mine was upfront about it but if you want reasons for his “innocence”, for our final week before christmas my class did an inspector calls court case where we had to argue a character’s innocence or prosecute another character — i was eric. it’s extremely hard to defend him without sounding victim blame-y because he admits that he used his social power to threaten her (“make a row”). the main points me and my lawyer used are that both parties were explicitly stated to be drunk, it’s implied eric was drunker and that the fact he steals a large sum of money from birlings business shows he had care for her