Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (19 page)

Move back to the door, stand to one side and wait. They break in the panels at last, stand back a moment for the final onslaught—and in that moment you fling the piece of glass you have preserved from the broken pane. You are lucky in actually hitting the remaining glass and setting it vibrating; but all that you really needed was the sound, the sound of someone smashing that hole in the window and diving out ‘into thin air’.

And the door gives, opening back against you as you stand flattened against the wall; and as the men surge forward, you surge forward with them. In that smoke-filled room, filled with blue uniforms—who will observe that one blue uniform came, not through the door but from behind it….

Rupert is there with them, of course, and now you have a little extra bit of luck to add to that alibi about having seen him leave the flat. You have noted where his car was parked, of course, and for the rest you could deduce that he’d rush out in a hurry—you’ve arranged for that by the telephone call and you know your Rupert; (his being early made no difference either way, of course—all you wanted was to be able to pretend this alibi for yourself, to describe Rupert rushing out, to know pretty exactly at what time that would happen; and it had the added advantage of your knowing just how long it would be before he arrived.) And now you observe that he can’t even have stopped to put on his macintosh. As you stand with your handkerchief up to your face, against the smoke and the heat, he comes up close to you, he shows you the note about Helen, and you are able to see that the shoulders of his light jacket are soaked through. (You must look round the flat and just see that he did take the mac. even if he didn’t wait to put it on.) Meanwhile, he’s reacting to the note as you knew he would—rushing off to look for Helen without stopping for a moment’s thought. The sergeant won’t let you follow him, as you’d rather hoped; so you shout out something not too specific about the fire brigade and, not waiting for consent or refusal, dash off, flinging a word to the man on duty at the top of the stairs. And from then on—a uniformed bobby, hurrying about some professional duty—slowing down as you get clear of the building, just a man strolling his beat. Back to the derelict factory, get the constable back into his uniform—easier when he’s alive than if he were, literally, a dead weight. Finish him off, heave him into the water tank: the longer they take to find him, the harder to deduce the time of death, and immersion in the water of course will further confuse it. The old man’s blood on the knife will account, as you’ve planned, for any on the uniform.

Twenty minutes later, you are coming up to the heath, scorching hell for leather along the empty roads. You had intended to knock up the pub people, ask them for change for the public telephone outside; but through the window you can see them all crowded round the television set watching the World Cup final; and what more natural than to tap on the pane—you know them quite well—and make questioning faces, sketch a query mark on the pane: clasp hands in mock prayer as they signal back, ‘All square; extra time,’ and turn back to huddle over the set again.

Helen safely out of the way, of course; you told her to meet you at the Dell. So you can go to the call box, make the legitimate call to the house to ask if she’s there; and then…

Five o’clock; and the policeman has been dead for half an hour and more—yet here is his voice asking for ‘George’—you know well enough that George is on the switchboard today—giving his nickname, all the little authenticities… Breaking off with vague alarms, coming back to scream out in gibbering fear that he’s being attacked….P.C. Cross: alive and speaking on the telephone at five o’clock when you are known to be fifteen miles away from the scene of his death.

He had reckoned on suspicion fastening, possibly, upon Rupert; but Helen—that had been horrible….The white light had grown more and more frightening then, blazing day and night inside his mind with a dazzling confusion as when one looks into the eye of the sun and sees only blackness. But this had been a whiteness, infinitely more terrible—a pain-filled, terror-filled radiance that blotted out all but the pain and the terror of the ensuing days. They had been very kind; considering what had happened, they had all been kind. They’d told him that he should not die nor even go to prison, but to a place where he might hide himself from the light inside his head. He’d been afraid of that, afraid of the truths that would face him when he was no longer blinded by the light. But they’d said that he hadn’t been—what they called ‘responsible’; because of that heredity, because of that very thing that Uncle Gemminy had been going to speak about—because of that long ago day when he had fled, a small boy, shrieking with mortal fear, away from Grandad, standing suddenly in the doorway carrying the great hatchet and stained down his front and all over his hands, with blood….

The gardeners had left the flower-beds and now at a discreet distance followed them; keeping a wary eye also—no point in humiliating and antagonising them, the trick psychs, said nowadays—upon other couples, other little groups all strolling in towards the big, barred buildings ahead; jingling the heavy keys, herding in their charges, sheep-like, to the grazing grounds. The old man stood aside, courteously, to usher the new-comer through the huge door with its wire-netted, splinter-proof glass. ‘Well, thank you, I enjoyed that. Someday I’ll tell you about
my
murder. Killed off my whole family one night, you know, with an axe. Not my fault; my father was mad before me, as mad as a hatter. And it’s years ago now; my goodness, yes!—when that happened, you’ll have been no more than a child.’

‘S
TAY ME WITH FLAGONS,
’ said Mr. Mysterioso, waving a fluid white hand, ‘comfort me with apples!’ There had been no flagons, he admitted, in that murder room thirteen years ago, but there had been apples—a brown paper bag of them, tied at the top with string and so crammed full that three had burst out of a hole in the side and rolled away on the dusty floor; and a rifle, propped up, its sights aligned on the cornerstone, seventy-odd yards away and two storeys below.

And at the foot of the cornerstone the Grand Mysterioso tumbled with his lame leg doubled up under him, clasping in his arms the dying man who for so many years had been his dresser, chauffeur, servant, and friend—who for the last five years, since the accident that had crippled him, had almost literally never left his side—tumbled there, holding the dying man to his breast, roaring defiance at the building opposite, from which the shot had come. ‘You fools, you murderers, you’ve got the wrong man!’ And he had bent his head to listen. ‘Dear God, he’s saying—he’s saying—come close, listen to him! He’s saying, “Thank God they only got
me
! It was meant for you.” ’

Thirteen years ago—a cornerstone to be laid for the local hospital, just another chore in the public life of Mr. Mysterioso, stage magician extraordinary. But mounting to the tiny platform, leaning his crippled weight on the servant’s arm, there had come the sharp crack of the rifle shot. And in the top-floor room of the unfinished hospital wing, looking down on the scene, they had found the fixed rifle with one spent bullet. And nobody there. Up on the roof a press photographer who couldn’t have got down to the window where the gun was fixed; down at the main entrance a policeman on duty, seen by a dozen pairs of eyes tearing up the stairs towards the murder room, moments after the shot. In all that large, open, easily searched building—not another soul.

Twelve—thirteen?—years ago; and now they were gathered together, eight of them—to talk it over, to try to excise the scar that had formed in the mind of a boy—of the boy whose father had been dismissed from the force ‘for negligence on duty’, had ever afterwards suffered from the results of the act that day, and who now was dead.

For the boy had developed an obsession of resentment against the only other person involved, the man on the roof, who nowadays called himself ‘Mr. Photoze’—whose first step on the road to fame had come with the picture he had taken that day of the lion head raised, the brilliant eyes glaring, the outraged defiance. ‘My father didn’t fire that shot—therefore you must have,’ was the burden of the young man’s message, and there had been a succession of threats and at last a physical attack.

They had sent him to see a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist had muttered darkly about paranoia and complexes and ‘a disturbed oedipal pattern—the boy is subconsciously jealous of the father’s domination of the mother, which seems to have been considerable. He feels guilty towards the father, and now seeks to cover up the recollection of his inner hatred by an exaggerated feeling of protection towards the father, now that the father is dead and unable, as it were, to protect himself.’ A long period of treatment, said the psychiatrist, would be necessary.

Half an hour of treatment, said Mr. Photoze to his friend Mysterioso, would be more like it. Once convince the boy…‘Hold a little court, get together some of the people who were present and talk it out.’

‘The very thing!’ Mysterioso had agreed, delighted. It would be entertaining; he was an old man now, long retired from the stage. It would give him something to do, sitting here crippled and helpless in his chair all day.

So here they were, gathered together in Mr. Mysterioso’s large lush apartment: Mysterioso himself and Inspector Block, who as a young constable had been on the scene of the crime; and a lady and gentleman who had been on the hospital balcony and seen the young policeman running up the stairs after the shot had been fired; and a lady who had been close to the site and seen and heard it all. And a once-lovely lady, Miss Marguerite Devine, the actress, who might also have something to say; and Mr. Photoze. Mr. Photoze was madly decorative in dress, and a half-dozen fine gold bracelets jingled every time he moved his arm.

The boy sat hunched against an arm of the sofa, strained against it as though something dangerous to him crouched at the other end. He hated them. He didn’t want their silly help; he wanted to be avenged on Mr. Photoze, who had committed a crime and got off scot-free, as a result of which his father had lost his job and his happiness and his faith in men. And his mind wandered back over the frightening, uneasy childhood, the endless bickering and recrimination over his too perceptive young head; the indigence, the sense of failure… I don’t want to hear all this, I know what I know. Because of what he did, my father’s life was ruined. I meant all those threats. I failed last time, but next time I’ll get him.’

‘You do see!’ said Mr. Photoze, appealing to the rest of them with outflung arms and a tinkling of gold.

‘Your father was never accused of anything,’ said Inspector Block. ‘He was dismissed—’

‘ “Dismissed for negligence”—everyone knew what that meant. He lived under suspicion till the day he died. He died with no job and no money; my mother has no money to this day.’

‘We are going to lift that suspicion,’ said Mysterioso. ‘That’s what we’re here for; we’re going to clear the whole thing up. You shall represent your father, Mr. Photoze will be in the dock with you, defending himself. And here we have our witnesses—who also will be our jury. And I shall be the judge. If in the end we all come to the conclusion that your father was innocent, and Mr. Photoze was innocent also, won’t you feel better?’ He said very kindly, ‘We only want to help you.’

The boy watched him warily. He’s not doing this for my sake, he thought. He’s doing it because he wants to be on a stage again, and this is the nearest he can get to it. He’s just a vain, conceited old man; he wants to show off.

A vain man, yes: a man consumed with vanity—enormously handsome once, with the tawny great mane, now almost white, a man of world wide fame, a great performer—and not only on stage if his boastings were at all to be trusted—despite the fact that the car accident at the height of his career had left him unable to walk more than a few steps unaided. It was whispered behind mocking hands that on romantic occasions his servant Tom had to lead him to the very bedside and lower him down to it. Certainly he was never seen in public without Tom: a walking stick was not enough, and as for a crutch, ‘Do you see me hopping about playing Long John Silver?’ Close to Tom, gripping Tom’s strong left arm, the lameness was hardly noticeable. On stage he had continued to manage brilliantly with the aid of cleverly positioned props which he could hold on to or lean against. It was a total lack of strength only; he suffered no pain…

He gave three knocks on the table by his side—the three knocks that usher in the judge in Central Criminal Court Number One at the Old Bailey. ‘We’ll take first the evidence of the police.’

Inspector Block, paying lip service to all this foolishness, was interested nevertheless to see the outcome. ‘May it please your lordship, members of the jury. Twelve years and six months ago, almost to this very day, the police were shown an anonymous letter which had been received by the famous stage magician, Mr. Mysterioso. It was the first of a dozen or so, over the next six months. They were composed of words cut out from the national dailies, and enclosed in cheap envelopes, varying in size and shape, posted from widely differing parts of the country. I may add here that no one concerned with the case appeared to have had the opportunity to post them, unless of course it was done for the sender by different persons. At any rate, the letters were untraceable. They were all abusive and threatening and evidently from the same person; they were all signed ‘Her Husband’.

‘Mr. Mysterioso made no secret of having received them, and there was a good deal of excitement as each new one arrived. The police gave him what protection they could, and when in June he came down to Thrushford in Kent to lay a cornerstone, it was
our
turn—I was a young constable then and didn’t know very much about it, but it was rather anxious work for my superiors, because he had done a brief season at the theatre there a couple of years before.

‘It was arranged, therefore, to cover certain points round the site of the ceremony. The cornerstone was for a new wing. A second wing, completed on the outside but not on the inside, lay between the cornerstone and the main hospital building.’ He drew a plan in the air, a circular movement with the fiat palm of the right hand for the main building of the hospital, a stab with the forefinger of the left hand for the cornerstone, and a sharp slash with the edge of the hand for the unfinished wing lying midway between them. ‘It was from a middle window on the top floor of this wing that the shot was fired.’