“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 recognized 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, 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 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 honor 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 he 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, gray-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 he was silent. But he’s not sorry really, thought the young man, 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 aging 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 young man 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 young man, and it was true; the insecurities of his childhood had heightened his perception — solitary, antisocial, he paid no lip service to conventional pretenses, was undeceived b y 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 with it. “What happened next—”
“I’ll tell what happened next,” said the young man. “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 color had changed, strangely darkened with hollows ringed round the bright eyes. He was coming now to the defense 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.”