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—’