They had come to the end of the path; turned now and started back towards the great spread of the mulberry tree and the bench beneath. From afar off a gong sounded; and below them as they started down the incline of the little hill, gardeners were straightening up, hands to loins, stretching, looking about them, gathering up their tools. ‘So,’ said the old man, ‘we are to leave Helen out of it, are we?’
‘Of course,’ said Giles. ‘As if Helen…’ And the hot white mist that invaded his mind always at the thought of Helen accused, welled up now like a miasma and sickened and stupefied him. When he emerged from it, the old man had embarked again upon his five questions. ‘Only they have perhaps changed a little bit now in order of importance. We asked ourselves why none of the police admitted having been shown the note about Helen, and we asked ourselves why someone should have gone for the fire brigade which would have been already on its way: and we found the answer to both questions—the murderer failed to get himself out of the room by the one means and resorted to the other. And we asked ourselves the meaning of those strange phrases about “vanishing into thin air” and “the long arms”—and we know now that they were only dragged in to confuse the issue. And we asked ourselves why your uncle was killed in the way he was—tied up, strangled, stabbed—and we know that this also was to cause confusion: that all the details of the recent stabbing and the newly broken window and the undrawn bolts, were all to cause confusion, to suggest that he had at that moment been killed by someone inside a locked room which in fact proved empty. But we asked ourselves one question which has not yet been answered and this now becomes the crucial question—why was the policeman killed? Because when we outlined an otherwise water-tight case against Rupert, this was the point that exonerated him. Rupert had no reason to kill the policeman.’
Giles walked beside him, slowly, supporting the shuffling steps down the gentle slope. ‘You are very hot now. Burning. Because, yes, that is the crucial question. Why was the policeman killed?’
‘To avenge the murder of your Uncle Gemminy,’ said the old man. ‘What other reason could there possibly be? And that means—one of you three: you or Helen or Rupert. But you’re out of it, that we do know; and I accept that Helen also is out of it—all that was only a tarradiddle because you challenged me, you said she couldn’t have done it. So we have to come back to Rupert.’
‘And come back to the question you asked before. Why should Rupert have killed the policeman? Revenge, you say. But how could he have known that the policeman was the murderer?’
‘Because in searching for Helen,’ said the old man, ‘he simply did the obvious thing. He stopped every policeman he saw and asked if they’d seen any sign of her. And recognised the man he’d shown the note to—back there in the murder room.’
And he dropped Giles’ arm and turned and faced him, the big, lined face alight with triumph. ‘Now am I hot?’ he said.
And the white mist was back, brilliant and stupefying, pierced through with pain. And out of the mist, Giles heard himself answering: ‘Yes. White hot.’
Rupert—whom also she loved, though surely one might believe, surely one might even yet hang on to the knowledge: not as she had loved himself. Rupert whom their guardian had chosen to be the favoured one. In Giles’ mind now, the white light blazed: the white mist that came ever more frequently nowadays, to flood his mind with its terrible brilliance, its terrible pain. ‘Am I hot?’ asked the old man, still playing the game, the game of Hunt the Killer which suddenly was only ugly and frightening, to be covered over and, please God, forgotten—the game which, unless something were said now, firmly and finally to bring it to an end, would never be covered over, never forgotten—never forgotten by this heavy old man with his cruel, sadistic mind, playing over old agonies like a cat with a mouse. And so: ‘Am I hot?’ he said; and ‘White hot,’ Giles answered conceding victory. ‘The end of the game.’
‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘The end of the game. And the beginning of reality.’ And he hooked a veined old hand into the trembling arm and started the long stroll in towards a nice hot cup of tea. ‘I told you I’d heard many murder confessions,’ he said. ‘Now tell me yours.’
No answer: only the terrible trembling, the terrible, uncontrollable shaking of the arm he held, of the whole suddenly sick and shambling body. He prompted: ‘The policeman first—for perhaps the oddest reason ever known for killing a policeman: that you wanted to borrow his uniform. Knowing in advance what your Uncle Gemminy was going to say—’
Knowing in advance what Uncle Gemminy was going to say: because you remembered that night, you knew all about that long ago night—that you had within you the seed passed down through the generations, the terrible seed. The hot white light which, off and on, had visited him since that hideous night of his childhood, had taken possession of Giles’ whole mind now: brilliant, dazzling—confusing yet clarifying, muffling all emotion, intensifying thought….One thought paramount: that Helen would be lost to him, that as always Rupert would win, that she would turn from him, back to Rupert whom also she had always loved….
The plan emerging: long thought-out, elaborate, nursed to perfection, a wish, a dream, a game, growing insensibly into a reality of purpose, springing into action because it must be now, today, this moment, if ever it was to be set going at all. Kill a policeman—no, don’t kill him immediately, he must not seem to have died until after his uniform has been used and returned to him. Tie him up then—choose a man who knows you well (that young chap that’s been making sheep’s eyes at Helen recently—he’ll do; and serve him right!)—and, knowing you, will trustingly come with you into the derelict building if you tell him some story of strange goings-on there: who’ll trustingly turn his back. Wearing his uniform, get to the office—World Cup day, not a soul about; and anyway, who notices a uniformed copper going about his every-day duties? Kill Uncle Gemminy, silence him for ever—he who alone knows the seed of madness you carry within you, he who alone knows that you should never marry, never bring tainted children into the world….Tie him to his chair: for good reasons you must tie up the policeman and also stab him—an ‘uncanny’ resemblance between the two murders will confuse the issue; and you can throw in a few strange references when you make your necessary telephone calls, cast over it all an air of nether-world horror.
Ring Rupert, ask him to come quickly; you well know Uncle Gem’s mannerisms and for the rest, pretended alarm will disguise your voice. Ten minutes now, before he—hurrying—will arrive. Break the window, keep back a piece of the glass. Set fire to the desk. A moment before Rupert is due, ring over to the police station with wild talk of a mysterious attack, so urgent as to bring them all tearing across: you know their habits, you have watched them from your window, often enough, snatching up their helmets, tumbling over one another to answer a hurry-call; and there must be several of them, that is the essence of your plot. Now the desk is well alight, the room filling with smoke, the doors bolted. As Rupert’s fist begins to pound, inflict the stab wound, observe the satisfactory trickle of blood, showing how recently the wound was made. Take out the knife, wrap it in the plastic sheet you have brought for the purpose and button the whole tight inside your uniform jacket. If Uncle Gemminy’s blood is on the uniform, the fact that this same knife was used to kill the policeman will account for it; no one must catch the smallest glimpse of the fact that that uniform was in the office at the time Uncle Gem was killed.
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 s
moke-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.’
The Scapegoat
‘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 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, sa
id 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.’
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