the presence of an assailant. You can be sure we are not closing the case, but we are not at this time able to find grounds for suspicion of any other person.’
‘He was nearly killed,’ I said blankly.
‘Yes, sir, well I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how things stand.’ He paused briefly, ‘I can understand your disbelief, sir. It can’t be easy for you.’ He sounded quite human, offering comfort.
‘Thank you at least for talking to me,’ I said.
‘Right, sir. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said slowly, but he had already gone.
‘Now what’s the matter?’ Malcolm asked, watching my face.
I repeated what I’d just heard.
‘Impossible!’ Malcolm said explosively.
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Clever.’
Eight
‘Which door did you go out of, with the dogs?’ I asked.
‘The kitchen door, like I always do.’
‘The kitchen door is about five steps along that covered way from the rear door into the garage.’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ Malcolm said testily.
‘You told me that you set off down the garden with the dogs, and I suppose you told the police the same thing?’
‘Yes, of course I did.’
‘But you can’t really remember actually going. You remember that you meant to, isn’t that what you told me?’
He frowned, ‘I suppose it is.’
‘So what if you never made it to the garden, but were knocked out right there by the kitchen door? And what if you weren’t dragged from there into the garage, but carried?
His mouth opened. ‘But I’m …’
‘You’re not too heavy,’ I said. ‘I could carry you easily in a fireman’s lift.’
He was five foot seven, stocky but not fat. He weighed ten stone something, I would have guessed.
‘And the fingerprints?’ Norman West asked.
‘In a fireman’s lift,’ I said, ‘you sling the person you want to carry over your left shoulder, don’t you, with his head hanging down your back. Then you grasp his knees with your left arm, and hold his right wrist in your own right hand, to stop him slipping off?’
They both nodded.
‘So if you’re holding someone’s wrist, you can put his hand easily onto any surface you like, including car doorhandles… particularly,’ I said, thinking, ‘if you’ve opened the doors yourself first with gloves on, so that your victim’s prints will be on top of any smudges you have made.’
‘You should have been an assassin,’ Malcolm said. ‘You’d have been good at it.’
‘So now we have Malcolm slumped in the back seat, half lying, like you said. So next you switch on the engine and leave the doors open so that all the nice fumes pour into the car quickly.’
‘Doors?’ Malcolm interrupted.
‘The driver’s door and one of the rear doors, at the least.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And then you have,’ I said, ‘a suicide.’
‘And when I woke up,’ Malcolm said gloomily, ‘I put my prints all over the place. On the ignition key… everywhere.’
‘No one could have counted on that.’
‘It just looked bad to the police.’
We contemplated the scenario.
‘If it happened like that,’ West said, ‘as indeed it could have done, whoever attacked you had to know that you would go out of the kitchen door at around that time.’
Malcolm said bleakly, ‘If I’m at home, I always go for a walk with the dogs about then. Take them out, bring them back, give them their dinners, pour myself a drink. Routine.’
‘And… er… is there anyone in your family who doesn’t know when you walk the dogs?’
‘Done it all my life, at that time,’ Malcolm said.
There was a short silence, then I said, ‘I wish I’d known all this when that car nearly killed us at Newmarket. We really ought to have told the police.’
‘I was fed up with them,’ Malcolm said, ‘I’ve spent hours and hours with the suspicious buggers since Moira’s death. I’m allergic to them. They bring me out in a rash.’
‘You can’t blame them, sir. Most murdered wives are killed by their husbands,’ West said. ‘And frankly, you appeared to have an extremely strong motive.’
‘Rubbish,’ Malcolm said, ‘I don’t see how people can kill people they’ve loved.’
‘Unfortunately it’s common.’ West paused. ‘Do you want me to continue with your family, sir, considering how little progress I’ve been able to make with them?’
‘Yes,’ Malcolm said heavily. ‘Carry on. I’ll get Joyce to tell them all to answer your questions. She seems to be able to get them to do what she wants.’
To get them to do what they want, I thought. She couldn’t stir them into courses they didn’t like.
Norman West put his notebook into his jacket pocket and shifted his weight forward on his chair.