Free An Awkward Lie by Michael Innes

don’t mean that Nauze – and I wonder why you are interested in him? – was the kind of man who might have left behind him anything really memorable. There are kinds of genius of whom one never feels that And no end of people of the first ability. Think of them, Bobby: all the professors and judges, the Kunsthistoriker , the Ministers of the Crown, the top civil servants.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ Bobby found this sudden gentle arrogance disconcerting. ‘But was this chap Nauze, gym-shoe and all, getting on for being a genius?’
    ‘Shall I just say that he had a brilliant mind – more brilliant even than Dr Gulliver himself?’ Hartsilver had turned from arrogance to whimsical malice. Suddenly – and most surprisingly – he shot out a question. ‘Why have you hunted me out, Bobby, to ask questions about Nauze?’
    ‘I believe he may be dead. I believe he may have died in rather a horrible way. And that other people – or another person – may be in danger as a result of having been…well, in at the kill. So I want to find out about him.’
    During this quite short speech, Hartsilver had contrived to drift away. Bobby remembered this as a physical necessity of his. In the middle of quite relaxed talk, the old man would be unaccountably impelled to get out of at least touching distance of anybody else. At the moment he had returned to Dürer’s drawing of the prep-school Dürer, and was seemingly as absorbed in it as if he had never seen it before. But when he turned round it was to continue the conversation naturally enough.
    ‘My dear Bobby, this is most distressing. Did you say your father was a policeman?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m being silly, my dear boy. Even I used to notice Sir John Appleby’s name in the news often enough. Are you turning detective because the role of Crown Prince is attractive to you?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ The sharpness of this had taken Bobby by surprise. ‘As a matter of fact, the person who may be in danger is a girl. It’s a little difficult to explain.’
    ‘Then let us simply return to Nauze. It would be extravagant to call him a genius. But at least he had an astounding linguistic faculty. I’d be surprised to hear that, when he had a pupil with the elements of docility, he didn’t teach Latin rather well.’
    ‘He certainly did that. I never saw him after I was about thirteen. But it was Nauze who got me my First in Mods seven years later. Incidentally, he started me on my Greek as well, and equally effectively. And I can remember having a dim sense that he’d never himself done Greek.’
    ‘Precisely. Do you do the crossword in The Times ?’
    ‘Only when my father makes me help him. My father’s a fifteen to twenty minute man on it.’
    ‘Nauze’s average time was seven and a half minutes.’
    ‘That’s not possible.’
    ‘It was to Nauze. And he was equally good at various sorts of mathematical puzzle.’
    ‘I see. Did he show off?’
    ‘Far from it. His expertness was more like something that he betrayed in spite of himself. The betrayal had something to do with his drinking a great deal.’
    ‘The boys never knew anything about that.’ Bobby frowned. ‘Except – do you know? – when he had those bouts with the gym-shoe – and they were essentially bouts – we felt there was something funny about him.’
    ‘He had been drinking. It released certain inhibitions, no doubt. I believe that’s the word.’
    ‘It’s rather revolting.’ Bobby discovered that he did feel genuinely revolted. ‘Of course, it’s an utterly trivial thing. A chap extracting a harmless sort of yelp from small boys just because he’s had a pint too much. Disagreeable, all the same. Yet I rather liked Nauze. I believe that most of us did. I suppose he gave us a good conceit of ourselves. We overestimated the merit gained by passing through that mild ordeal.’ Bobby fell silent for a moment. ‘But all this is nonsense – unless it gives me a better picture of the