Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (20 page)

And he described the unfinished wing. A simple oblong; ground floor and two storeys, with its main entrance at one end. This entrance had no door as yet, was only a gap leading into a little hall out of which the stairs curled round the still-empty lift shaft. A sloping roof of slate surrounded by a ledge with a low parapet.

‘It was an easy matter to search it. Except on the top floor there were no interior walls, and up there only half a row of rooms was completed—each floor was designed to have a central corridor with small rooms leading off both sides. There was a lot of stuff about, planks and tools and shavings and so on, but literally nowhere big enough for a man to hide. It was searched very thoroughly the night before the ceremony and less thoroughly the next morning, and a constable was placed at the main entrance with orders not to move away from it.’

‘And he didn’t move away from it,’ said the boy. ‘That was my father.’

Inspector Block ignored him. ‘The order of events is as follows: one hour before the ceremony, Mr. Mysterioso arrived, and the Superintendent explained the arrangements to him. Their way to the main hospital building, where the reception committee awaited him, led past the entrance of the unfinished wing. Just outside it a man was speaking to the policeman on duty.’

‘The
murderer
was speaking to the policeman on duty,’ said the boy.

‘This person was well known to the police,’ said the Inspector, ignoring the young man again, ‘as a press photographer—not yet calling himself Mr. Photoze. He wanted permission to go up on the roof and take pictures of the ceremony from there.’

‘Always one for the interesting angle,’ said Mr. Photoze archly.

‘The Super was about to refuse him, but Mr. Mysterioso recognised the man and said he should be permitted to go up. So he was carefully searched for any weapons, and it ended in all of them going up to the top floor together. Mr. Mysterioso, of course, had his man, Tom, to help him.’

‘We’d been together so long,’ said Mysterioso, ‘that really in the end we moved like a single person, always running a sort of three-legged race. I had no pain from this thing, it was only a total lack of strength. A couple of flights of stairs was nothing to us.’

You couldn’t get on with it, with these people, thought the Inspector. They all wanted to exhibit. ‘At any rate, they went up,’ he proceeded, letting a little of his irritability show. ‘There was a trap door, the only exit to the roof, and Mr. Photoze, as we now call him, was helped up through it with his gear. At that moment Tom came down the corridor, having left his master standing propped up against the window-sill in one of the little rooms, looking down with interest at the site. Tom said he didn’t like it, that he felt uneasy about the whole thing; the man shouldn’t have been allowed up. Someone—I think in fact it was P.C. Robbins, the man on the door, this young man’s father—suggested that there was a bolt which could be shot from the inside, locking the photographer out on the roof. So this was done. Mysterioso was waiting for them at the door of the little room, and they went on to the cornerstone.

‘And then—it happened. The guest of honour went up the four shallow steps that led to the platform in front of the cornerstone. There was a shot, and both men fell. A minute later Tom, the servant, died in his master’s arms. As he died he was heard to say: “Thank God they only got me! It was meant for you.” ’

‘He said it over and over,’ said the woman who had been near the site. ‘Over and over. It was so dreadful, so touching—’

‘Let us hear from our witnesses later,’ said Mysterioso; but he looked down at his hands, lying in his lap, and when she continued, made no further attempt to stop her.

For the woman was carried away, full of tragic memories, and could not be still. ‘I can see them now! A moment before, it had all been so lovely, so sunny and pleasant, all the doctors from the hospital there and lots of guests, and Matron, of course, and some of the nurses, and Mr. Mysterioso looking so magnificent, if I may say so’—she made a little ducking movement which the great man graciously accepted—‘with his top hat and flowing black cloak, as though he’d just walked down from the stage to come and lay our cornerstone for us.

‘And then—they went up the steps together, he on the left. His man walked very close to him, and I suppose that under the cloak his arm was holding tight to his man’s arm; but you wouldn’t have guessed that he was lame at all. They stood there in the sunshine and a few words were spoken and so on; and then the man put out his hand to take the trowel, which was on a stand to his right, and pass it across to his master—and suddenly there was this sharp crack!—and before we knew what was happening, the man fell and dragged his master down with him.’ And the lifting up of the splendid head with its tawny, grey-streaked hair, the great roar of defiance flung up at the window from which the shot had come…

‘When you think,’ said the woman, ‘what a target he presented! We had all swung round to where the shot came from, and we could see a man up on the roof. Of course, we all thought he was the murderer. And at any moment he might have taken a second shot and really killed the right man this time.’

‘If he
was
in fact the right man,’ said Inspector Block, throwing a cold pebble into this warm sea of emotion. ‘Not all of us were convinced at the time that the shot wasn’t meant for Tom.’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Mysterioso. ‘Who would want to kill Tom?—my poor, inoffensive, faithful, loving old Tom. And what about the threatening letters? Besides, he said it himself—over and over, as the lady says. He’d have known if he’d had such an enemy, but he said it himself, “It was meant for you.” ’ He appealed to the woman. ‘You heard him?’

‘Yes, of course. You called me close. “Listen!” you said.’ She shuddered. ‘The blood was coming up, bubbling up out of his mouth. They were the last words he spoke. “Thank God they only got me. It was meant for you.” ’

‘And so he died—for my sins,’ said the Grand Mysterioso, and again was silent. But he’s not sorry, really, thought the boy, crouched in his sofa corner, watching the big handsome old face heavy with sadness, and yet spread over with a sort of unction of self-satisfaction. ‘He’s pleased, underneath it all, that everyone should know that even at that age he could still be seducing girls, breaking up homes, getting threatening letters from husbands.’ And certainly in the ensuing years the ageing lion had done nothing to obliterate the public’s memory of that terrible, yet magnificent day. ‘I was so bloody mad, I forgot all about everything but Tom. Dying for my sins!’ In a hundred talks and broadcasts he lived it over again, mock regretful, mock remorseful (thought the young man) that a man should have died to pay for the triumphs of his own all-conquering virility. ‘I think you’re pleased,’ the boy said. ‘I think you’re proud of it. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have kept telling people about it all this time.’

‘He’s got you there, old boy,’ said the actress, Marguerite Devine, without venom. ‘Literally below the belt,’ she added, laughing, and then said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love!’ and laughed no more.

‘I know a lot about people,’ said the boy, and it was true; the insecurities of his childhood had heightened his perception—solitary, anti-social, he paid no lip service to conventional pretences, was not deceived by them. Life had accustomed him to be ready for the worst.

‘Well, the cheeky monkey!’ said the old man in a comic accent, trying to make light of it. Inspector Block asked patiently if they might now get on. ‘What happened next—’

‘
I’ll
tell what happened next,’ said the boy. ‘Because I know it.’ You could see the tense clutch of his hands, the tense pressure of his shabby shoes on the soft carpeting of Mysterioso’s room; his very skin colour had changed, strangely darkened with hollows ringed round the bright eyes. He was coming now to the defence of his father. ‘My father was standing in the doorway where he’d been posted. I’ve heard him tell about it a hundred times; he was always telling it. He heard the shot fired and ran to the corner of the building and sent one glance at the site and saw what had happened—and don’t tell me that in that short time someone could have come out of the building and run away, because they couldn’t. Could they?’ He appealed to Inspector Block.

‘No,’ said Block. ‘In that short time, anyone shooting from the window where the gun was, could hardly even have reached the top of the stairs. Experiments were made.’

‘Well, all right, so he saw them both fall and he saw the crowd swing round and stare up at the building, so he knew where the shot must have come from and he turned back and ran into the building and up the stairs. He didn’t bother about the ground floor, because he knew the man couldn’t have got there yet; and anyway, it was just an open space, he could see that it was empty; and so was the second floor an empty space.’

‘That’s right,’ said Block. ‘He acted perfectly wisely. Go on, you’re doing fine.’

The tense darkened face gave him no thanks. ‘He went tearing up,’ said the boy, ‘and as he passed the first big window on the stairs looking across at the main building of the hospital, he saw people lying in beds and sitting in wheelchairs out on the balcony—’

They had sat very quiet and intent, those two who had been on the hospital balcony that day long ago—traced and brought here by the dramatic enthusiasm of the Grand Mysterioso to stand witness to what they had seen. ‘Yes, I remember it well,’ said the woman. ‘They’d wheeled us out there into the sunshine. Nothing to see, mind: the unfinished wing cut off the view of the park beyond, and of course, of the cornerstone. It would have been fun to lie there and watch the ceremony, but—well, we couldn’t see it. Still, it was nice to get a bit of. fresh air. This gentleman was on the other side of the partition with others from Men’s Surgical. We were lying there quietly, dozing, enjoying the sunshine—’

‘That’s right. And then suddenly we heard the shot, and half a minute later this policeman comes racing up the stairs of the unfinished wing opposite. There was a lot of glass there, at least there was going to be—now it was just a huge great open space. He went dashing past, and then something must have occurred to him, because he reappeared, hanging out of the window to shout out to us, clinging to the post with one hand. “Watch the stairs!” he shouted. “Watch that no one comes down!” We were all excited, we yelled back, “What’s happened?” and he yelled, “They’ve shot him!” or “They’ve got him!”—I don’t know which—and then off he went tearing up the stairs again.’

‘What a kerfuffle!’ said the woman. ‘Everyone squealing and hysterical, one of them fainted—we were all weak, I suppose, and I think we thought the murderer would suddenly appear and start taking shots at us from the window—’

‘Or from the roof,’ said the boy.

‘We’re coming to the roof in a moment,’ said Mysterioso patiently. Don’t worry about him, his look said to the rest of them; after all, this is why we’re here. ‘Now—your father went tearing on up the stairs—?’

‘Yes, and came to the top and ran along the corridor. There were a few rooms with their walls up, but the rest was open space—no ceiling in yet, you could see the joists and the slates up over your head. He ran past several of the little rooms that were partitioned—there were no doors or windows in yet—and suddenly in one of them he saw the rifle. A .22, rigged up, fixed, aligned on the cornerstone below.

‘He took just one glance and ran out into the corridor again, to try to find someone. He knew the murderer must still be up there. But there was nobody. And then he heard footsteps coming pounding up the stairs, and it was—well, now he’s Inspector Block.’ Even that seemed to be an injury; his father had never had the chance to become Inspector Robbins.

‘He met me at the top of the stairs,’ said Block. ‘I’d been on duty at the other end of the wing. He said, “My God, there’s nobody here! They’ve shot him, but there’s nobody here!” He looked almost—scared, as though he’d seen a ghost. “There’s a rifle fixed up,” he said. “Come and look!” ’

In the last of the half-dozen little rooms that had so far received their dividing walls, there was a rough tripod formed of three planks. These had been shaped at their ends so that, propped against the skirting boards on three sides of the room, they met and dovetailed to form a crotch into which the butt of the rifle fitted securely. A short length of rope had been tied round the whole, and this was further reinforced by a twelve-foot length of twine, doubled for extra strength, its ends roughly tucked in as though hurriedly done. Into the wood of the window-sill two nails had been driven to form a triangle through which the muzzle of the rifle had been thrust. The whole was trained, steady as a rock, on the site below.

And spilled out of a torn paper bag, too small to hold so many, three out of half a dozen rosy apples had rolled out on the dusty boards of the wooden floor.

‘We stood and stared, and as we stood, there was a scraping and scuffling overhead, a small shower of debris, and when we looked up we saw two hands tearing at the slates above us and a face peering through. And a voice said, “For God’s sake, what’s happening? They’ve shot him!” And then added, “But, my God, what a picture!” ’