Buffet for Unwelcome Guests

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Anyone can fake a photograph,’ said the boy.

  ‘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 boy 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 boy. ‘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.’

  ‘And so must this meeting,’ said Inspector Block, tapping an impatient toe.

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes—well, I went on taking pictures till the crowd surged in and there was nothing to take but the backs of their heads. So then I suddenly thought about the shooting, and I peeked over the parapet, and there, to my horror, I saw the tip of a gun, the barrel, just showing beyond the window-sill. To this day I don’t know why I did it, but I dropped all my gear and ran along the ledge to the trap door, to get down and—I don’t know, do something, I suppose. Sheer madness, because imagine if the murderer had still been there! But anyway, I couldn’t get the trap door open. I tugged and I kicked, but—well, we know now that it had been bolted from the inside. So I ran back to where I’d seen the gun, and what was in my mind then, I think, was that there it still was, still pointing down at all those helpless people—’

  ‘He’d have cleared out long before,’ said the boy scornfully, ‘while you were taking pictures and running up and down.’

  ‘Well—’ He spread artistic, explanatory, jingly hands. ‘I mean, one isn’t exactly a man of action, is one? I dare say what I thought didn’t make much sense. But I did imagine him crouching there with that gun in his hands—of course I didn’t know then about the tripod and all that—and all those poor dear people in danger down below. And suddenly I started smashing at the slates, bashing at them with the heel of my shoe, clearing a little hole so that at least I could look down and see what he was doing—perhaps to frighten him off, make him clear out.’

  But he had cleared out long ago—cleared out, vanished into thin air. Nobody was there except two policemen, staring back, astonished, into Mr. Photoze’s startled face. One said, ‘What are you doing up there?’

  ‘He had permission. To take photos. I know him,’ said P. C. Robbins. ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘My poor father—little did he think!’ said the boy.

  Mr. Photoze collapsed into his chair with an air of giving up. ‘I don’t know. What can you do? The facts, you silly boy, I’ve just given you the facts! I was up on the roof, I couldn’t get down—it was your own father who pulled the bolt and locked me out. How could I have committed the murder, how could I have fired the gun? Even if I’d wanted to, how could I have done it? We’ve all just given you the facts.’

  The trapped animal, head turning from side to side, seeking a way out. And then—the release. The boy was absolutely still, struck mindless for a moment by the immensity of the idea. He blurted out at last, ‘The apples!’

  ‘The apples?’

  ‘Who ties a bag of apples at the neck with string? And—yes, there was other string in that room, wound round the tripod and the butt of the rifle, a long piece of string. What for? The rifle was already tied into place with the rope.’ He said to Inspector Block, ‘Was there a nail in the wall opposite the window?’

  ‘There were nail holes,’ said Block. ‘They were everywhere.’

  ‘The rifle fixed steady, tied by the rope, aligned on the spot.’ The dark was receding from his face, he was alive with excitement. ‘And tied to the rifle—to the trigger of the rifle—the string; tied with a slip noose, easy to undo afterwards, and the other end of the string tied, stretched taut, with a slip noose to a nail in the wall opposite the window. And a bag of apples—an innocent-looking bag of apples that no one will worry about too much. A little light refreshment for the murderer while he waits?’ he suggested to Inspector Block with a fine contempt.

  ‘I was a plain copper in those days,’ said Block, ‘and not in the close confidence of my superiors. But I don’t think they took it all quite so easily as that. On the other hand, murderers are funny animals, they have all sorts of cock-eyed reasons for what they do. He could, for example, have been a smoker and didn’t want to draw attention to the fact—leaving ashes and stubs around. So he supplied himself with something to munch, to fill the gap.’

  ‘Are you a smoker?’ said the boy nastily to Mr. Photoze.

  ‘I have no idea what either of you is talking about,’ said Mr. Photoze.

  ‘A bag of apples is a funny thing,’ said the boy. ‘Sort of—nobbly. Of course, other things would have done as well, but the presence of a bag of apples on the scene could be explained in lots of ways—for example, something to stop the murderer from wanting to smoke.’ His face, growing white and pinched now where the dark had been, stared, ugly with spite, at Mr. Photoze. ‘I was sure you must have done it,’ he said, ‘because I knew my father hadn’t. But now I know. Because I know how.’ And his hands described it, stretched apart, holding taut an imaginary string. ‘One end tied to the trigger, one end fixed to the wall. At the right moment, something heavy falling on the string, jerking it down, yanking back the trigger, firing the shot.’

  Absolute silence had fallen in the big room. Mr. Photoze said at last, shakily, ‘I was on the roof. How could I have dropped the bag of apples down?’

  ‘You admit you made a hole in the slates,’ said the boy. ‘You dropped it down through that.’

  Silence again. Inspector Block said quietly, ‘Very ingenious. But your father was in the room within two minutes or less after the shot was fired. The string was wound round the tripod when he first saw it. Who took it down and wound it there?’

  ‘Perhaps his precious father did,’ said Mr. Photoze, a trifle viciously, ‘having fixed it all up himself. He was supposed to be on duty at the entrance. But no one could see him. Who knows that he was really there?’

  ‘He was seen going up the stairs after the shot was fired,’ said Mr. Mysterioso reasonably.

  ‘That’s right. To take down the string before Block arrived and saw it.’

  The boy was unafraid. ‘How could he have got it to work? He was outside the door, three storeys down—we know that, because he was seen coming up. So… Mr. Mysterioso, you’re the magician here. How co
uld my father have got the trick to work?’

  ‘There are ways,’ admitted Mr. Mysterioso reluctantly. ‘Blocks of ice and melting wax and timing machines—after all, he only had to be the first one on the scene to clear the evidence away.’

  ‘Curiously enough,’ said Block, ‘the police thought of some of these little ideas too. Considering the length of string—just the width of the room—and the uselessness of it where we found it, as the boy rightly points out, just wound round the tripod, not even knotted—well, we did just think about it. Though I admit that I don’t think anyone read this particular significance into the bag of apples. But I do assure you that the place was searched for candle grease and damp patches and timing clocks, till we thought we never wanted to see an unfinished building again. And Robbins, of course, was examined from head to toe, inside and out, till he couldn’t have had so much as a spent match concealed about him. You can take it from me—inside and outside, both the building and P. C. Robbins—absolutely nothing.’

  ‘So where does that leave me?’ said Mr. Photoze, and immediately answered himself. ‘On the roof, dropping a bag of apples through a hole which wasn’t there until after the shot was fired; when two policemen, including your own dear parent, stood there and watched me make it.’

  ‘For the second time,’ said the young man.

  Up there on the roof—out of sight, if anybody had been looking that way, which, in the nature of things, they wouldn’t be—a photographer fiddling about with the tools of his trade. A slate removed, two slates or three or four—enough to allow him to slip down into the room below, fix up the tripod and the rifle and the taut string, all prepared and left ready previously. Back again, using the tripod as a step to hoist yourself up through the hole and back on to the roof; the bag of apples in his hand. And the shot fired by dropping the bag of apples to pull sharply on the string—then down through the hole again, quickly twist the string round the tripod, and back up on the roof, covering the hole over with the slates before P.O. Robbins even gets up the stairs. Covering the hole over roughly—anyone entering the little room will be intent on the rifle and the tripod, not looking up. And before they get around to the roof—start battering and scrabbling, smashing the slates, making the hole again—

  ‘Dear God!’ said Mr. Photoze, and caught Inspector Block’s eye and said again, ‘Dear God!’

  The boy sat bolt upright in his chair, triumphant. ‘Just tell me,’ said Mr. Photoze at last, slowly, ‘why should I have rigged up all this nonsense? I could just have jumped down through the hole, fired the rifle, and nipped back.’

  ‘Using what as a hoist?’ said the boy. ‘It’s a long way up to the roof, even to the lower bit of the slope where the hole was.’

  ‘Oh, well, as to that, with so much ingenuity as you ascribe to me, I think I could have managed something, don’t you?’

  The boy ignored the slightly teasing tone. ‘There was something much more important—the photograph. You had to be there to take the photograph, the one with the parapet in it that proves you were on the roof when the gun went off.’

  ‘So I did!’ said Mr. Photoze; and it frightened the boy a little—how could the man be so easy and unafraid?—with his mocking, half-indulgent admiration, a touch in his voice of something very much like pity. ‘You knew Mysterioso,’ he burst out. ‘He recognised you at the main entrance, it was he who told them to let you go up on the roof. I suppose,’ he added, spitting out venom, ‘that, like all your kind, you revelled in having your picture taken; didn’t you?’

  ‘I was willing to do him a kindness,’ said Mysterioso mildly, ‘that was all.’

  ‘Well, it made a change then, if you were,’ said the boy. ‘You’d done him anything but a kindness two years before, hadn’t you?’ And he looked at the rest of them with a triumph almost pitiful because it was so filled with spite. ‘You want a motive?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll tell it to you—the Inspector could have told it to you long ago, only he protects this man like all the rest have done. All the world knew that Mysterioso had taken Mr. Photoze’s girl friend away from him.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Marguerite Devine, ‘would you say that this was where I come in?’

  There fell a verbal silence in which even Mr. Photoze lost his recent poise, jangling his golden bracelets with nervous movements of his hands. Perhaps it was their tinkling that led him to say finally, ‘Do I really give the impression of a man who would kill another man for taking a woman away from him?’

  ‘Speaking from memory,’ said Marguerite, ‘I would say that the answer to that one is—no.’

  ‘You’ll confirm it, Marguerite?—all I did was to take pictures of you.’ He explained to the ‘court’. ‘I lived in the same group of flats. I was a lodger—with this young man’s parents, us in the basement, her ladyship here in considerably more comfort on the fifth floor. She was a star then, at the top of her career—’

  ‘Not to say a little over the hill,’ admitted Marguerite ruefully.

  ‘Do you think she’d have looked at me in that way?—a scruffy little press photographer without tuppence to bless himself with. But she was an actress, she was resting at the time, and all actresses, all that our young gentleman here would call “their kind”, like having their pictures taken. It’s part of their stock in trade. So… It was good practice for me; and in those days, what a marvellous profile!’

  ‘For “in those days”, dear,’ said Marguerite, ‘much thanks!’ But she added, kindly, to the boy, ‘However, at least an honest face, love, I hope. And in all honesty I tell you—he wouldn’t have killed so much as a fly on account of me.’

  ‘Well, some other reason then, what does it matter? But he was up on that roof, he could have done it, and nobody else could, so he must have.’

  Inspector Block got suddenly to his feet. ‘Now look here, my lad! You’ve had a long innings, you’ve done a lot of very clever talking—now you listen for a change! Your theory is beautifully ingenious, but it has one tiny flaw, and that is, it won’t work. The whole thing depends on a hole in the roof so big that Mr. Photoze could get down through it and then up again. But the police do think of these things too, you know; and that hole was most carefully examined, and the simple fact is that he couldn’t have got his head through it, let alone the rest of him. The slates were securely pegged down and couldn’t be removed; the only hole was the small one he made by shattering one of the slates with the heel of his shoe.’

  The boy was taken aback. It had seemed to fit so well, justify all his suspicions. And now nothing was left of it. Back to the parrot cry that had sustained him all this bitter time since his father had died. ‘He was on the roof. There was only him and my father—’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Inspector Block. ‘Him—and your father.’

  You couldn’t call him slow on the uptake. The boy was there before any of them and had sprung to his feet—frightened now, really frightened. ‘You mean—together? In it together?’

  The rifle hidden away during the night—it was true that these things, the gun, the bag of apples, the string, might very easily have escaped detection during the more cursory inspection on the day of the ceremony: small enough objects to be lost among the innumerable bits and pieces lying about in a building still under construction. Up to the roof with Mr. Photoze, then, searched and found free of the impedimenta of murder; he’d have been smuggled up there without permission if none had been given, of course; had they been surprised, those two, in the middle of their plan, when Mysterioso and the Superintendent had come upon them outside the main entrance? Up to the roof, anyway—and the bolt shot that would keep him up there. ‘It was P.C. Robbins who suggested that the inside bolt be shot. It left his accomplice, now that he was known to be on the roof, safe from accusation of firing the gun.’

  The boy did not argue. There was in his heart now a terrible fear.

  Everyone gone off at last to prepare for the ceremony—a clear field. P.C. Robbins leaves his post at t
he main entrance and nips up the stairs—no patients yet, perhaps, to mark his going, or if there are, after all the passings up and down that morning, who is going to recall one more policeman checking things once again?

  Up to the murder room then; a minute and a half to erect the prepared tripod, not more (‘We experimented with that,’)—to fix the taut string and ‘(‘Here it comes!’) to pass up the bag of apples through the small hole which meantime Mr. Photoze would have been making by the removal of one slate. And P.C. Robbins is back at his post long before the ceremonial procession is due to pass down again to the site—and he can’t have fired the shot because he was at the post when it was fired—any more than Mr. Photoze could have fired it, known to be locked out (and taking pictures) on the roof.

  The bag of apples is dropped, and the taut string pulls on the trigger, and the shot is fired; and the one slate is replaced, to be reopened with much scrabbling and shattering when the proper moment arrives; and the photograph is taken. And three steps at a time P.C. Robbins comes pounding up the stairs to untie the string and wind it—no time for knots—round the butt of the gun, to look as though it had some purpose other than its real one; and is ready to greet P.C. Block arriving, panting, ‘There’s a rifle fixed up. Come and look!’

  The boy stared, helpless. Great tears rolled down his thin face, white now and haggard. ‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ But to fight was better than to despair. ‘Anyway, what was the reason? My father had no reason to do it; so why should he?’