Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 (28 page)

“
A little tribute, true and tender:

Just to show we still remember.
”

He stood up and hunted in his pocket and took out a revolver. I looked at Johnson but he didn’t move. Innes sat up.

“Wait,” said Johnson.

We waited. By the coffee cups, I could hear Timothy breathing. Professor Hathaway, moving with dignity, perched herself on the bed beside Maurice. Jacko remained where he was, beside me, with his arm held tight around me. I didn’t mind. He was a nice boy, and I suppose I filled a sort of Diana-shaped space at the moment. Charles said, without pointing the gun at anybody in particular, “We can’t all be perfect. You made one hell of a mistake yourself.” He pointed the gun at Johnson. “The red balloon. There was gas in it.”

For a moment everyone was lost, and then I remembered. The car chase from the Castel Sant’ Angelo, among those balloons which Charles had assured us were gas-filled. And which had proved entirely harmless, but for the last one. “Ah, yes,” said Johnson. “That was the place where I overreached myself. Ruth should know — we had found the Paladrini address long before I took you there next morning. We found the explosive gas and we noticed the switch in the cylinders. So I set a trap.

“There was never an appointment in Paladrini’s papers for the Castel Sant’ Angelo. The whole thing was a fabrication of mine to induce Charles to get into that balloon cart. To save his own life, as he thought, he had suddenly to produce a new theory about the toletta death being due to a gas balloon. More than that, he had to give away the switch of gas cylinders. In fact, I had filled the balloons from the harmless cylinder, and we had already made the lethal one harmless. The only thing I didn’t know was that Paladrini already had one or two explosive red balloons fastened to the pole of the toy cart. They weren’t loose, so it didn’t appear to matter, until the Chief of Police chanced to shoot one.”

“You mean…” I said. I shook Jacko’s hand off my arm and stared at Johnson.

“The whole ride from the castle was my doing. I’m sorry,” said Johnson. “At least… I’m not entirely sorry.”

No. Charles hadn’t enjoyed that journey. Charles had been more scared than any of us. But Charles, of course, had been convinced that each blue balloon was a killer.

Whereas the killer, I suppose, was Johnson. For prison would be the death of Charles. Not a few days in clink for an escapade. But the life of Dartmoor or Peterhead, year after year after year. No matter who his parents were.

“Goodbye,” said Charles; and lifting his gun pulled the trigger, twice, in Johnson’s face.

Nothing happened.

“Did you think,” said Johnson, “we should let you keep it with the bullets still inside? Be a good chap and come downstairs quietly. There are police outside. You really can’t get away.”

Charles turned the gun toward himself and looked a long time in the muzzle. Then he shook it, and threw it down on the floor, dusting his hands afterward. “
Memories
,” he said, “
don’t fade, they just grow deep. Of one we loved but could not keep.
” He grinned, and putting his hands in his pockets, began to walk backward toward Maurice’s study.

Through that was a door to the public rooms, and a staircase which led to the loggia. Johnson said, “Charles. You’ve no transport, no money, no possible hope of escape. Don’t cause trouble. Come with me.” And he walked quietly forward.

Two things happened very suddenly. Charles turned and ran. And Maurice, stretching out a finger, pressed on a button.

The scream came to us from the study. It went on and on, and even Johnson, caught striding over the threshold, stopped, too taken aback to move for a moment. Then he looked at Maurice and Maurice said, “He deserves it.”

I wondered afterward if he did deserve that. If you have ever seen a drugged fly hurling itself buzzing from wall to wall, blind and deaf and insensible to all but its agony, you will know what it was like to look at Charles in that room, howling, twisting and staggering, with all thought of escape stricken from him.

Beside me was the coffeepot. Not far away was the wall panel : the famous wall panel of history, slowly twitching. I looked at the doorway and saw Johnson was looking at me in turn. Then he shook his head and walked forward to his prisoner.

I don’t think Charles even heard him, or saw the hand stretching out for his sleeve. He gave a long hoot, like a Sicilian diesel, and plunging from Johnson’s reach, ran the length of the room to the windows.

We heard the crash of the glass, but didn’t see him jump, in the darkness. It was a second floor, and there was no balcony. I wondered if, in some rodent paradise full of sunflower seeds, Poppy knew how tidy had been her requital.

I have never been back to Italy. Maurice is dying, they say, now, and the pretty girls have all gathered around someone else, but Timothy still makes his coffee for him, and they have a new chauffeur who likes them.

Jacko left the observatory for the Surface Weapons Establishment and when last heard of, he had a Zufenhausen Flyer and a nice flat with twin baths in Croyden.

Innes finished his Incubator. It proved to be an instrument for the detection of neutrinos, and was every bit of the success that he expected. He was able to put it into production himself with the help of the United States Government and the £20,000 he won on “Rischia Tutto” just before he left Rome for Christmas.

I am working at the Zodiac Trust with Professor Hathaway, handing out and digesting projects with the help of a new computer and the extra physics man we got sanction to appoint on the strength of Johnson’s check for the Mouse Hall power cut.

Johnson finished his portrait of the Pope. It was crated by the Vatican carpenters and left the Vatican station with an escort of cardinals for its sacerdotal quarters in London. They say His Holiness was so pleased with it that Johnson is to return to paint another for the Pontiff’s own study. Johnson says the Chief of Police has some reservations.

Johnson comes to see Professor Hathaway on occasion, and I have had him in the computer room, watching us working. He and Conrad hit it off, which is a relief. Conrad is the new physics appointment. You never can tell, but it seems that he might be an asset.

Johnson doesn’t appear to consider remarrying. Of course, he has his boat, and his painting. I’m glad to have known him. I feel quite differently, I find, about bifocal glasses. It is only obituary notices that I never read.

What you suffered, you told but few

You didn’t deserve what you went through.

Tired and weary, you made no fuss

But tried so hard to stay with us.

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[June 24, 2007]