Free Gently Continental by Alan Hunter Page B

is ridiculous. I would have noticed—
    GENTLY
    Yes?
    TRUDI
    But I didn’t. No, there’s nothing in it at all.
    GENTLY
    Yet the news of his death upset your mother.
    TRUDI
    Of course, she’s hysterical, she enjoys a scene. She’d storm and howl over a flat soufflé, let alone a guest being killed. That’s her way.
    GENTLY
    So Frieda told me. Yet your mother is a shrewd woman.
    TRUDI
    Oh yes.
    GENTLY
    Too shrewd, I’d have thought, to enjoy a scene in front of the guests. Were you present, by the way?
    TRUDI
    I? – no, I slept through it.
    GENTLY
    (Raises his eyebrows.)
    TRUDI
    I can’t help it! I just did, that’s all.
    GENTLY
    So you’re not a witness to how your mother reacted.
    TRUDI
    No, but I know how it would be, mother going off the deep end, Frieda being wildly efficient. But there’s nothing in it, nothing at all. It’s simply what you’d expect. He didn’t mean anything to mother. You’re quite wrong about that.
    GENTLY
    Then perhaps to Frieda he meant something.
    TRUDI
    Frieda? Oh, that’s absurd!
    GENTLY
    Why so, Miss Trudi?
    TRUDI
    Can you imagine it, a man like that, and Frieda?
    gently
    (Shrugs.)
    I’m afraid I can. It doesn’t seem a bit improbable. A man of fifty, perhaps not a strong character, might easily become infatuated with your sister.
    TRUDI
    Oh, that’s likely. You don’t know Frieda, she doesn’t invite infatuations. Besides . . .
    GENTLY
    You were saying?
    TRUDI
    It’s completely impossible, absolutely. It couldn’t be.
    GENTLY
    Completely impossible.
    TRUDI
    Yes, yes.
    GENTLY
    I wonder how you can be so certain.
    TRUDI
    (Is her colour fading again?)
    I just know. I know it.
    GENTLY
    Yes, there’s one way you could know it.
    Trudi hugs her knees very tightly and stares over them at the fawn turf. If no blue ribbon were containing her hair it would be drooped forward about her face, but there is a blue ribbon, and her face is naked, and it is as pale as it has ever been.
    STEPHEN
    (Angrily.)
    I think that stinks! I think that’s a wicked thing to insinuate.
    GENTLY
    What, Mr Halliday?
    STEPHEN
    That he – that fellow – should have been carrying on with Trudi.
    GENTLY
    Carrying on?
    STEPHEN
    Yes, carrying on – that’s what you had in mind, wasn’t it? So then she’d know it wasn’t with Frieda, that’s the ‘one way’ she could be certain. Oh, very clever!
    GENTLY
    You interest me.
    STEPHEN
    Yes, and I can see what it’s leading up to. You’re trying to put me in the middle, aren’t you – finding a fat motive for me.
    GENTLY
    You seem to have found one for yourself.
    STEPHEN
    Go on, go on. Say I killed him.
    GENTLY
    Is this a confession?
    STEPHEN
    You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
    GENTLY
    Psychology is part of my job, too.
    STEPHEN
    A
crime passionel
– how convenient. Clooney slain by jealous lover. Crazy medical student slices victim before hurling him over cliff. I fit the part, oh beautifully! A manic depressive, why not? You can tie that label on to anyone, they don’t need any spots.
    GENTLY
    Where were you that evening, by the way?
    STEPHEN
    Oh here. Right here. I don’t have an alibi worth tuppence, I’m your man on the spot.
    GENTLY
    Visiting Trudi?
    STEPHEN
    Spying on her. Creeping around in the bushes. My crazy jealousy on the boil, a case of lancets in my pocket. Then I saw – does it matter what? When a man’s in that state it scarcely matters. But something snapped in my unbalanced mind, and I followed my victim to the cliffs. Just ask my uncle. He knows I was out, knows I came back at the critical time.
    TRUDI
    (Dully.)
    There’s another way.
    STEPHEN
    Oh, don’t go spoiling it.
    TRUDI
    My room . . . it’s next door to Frieda’s. If she . . .
    STEPHEN
    The Superintendent will hate you.
    TRUDI
    Well, I’d know. That’s all. Not the other . . . not that.
    STEPHEN
    For