They had sent him to see a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist had muttered darkly about paranoia and complexes and “a disturbed oedipaI pattern — the young man is subconsciously jealous of the father’s domination of the mother, which seems to have been considerable. He feels guilty towards the father and now seeks to cover up the recollection of his inner hatred by an exaggerated feeling of protection towards the father, now that the father is dead and unable, as it were, to protect himself.” A long period of treatment, said the psychiatrist, would be necessary.
Half an hour of treatment, said Mr. Photoze to his friend Mysterioso, would be more like it. Once convince the young man — “Hold a little court, get together some of the people who were present and talk it out.”
“The very thing!” Mysterioso had agreed, delighted. It would be entertaining; he was an old man now, long retired from the stage. It would give him something to do, sitting here crippled and helpless in his chair all day.
So here they were, gathered together in Mr. Mysterioso’s large lush apartment: Mysterioso himself and Inspector Block who as a young constable had been on the scene of the crime; and a lady and gentleman who had been on the hospital balcony and seen the young policeman running up the stairs after the shot had been fired; and a lady who had been close to the site and seen and heard it all. And a once-lovely lady, Miss Marguerite Devine, the actress, who might also have something to say; and Mr. Photoze. Mr. Photoze was madly decorative in dress, and a half dozen fine gold bracelets jingled every time he moved his arm.
The young man sat hunched against an arm of the sofa, strained against it as though something dangerous to him crouched at the other end. He hated them. He didn’t want their silly help; he wanted to be avenged on Mr. Photoze who had committed a crime and got off scot-free, as a result of which his father had lost his job and his happiness and his faith in men. And his mind wandered back over the frightening, uneasy childhood, the endless bickering and recrimination over his too perceptive young head; the indigence, the sense of failure… “I don’t want to hear all this, I know what I know. Because of what he did, my father’s life was ruined. I meant all those threats. I failed last time, but next time I’ll get him.”
“You do see!” said Mr. Photoze, appealing to the rest of them with outflung arms and a tinkling of gold.
“Your father was never accused of anything,” said Inspector Block. “He was dismissed—”
“ ‘Dismissed for negligence’ — everyone knew what that meant. He lived under suspicion till the day he died.”
“We are going to lift that suspicion,” said Mysterioso. “That’s what we’re here for; we’re going to clear the whole thing up. You shall represent your father, Mr. Photoze will be in the dock with you, defending himself. And here we have our witnesses — who also will be our jury. And I shall be the judge. If in the end we all come to the conclusion that your father was innocent, and Mr. Photoze was innocent also, won’t you feel better?” He said very kindly, “We only want to help you.”
The young man watched him warily. He’s not doing this for my sake, he thought. He’s doing it because he wants to be on a stage again and this is the nearest he can get to it. He’s just a vain, conceited old man; he wants to show off.
A vain man, yes: a man consumed with vanity — enormously handsome once, with the tawny great mane, now almost white, a man of world-wide fame, a great performer — and not only on stage if his boastings were at all to be trusted — despite the fact that the auto accident at the height of his career had left him unable to walk more than a few steps unaided. It was whispered behind mocking hands that on romantic occasions his servant Tom had to lead him to the very bedside and lower him down to it. Certainly he was never seen in public without Tom: a walking stick was not enough and as for a crutch, “Do you see me hopping about playing Long John Silver?” Close to Tom, gripping Tom’s strong left arm, the lameness was hardly noticeable. On stage he had continued to manage brilliantly with the aid of cleverly positioned props which he could hold on to or lean against. It was a total lack of strength only; he suffered no pain…
Mysterioso gave three knocks on the table by his side — the three knocks that usher in the judge in Central Criminal Court Number One at the Old Bailey. “We’ll take first the evidence of the police.”
Inspector Block, paying lip service to all this foolishness, was interested nevertheless to see the outcome. “May it please your lordship, members of the jury. Fifteen years ago, almost to this very day, the police were shown an anonymous letter which had been received by the famous stage magician, Mr. Mysterioso. It was the first of a dozen or so, over the next six months. They were composed of words cut out from the national dailies, and enclosed in cheap envelopes, varying in size and shape, posted from widely differing parts of the country. I may add here that no one concerned with the case appeared to have had the opportunity to post them, unless of course it was done for the sender by different persons. At any rate, the letters were untraceable. They were all abusive and threatening and evidently from the same person; they were all signed ‘Her Husband.’
“Mr. Mysterioso made no secret of having received them and there was a good deal of excitement as each new one arrived. The police gave him what protection they could and when in June he came down to Thrushford in Kent to lay a cornerstone, it was our turn — I was a young constable then and didn’t know too much about it, but it was rather anxious work for my superiors because he had done a brief season at the theater there a couple of years before.
“It was arranged, therefore, to cover certain points round the site of the ceremony. The cornerstone was for a new wing; a second wing, completed on the outside but not on the inside, lay between the cornerstone and the main hospital building.”
He drew a plan in the air, a circular movement with the flat palm of the right hand for the main building of the hospital, a stab with the forefinger of the left hand for the cornerstone, and a sharp slash with the edge of the hand for the unfinished wing lying midway between them. “It was from a middle window on the top floor of this wing that the shot was fired.”
And he described the unfinished wing. A simple oblong; ground floor and two stories, 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 elevator 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 man was placed at the main entrance with orders not to move away from it.”
“And he didn’t move away from it,” said the young man. “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 young man.