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 out (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 boy 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 boy’s white 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 met one another, in connection with the case. But that was all.’
‘So there!’ said the boy passionately. He added with a suddenly rather sweet simplicity, ‘Besides, he was married to my mother.’
‘And loved your mother?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy. (Loved her too much, to the exclusion of oneself—quarrelled with her, yes, but that was—surely?—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 boy’s face. 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 boy. ‘I never touched your mother, child, never so much as saw her.’
‘You could have,’ said the boy 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—’