My Name is Michael Sibley Read Online Free Page A

knew no more than I did. I felt pretty certain that was true.
    “Just one more question. Have you any ideas at all, Mr. Sibley, about this case? Any theory, perhaps, which you think we might look into? It’s not often we ask a question like that, but your position is rather a special one.”
    “How do you mean?” I asked.
    “Well, after all, he was your friend, wasn’t he?”
    “He was, yes. He was a very good friend of mine, but at the moment I don’t know what to suggest.”
    The Inspector swallowed the rest of his whisky, put the file back in the briefcase, and stood up.
    “All right, Mr. Sibley,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that for the moment. I’m very much obliged to you.”
    The Sergeant shut his notebook and stood up as well. We shook hands, and I saw them to the front door. On the steps the Inspector said: “If you think of anything else about Mr. Prosset, perhaps you’ll be good enough to give us a buzz on the phone?”
    “With pleasure,” I said.
    I could not help smiling as I watched them walk away. There was so much more, in actual fact, which I could have told him. But I could not have told him then, in the course of that short talk, and indeed I doubted if he would ever really understand. On second thought, I decided he certainly would not; not the Inspector, with his hard eyes, so strong and down to earth and unimaginative.
    It would have needed a better talker than I to have been able to explain the position to the Inspector that evening. Even I myself sometimes find it hard to understand the story of John Prosset and Michael Sibley.

CHAPTER 2
    I cannot say accurately at which particular point I should have broken off our acquaintanceship, or even whether it was possible for me, or for any normally polite individual, to have done so.
    You have to have a good cause, a terrible row about something, before you can abruptly terminate an association with a man whom you have known for years; and Prosset had a devastating ability for preventing a row from properly developing. The way he did it was to assume an attitude of amused tolerance directly he saw that you were becoming annoyed. He would look at you with his slightly mocking blue eyes, and stroke his raven-black hair, and his cigarette used to bob up and down between his lips as he spoke, and before you realized it you would find yourself in a position where if you became angry you would, compared to Prosset, merely look silly and ineffectual. You can’t have a row with a man who at the critical moment just laughs at you, however jeeringly he may do it.
    I tried it once or twice at school, but soon gave up.
    There were three of us who did everything together at school: John Prosset, David Trevelyan, and myself. When our schooldays were finished, Trevelyan went and buried himself on his father’s farm in Cornwall; he rarely answered letters. But somehow, over the years, Prosset and I kept in touch. It was due to no wish of mine.
    It was through David that I got to know Prosset. At our particular school the boarders lived in half a dozen Houses, widely scattered around the main college buildings. There were about fifty or sixty boys in each House. But sometimes, if a House was full, they would lodge a boy out in what they called a “waiting house,” which was little more than a large private house run by one of the masters, where six or seven boys, or more, would spend anything from one term to a year until they could transfer to the regular House for which their names had been put down.
    David Trevelyan and I were in Bailey’s Waiting House; in fact, David had been there one term already when I arrived as a new boy. Unlike Prosset, who was perfectly proportioned, David Trevelyan was a comfortably chubby, medium-sized boy; he, too, had very black hair; and big lustrous brown eyes, rather thick red lips, and fine white teeth. I can see him now, practising with his flute, his eyes fixed on the horizon as he went up and down the scale,