“Hello, Dad.”
“Good evening!” Like Masson, he was noticeably happier than usual, which led me to wonder if there was something in the air. Before I could offer him refreshment, he asked, “Is this the way you treat your guests? Nothing to drink? Are you suddenly teetotal?”
Max said, “What would you like, Dr Elliot? Beer, wine, or something soft?”
“If my son has a decent bottle of beer, I’ll have one. None of that gnat’s pee you call lager, though.”
She found him a bottle of bitter that he sniffed at somewhat – he only liked beers that stripped the stomach of its lining and then knocked out your bone marrow – but eventually deigned to try.
“What’s in the suitcase?”
“Aha! I thought you’d never ask.” He sighed with happiness. “It’s finished.” With which he pulled the suitcase on to his knees and flicked the catches. From within it he withdrew a crossbow draped in a white cloth, much as a Stradivarius is cosseted by its owner. He placed it on the garden table, exposed it fully and sat back.
Max said at once, “It’s wonderful.” Even I had to admit that he’d done a good job on it. The stock was beautifully shaped and deeply varnished; the bow was of burnished metal, the trigger mechanism finely etched with filigree. There was a sight at the front and small handle towards the back with which to wind back the bowstring. It looked lethal.
“Gosh,” I said softly.
“I’m rather pleased with it.” He picked it up, put it to his shoulder, at which Max and I ducked instinctively. He looked at us. “What’s wrong with you two?”
“Is it loaded?”
A look of irritation passed across his face. “Don’t be stupid, Lance. I wouldn’t point it at someone if it had an arrow in it, would I?” I thought about responding, saw the futility of this at once. “Anyway, I haven’t made any arrows yet. I’ve only just finished the bow.”
“Let me know when you do,” I suggested, half to myself. He didn’t hear and continued, “Mind you, I might not just stick at arrows.”
“No?” asked Max.
“It’s quite versatile. You can even fire things like marbles. They could be just as lethal.”
He had put it back down and Max was inspecting it carefully. “How easy is it to use?” she asked.
“Very. That was the beauty of it; unlike the longbow, it doesn’t require much training to be very accurate. The disadvantage is that it has a low rate of fire – at most one or two arrows per minute as opposed to a dozen with a longbow. But as a sniper’s weapon, it’s superb. Accurate and lethal over nearly two hundred yards.”
As he prattled on, I remember wondering whether to ring his neighbours and warn them that it would be in their best interests to remain indoors during daylight hours for the next few weeks. Dad was clearly in love with his new creation and I could not criticize him for it, but the memory of my close encounter with death a few weeks before was strong within me.
Suddenly, I was brought back to the present as he was talking about the troubles he had had in making it. “To think that I had to wait so long to get hold of the book from the library. Some people are just so selfish. The librarian got very angry that this chap, Carlton, held on to it for so long. The fine was quite astronomical…”
“Carlton?”
“Yes. As I was saying…”
“Peter Carlton?”
“I’m not sure.”
I was looking at Max who was returning the compliment. Dad drank his beer and carried on talking.
When I rang the next morning and asked the librarian if it had been Peter Carlton who had kept the book on making crossbows out of my father’s hands, he was at first slightly surprised to be asked, but eventually confirmed that, yes, it had indeed been Peter Carlton. He made some comment that he was glad that the book had been returned before he had had his stroke, which I thought was a bit tasteless though I said nothing.
What, though, was I going to do with the information? This question occupied me as I worked my way through morning and evening surgeries, sandwiched by the midday home visits. By the time I was finished, though, I had made up my mind and, trying to avoid feelings of hypocrisy, I knocked on Mrs Kerry’s door. She was a delightful old lady who swallowed every lie that I told her about wanting to look in Peter Carlton’s shop for his cheque book, happily handing over the key.
What was I looking for? I suppose, to be truthful, I was thinking I might just find a crossbow, but I was not optimistic. If Peter Carlton had any sense, he would have burned it immediately, and I suspected that he had had a lot of sense indeed. The theory that had percolated its way through my brain cells was that he had shot the bullet with the crossbow, but that left some important questions unanswered; firstly, why had he used an old bullet – one already fired from a gun with a silencer – and secondly how had he managed to fire the crossbow in broad daylight when there were potentially a hundred people to see him?
I spent several hours looking but without success. The only vaguely suspicious thing I found was in the back garden where there were the remains of small bonfire. By the light of a torch I looked through it and came up with several pieces of charred metal but none of them looked like they might be from a crossbow; I raked them together, though, and put them in a plastic bag. I finished by searching the office, as Max had done, which was when everything fell into place as I came across those peculiar receipts for fluffy dice and barometers.
With Max, I went to see Peter Carlton the next evening. He was sitting out by his bed, dressed in pyjamas and dressing gown, a urinary catheter snaking surreptiously out from beneath the ensemble. The right side of his face was drooping, a faint shiny line of dribble coming from the corner of his mouth. His right arm was flexed on his lap; his eyes were bright but it was with the light of tears held back. After the niceties of introduction and questions about his welfare that he could only answer with nods and winks, I said gently, “Peter, I want to talk to you about your brother’s death.” There was no reaction. “I’d like to suggest to you what might have happened that day.”
If he wanted to hear what I had to say, he didn’t show it. I glanced across at Max who encouraged me with a smile. “I think you did something that was quite ingenious, quite outrageously clever.”
The flattery had no effect either. “I think that you made yourself a crossbow. You borrowed a book from the library to help you construct it, but you would have managed with your skills to make a very, very good one, I suspect.” For the first time there was something in his eyes that suggested a reaction – pride, perhaps. I continued, “As my father has told me, it’s a perfect sniper’s weapon. Silent and very deadly over long distances. Also, it can fire anything, not just arrows. The problem is, of course, that it’s difficult to conceal.
“Also, since the murder occurred in broad daylight – at three-fifty-two in the afternoon, to be precise – and the trajectory of the bullet suggests that the killer must have been standing in open view of scores of witnesses, it is spooky that no one saw him.”
For the first time he made a noise; it was no more than a gurgle and incapable of being comprehended. I said, “The clever thing was that it wasn’t the bullet the police found that killed your brother, was it? That was just a decoy, so that they would work with completely the wrong trajectory. You fired that the night before, didn’t you? You put a silencer on the gun, walked across Thornton Road and stood in the garden of the Homans’ house. You knew that he worked late into the night, and more or less when he would leave. What did you do? Wait for your brother to leave the shop and then fire over his shoulder? You must be a good shot, Peter. Are you?”
He didn’t answer, of course, so I went on, “It must have been tempting to kill him there and then, but you were patient. Your target was the wooden shelving behind him, and you hit it; it was small-calibre ammunition so that it wouldn’t do too much damage. You knew the police would find it and you knew that they’d jump to all the wrong conclusions.