The tense darkened face gave him no thanks. “He went tearing up,” said the young man, “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 wheel chairs 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 — we were pretty sick people, from the surgical wards. 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 young man.
“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 tiles 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 and 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!’ ”
The picture that had brought Mr. Photoze fame and fortune: the picture of the famous lion head raised, mouth half open in that great outraged bellow heedless of danger; “You murderers, you’ve got the wrong man!”
Usually, for publication, the head was lifted out of the rest, but the whole picture showed the scene moments after the impact of the bullet. First the edge of the parapet, then an expanse of grass between the main building and the cornerstone; the smoother grass where turf had been laid for the ceremony, the flowering shrubs temporarily planted for the occasion, the tubs of geraniums; the partially built wall with the cornerstone at its center, the small crowd swung about to stare up, stupefied with shock.
But as the press photographer had exclaimed, in instant recognition of what he had achieved — what a picture! A murdered man, caught in the very act of dying; the hands that held him as famous a pair as existed in the world, and the splendid head, the magnificent, ravaged, upturned face. But the most beautiful thing in the whole photograph, Mr. Photoze assured them now, had been the glimpse in the foreground of the parapet’s edge. “Because if the parapet is in the picture, then I took that picture from the roof and not from the room below where the rifle was.”
“Anyone can fake a photograph,” said the young man.
“The police confiscated my equipment,” said Mr. Photoze, “before I had time to do any faking. And before you get any sharper and cut yourself, dear boy, there was no apparatus by which the camera could be left to take pictures all by itself. I wasn’t lugging more than I had to up to that roof.”
It was a splendid room — big and luxurious, all just a bit larger than life, like Mr. Mysterioso himself. But the young man sat tensed like a wild thing about to spring, and his tension communicated itself to the rest of them, meeting his sick and angry stare with eyes divided between understanding, pity, and impatience. He resumed his parrot cry. “You were there. And nobody else was. My father didn’t do it, so it must have been you.”
Mr. Photoze was — understandably enough — one of the impatient ones. “Now, look here!” He appealed to them all. “I was up on that damn roof. I was there the whole time, anyone could have seen me there—”
“No one was looking,” said the young man. “They were all watching the ceremony.”
“And so was I, you silly fool! I was taking photographs, that’s what I was there for. And then suddenly this gun goes off somewhere below me and I saw the two men fall. It was like a film shot in slow motion,” he recalled, “the two of them collapsing, but slowly, slowly. I stood there frozen and then I saw that Mysterioso had lifted up his head and was shouting up to the window where the gun was; and I seemed to come to life and started clicking away like mad—”
“Without a thought that a man was dying?”
“Sort of reflex action, I suppose,” said Mr. Photoze. He added simply, “It’s my job.”
Mr. Mysterioso had had much cause to be grateful to the photographer who had forgotten all but getting on with his job. The photograph had kept alive the legend of that moment of bravado, of selfless courage on behalf of one who had after all been only a servant. They had remained on friendly terms ever since; it was to him that Mr. Photoze had turned for advice when the young man’s foolish threats had suddenly turned into action. “You did quite right,” Mysterioso said. “The show must go on.”