Get 'em on the run. Inspector Taverner had said. Get 'em rattled.
Well, Laurence Brown was rattled all right.
He began talking quickly and nervously.
"You don't know what it's like... The strain... Not knowing what - I mean, they just come and go - Asking questions...
Questions that don't seem to have anything to do with the case..."
He broke off.
I waited.
He wanted to talk - well, then, let him talk.
"You were there when the Chief Inspector made that monstrous suggestion the other day?
About Mrs Leonides and myself... It was monstrous.
It makes one feel so helpless.
One is powerless to prevent people thinking things!
And it is all so wickedly untrue.
Just because she is - was - so many years younger than her husband.
People have dreadful minds - dreadful minds...
I feel - I can't help feeling, that it is all a plot."
"A plot?
That's interesting."
It was interesting, though not quite in the way he took it.
"The family, you know; Mr Leonides' s family, have never been sympathetic to me.
They were always aloof.
I always felt that they despised me."
His hands began to shake.
"Just because they have always been rich - and powerful.
They looked down on me.
What was I to them?
Only the tutor. Only a wretched conscientious objector.
And my objections were conscientious.
They were indeed!"
I said nothing.
"All right then," he burst out. "What if I was - afraid? Afraid I'd make a mess of it.
Afraid that when I had to pull a trigger - I mightn't be able to bring myself to do it.
How can you be sure it's a Nazi you're going to kill?
It might be some decent lad - some village boy - with no political leanings, just called up for his country's service.
I believe war is wrong, do you understand?
I believe it is wrong."
I was still silent.
I believed that my silence was achieving more than any arguments or agreements could do.
Laurence Brown was arguing with himself, and in so doing was revealing a good deal of himself.
"Everyone's always laughed at me." His voice shook. "I seem to have a knack of making myself ridiculous.
It isn't that I really lack courage - but I always do the thing wrong.
I went into a burning house to rescue a woman they said was trapped there.
But I lost the way at once, and the smoke made me unconscious, and it gave a lot of trouble to the firemen finding me.
I heard them say,
'Why couldn't the silly chump leave it to us?'
It's no good my trying, everyone's against me.
Whoever killed Mr Leonides arranged it so that I would be suspected.
Someone killed him so as to ruin me."
"What about Mrs Leonides?" I asked.
He flushed. He became less of a mouse and more like a man.