by a Dr Forester for the last four months, suffering from loss of memory due to an air-raid. My memory is not fully restored, but I wish to tell everything I know in connection with the murder of. . ."
The detective stopped Beavis. He said, "That's quite fair, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is."
"You'll be asked to sign it presently. Now tell us the name of the murdered man."
"I don't remember it."
"I see. Who told you we wanted to talk to you about a murder?"
"Dr Forester."
The promptness of the reply seemed to take the detective by surprise. Even Beavis hesitated before the pencil bore down again upon the pad. "Dr Forester told you?"
"Yes."
"How did he know?"
"I suppose he read it in the papers."
"We have never mentioned murder in the papers."
Rowe leant his head wearily on his hand. Again his brain felt the pressure of associations. He said, " Perhaps. . ." The horrible memory, stirred, crystallized, dissolved. "I don't know."
It seemed to him that the detective's manner was a little more sympathetic. He said, "Just tell us -- in any order -- in your own words -- what you do remember."
"It will have to be in any order. First there's Poole. He's an attendant in Dr Forester's sick bay -- where the violent cases go, only I don't think they are always violent. I know that I met him in the old days -- before my memory went. I can remember a little shabby room with a picture of the Bay of Naples. I seemed to be living there -- I don't know why. It's not the sort of place I'd choose. So much of what's come back is just feelings, emotion -- not fact."
"Never mind," the detective said.
"It's the way you remember a dream when most of it has gone. I remember great sadness -- and fear, and, yes, a sense of danger, and an odd taste."
"Of what?"
"We were drinking tea. He wanted me to give him something."
"What?"
"I can't remember. What I do remember is absurd. A cake."
"A cake?"
"It was made with real eggs. And then something happened. . ." He felt terribly tired. The sun was coming out. People all over the city were going to work. He felt like a man in mortal sin who watches other people go to receive the sacrament -- abandoned. If only he knew what his work was.
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Yes. I'm a bit tired."
"Go and find some tea, Beavis, and some biscuits -- or cake."
He asked no more questions until Beavis had returned, but suddenly as Rowe put out his hand to take a piece of cake, he said, "There are no real eggs in that, I'm afraid. Yours must have been home-made. You couldn't have bought it."
Without considering his reply, Rowe said: "Oh no, I didn't buy it, I won it. . ." and stopped. "That's absurd. I wasn't thinking. . ." The tea made him feel stronger. He said, "You don't treat your murderers too badly."
The detective said, "Just go on remembering."
"I remember a lot of people sitting round a room and the lights going out. And I was afraid that someone was going to come up behind me and stab me or strangle me. And a voice speaking. That's worse than anything -- a hopeless pain, but I can't remember a word. And then all the lights are on, and a man's dead, and I suppose that's what you say I've done. But I don't think it's true."
"Would you remember the man's face?"
"I think I would."
"File, Beavis."
It was growing hot in the small room. The detective's forehead was beaded and the little fair moustache damp. He said, "You can take off your coat if you like," and took his own off, and sat in a pearl-grey shirt with silvered armlets to keep the cuffs exactly right. He looked doll-like as though only the coat were made to come off.
Beavis brought a paper-covered file and laid it on the table. The detective said, "Just look through these -- you'll find a few loose photographs too -- and see if you can find the murdered man."
A police photograph is like a passport photograph; the intelligence which casts a veil over the crude common shape is never recorded by the cheap lens. No one can deny the contours of the flesh, the shape of nose and mouth, and yet we protest: This isn't me. . .
The turning of the pages became mechanical. Rowe couldn't believe that it was among people like these that his life had been cast. Only once he hesitated for a moment: something in his memory stirred at sight of a loose photograph of a man with a lick of hair plastered back, a pencil on a clip in the lower left-hand corner, and wrinkled evasive eyes that seemed to be trying to escape too bright a photographer's lamp.
"Know him?" the detective asked.
"No. How could I? Or is he a shopkeeper? I thought for a moment, but no, I don't know him." He turned on. Looking up once he saw that the detective had got his hand out from under his thigh; he seemed to have lost interest. There were not many more pages to turn -- and then unexpectedly there the face was: the broad anonymous brow, the dark city suit, and with him came a whole throng of faces bursting through the gate of the unconscious, rioting horribly into the memory. He said, "There," and lay back in his chair giddy, feeling the world turn around him. . .
"Nonsense," the detective said. The harsh voice hardly penetrated. "You had me guessing for a moment. . . a good actor. . . waste any more time. . ."
"They did it with my knife."
"Stop play-acting," the detective said. "That man hasn't been murdered. He's just as alive as you are."
2
"Alive?"
"Of course he's alive. I don't know why you picked on him."
"But in that case" -- all his tiredness went: he began to notice the fine day outside -- "I'm not a murderer. Was he badly hurt?"