The Beast Must Die Read Free Page B

the Lion and Lamb and the Crown. Much goodwill but no information. I shan’t get anywhere on this tack. Must try an entirely different line. But what? Too tired to think any more tonight.

27 June
    A LONG WALK over towards Cirencester today. Passed the ridge from which Martie and I catapulted those toy gliders. He was quite crazy about them; would probably have smashed himself up in an aeroplane if the car hadn’t come first. I shall never forget the way he stood watching the gliders, his face ineffably solemn and tense, as though he could will them to keep soaring and flying for ever. The whole countryside is his memorial. As long as I stay on here, the wound will stay unhealed – which is what I want.
    Someone seems to want me to clear out. All the madonna lilies and tobacco plants in the bed under my window were torn up last night and flung on to the path. Some time early this morning, rather; they were all right at midnight. No village kid would do a thing like that twice. There’s a malevolence about this that worries me a little. But I’m not going to be intimidated.
    An extraordinary thought has just struck me. Have I got some deadly enemy who killed Martie deliberately and is now destroying everything else that I love? Fantastic. Just shows how easily anyone’s brain can be turned if he is too much alone. But if this goes on much longer, I shall be afraid to look out of the window in the morning.
    I walked fast today, so that my brain couldn’t keep up with me and I was free of its constant nagging for a few hours. I feel refreshed now. So, with your permission, hypothetical reader, I’ll start thinking on paper. What is the new line that I must adopt? Better put it down as a series of propositions and deductions. Here goes:
    (1) There’s no use my trying the methods of the police, which they have far better means to carry out, and in any case seem to have failed.
     The implication is that I must exploit my own strong point – presumably, as a detective writer, the capacity to imagine myself into the mind of the criminal.
    (2) If I’d run down a child and damaged my car, my instinct would be to keep off main roads, where the damage might be spotted, and get as quickly as possible to a place where it could be repaired. But, according to the police, all garages have been investigated, and all damages repaired during the days after the accident were found to have had some innocent explanation. Of course, they may have been diddled about this, somehow or other but, if they were, I couldn’t possibly discover how.
     What follows from this? Either (a) the car was undamaged after all – but expert evidence suggests this is most unlikely. Or (b) the criminal drove his car straight into a private garage and has kept it locked up ever since; possible, but highly improbable. Or (c) the criminal secretly effected the repairs himself. This is surely the likeliest explanation.
    (3) Assume the chap did his own repairs. Does that tell me anything about him?
     Yes. He must be an expert, with the necessary tools at his disposal. But even a small dent in a mudguard has to be hammered out, and that kicks up enough din to wake the dead. ‘Wake’! Exactly. He’d have to do the repairs the same night, so that there should be no trace of the accident next morning. But a sound of hammering at night would be bound to wake people and rouse suspicion.
    (4) He did not do any hammering that night.
     But, whether his car was in a private or a public garage, hammering the next morning would surely call attention to him, even if he could afford to put off the repairs till the morning.
    (5) He did not do any hammering at all.
     But we have to assume that the repairs were effected somehow or other. What a fool I am! Even to hammer out a small dent,
one has to take the wing off
. Now if – as we are forced to conclude – the criminal could not afford to make a noise while repairing his car, the