Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(67)

‘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 boy afterwards, saying, “He never covered this or that aspect.” But by then, I knew. When the boy accused you of making the hole in the roof before I saw you apparently making it—’

‘It accounted for the bag of apples and all,’ said Mr. Photoze. ‘So simple! 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, concealing the rifle, the rope, the string, the apples, preparing 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, erecting the tripod, fixing the rifle, winding a length of twine around the butt to suggest exactly what in fact had been deduced—that some trick with the string had been played. (A bag of apples dropped on to 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 confusion, at any rate, masking the sound of—

‘Of the real shot,’ said Mr. Photoze.

‘How do you hide a brown paper bag?—a paper bag that you’ve blown up and burst, to take the sound of a shot. You fill it with too many apples and leave it prominently displayed, with two or three of them apparently rolled out from the tear in the side.’

‘So his father did commit the murder,’ said Mr. Photoze. ‘But in fact he didn’t. Because the man he calls his father, was not his father. So we could all look him in the eye and tell him that his father was innocent.’

‘These trick-psychs!’ said Inspector Block. ‘Oedipal complexes, delusions, paranoia—looking for a scapegoat for his own guilt feelings towards his dead father, because he had resented him in life, his dominance over himself; been jealous of the father’s possession of the mother—all the rest of it. “A long period of treatment!” Damn nonsense! One evening’s straight-forward discussion—merely convince the boy that his suspicions are unfounded, and that’s all there is to it. From now on, he’ll be as right as rain.’

The boy 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 that was meant to be killed—I can see that now; it was Tom. Because it was you that killed him—wasn’t it? It has to be. There’s nobody else. You were dependent on him—you hated him for that, to be 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 to be helpless. And jealous of him—you were jealous because he was a man and you weren’t one any more; you told us about that just now, you and that woman: you gave away 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; it must have been you, there’s nobody else. Oh, don’t ask me how—you’re the magician, you’re the one that knows the tricks; you said it yourself, things like melting ice and burning-down candles and a lot of others, I expect, that you carefully didn’t mention; but you’d know them all, all right. And there you were with your big cloak, even on such a hot day—all pockets and hiding places…

‘And you were on your own—they left you alone when they went down the corridor and hoisted Mr. Photoze up on to 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, standing in the doorway of the room—standing in the doorway, blocking off their view into that room with your big body and your big cloak. If you could get across the room from the window to the door, then 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.’