Malice in Wonderland

by Nicholas Blake

“I see.” Nigel recollected the crash, three or four years ago, of that brilliant, erratic financier, and his subsequent suicide. “So clever, he cut himself in the end,” had been the general verdict on Lysaght Jones. His daughter certainly seemed to have inherited his genius for organisation—and a dash of the mischievous humour which had been his saving charm, Nigel suspected. Here she was, anyway, working for a salary that, a few years ago, might have paid for one of her fur coats.

  “And don’t tell me how much more ennobling honest toil is than my previous butterfly existence,” she went on. “I went through quite a lot after the crash—before I got this job. Old friends of my father who’d love to find something for the little girlie, if she’d just pay them something on account. The usual something. The only currency I possessed. No, it was not ennobling.”

  “Still, you’ve established yourself all right now.”

  “Until this damned Mad Hatter turned up. Now I shall have to start looking for a job again.”

  “Surely it’s not as bad as that.”

  “This publicity’s sunk us, my lad, don’t you make any mistake. You should have heard Arbuthnot—he’s the managing director—on the phone this morning. They can kiss good-bye to Wonderland, and he knows it. Poor Captain Wise—I don’t know what he’ll do if the place fails. They’d never give him another job, and he’ll have nothing to live on.”

  As they talked, she was making out the order in which Nigel should interview the staff. She threw out her remarks spasmodically, in between the clattering periods of the typewriter. There was a certain contemptuous abandon in the way she worked, as if she didn’t care whether typewriter, lists, files, office, and all Wonderland went to perdition the next moment. Now, tearing the sheet out of the machine, she said abruptly:

  “For all that, I’d like to catch this bird, even if it is too late. D’you know anything about initiation ceremonies, Nigel Strangeways?”

  “Not a great deal. Why?”

  “Mr. Paul Perry does. He gave me a lecture on the subject yesterday afternoon.”

  She stopped, as abruptly as she had begun, took off her spectacles and began to make up her mouth. For all her air of insouciance, she evidently expected something from him.

  “You mean, these practical jokes bear a strong resemblance to the tricks played by the older men on the youths during their initiation ceremonies in the New Hebrides, for instance?”

  “I see you have points as a detective.”

  “You’d better tell me just exactly what you’ve got in mind.”

  “I don’t want to throw accusations about. He seems a nice enough young man, if he is a bit of a solemn prig. Do we believe in the ruthless scientist, outside books? I don’t know. Anyway, he’s an anthropologist of sorts, batty about his job. He’s never had the money or influence to get on to any expeditions. Would he try a little experimenting at home? I don’t know. I’m just asking you.”

  “Surely these practical jokes, and people’s reactions to them, wouldn’t make a very valuable scientific experiment? And he’d hardly go chatting to you about initiation ceremonies a few hours before he put dead animals in people’s beds?”

  “O.K., then. I’d much rather it was someone else than him.”

  “You’ve got something else in mind.”

  “All right. Why was he so keen to be allowed to see our part of the questionnaire—the answers about the Mad Hatter? They wouldn’t contribute anything to his Mass Observation survey.”

  “Idle curiosity, perhaps.”

  “Is a scientist’s curiosity ever idle?”

  “That’s an interesting point. Anything more?”

  “Nothing you’d call evidence. But he’s got a terrific puritan streak: he was quite devastated by the costume his young woman was wearing in the cabaret, for instance. And where would one expect a puritan to break out more violently than in a place like this, a Babylon of pleasure? Heaven knows, our pleasures here are chaste enough, except for a bit of to-and-fro between the chalets at night; but pleasure of any sort is enough to touch off a really hard-bitten puritan.”

  Presently Nigel left the girl and went thoughtfully across to his chalet. Here, putting her suggestion out of his mind for the present, he wrote a letter to his uncle, Sir John Strangeways, Assistant Commissioner of Police. Sir John, his favourite uncle and guardian in boyhood days, was still his best friend: indeed, Nigel’s youthful hero-worship of him had been an important factor in his own choice of profession. It was tacitly understood between them that Nigel should not trade upon Sir John’s position, nor did he call upon his uncle for advice or assistance unless a situation seemed urgently to demand it. As head of the C. department of New Scotland Yard, Sir John had quite enough on his hands already. There were times, however, when Nigel could proceed no further with a case single-handed, and then he placed the facts in a memorandum before Sir John, who would decide whether they justified his lending official support from his own organisation.

  Paying no attention to the luncheon gong, Nigel now wrote steadily ahead. There was no need for him to give a full description of the earlier outrages: Sir John could find one in the Daily Post; for that matter, in spite of Mr. Leeson’s bland assurances, there could be little doubt that the public would be kept well posted about each new event in Wonderland as well.

  “… So you see, my dear uncle,” he concluded, “I have at present upward of four hundred single suspects—to say nothing of accomplices, which would create enough permutations and combinations to make even your head reel. Of course, most of these can in fact be reasonably ruled out, but I’m still left with a disagreeably large residue. The only tangible clue points to this Paul Perry, but I’m not altogether satisfied with the motive so far attributed to him. Then there’s the mysterious ‘Mr. Charles Black,’ photograph enclosed. Have your boys got anything on him? Or, alternatively, can you find out for me whether he’s connected with any of the other holiday-camp companies, in particular the one that runs Beale, which is Wonderland’s chief rival? A third explorable avenue is our Miss Esmeralda Jones: an attractive, intelligent, and I should fancy a-moral young woman, who knows which side her bread is buttered on—and would prefer caviare to butter. Can you tell me whether any of the Wonderland directors were instrumental in the crash which brought down her father, Lysaght Jones? The revenge-motif is a possible one, if a bit far-fetched. But what isn’t far-fetched in this dotty case. I’d like, too, any information you may have about Captain Mortimer Wise and his brother Edward. M’s reputation is bound up with the camp’s, one would presume; but one can’t be sure. Any information will be gratefully received. Also, a chit to the local Chief Constable. I’ve not much time to work in, as great numbers of the visitors only stay for a week and on Saturday I must kiss good-bye to all these potential witnesses. (And why, by the way, has nobody witnessed anything yet except the faits accomplis?—I shall just burst into tears if this Mad Hatter continues to be an Invisible Man as well as a Menace to the Sanctity of the English Holiday.)

  “Yours,

  “NIGEL.”

  After sending off this letter, Nigel rang up his uncle and gave him the gist of it: the sooner he could get some concrete information, the better. Sir John promised to do his best. Nigel then ate a packet of milk chocolate and two apples which he had brought with him from London. He was depressed by a sense of anti-climax: even if he discovered the identity of the practical joker, the damage had now been done: Wonderland’s reputation, if Captain Wise could be believed, was irreparably ruined. Nor was he himself an inch nearer to the solution of the problem: indeed, by so thoughtfully depositing the dead rabbit in his bed, the Mad Hatter had underlined Nigel’s own impotence. Yet he felt that, if he could only correlate and interpret them correctly, he had already received enough indications to set him on the right track.

  In the meantime, hard routine work would be the best cure for depression. Interviewing one by one the Wonderland staff took him till nearly five o’clock. The hosts and hostesses, the kit
chen and domestic staff, the dance band, the gardeners, the odd-job men—they seemed to come in an endless procession, and to leave him as puzzled as they had found him.

  When the last had gone, Nigel sat back to review the little information he had gleaned from them. It was desperately negative. The head-gardener produced a sack which he had found in one of the potting-sheds: it smelt unpleasantly, and was doubtless the one which had been used to convey the dead animals; but anyone might have got into the shed, stolen and replaced the sack. He was a native of this part of the country, and could give Nigel particulars about the preserved coverts in the neighbourhood, so that, if the animals had come from a gamekeeper’s gallows, they could be traced back to it. But this, Nigel imagined, would be of little assistance: for the odds were that the Mad Hatter had collected them by night, and cached them somewhere near the camp till the next night came: he must have done so unobserved, or the gamekeeper would have got him. For what it was worth, this supported the theory of an agent, or at least an accomplice, outside the camp. One of the staff, or a visitor, would run a certain risk carrying a sack about, even at night. Whereas Old Ishmael and his sack were such familiar features of the landscape that nobody would pay them much attention.

  The dance band and their leader agreed that, when the lights went up after the first public pronouncement of the Mad Hatter, the last pair to be eliminated—Miss Jones and her partner, Paul Perry—were nearer to the microphones than anyone else. But this meant nothing. Had either of theirs been the voice that had come through the loud-speakers, you would expect them to have put a greater distance between themselves and the microphones before the lights went up. Nobody yet had a convincing alibi for this moment except Teddy Wise and Miss Thistlethwaite, who were under the spotlight towards the far end of the hall. Miss Jones had already told Nigel that, when she and Paul were counted out, they separated in the darkness. So either of them could have done it. But so could any number of others in the hall, to say nothing of a person entering through the side doors by the platform.

  Nor did Nigel obtain any relevant information about the duckings. Two or three of the staff, as well as the Wises, had been on the beach at various times that morning. They had not noticed anyone climbing the cliff path or returning around midday. Nor were they at all agreed as to who had been nearest the victims at the time of the duckings.

  After asking each member of the staff a series of more particular questions, Nigel inquired whether he knew anyone who had any sort of grievance against the company or management, whether he had seen any of the visitors acting at any time in a suspicious or even unusual manner, and whether he had heard any gossip amongst the visitors suggesting some special knowledge of their own. Nigel hoped for some result from this last question at any rate, since these residents would not be likely to have maintained any of the upper-middle-class reticence before servants.

  Yet, in spite of this, he gleaned little. The answers to the first question were remarkably unanimous: there was no doubt that, as Miss Jones had said, Captain Wise was thoroughly popular with his staff. As one of the waitresses put it, “he’s a real gentleman—makes you feel it’s a pleasure to work for him and the camp, listens to any complaints you have, and never goes behind your back. Reckon he’s the making of this place—ought to pay him a much higher salary than they do, that’s what I say. Nor did anyone reveal, or appear to be trying to conceal, a grudge against the company.

  The only item that made Nigel prick up his ears was an apparently irrelevant comment by one of the hostesses. “The only person in this camp who might fairly feel a bit annoyed with us is that funny little chap, Mr. Morley. ‘Albert,’ everyone calls him. They’re always ragging him about something or other, but he’s as good-tempered as——”

  “‘Annoyed with us,’ you said. Do the staff go in for teasing him, too, then?”

  “Oh, of course not, Mr. Strangeways. Captain Wise’d be down like a ton of bricks on that. Why, on Sunday morning he stopped his brother, and Teddy was really meaning no harm.”

  Nigel elicited the story of the beach-ball baiting, and later, from another witness, the episode in the shooting-gallery. They didn’t, he reflected, amount to much, even after he had discovered that Mr. Morley had been equally a general butt on his first visit to the camp last year. This might have created in the little man a feeling of resentment towards his fellow visitors and Teddy Wise, and Nigel did not assume that a man who apparently takes a joke in good part may not also be taking it very much to heart; but it was difficult to imagine Albert Morley retaliating in this grim and wholesale manner: besides, Nigel remembered now, Albert had an alibi for the period when the dead animals were distributed, for Mr. Thistlethwaite had mentioned jokingly in the car this morning that he and Mr. Morley could vouch for each other over that—they having sat together at dinner, adjourned to the bar afterwards, sat beside each other during the cabaret, and smoked a cigarette together during the interval.

  The answers to Nigel’s second question added up to exactly nothing. His third produced little evidence either, except of the solidarity, the community-spirit which communicated itself to the staff as well as the residents of Wonderland. Most of his witnesses were quite evidently uneasy about repeating any gossip they might have heard which was likely to do further damage to the camp. The only exception to this meritorious unhelpfulness was the chief saxophone player in the dance band, a rather greasy and self-assured young man with a small black smut of a moustache, who commented knowingly:

  “Gossip? We don’t have no scandal here, old man—I don’t think. All boys and girls together, and does that go for the management or does that go for the management?”

  “Well, does it?” asked Nigel distastefully.

  “I’m not talking, old man. If Cap Wise likes to keep his bit of sugar on the premises, that’s O.K. by me. We’re not living in the Middle Ages, are we?”

  “Bit of sugar?” queried Nigel, leering horribly. “What price a nice big Emerald?”

  “I don’t get you—oh, I see. Emerald. Esmeralda. Trust the good old sleuth to sniff it out. Mind you, old man, they’re discreet. Take a letter, Miss Jones. Certainly, Captain Wise. But they can’t fool Artie Foscuro. It’d burn you up, if I told you what I’d seen——”

  “What was it Miss Jones didn’t like about you?” said Nigel with chilly emphasis. “Your manners? Or that disgusting moustache?”

  “Here, old man, draw it mild——” Artie’s voice degenerated from bogus American to whining Cockney. “I mean to siy——”

  “Say it somewhere else. Good afternoon.”

  Before the saxophonist had gone, Nigel was reproaching himself. He disliked very much people who took a high hand or a moral tone with chance witnesses. Hadn’t I asked for gossip? Why then talk like a heavy house-master when I got it? The reason is, reflected Nigel, who seldom missed an opportunity for catching himself out in intellectual dishonesty, partly that I am getting irritable over the cumulative futility of all these interviews, and partly that I must be feeling a shade protective towards Esmeralda Jones myself. And when a man begins to feel protective towards a woman, it’s high time for someone to start protecting him.

  When the interviews were over, Nigel decided that as a penance he would read through the note-book in which Paul Perry jotted down the gossip he picked up in the camp. It was a penance, however, which had to be deferred, for he had only just opened the note-book when Dr. Holford entered, looking worried.

  “I’m not at all satisfied with Miss Arnold’s condition,” he said at once. “The scars left by the blisters are unusually fragile, and the silly girl left off her bandages yesterday morning, she now admits. To tell you the truth, the wounds are septic. And she’s not got much resistance. I think she ought to be removed to hospital.”

  “I see. Yes,” said Nigel, after a pause. “Is she willing to go?”

  “That’s the trouble.”

  “Would it be all right for me to have a few words with her alone? I might be
able to persuade her.”

  “Certainly. It’s very good of you.”

  Phyllis Arnold was looking flushed, and evidently in pain, when Nigel went to visit her. She still, however, refused obstinately at first to consent to the doctor’s plan.

  “It’s a matter of principle,” she said.

  “We respect you for it. But the fact is you may be safer away from the camp. It’s possible that you are the real object of this series of horrible jokes.”

  “Oh, Mr. Strangeways, whatever do you mean?” The girl was alarmed, but also gratified—the effect Nigel had been aiming at. It was not often that life gave her the opportunity of being the centre of a picture.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more.” (That is true, at any rate, thought Nigel.) “But you’d be doing me a great favour, if——”

  “I’ll do it, then. I always say the good of the community ought to come before one’s private scruples—don’t you agree, Mr. Strangeways?”

  “I think this is an instance when it should, anyway. Now I just want to ask you a few questions and then I won’t disturb you any more. Please tell no one, absolutely no one, what I have asked you.”

  “I promise.” Miss Arnold’s flush was now at least partly one of excitement.

  “First, did anyone in the camp, staff or residents, know that you would be susceptible to this wild parsley stuff or to blood-poisoning? Could they even have heard about it from someone outside the camp altogether—in your family or your office, say?”

  “Really, I don’t think so. Only my friend, Janice, that is. You see, we didn’t know any of the other visitors, not till we came here. Janice knew I had blood-pois—I mean, what the doctor called blood-poisoning, two years ago. But I’ve never touched any wild-parsley before. Mind you, I’m ever so keen on botany. But I don’t approve of picking wild flowers—I always say they ought to be left where God put them.”

  “I see. Well then, have you any reason to suppose that either Captain Wise, or his secretary, or his brother, could have a grudge against you. Don’t be shocked at the idea. I have to ask these questions, and they often lead to nothing. Just think hard.”