The Inspector – Part 1: The Suspect

The study was lit by a single green-shaded lamp. Rain ticked against the window. On the desk lay a thin cardboard case file, a magnifying glass and a pair of black leather gloves, and a steel-framed chair stood in the middle of the carpet, facing the light.

Rosamund sat behind the desk in a long grey coat, her glasses pushed up in her hair. She was forty-eight, a retired detective inspector with twenty years in homicide and a deep, still, watchful manner. Calvin was forty-one, a pharmacist and her partner of five years, a gentle man who had told her, after an evening of old crime films, that he secretly wanted to be the one under the lamp.

"Sit," said Rosamund.

He sat in the steel chair. She slid the case file across the desk. Inside was a single sheet. Terms of Interview. His limits and hers, typed in black: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the study, no one else. The word was Alibi.

"Say it."

"Alibi."

"If you say it, the Inspector closes the file. I am Rosamund. We make tea and put on the radio."

"I understand."

"And every half hour, I ask if you wish to continue. You answer honestly."

"Yes, Inspector."

"Not yet." She pulled on the gloves, one finger at a time, and took off her glasses. Her voice dropped, flat, slow and absolutely level. "Mr Doyle. Where were you on the evening of the fourteenth?"

"At home, Inspector."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"I see." She wrote something down. The pen scratched. She did not look up for a long time. The rain ticked. The lamp hummed. "And yet your neighbour says she saw a light."

"That was..."

"I did not ask you to explain."

He closed his mouth. She raised her eyes and held his, and he felt, with an odd rush of relief, entirely and exactly seen.

"Are you content, Mr Doyle?"

"Content, Inspector."

"Good. We have a great deal of ground to cover."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Case Closed.