Perhaps it was this darkening weather which made Constantin impatient of Malek’s slowness in seeing the point of his argument, and he made his first suggestions that Malek should transmit a formal request for a re-trial to his superiors at the Department of Justice.

‘You speak to someone on the telephone every morning, Malek,’ he pointed out when Malek demurred. ‘There’s no difficulty involved. If you’re afraid of compromising yourself — though I would have thought that a small price to pay in view of what is at stake — the orderly can pass on a message.’

‘It’s not feasible, Mr Constantin.’ Malek seemed at last to be tiring of the subject. ‘I suggest that you—’

‘Malek!’ Constantin stood up and paced around the lounge. ‘Don’t you realize that you must? You’re literally my only means of contact, if you refuse I’m absolutely powerless, there’s no hope of getting a reprieve!’

‘The trial has already taken place, Mr Constantin,’ Malek pointed out patiently.

‘It was a mis-trial! Don’t you understand, Malek, I accepted that I was guilty when in fact I was completely innocent!’

Malek looked up from the board, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Completely innocent, Mr Constantin?’

Constantin snapped his fingers. ‘Well, virtually innocent. At least in terms of the indictment and trial.’

‘But that is merely a technical difference, Mr Constantin. The Department of justice is concerned with absolutes.’

‘Quite right, Malek. I agree entirely.’ Constantin nodded approvingly at the supervisor and privately noted his quizzical expression, the first time Malek had displayed a taste for irony.

He was to notice this fresh leit-motiv recurringly during the next days; whenever he raised the subject of his request for a retrial Malek would counter with one of his deceptively naive queries, trying to establish some minor tangential point, almost as if he were leading Constantin on to a fuller admission. At first Constantin assumed that the supervisor was fishing for information about other members of the hierarchy which he wished to use for his own purposes, but the few titbits he offered were ignored by Malek, and it dawned upon him that Malek was genuinely interested in establishing the sincerity of Constantin’s conviction of his own innocence.

He showed no signs, however, of being prepared to contact his superiors at the Department of Justice, and Constantin’s impatience continued to mount. He now used their morning and afternoon chess sessions as an opportunity to hold forth at length on the subject of the shortcomings of the judicial system, using his own case as an illustration, and hammered away at the theme of his innocence, even hinting that Malek might find himself held responsible if by any mischance he was not granted a reprieve.

‘The position I find myself in is really most extraordinary,’ he told Malek almost exactly two months after his arrival at the villa. ‘Everyone else is satisfied with the court’s verdict, and yet I alone know that I am innocent. I feel very like someone who is about to be buried alive.’

Malek managed a thin smile across the chess pieces. ‘Of course, Mr Constantin, it is possible to convince oneself of anything, given a sufficient incentive.’

‘But Malek, I assure you,’ Constantin insisted, ignoring the board and concentrating his whole attention upon the supervisor, ‘this is no death-cell repentance. Believe me, I know. I have examined the entire case from a thousand perspectives, questioned every possible motive. There is no doubt in my mind. I may once have been prepared to accept the possibility of my guilt but I realize now that I was entirely mistaken — experience encouragcs us to take too great a responsibility for ourselves, when we fall short of our ideals we become critical of ourselves and ready to assume that we are at fault. How dangerous that can be, Malek, I now know. Only the truly innocent man can really understand the meaning of guilt.’

Constantin stopped and sat back, a slight weariness overtaking him in the cold room. Malek was nodding slowly, a thin and not altogether unsympathetic smile on his lips as if he understood everything Constantin had said. Then he moved a piece, and with a murmured ‘excuse me’ left his seat and went out of the room.

Drawing the lapels of the dressing gown around his chest, Constantin studied the board with a desultory eye. He noticed that Malek’s move appeared to be the first bad one he had made in all their games together, but he felt too tired to make the most of his opportunity. His brief speech to Malek, confirming all he believed, now left nothing more to be said. From now on whatever happened was up to Malek.

‘Mr Constantin.’

He turned in his chair and, to his surprise, saw the supervisor standing in the doorway, wearing his long grey overcoat.

‘Malek—?’ For a moment Constantin felt his heart gallop, and then controlled himself. ‘Malek, you’ve agreed at last, you’re going to take me to the Department?’

Malek shook his head, his eyes staring sombrely at Constantin. ‘Not exactly. I thought we might look at the garden, Mr Constantin. A breath of fresh air, it will do you good.’

‘Of course, Malek, it’s kind of you.’ Constantin rose a little unsteadily to his feet, and tightened the cord of his dressing gown. ‘Pardon my wild hopes.’ He tried to smile at Malek, but the supervisor stood by the door, hands in his overcoat pockets, his eyes lowered fractionally from Constantin’s face.

They went out on to the veranda towards the french windows. Outside the cold morning air whirled in frantic circles around the small stone yard, the leaves spiralling upwards into the dark sky. To Constantin there seemed little point in going out into the garden, but Malek stood behind him, one hand on the latch.

‘Malek.’ Something made him turn and face the supervisor. ‘You do understand what I mean, when I say I am absolutely innocent. I know that.’

‘Of course, Mr Constantin.’ The supervisor’s face was relaxed and almost genial. ‘I understand. When you know you are innocent, then you are guilty.’

His hand opened the veranda door on to the whirling leaves.

Minus One

‘Where, my God, where is he?’

Uttered in a tone of uncontrollable frustration as he paced up and down in front of the high-gabled window behind his desk, this cri de coeur of Dr Mellinger, Director of Green Hill Asylum, expressed the consternation of his entire staff at the mysterious disappearance of one of their patients. In the twelve hours that had elapsed since the escape, Dr Mellinger and his subordinates had progressed from surprise and annoyance to acute exasperation, and eventually to a mood of almost euphoric disbelief. To add insult to injury, not only had the patient, James Hinton, succeeded in becoming the first ever to escape from the asylum, but he had managed to do so without leaving any clues as to his route. Thus Dr Mellinger and his staff were tantalize4 by the possibility that Hinton had never escaped at all and was still safely within the confines of the asylum. At all events, everyone agreed that if Hinton had escaped, he had literally vanished into thin air.

However, one small consolation, Dr Mellinger reminded himself as he drummed his fingers on his desk, was that Hinton’s disappearance had exposed the shortcomings of the asylum’s security systems, and administered a salutary jolt to his heads of departments. As this hapless group, led by the Deputy Director, Dr Normand, filed into his office for the first of the morning’s emergency conferences, Dr Mellinger cast a baleful glare at each in turn, but their sleepless faces remained mutely lowered to the carpeting, as if, despairing of finding Hinton anywhere else, they now sought his hiding place in its deep ruby pile.