Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 2. Whole No. 321, August 1970

The Scapegoat by Christianna Brand[8]

Very few writers — in our opinion, too few — are producing the kind of defective story that Christianna Brand specializes in: novelets, each presenting a highly intricate mystery, with a wide range of possible answers, every theory pursued, analyzed, discarded, until only one solution covering all the facts remains — and even then, beware! These fascinating merry-go-round, teeter-totter, crossruff, tightrope novelets are “renaissance” detective stories — relish them!

“Stay 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 fifteen 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 stories 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 M r Mysterioso, 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 then he hall 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.’ ”

Fifteen 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 toward the murder room, moments after the shot. In all that large, open, easily searched building — not another soul.

Fifteen years ago; and now they were gathered together, eight of them — to talk it all over, to try to excise the scar that had formed in the mind of the young man whose father had been dismissed from the force “for negligence on duty,” had ever afterward suffered from the results of the act that day, and who now was dead.

For the young man 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 oedipaI pattern — the young man 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 young man — “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 young man 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.”

“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 young man 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 auto 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…

Mysterioso 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. Fifteen years 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 too much about it, but it was rather anxious work for my superiors because he had done a brief season at the theater 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 flat 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.”

And he described the unfinished wing. A simple oblong; ground floor and two stories, with its main entrance at one end. This entrance had no door as yet, was only a gap leading into a little hall out of which the stairs curled round the still empty elevator shaft. A sloping roof of slate surrounded by a ledge with a low parapet.

“It was an easy matter to search it. Except on the top floor there were no interior walls and up there only half a row of rooms was completed — each floor was designed to have a central corridor with small rooms leading off both sides. There was a lot of stuff about, planks and tools and shavings and so on, but literally nowhere big enough for a man to hide. It was searched very thoroughly the night before the ceremony and less thoroughly the next morning, and a man was placed at the main entrance with orders not to move away from it.”

“And he didn’t move away from it,” said the young man. “That was my father.”

Inspector Block ignored him. “The order of events is as follows: One hour before the ceremony Mr. Mysterioso arrived and the Superintendent explained the arrangements to him. Their way to the main hospital building, where the reception committee awaited him, led past the entrance of the unfinished wing. Just outside it a man was speaking to the policeman on duty.”

“The murderer was speaking to the policeman on duty,” said the young man.

“This person was well known to the police,” said the Inspector, ignoring the young man again, “as a press photographer — not yet calling himself Mr. Photoze. He wanted permission to go up on the roof and take pictures of the ceremony from there.”

“Always one for the interesting angle,” said Mr. Photoze archly.

“The Super was about to refuse him, but Mr. Mysterioso recognized the man and said he should be permitted to go up. So he was carefully searched for any weapons and it ended in all of them going up to the top floor together. Mr. Mysterioso, of course, had his man, Tom, help him.”

“We’d been together so long,” said Mysterioso, “that really in the end we moved like a single person, always running a sort of three-legged race. I had no pain from this thing, it was only a total lack of strength. A couple of flights of stairs was nothing to us.”

You couldn’t get on with it, with these people, thought the Inspector. They all wanted to exhibit. “At any rate, they went up,” he proceeded, letting a little of his irritability show. “There was a trap door, the only exit to the roof, and Mr. Photoze, as we now call him, was helped up through it with his gear. At that moment Tom came down the corridor, having left his master standing propped up against the window sill in one of the little rooms, looking down with interest at the site. Tom said he didn’t like it, that he felt uneasy about the whole thing; the man shouldn’t have been allowed up. Someone — I think in fact it was P.C. Robbins, the man on the door, this young man’s father — suggested that there was a bolt which could be shot from the inside, locking the photographer on the roof. So this was done. Mysterioso was waiting for them at the door of the little room and they went on to the cornerstone.

“And then — it happened. The guest of honor went up the four shallow steps that led to the platform in front of the cornerstone. There was a shot and both men fell. A minute later Tom, the servant, died in his master’s arms. As he died he was heard to say: ‘Thank God they only got me. It was meant for you.’ ”

“He said it over and over,” said the woman who had been near the site. “Over and over. It was so dreadful, so touching—”

“Let us hear from our witnesses later,” said Mysterioso; but he looked down at his hands, lying in his lap, and when she continued he made no further attempt to stop her.

For the woman was carried away, full of tragic memories and could not be still. “I can see them now! A moment before it had all been so lovely, so sunny and pleasant, all the doctors from the hospital there and lots of guests, and Matron, of course, and some of the nurses, and Mr. Mysterioso looking so magnificent, if I may say so,” — she made a little ducking movement which the great man graciously accepted “—with his top hat and flowing black cloak, as though he’d just walked down from the stage to come and lay our cornerstone for us.

“And then — they went up the steps together, he on the left. His man walked very close to him, and I suppose that under the cloak his arm was holding tight to his man’s arm; but you wouldn’t have guessed that he was lame at all. They stood there in the sunshine and a few words were spoken and so on; and then the man put out his hand to take the trowel, which was on a stand to his right, and pass it across to his master — and suddenly there was this sharp crack! — and before we knew what was happening, the man fell and dragged his master down with him.” And the lifting up of the splendid head with its tawny, gray-streaked hair, the great roar of defiance flung up at the window from which the shot had come.

“When you think,” said the woman, “what a target he presented! We had all swung round to where the shot came from and we could see a man up on the roof. Of course we all thought he was the murderer. And at any moment he might have taken a second shot and really killed the right man this time.”

“If he was in fact the right man,” said Inspector Block, throwing a cold pebble into this warm sea of emotion. “Not all of us were convinced at the time that the shot wasn’t meant for Tom.”

“For God’s sake!” said Mysterioso. “Who would want to kill Tom? — my poor, inoffensive, faithful, loving old Tom. And what about the threatening letters? Besides, he said it himself — over and over, as the lady says. He’d have known if he’d had such an enemy, but he said it himself, ‘It was meant for you.’ ” He appealed to the woman. “You heard him?”

“Yes, of course. You called me close. ‘Listen!’ you said.” She shuddered. “The blood was coming up, bubbling up out of his mouth. They were the last words he spoke. ‘Thank God they only got me. It was meant for you.’ ”

“And so he died — for my sins,” said the Grand Mysterioso, and again he was silent. But he’s not sorry really, thought the young man, crouched in his sofa corner, watching the big handsome old face heavy with sadness, and yet spread over with a sort of unction of self-satisfaction. “He’s pleased, underneath it all, that everyone should know that even at that age he could still be seducing girls, breaking up homes, getting threatening letters from husbands.” And certainly in the ensuing years the aging lion had done nothing to obliterate the public’s memory of that terrible, yet magnificent day. “I was so bloody mad, I forgot all about everything but Tom. Dying for my sins!” In a hundred talks and broadcasts he lived it over again, mock regretful, mock remorseful (thought the young man) that a man should have died to pay for the triumphs of his own all-conquering virility. “I think you’re pleased,” the young man said. “I think you’re proud of it. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have kept telling people about it all this time.”

“He’s got you there, old boy,” said the actress, Marguerite Devine, without venom. “Literally below the belt,” she added, laughing, and then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, love!” and laughed no more.

“I know a lot about people,” said the young man, and it was true; the insecurities of his childhood had heightened his perception — solitary, antisocial, he paid no lip service to conventional pretenses, was undeceived b y them. Life had accustomed him to be ready for the worst.

“Well, the cheeky monkey!” said the old man in a comic accent, trying to make light of it. Inspector Block asked patiently if they might now get on with it. “What happened next—”

“I’ll tell what happened next,” said the young man. “Because I know it.” You could see the tense clutch of his hands, the tense pressure of his shabby shoes on the soft carpeting of Mysterioso’s room; his very skin color had changed, strangely darkened with hollows ringed round the bright eyes. He was coming now to the defense of his father. “My father was standing in the doorway where he’d been posted. I’ve heard him tell about it a hundred times; he was always telling it. He heard the shot fired and ran to the corner of the building and sent one glance at the site and saw what had happened — and don’t tell me that in that short time someone could have come out of the building and run away, because they couldn’t. Could they?” he appealed to Inspector Block.

“No,” said Block. “In that short time anyone shooting from the window where the gun was could hardly even have reached the top of the stairs. Experiments were made.”

“Well, all right, so he saw them both fall and he saw the crowd swing round and stare up at the building, so he knew where the shot must have come from and he turned back and ran into the building and up the stairs. He didn’t bother about the ground floor because he knew the man couldn’t have got there yet; and anyway, it was just an open space, he could see that it was empty; and so was the second floor an empty space.”

“That’s right,” said Block. “He acted perfectly wisely. Go on, you’re doing fine.”

The tense darkened face gave him no thanks. “He went tearing up,” said the young man, “and as he passed the first big window on the stairs looking across at the main building of the hospital he saw people lying in beds and sitting in wheel chairs out on the balcony—”

They had sat very quiet and intent, those two who had been on the hospital balcony that day long ago — traced and brought here by the dramatic enthusiasm of the Grand Mysterioso to stand witness to what they had seen. “Yes, I remember it well,” said the woman. “They’d wheeled us out there into the sunshine — we were pretty sick people, from the surgical wards. Nothing to see, mind: the unfinished wing cut off the view of the park beyond and of course of the cornerstone. It would have been fun to lie there and watch the ceremony, but — well, we couldn’t see it. Still, it was nice to get a bit of fresh air. This gentleman was on the other side of the partition with others from Men’s Surgical. We were lying there quietly, dozing, enjoying the sunshine—”

“That’s right. And then suddenly we heard the shot and half a minute later this policeman comes racing up the stairs of the unfinished wing opposite. There was a lot of glass there, at least there was going to be — now it was just a huge great open space. He went dashing past and then something must have occurred to him, because he reappeared, hanging out of the window to shout out to us, clinging to the post with one hand. ‘Watch the stairs!’ he shouted. ‘Watch that no one comes down!’ We were all excited, we yelled back, ‘What’s happened?’ and he yelled, ‘They’ve shot him!’ or ‘They’ve got him!’ — I don’t know which — and then off he went tearing up the stairs again.”

“What a kerfuffle!” said the woman. “Everyone squealing and hysterical, one of them fainted — we were all weak, I suppose, and I think we thought the murderer would suddenly appear and start taking shots at us from the window—”

“Or from the roof,” said the young man.

“We’re coming to the roof in a moment,” said Mysterioso patiently. Don’t worry about him, his look said to the rest of them; after all, this is why we’re here. “Now — your father went tearing on up the stairs—?”

“Yes, and came to the top and ran along the corridor. There were a few rooms with their walls up, but the rest was open space — no ceiling in yet, you could see the joists and the tiles up over your head. He ran past several of the little rooms that were partitioned — there were no doors or windows in yet — and suddenly in one of them he saw the rifle. A .22, rigged up, fixed, aligned on the cornerstone below.

“He took just one glance and ran out into the corridor again, to try and find someone. He knew the murderer must still be up there. But there was nobody. And then he heard footsteps coming pounding up the stairs and it was — well, now he’s Inspector Block.” Even that seemed to be an injury; his father had never had the chance to become Inspector Robbins.

“He met me at the top of the stairs,” said Block. “I’d been on duty at the other end of the wing. He said, ‘My God, there’s nobody here! They’ve shot him, but there’s nobody here!’ He looked almost — scared, as though he’d seen a ghost. ‘There’s a rifle fixed up,’ he said. ‘Come and look!’ ”

In the last of the half-dozen little rooms that had so far received their dividing walls there was a rough tripod formed of three planks. These had been shaped at their ends so that, propped against the skirting boards on three sides of the room, they met and dovetailed to form a crotch into which the butt of the rifle fitted securely. A short length of rope had been tied round the whole and this was further reinforced by a twelve-foot length of twine, doubled for extra strength, its ends roughly tucked in as though hurriedly done. Into the wood of the window sill two nails had been driven to form a triangle through which the muzzle of the rifle had been thrust. The whole was trained, steady as a rock, on, the site below.

And spilled out of a torn paper bag, too small to hold so many, three out of half a dozen rosy apples had rolled out on the dusty boards of the wooden floor.

“We stood and stared and as we stood, there was a scraping and scuffling overhead, a small shower of debris, and when we looked up we saw two hands tearing at the slates above us and a face peering through. And a voice said, ‘For God’s sake, what’s happening? They’ve shot him!’ And then added, ‘But, my God, what a picture!’ ”

The picture that had brought Mr. Photoze fame and fortune: the picture of the famous lion head raised, mouth half open in that great outraged bellow heedless of danger; “You murderers, you’ve got the wrong man!”

Usually, for publication, the head was lifted out of the rest, but the whole picture showed the scene moments after the impact of the bullet. First the edge of the parapet, then an expanse of grass between the main building and the cornerstone; the smoother grass where turf had been laid for the ceremony, the flowering shrubs temporarily planted for the occasion, the tubs of geraniums; the partially built wall with the cornerstone at its center, the small crowd swung about to stare up, stupefied with shock.

But as the press photographer had exclaimed, in instant recognition of what he had achieved — what a picture! A murdered man, caught in the very act of dying; the hands that held him as famous a pair as existed in the world, and the splendid head, the magnificent, ravaged, upturned face. But the most beautiful thing in the whole photograph, Mr. Photoze assured them now, had been the glimpse in the foreground of the parapet’s edge. “Because if the parapet is in the picture, then I took that picture from the roof and not from the room below where the rifle was.”

“Anyone can fake a photograph,” said the young man.

“The police confiscated my equipment,” said Mr. Photoze, “before I had time to do any faking. And before you get any sharper and cut yourself, dear boy, there was no apparatus by which the camera could be left to take pictures all by itself. I wasn’t lugging more than I had to up to that roof.”

It was a splendid room — big and luxurious, all just a bit larger than life, like Mr. Mysterioso himself. But the young man sat tensed like a wild thing about to spring, and his tension communicated itself to the rest of them, meeting his sick and angry stare with eyes divided between understanding, pity, and impatience. He resumed his parrot cry. “You were there. And nobody else was. My father didn’t do it, so it must have been you.”

Mr. Photoze was — understandably enough — one of the impatient ones. “Now, look here!” He appealed to them all. “I was up on that damn roof. I was there the whole time, anyone could have seen me there—”

“No one was looking,” said the young man. “They were all watching the ceremony.”

“And so was I, you silly fool! I was taking photographs, that’s what I was there for. And then suddenly this gun goes off somewhere below me and I saw the two men fall. It was like a film shot in slow motion,” he recalled, “the two of them collapsing, but slowly, slowly. I stood there frozen and then I saw that Mysterioso had lifted up his head and was shouting up to the window where the gun was; and I seemed to come to life and started clicking away like mad—”

“Without a thought that a man was dying?”

“Sort of reflex action, I suppose,” said Mr. Photoze. He added simply, “It’s my job.”

Mr. Mysterioso had had much cause to be grateful to the photographer who had forgotten all but getting on with his job. The photograph had kept alive the legend of that moment of bravado, of selfless courage on behalf of one who had after all been only a servant. They had remained on friendly terms ever since; it was to him that Mr. Photoze had turned for advice when the young man’s foolish threats had suddenly turned into action. “You did quite right,” Mysterioso said. “The show must go on.”

“And so must this meeting,” said Inspector Block, tapping an impatient toe.

“I’m sorry. Yes… well, I went on taking pictures till the crowd surged in and there was nothing to take but the backs of their heads. So then I suddenly thought about the shooting and I peeked over the parapet and there to my horror I saw the tip of a gun, the barrel, just showing beyond the window sill. To this day I don’t know why I did it, but I dropped all my gear and ran along the ledge to the trap door, to get down and — I don’t know, do something, I suppose. Sheer madness, because imagine if the murderer had still been there! But anyway, I couldn’t get the trap door open. I tugged and I kicked but — well, we know now that it had been bolted from the inside. So I ran back to where I’d seen the gun and what was in my mind then, I think, was that there it still was, still pointing down at all those helpless people—”

“He’d have cleared out long before,” said the young man scornfully, “while you were taking pictures and running up and down.”

“Well—” He spread artistic, explanatory, jingly hands. “I mean, one isn’t exactly a man of action, is one? I daresay what I thought didn’t make much sense. But I did imagine him crouching there with that gun in his hands — of course I didn’t know then about the tripod and all that — and all those poor dear people in danger down below. And suddenly I started smashing at the slates, bashing at them with the heel of my shoe, clearing a little hole so that at least I could look down and see what he was doing — perhaps frighten him off, make him clear out.”

But he had cleared out long ago — cleared out, vanished into thin air. Nobody was there except two policemen, staring back, astonished, into Mr. Photoze’s startled face. “One said, ‘What are you doing up there?’

“ ‘He had permission. To take photos. I know him,’ said P.C. Robbins. ‘He’s all right.’ ”

“My poor father — little did he think!” said the young man.

Mr. Photoze collapsed into his chair with an air of giving up. “I don’t know. What can you do? The facts, you silly boy, I’ve just given you the facts! I was up on the roof, I couldn’t get down — it was your own father who pulled the bolt and locked me out. How could I have committed the murder, how could I have fired the gun? Even if I’d wanted to, how could I have done it? We’ve all just given you the facts.”

The trapped animal, head turning from side to side, seeking a way out. And then — the release. The young man was absolutely still, struck mindless for a moment by the immensity of the idea. He blurted out at last, “The apples!”

“The apples?”

“Who ties a bag of apples at the neck with string? And… yes, there was other string in that room, wound round the tripod and the butt of the rifle, a long piece of string. What for? The rifle was already tied into place with the rope.” He said to Inspector Block, “Was there a nail in the wall opposite the window?”

“There were nail holes,” said Block. “They were everywhere.”

“The rifle fixed steady, tied by the rope, aligned on the spot.” The dark was receding from his face, he was alive with excitement. “And tied to the rifle — to the trigger of the rifle — the string; tied with a slip noose, easy to undo afterwards, and the other end of the string tied with a slip noose to a nail in the wall opposite the window. And a bag of apples — an innocent-looking bag of apples that no one will worry about too much. A little light refreshment for the murderer while he waits?” he suggested to Inspector Block with a fine contempt.

“I was a plain copper in those days,” said Block, “and not in the close confidence of my superiors. But I don’t think they took it all quite so easily as that. On the other hand, murderers are funny animals, they have all sorts of cockeyed reasons for what they do. He could, for example, have been a smoker and didn’t want to draw attention to the fact — leaving ashes and stubs around. So he supplied himself with something to munch, to fill the gap.”

“Are you a smoker?” said the young man nastily to Mr. Photoze.

“I have no idea what either of you is talking about,” said Mr. Photoze.

“A bag of apples is a funny thing,” said the young man. “Sort of — nobbly. Of course other things would have done as well, but the presence of a bag of apples on the scene could be explained in lots of ways — for example, something to stop the murderer from wanting to smoke.” His face, growing white and pinched now where the dark had been, stared, ugly with spite, at Mr. Photoze. “I was sure you must have done it,” he said, “because I knew my father hadn’t. But now I know. Because I know how.” And his hands described it, stretched apart, holding taut an imaginary string. “One end tied to the trigger, one end fixed to the wall. At the right moment something heavy falling on the string, jerking it down, yanking back the trigger, firing the shot.”

Absolute silence had fallen in the big room. Mr. Photoze said at last, shakily, “I was on the roof. How could I have dropped the bag of apples down?”

“You admit you made a hole in the slates,” said the young man. “You dropped it down through that.”

Silence again. Inspector Block said quietly, “Very ingenious. But your father was in the room within two minutes or less after the shot was fired. The string was wound round the tripod when he first saw it. Who took it down and wound it there?”

“Perhaps his precious father did,” said Mr. Photoze, a trifle viciously, “having fixed it all up himself. He was supposed to be on duty at the entrance. But no one could see him. Who knows that he was really there?”

“He was seen going up the stairs after the shot was fired,” said Mr. Mysterioso reasonably.

“That’s right. To take down string before Block arrived and saw it.”

The young man was unafraid. “How could he have got it to work? He was outside the door, three stories down — we know that because he was seen coming up. So… Mr. Mysterioso, you’re the magician here. How could my father have got the trick to work?”

“There are ways,” admitted Mr. Mysterioso reluctantly. “Blocks of ice and melting wax and timing machines — after all, he only had to be the first one on the scene to clear the evidence away.”

“Curiously enough,” said Block, “the police thought of some of these little ideas too. Considering the length of the string — just the width of the room — and the uselessness of it where we found it, as the young man rightly points out, just wound round the tripod, not even knotted — well, we did just think about it. Though I admit that I don’t think anyone read this particular significance into the bag of apples. But I do assure you that the place was searched for candle grease and damp patches and timing clocks, till we thought we never wanted to see an unfinished building again. And Robbins, of course, was examined from head to toe, inside and out till he couldn’t have had so much as a spent match concealed about him. You can take it from me — inside and outside, both the building and P.C. Robbins — absolutely nothing.”

“So where does that leave me?” said Mr. Photoze, and immediately answered himself. “On the roof, dropping a bag of apples through a hole which wasn’t there until after the shot was fired; when two policemen, including your own dear parent, stood there and watched me make it.”

“For the second time,” said the young man.

Up there on the roof — out of sight, if anybody had been looking that way which, in the nature of things they wouldn’t be — a photographer fiddling about with the tools of his trade. A slate removed, two slates or three or four — enough to allow him to slip down into the room below, fix up the tripod and the rifle and the taut string, all prepared and left ready previously. Back again, using the tripod as a step to hoist yourself up through the hole and back onto the roof; the bag of apples in his hand. And the shot fired by dropping the bag of apples to pull sharply on the string — then down through the hole again, quickly twist the string round the tripod, and back on the roof, covering the hole over with the slates before P.C. Robbins even gets up the stairs. Covering the hole over roughly — anyone entering the little room will be intent on the rifle and the tripod, not looking up. And before they get around to the roof — start battering and scrabbling, smashing the slates, making the hole again—

“Dear God!” said Mr. Photoze, and caught Inspector Block’s eye and said again, “Dear God!”

The young man sat bolt upright in his chair, triumphant. “Just tell me,” said Mr. Photoze at last, slowly, “why should I have rigged up all this nonsense? I could just have jumped down through the hole, fired the rifle, and nipped back.”

“Using what as a hoist?” said the young man. “It’s a long way up to the roof, even to the lower bit of the slope where the hole was.”

“Oh, well, as to that, with so much ingenuity as you ascribe to me I think I could have managed something, don’t you?”

The young man ignored the slightly teasing tone. “There was something much more important — the photograph. You had to be there to take the photograph, the one with the parapet in it that proves you were on the roof when the gun went off.”

“So I did!” said Mr. Photoze; and it frightened the young man a little — how could the man be so easy and unafraid? — with his mocking, half-indulgent admiration, a touch in his voice of something very much like pity. “You knew Mysterioso,” he burst out. “He recognized you at the main entrance, it was he who told them to let you go up on the roof. I suppose,” he added, spitting out venom wherever it might hurt,’ ” that, like all your kind you reveled in having your picture taken, didn’t you?”

“I was willing to do him a kindness,” said Mysterioso mildly, “that was all.”

“Well, it made a change then, if you were,” said the young man. “You’d done him anything but a kindness two years before, hadn’t you?” And he looked at the rest of them with a triumph almost pitiful because it was so filled with spite. “You want a motive?” he said. “Well, I’ll tell it to you — the Inspector could have told it to you long ago, only he protects this man like all the rest have done. All the world knew that Mysterioso had taken Mr. Photoze’s girl friend away from him.”

“Dear me,” said Marguerite Devine, “would you say that this was where I come in?”

There fell a verbal silence in which even Mr. Photoze lost his recent poise, jangling his golden bracelets with nervous movements of his hands. Perhaps it was their tinkling that led him to say finally, “Do I really give the impression of a man who would kill another man for taking a woman away from him?”

“Speaking from memory,” said Marguerite, “I would say that the answer to that one is — no.”

“You’ll confirm it, Marguerite? — all I did was to take pictures of you.” He explained to the “court.” “I lived in the same group of flats. I was a lodger — with this young man’s parents, us in the basement, her ladyship here in considerably more comfort on the fifth floor. She was a star then, at the top of her career—”

“Not to say a little over the hill,” admitted Marguerite ruefully.

“Do you think she’d have looked at me in that way? — a scruffy little press photographer without tuppence to bless himself with. But she was an actress, she was at liberty at the time, and all actresses, all that our young gentleman here would call ‘their kind,’ like having their pictures taken. It’s part of their stock in trade. So… It was good practise for me; and in those days what a marvelous profile—”

“For ‘in those days,’ dear,” said Marguerite, “much thanks.” But she added, kindly, to the young man, “However, at least an honest face, love, I hope. And in all honesty I tell you — he wouldn’t have killed so much as a fly on account of me.”

“Well, some other reason then, what does it matter? But he was up on that roof, he could have done it and nobody else could, so he must have.”

Inspector Block got suddenly to his feet. “Now, look here, my lad! You’ve had a long innings, you’ve done a lot of very clever talking — now you listen for a change! Your theory is beautifully ingenious but it has one tiny flaw and that is, it won’t work. The whole thing depends on a hole in the roof so big that Mr. Photoze could get down through it and then up again. But the police do think of these things too, you know; and that hole was most carefully examined and the simple fact is that he couldn’t have got his head through it, let alone the rest of him. The slates were securely pegged down and couldn’t be removed; the only hole was the small one he made by shattering one of the slates with the heel of his shoe.”

The young man was taken aback. It had seemed to fit so well, justify all his suspicions. And now nothing was left of it. Back to the parrot cry that had sustained him all this bitter time since his father had died. “He was on the roof. There was only him and my father—”

“That’s right,” said Inspector Block. “Him — and your father.”

You couldn’t call him slow on the uptake. The young man was there before any of them and had sprung to his feet — frightened now, really frightened. “You mean — together? In it together?”

The rifle hidden away during the night — it was true that these things, the gun, the bag of apples, the string, might very easily have escaped detection during the more cursory inspection on the day of the ceremony: small enough objects to be lost among the innumerable bits and pieces lying about in a building still under construction. Up to the roof with Mr. Photoze, then, searched and found free of the impedimenta of murder; he’d have been smuggled up there without permission if none had been given, of course; had they been surprised, those two, in the middle of their plan, when Mysterioso and the Superintendent had come upon them outside the main entrance? Up to the roof, anyway — and the bolt shot that would keep him up there. “It was P.C. Robbins who suggested that the inside bolt be shot. It left his accomplice, now that he was known to be on the roof, safe from accusation of firing the gun.”

The young man did not argue. There was in his heart now a terrible fear.

Everyone gone off at last to prepare for the ceremony — a clear field. P.C. Robbins leaves his post at the main entrance and nips up the stairs — no patients yet, perhaps, to mark his going, or if there are, after all the passings up and down that morning, who is going to recall one more policeman checking things once again?

Up to the murder room then; a minute and a half to erect the prepared tripod, not more (“We experimented with that”) — to fix the taut string and (“Here it comes!”) to pass up the bag of apples through the small hole which meantime Mr. Photoze would have been making by the removal of one slate. And P.C. Robbins is back at his post long before the ceremonial procession is due to pass down again to the site — and he can’t have fired the shot because he was at the post when it was fired — any more than Mr. Photoze could have fired it, known to be locked up (and taking pictures) on the roof.

The bag of apples is dropped and the taut string pulls on the trigger and the shot is fired; and the one slate is replaced, to be reopened with much scrabbling and shattering when the proper moment arrives; and the photograph is taken. And three steps at a time P.C. Robbins comes pounding up the stairs to untie the string and wind it — no time for knots — round the butt of the gun, to look as though it had some purpose other than its real one; and is ready to greet P.C. Block arriving, panting “There’s a rifle fixed up. Come and look!”

The young man stared, helpless. Great tears rolled down his thin face, white now and haggard. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.” But to fight was better than to despair. “Anyway, what was the reason? My father had no reason to do it, so why should he?”

Inspector Block said steadily, “Mr. Photoze lived in the same group of flats as this lady did. You were ready enough to accuse him of an affair with her. But your father also lived in that same group of flats; and the lady is a very pretty lady. And then—”

“Oh, come now, darling!” protested Marguerite. “First a photographer — now a policeman as well. Have a heart! I wasn’t very fussy — but!”

“— along came Mr. Mysterioso,” went on Block, “and took her away from them both.”

“What a happy little threesome we seem to have been,” said Mr. Photoze.

“I don’t say you were a threesome — not in that sense. There may be many ways of caring for a woman, needing a woman — many reasons, at any rate, for resenting her being stolen from you.”

“But I wasn’t stolen from the policeman,” said Marguerite, half laughing. And she looked at the young man’s face and laughed no more. “Now, look, Inspector, this is absolutely not fair. I’ve told you about Mr. Photoze — we were both frank enough with you. So believe me when I say, when I swear to you on oath, that as for the policeman I never set eyes on the fellow in my life. Not till after the shooting; then we all saw one another in connection with the case. But that was all.”

“So there!” said the young man passionately. He added with a suddenly rather sweet simplicity, “Besides he was married to my mother.”

“And loved your mother?”

“Yes,” said the young man (loved her too much, to the exclusion of oneself — quarreled with her, yes, but that was because of the failure and the poverty brooding in the home, which in turn was because of the crime and subsequent unjust dismissal).

Inspector Block did not like what he had to say next. But he said it. “All right. He loved her. But Mr. Photoze lived with them, and perhaps in his own way he was devoted to her too — enough at any rate to enter into a plot to avenge her. Because—” It was not very nice, but it had to be said. “Because Mr. Mysterioso had been visiting those flats, hadn’t he? And one lady at a time wasn’t necessarily enough for the Grand Mysterioso.”

“You flatter me,” said Mysterioso; but nobody listened to him. For it was terrible — horrible — to see the young man. Before, it had been a young face, dark, pale as the emotions passed across it. Now it was a man’s face, a clown’s face, a mask of white patched clownishly with pink. That gesture again as though physical danger were coming close to him. He whimpered, “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“We have to consider everything,” said Inspector Block, as though excusing what he did.

“It’s madness,” said Mysterioso. He hauled himself straighter in his chair but he too had gone pale. “By all I hold sacred, I never even saw her — not till after the inquiries started.” He looked with pity at the cowering young man. “I never touched your mother, boy, never so much as saw her.”

“You could have,” said the young man, sobbing. “You could have.” His body was bowed over till his forehead rested on his two fists clenched on the arm of the chair. “Everyone tells lies — you have to say you didn’t know her. But you could have, you may have—”

Marguerite got up from her place. She went and knelt beside him, lifted his head, pushing back the damp, soft, spiky young-boy hair from his forehead; caught at the writhing hands and held them steady in her own two hands, so white and well-cared for with their long, pink, manicured nails. “Hush, love, hush! Of course it isn’t true.” And she looked across the room at Mr. Mysterioso and said, “A secret — between us and these kind people here who’ll be too generous, I know, ever to give us away.” She glanced at the door.

“Nobody could be listening?”

“No,” said the Inspector.

“Between these four walls then?” She looked round at them, appealing, then back to Mysterioso. She said, “I think we must tell.”

An actress, “over the hill,” glad of the attentions of even a scruffy young press photographer using her as a sitter to practise his craft. Thankful beyond words for the advent of a new admirer and a rich, famous, and handsome one at that, “good to be seen about with” at the fashionable restaurants where theatrical agents and managers would be reminded of her. Entertaining him at home, not at all secretly; dropping naughty hints to anyone who would listen — my darling, he’s fantastic! Using it all to further her own ends, to bolster her tottering career.

And a man, larger than life size, not quite like other men. Big, handsome, with his mane of tawny hair, a man who looked like a lion and must live like a lion; a man with a reputation for affairs, in middle age still strutting in the pride of his well publicized virility. And all in an hour, in a moment… The accident that had left him a crippled thing, humiliatingly powerless, had left him powerless in other ways as well. “She was — kind,” he said, looking at Marguerite still kneeling by the young man’s chair. “She kept my secret a secret.” To the young man he said, “Even if I’d ever set eyes on her, my boy, your pretty young mother would have been safe from me.”

“It’s true,” said Marguerite. She looked down at her hands. “I know.”

Inspector Block helped her up from the floor and back to her chair. He said to them both, with something like humility in his cold voice, “Thank you.”

The Grand Mysterioso stirred and sighed and came back to the present with a jerk. “Well, now… My dear boy, I think you have no cause to complain. We’ve done what we came here to do — talked it all out, put it all before you, all the facts, the ifs and the ands, the probabilities and the just possibles — riddled out our very souls for you, so that you may save your own. So save it! Accept the judgment of this court — who also have heard it all — and get rid of this bug that has been obsessing your mind and spoiling your splendid young life. I’ll help you. I’ll be your friend — you can start all over again, grow up, be a man.

“So now — you two have been the accused, you and Mr. Photoze here. Go outside this room and wait; and we will arrive at a verdict in here, all of us, me and Inspector Block and this kind and lovely lady, Miss Devine, and these three kind people who have come here as witnesses, at no small trouble to themselves, to help you too. None of us with any ax to grind, remember that. So — whatever verdict we come to, will you accept it?” And he said kindly, “All we want, boy, in all honesty, is to arrive at the truth and set your mind to rest.”

“Suppose,” said the young man, “the truth doesn’t set my mind at rest.”

“Then we’ll tell it just the same,” said Block. He made a small-boy gesture, licking his thumb and crossing his heart with it. “I swear you shall hear the truth. I’ll tell you no lie.”

“Considering that I’m in the dock too,” said Mr. Photoze, getting up and going toward the door with his accompanying jingle, “and I’m ready to accept the verdict, I think you can too.” He opened the door. “Come along, the jury is about to retire.”

The door closed behind them. Mr. Mysterioso said, “Photoze will keep him safely out of earshot.” But he looked anxious. “Can you really swear to tell him the truth of it? For that matter — what is the truth of it?”

Inspector Block went and stood in the middle of the room. He said, “The truth of it is very short, and very simple. I can tell it to you in—” he counted on his fingers — “in fourteen words. In fact, I could reduce those words to six, and give you the whole story. Of course I could say a lot of other words, but I’m not going to. It’s not for me to accuse. Our business is to exonerate.” And he spoke the fourteen words. “I think the rest is self-explanatory… Verdict unanimous? Let’s have the young man back.”

The big lush room, curtains drawn, hushed in the evening quiet, no traffic rumbling outside, scented with flowers and the upward curl of cigar and cigarette smoke, bottles and glasses hospitably placed within reach of outstretched hands… The door opened and Mr. Photoze came jangling through and the young man was standing there, wearing the dark look again, his eyes like the eyes of a frightened animal, his hands tensed into claws. Mr. Mysterioso struggled his helpless limbs forward in his chair and held out a hand. “Come over here, son. Come and stand by me.”

He came over and stood by the chair. “It’s all right,” said Mysterioso and took the narrow brown hand and held it, strongly and comfortingly in his own. He said, “You see, it hasn’t taken long. We all recognized the truth immediately. Verdict unanimous.” And he gave it. “Mr Photoze — not guilty; neither motive nor opportunity. And your father — not guilty; neither motive nor opportunity. My hand on my heart!”

A sort of shudder ran through the young man. Tears ran down his face as he stood motionless, his head bowed. “All go!” said Mysterioso. “I’ll look after him. We’ve done our job. But never again,” he said, giving a little shake to the nerveless hand still held in his own, “any threats to Mr. Photoze, let alone any violence! You accept the verdict? That’s a promise?”

The bowed head nodded.

“Good boy! Well, then, good night to you all,” said the old man, “and thank you.” And he said again to the young man. “I’m sure you thank them too?”

Yes, nodded the hanging head again; thin hand still clasped in the veined old hand, the beautiful, still mobile, veined old hand of the master magician, the Grand Mysterioso.

Mr. Photoze walked away with Inspector Block. “Well, thank God that’s over! I think I’m pretty safe from now on. He gave his promise and he’ll keep it, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes, you’ll have no more trouble,” said Block. “He meant it. I know these kids; they only need convincing.” He walked a little farther in silence. “What you and I now know,” he said carefully, “at least I think you know it? — had better be kept secret.”

“Mysterioso and the others know it.”

“Some of it,” said the Inspector. A vain man, Mysterioso, he added, really one of the vainest he had ever known. “Of course, as you said, it’s their stock-in-trade.”

“For what he admitted tonight,” suggested Mr. Photoze, “I think much may be forgiven the old man.”

“Nevertheless, through his vanity he’s obstructed the course of justice. From the very beginning — from before the very beginning.”

“You mean — the letters?”

“The letters — anonymous letters signed ‘Her Husband.’ In all sorts of different envelopes, in all sorts of different type, posted from all sorts of different parts of the country—”

“Ye Gods! And who traveled all over the country constantly, with his act? And who got all that lovely publicity? You mean he wrote them to himself?”

“No, I think the letters were genuine,” said Block slowly. “Genuine letters in genuine envelopes. I just think the letters didn’t belong in the envelopes.”

Typed envelopes — envelopes that had previously held circulars, impossible to distinguish, even by the senders, from the myriad of similar envelopes pushed day after day through letter boxes up and down the land. “He’d just pick one with a Birmingham postmark or a Glasgow postmark or what you will — put the letter in that, seal it up instead of merely tucking it in — the glue would be still intact; tear it open again and then send it off to the police — first taking care to arrange for the maximum publicity.”

“The publicity I understand,” said Mr. Photoze. “But for the rest — I daresay I’m dense, but why put the letters into new envelopes? Why not just show them as they were?” And he answered himself immediately, “Well, but good God, yes — of course! Because the letters were addressed to someone else.”

Fourteen words: The young man’s father couldn’t have killed Tom. Tom was the young man’s father.

While the cat’s away, the mouse will play. And why shouldn’t the mouse play? How had the indispensable servant spent the long waiting hours, while his master dallied five stories above?

“So the letters were really addressed to Tom — Tom Cat perhaps we should call him from now on. And the shot — but good heavens, that performance at the foot of the cornerstone?”

“A performance,” said Inspector Block briefly.

“With a dying man in his arms — his friend?”

“I wonder if the poor neutered cat felt so very warmly towards the full Tom after all? And think of the dividends! The photograph — but that was a bonus — of the great, defiant gesture; the reputation ever afterwards for heedless courage. Some defiance! — he knew perfectly well there wouldn’t be another shot. The murderer hadn’t got the wrong man at all. It was meant for Tom.”

“But Tom himself said—”

“Just recall the way that went,” said Inspector Block. “The man was bleeding at the mouth, hardly in good shape for clear articulation. Mysterioso listened, then he called the woman to come close. He told her what the man was saying: ‘Thank God they only got me — it was meant for you.’ He told them all. The woman listened to the choked-out words and believed what she’d been told. No doubt Tom gasped out something like, ‘My God, they’ve got me. He really meant it’ — something like that. Don’t you see, the magician forced the card on her; she heard what he told her to hear, that’s all.”

“Some opportunist!”

“He’d shown that in the matter of the letters. This was only an extension of that.”

“He’d bring the first letter to his master — I daresay there weren’t many secrets between those two. I wonder,” said Inspector Block, “what Mysterioso’s first reaction would have been?”

“Jealousy,” said Mr. Photoze.

“I think so too, especially after what we heard tonight. I think Mr. Mysterioso wanted those letters for himself. So — all sorts of good reasons to the man: you’re in danger; this idiot, whoever he is, might try something funny. The police won’t bother too much about you, but if I were to ask for protection— And Tom, after long years in ‘the business,’ would be the first to appreciate the value of the publicity, the anxious fans, the eager sensation-seekers, flocking to performances with the subconscious hope that something tragic would happen — as they flock to the circus.”

“Why no letters before that?”

“I think,” said Block slowly, “that all the way along this was a crime arising out of opportunity. And here was the first opportunity. The months passed, the baby was born, Robbins fumed and was sick with anger; he couldn’t just go and beat up the seducer — he was in the police and the police wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing; and more important, he wasn’t going to let the world know of his shame. But then — well, Mysterioso told us that these invitations to lay cornerstones and whatnot were arranged months in advance; and the first people to know about forthcoming events are the local police. Suddenly P.C. Robbins learned that his enemy was coming to Thrushford.

“Threats at first, meaningless probably, just to give the seducer a bad time, with the vague hope that when he comes to Thrushford with his master, one may be able to add some small frightening shock just to shake him up. But the seducer turns it all to his own advantage, makes a sort of public joke of it, hands the letters to another man. The rankling anger grows and grows and begins to take on a more positive quality. And then the second opportunity presents itself.

“I don’t know which came first — the rifle or the post of duty outside the unfinished wing. Either could have been fiddled, I daresay, having achieved the other. Not too difficult, for example, for a policeman to come by a weapon. Some old lady finds the rifle after her husband’s death, hardly dares to touch the nasty dangerous thing, knows nothing certainly of numbers and identification marks, hands it over to the first copper, and thinks no more about it. He may have had it stashed away for years, or from the time his suspicions were first aroused; by the time it came to be used, the hander-over could be dead or senile or have moved elsewhere — certainly it was never traced. At any rate, with it in his possession and a perfect place at his disposal for using it, he began really to think about taking action. He thought out a plan, worked on it, and brought it off. And damn near perfect it turned out to be.”

“No one guessed at the time how the thing was done?”

“My higher-ups may have; but it was all so tenuous. Still, he’d lived in the flats where Mysterioso had visited; they must have had some suspicions—”

“Only, I had lived there too.”

“That’s right. And been on the scene of the crime too. So how to choose between the two of you when it seemed impossible for either of you to have done it? At any rate, they cooked up some excuse and got rid of him — I remember him as a difficult chap, brooding and touchy — well, no wonder. I daresay they weren’t sorry to let him go. It wasn’t till tonight—” He laughed. “It hit you at the same moment.”

“But you went on with the theory about possible collusion—”

“I had to run through all the possibilities. I had to leave no doubts in anyone’s mind. I didn’t want people coming to the young man afterwards, saying, ‘He never covered this or that aspect.’ But by then I knew. When the young man accused you of making the hole in the roof before, I saw you apparently making it—”

“So simple,” said Mr. Photoze. “Wasn’t it?”

So simple.

P.C. Robbins with hate in his heart and a long perfected plan of revenge. After the major search of the previous day he concealed the rifle, the rope, the string, the apples, and prepared the boards for dovetailing into a tripod. Slipping up when the final inspection had been concluded and they’d all gone off to prepare for the ceremony, he erected the tripod, fixed the rifle, wound a length of twine around the butt to suggest exactly what in fact had been deduced — that some string trick had been played. (A bag of apples dropped onto a taut string, jerking back a trigger — the nonsense of it! As if anyone for a moment could really depend on anything so absurdly susceptible to failure!) Down again, unseen because there was as yet nobody on the hospital balcony, or if observed, just another copper going about his business; the police had been up and down all day.

And then—

The sound of a shot — in the unfinished wing. A policeman tearing up, two steps at a time, pausing only to yell out, “Watch the stairs!” and “They’ve got him!” Pandemonium, predictably, on the hospital balcony, everyone talking at once, a lot of people ill and easily thrown into hysteria. Noise and talking at any rate, masking the sound of—

“The real shot,” said Mr. Photoze.

“How do you hide a brown paper bag that you’ve burst to fake the sound of a shot? You fill it with too many apples and leave it prominently displayed with two or three of them rolled out from the hole in the side.”

“So his father did commit the murder,” said Mr. Photoze. “But in fact he didn’t. And we could all look the young man in the eye and swear to that.”

“These psychiatrists,” said Inspector Block. “Oedipal complexes, delusions, paranoia, looking for a scapegoat for his own guilt feelings towards his father — all the rest of it. And ‘a long period of treatment’! Hah! One evening’s discussion — merely convince the young man that his suspicions are unfounded, and that’s all there is to it. From now on he’ll be as right as rain.”

The young man was as right as rain. He was bending over the Grand Mysterioso, lying back helpless in the big armchair. “If they didn’t do it, then you must have. Of course it wasn’t you who was meant to be killed — it was Tom. Because it was you that killed him, wasn’t it? You hated him because you were dependent on him, humiliatingly dependent, like a child; I know about that, I know what that’s like, to be a child and — and hate someone underneath; and be helpless. And jealous of him — you were jealous of him because he was a man and you weren’t any more; you told us about that just now, how ashamed you were. I know about that too, I was only a child but my — my father was a man.

“I was angry with my father about that, but you — you were ashamed. And so you killed him. Oh, don’t ask me how — you’re the magician, you’re the one who knows the tricks; you said it yourself — things like melting ice and burning-down candles and a lot of others you carefully didn’t mention; but you’d know them all right. And there you were with your big cloak, even on such a hot day — all pockets and hiding places.

“And they left you alone when they went down the corridor and hoisted Mr. Photoze up onto the roof and shot the bolt after him; quite a while they must have been there and by the time they came back you were waiting for them out in the corridor — out in the corridor, blocking off their view into that room with your big body and your big cloak. If you could get across the room and out into the corridor, you could do other things — oh, I don’t know how and I don’t care; you’re the magician, you do tricks that nobody ever sees through and this was just another of them. But you did it; if that fool with his bangles and his photos didn’t, well then there’s no one else.

“And for what you did my father suffered the rest of his life; it was horrible, we were so poor, they were always fighting and my father wasn’t always — wasn’t always… Well, sometimes he was unkind, a bloody little bastard he’d call me and my mother would cry and cry.”

He went on and on, face chalk-white, scarlet-streaked. But he was all right now, as right as rain. He had found his scapegoat. He might love his mother and be loved by her without feeling guilty that his father was dead and could rival him no more. His father had suffered and died and it had been — horrible — to go on resenting his memory; but now he had avenged his father and he was free.

The spittle ran down from his gibbering mouth and fell on the upturned face of the Grand Mysterioso. But Mysterioso made no move to prevent it. The young man’s hands were around his throat and the Grand Mysterioso was dead.