The Judas Pair (27 page)

It was logical. Your eye’s in line with the barrel. So if it’s your own gun that shoots you through your right eye, aiming it frontwards at your own right eye will shoot your opponent. But how?

Amid the moanings and the tears, as poor Muriel wailed and screamed on Lagrange and Margaret tried some hopeless first aid, I examined the pistol I held. It was the one with the silver stock-pins – that was probably how to tell them apart. Lagrange had picked the gold-pinned one. Yet mine was still loaded.

I got the green velvet and the case and set to work while somebody phoned the police. It’s always important to unload a gun first, no matter how old it is. This I did safely, then dismantled the lock. Any flinter enthusiast lifts the lock out to look. It does the piece no harm and the mechanism’s everything.

It was exquisite, delicate as a lady’s hand. There were not two lock mechanisms inside as I’d guessed – the standard firing mechanism was actually unworkable. The trigger activated a small air-chamber, which worked by propelling a missile along a reverse concealed barrel towards the eye of the person holding the weapon. The missile pushed up the silver escutcheon plate on a minute hinge unlocked by the trigger. Highly ingenious. The better your aim the more likely you were to shoot your eye out.

But what was the missile? What had exploded into his eye with such force? Clutching the parts I went out into the hall. An old crone – the one I’d been so unhappy about on my previous visit – was sobbing information into the telephone.

‘Excuse me,’ I said politely, taking the phone from her to calm her down. ‘When the Reverend came out of the study a few minutes ago, where did he go?’

‘Into the kitchen for some ice,’ she said, red-eyed, and at last I knew.

You crushed a piece of ice into a sphere in the bullet-mould, inserted it into the concealed chamber and made sure your opponent got the silver-pinned pistol. No wonder the pathologist had never found the bullet. The ice had pierced Eric Field’s eye, penetrated his brain from there and instantly melted away from his body heat, just as the ice ball was now doing in Lagrange’s silent skull.

Yet . . . I sat at the hall table examining the weapon further. Who on earth had had the gall, not to mention the authority, to compel the world’s greatest gunsmith to make a treacherous pair of weapons like this so long ago? Duelling was crackers, but it
was
supposed to be an affair of honour. Somebody had wanted to be bold and dashing around the Regency clubs, but was unwilling to run any actual risk while going about it. I inserted the turnkey and rotated gently against the spring’s weight.

The locks came out and showed their secret beneath the recess. There, engraved in gold, was my revelation:
REX ME FECIT
.
The King made me.

It brought tears to my eyes. I had a vision of the old gunsmith in his darkened workshop, all his assistants and apprentices sent away for the night, as in obedience to royal command he fashioned the brilliant device alone. Yet he was determined his complaint should be recorded for others to realize in later years. The old genius
had
made the Judas pair – they bore all the characteristic features of his consummate skills. But he cleverly recorded the customary Latin inscription to tell the despairing truth
why
he had: the King had made him. That deranged sick man George the Third, or the Prince Regent, wencher and gambler? Probably the latter.

Before the police arrived I’d substituted a pair of officer’s pistols, Joseph Heylin of London, quite well-preserved in an altered cutlery box, for the Judas pair. Lagrange’s small collection in the morning room cabinet was easy to find and he’d left the key in. I whisked the Heylin pair outside where I burned a little black powder in one and loaded the other. Amid the general alarms and excursions nobody took much notice of me wandering about. I swapped both pairs. Going out to wait for the police to arrive, I tucked the Durs case on top of the engine of Margaret’s Morris beneath the bonnet – carefully wrapped, of course, and wedged in good and proper.

And when the pathologist couldn’t find the bullet? I was suddenly unutterably weary. I decided to let them all guess till they got tired, just like they did of old Eric Field and Sheila. When the Old Bill came hurtling up I was back in the study wringing my hands with the others. I was clearly very upset.

Three weeks later, Margaret was quizzing me again. I was just back from George Field’s.

‘What did he say when you told him you’d found the Judas guns?’

There’d been no mention of Margaret’s husband. We’d just taken up together, going into her arcade shop daily and scratching a living. Naturally, the inevitable had happened, as it always does when a man and woman live in one dwelling, but that was all to the good and it was long overdue anyway as we both knew.

The trouble was this conversion gimmick they have. That I was quite content to drop in to my old garden and still hadn’t started clearing away the cottage’s ruins obviously niggled her. She’d let several hints drop, asking what plans I had for rebuilding and suchlike. You have to watch it.

‘Lovejoy!’ she complained. ‘You’re dreaming again.’

‘Oh. He said he didn’t want anything to do with them – said it was poetic justice.’

‘And then?’ she pressed.

‘He shut the door.’

‘I don’t think he likes your instincts very much, Lovejoy.’

‘I’m surprised,’ I said. ‘I’m really quite lovable.’

‘Won’t you offer them back to Muriel?’ was her next gem. Sometimes I think women have no sense at all.

‘Of course,’ I said, thinking, That’s not poetic justice.

‘When?’

‘Well,’ I said after a long, long pause. ‘Well, maybe later.’

‘Lovejoy!’

‘No, look, honestly,’ I began, searching desperately for some way out. ‘It’s honestly a question of time and personal values.’

‘Lovejoy! How
could
you! It’s stealing!’

‘Honestly, love – judgement comes into it,’ I said. ‘I’d take them back this very minute, but –’

‘You’ve absolutely no excuse!’ She started banging things about.

‘Maybe in time, honestly,’ I said. ‘I’m only thinking of her –’

Women have no tact, no tact at all. Never noticed that?