Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(61)

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 boy. ‘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 the string before Block arrived and saw it.’

The boy was unafraid. ‘How could he have got it to work? He was outside the door, three storeys 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 string—just the width of the room—and the uselessness of it where we found it, as the boy 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 on to 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 up on the roof, covering the hole over with the slates before P.O. 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 boy 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 boy. ‘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 boy 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 boy 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 recognised 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, ‘that, like all your kind, you revelled in having your picture taken; didn’t you?’