Going It Alone by Michael Innes

measure fail to carry any notion of your own identity with you. At least I haven’t succumbed to that. I’m Tim Barcroft.’
    ‘But Tim,’ Anne asked, ‘is this in aid of anything? You’re obviously none of these things.’
    ‘Are you sure? I’m not sure. I may have forgotten something , don’t you think? In fact, it almost looks as if I must have. It’s very puzzling.’
    At this point Averell felt he must chip in. He had remained silent for so long that he might be thought to be disapproving of this whole conference. It was true that its tone at times puzzled or even offended him. But he did feel that something might come of it.
    ‘It mightn’t be a bad idea,’ he said, ‘if Tim just tried to jot down a day to day record of his doings over the past week or so. I don’t believe in his having forgotten anything – or not anything in the least memorable. But the point may lie just there.’
    ‘How d’you mean, Uncle Gilbert?’ Tim asked swiftly – and with an intentness which made Averell uncomfortably aware that a good deal was expected of him.
    ‘I mean that one interpretation of the thing is this: that you may have come by information so unremarkable in itself that your mind sees, so to speak, no point in recalling it. But somebody else knows you have it, and is determined at all costs that it won’t leak out and spread abroad.’
    ‘Or be exploited,’ Lou said, ‘for purposes of blackmail. Something like that.’
    ‘Lou!’ Anne said indignantly. ‘Are you saying that anybody could possibly imagine Tim turning into a blackmailer? Surely –’
    ‘Lou obviously isn’t saying that,’ Averell interrupted pacifically. He was realizing that these young women were by no means bosom friends. ‘But I can conceive myself believing that somebody was thinking of having a go at blackmail with me – provided I was sufficiently deeply of a criminal turn of mind myself. The wicked are wary, and the malevolent see malevolence all around them.’
    ‘But it’s quite absurd!’ Anne said. ‘About us, I mean.’ For the moment, Anne wasn’t thinking very clearly.
    ‘It’s a strange idea, certainly, Anne. But it’s not to be rejected out of hand. Here’s an absolute mystery still, and we need to hold on to every blessed idea we can grab by the tip of the tail.’
    ‘Agreed,’ Lou said firmly. ‘Tim?’
    ‘Well, yes. But how on earth could I come by information leading straight into the area of murder and all that without myself having the remotest notion I was doing so?’
    ‘That’s where your day to day activities come in, Tim.’ Averell paused for a moment. ‘I admit it may be like looking for the needle in the haystack. But if there’s a needle there it can be found – provided one looks hard and long enough.’
    ‘And knows a needle when one sees it,’ Lou said. ‘The rub is there.’
    ‘Perfectly true, Lou.’ Averell paused for a moment’s thought. ‘Take a hypothetical case. Tim is sitting in a tube train, and a man comes in and sits down opposite to him. Tim for some reason studies this man in rather a thoughtful and covert-seeming way. Then Tim happens to open a briefcase and glance through a file of those famous photographs. He’s shy and protective about his photographs for one reason or another. So it’s rather obtrusively that he takes this peep at them in what he thinks is an unobtrusive way. Then he tucks them away again – and the man sitting opposite him simply isn’t in his head. But he is in the man’s head, all right. The man believes he has been identified. So at the next station he follows Tim – now thought of, let’s say, as a sort of secret agent – up into the street and manages to shove him under a bus.’
    ‘Thank you very much, Uncle Gilbert,’ Tim said rather wanly. ‘A least it’s a quick end.’
    ‘It’s a good schema ,’ Lou said. ‘Of course, one could think up no end of other schemata to fit.’ Lou, like the Barcroft twins, appeared to