The Deadly Joker

by Nicholas Blake

  “That’s one interpretation.” I spent some little time giving him another interpretation, during which he stared at me with increasing confusion. When I had finished, he seemed to take a resolution highly unpalatable to him.

  “There’s a third, you know,” he said, plucking the grass at the side of his deck-chair. “Yes, I shall have to come clean. I see you’ve got poor old Al booked for the high jump. But it won’t do. You see, I do know him pretty well. We’ve had our little rows—particularly when I was a boy and Father gave me all the breaks and him all the stick. But, y’know, blood’s thicker than water, he’d never do what you think he’s done and leave me holding the baby. It’s not in him.” Bertie broke off, with an anxiously appealing look at me.

  “You said there was a third alternative.”

  “Yes. This is damned difficult, y’know. Well, here it is. Just before the committee assembled at the end of the marquee, I happened to put my nose through the canvas partition. I saw Ronald Paston was alone in there. He was pouring something out of a bottle into the trick container Al was going to use. He held the container at arm’s length from him as he poured. Al had told me confidentially about the spray business—he can’t keep a secret—so I assumed Ronald was pouring the scent into the container. I couldn’t see the bottle, because of the angle he was standing at. Naturally, I didn’t go in or make my presence known, because I wasn’t supposed to be in the secret. Ronald put the container into Al’s knapsack thing, and I swanned off. He’d glanced over his shoulder once or twice—furtive sort of way—but again I assumed it was because he didn’t want anyone to come bouncing in on the surprise he and Al had thought up. So there you have it.”

  I had been following him with close attention. Now I said, “Good heavens, man, and you’ve kept quiet about this ever since?”

  “So it seems.”

  “But why? With Vera dead and your brother likely to be charged any moment? Why protect Paston?—you don’t even like him.”

  “Yes. This is the difficult part.” Bertie’s handsome face flushed deeply: sitting up in the chair, he unconsciously straightened his shoulders. “About a year ago, Ronald lent me a largish sum of money. I had a debt I didn’t want old Al to know about. I knew that, if Ronald was convicted, the paper I signed would come to light, and presumably the estate would demand the money back. Of course, if things get too hot for Al, I’ll come clean about it. Otherwise—well, Vera’s dead; hanging Ronald won’t do her any good. Why I’m telling you this—you of all people—God knows. But somehow I’ve got the idea you won’t be as censorious about it as—”

  “As Alwyn?” I prompted.

  “As you are about other things,” he said, with an impish grin that reminded me of his brother.

  “Like attempting to seduce my wife?”

  “Yes, you really are quite human when you unbutton yourself.”

  “You expect me to believe that story?”

  “It is asking a bit much, I grant you.”

  “It’s so far-fetched that I’d almost be inclined to believe it. But tell me, why d’you suppose Ronald would go so far as murdering his wife?”

  “He’s a thoroughly vindictive chap behind that smooth manner. I don’t say he’s so Oriental that he’d kill his wife just for erring and straying, though he might. I could tell you stories about our Ronald. But never mind—the point is, he saw a wonderful opportunity here for getting his own back on Al. My brother had baited him unmercifully—made a fool of him in public; and as far as the county and the village were concerned, Al was still the squire. It riled our Ronald beyond endurance. He was a big fish in the ocean; but in the village pond he found himself less than a minnow. Don’t you see?—that’s why he threw his weight about, buying up this and that. He’d got to make himself felt here somehow.”

  “Did he throw the Mills bomb and fire his own ricks to make himself felt?”

  “Don’t be damn’ silly. To implicate old Al—that’s been the whole object of the exercise. Al’s the local joker: harmless stuff at first, then he goes off his rocker and they get really nasty, and finally he does in poor Vera. That’s the impression Ronald aimed to establish. And I must hand it to him, he’s bloody cute—that poison-spray business was damnably Al-ish, if you get me.”

  “You mean the perfume-spray business. But that was Alwyn’s bright idea, whether or not it was Ronald who made use of it to poison—”

  “Not on your life, old boy. Ronald suggested it to Al, whatever he may say now.”

  “Alwyn told you so?”

  “Who else?”

  “That’s not disinterested evidence.”

  Bertie looked mulish. “I happen to believe my brother.”

  “It’s touching, the way you two rally round each other in a crisis,” I remarked dryly.

  “I wish you would stop needling me.” Bertie’s voice was sulky as a small boy’s. It was an index of his nature that, forgetting or disregarding his own attempts upon Corinna and Jenny, he should resent any unfriendliness towards him on my own part. His father had spoilt him; his women had come to heel; even Alwyn, in a fussy way, had tried to protect him from the consequences of his outrageous behaviour. So indulged, and self-indulged, how could Bertie acquire much sense of reality? He was the extrovert type, who sees reality in simple terms of his own needs, reactions and routine.

  There seemed no more to be said, but he showed no signs of leaving. I offered him a drink, which rather to my surprise he accepted. I went into the house. As I was coming out again, with bottles and glasses on a tray, I noticed that he had got up and was stooping to smell a rose in the centre bed.

  Suddenly he jerked his head back, an expression on his face which vividly reminded me of Alwyn’s just after Vera had bent her lovely head to smell the flower in his buttonhole. Bertie was flailing with his arms at some invisible object. The scene was oddly macabre.

  “Damned bee lurking in that rose,” he exclaimed as I came up. “Can’t stand them.”

  Well, I thought, there was a gallant field-marshal who was terrified of cats. Something tugged importunately at my mind, but I could not attend to it, for Jenny came into the garden followed by Corinna and Sam.

  Bertie looked somewhat flustered, what with the bee and the two women. Automatically he gave them his doggish look, but his heart was not in it. Corinna sat cross-legged on the grass, demurely sipping her gin and ginger beer, talking to Sam in whispers, while Jenny engaged Bertie in small talk. The new puppy waddled up, and Bertie fondled its ears. Everything seemed relaxed and normal, as if there had been a shift in time and we were back in our first afternoon at Green Lane, and the shattering events of the past weeks had not occurred—were never going to occur.

  Once or twice Sam fixed his eyes upon Bertie in a neutral, measuring gaze, but he was the only one of us who appeared to have it in mind that we might be drinking with a murderer. Watching Jenny’s golden hair ruffled by the fitful breeze, I could think of nothing but her love for me, and how I had unforgivably doubted her, and how she had proved true. Even when Bertie whispered to her and they strolled off to the far end of the garden, where I saw them talking earnestly for a few minutes, there was nothing to discompose me.

  “Aren’t you a fierce little monkey?” said Corinna as the puppy tried to chew her fingers.

  Time slipped out of gear again. I heard Bertie’s voice, on the far side of the wall that evening after the Pastons’ dinner party—”Like being ridden by a vicious monkey, I should think.”

  Bertie talking about Vera to some boon companion. A smoking-room story. Cheap, callous, contemptible. Talking about his own mistress like that. How crass the fellow was, not to appreciate her value, her unique identity! I felt sick.

  They came back across the lawn. Bertie was looking preoccupied. He pulled himself out of whatever problem exercised his mind, saying, “What an idyllic scene! Might be the garden of Eden. Well, the snake had better rustle off …”

  I followed Jenny into the kitchen. “What were you a
nd Bertie talking about?”

  “It’s perfectly extraordinary. He wanted to know if I had written a note asking him to come over here, that afternoon we went sailing. I said, of course I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me why he asked. He does seem very subdued, doesn’t he? What were you saying to him?”

  “We were talking about Alwyn chiefly. And Ronald Paston. Jenny, love, would you think Bertie an accomplished liar?”

  She took her time about it, as she laid out the ingredients for dinner. “He’d tell any lie to get a woman into bed with him. Of course, at heart he despises women—lying to them doesn’t count.”

  “Would he lie his way out of trouble—bad trouble?”

  “Depends,” Jenny answered after a pause. “He has no morals. But he’s not a coward. And he’s got some genuine pride, as well as his sexual arrogance. And vestiges of a public school and regimental ethic. Mustn’t let the side down.”

  “He’d lie for somebody else, you mean, more readily than to protect himself?”

  “Yes. If the somebody else was a man, a comrade.”

  “His brother?”

  Jenny’s eyes opened wide at me. “What is all this about? … oh, well, if you won’t tell me—”

  “You said once you thought there was no love lost between him and Alwyn. You still think that? He hates Alwyn?”

  “No, I’d say the boot was on the other foot. Of course, he chafes a bit, living with Alwyn. But I imagine family solidarity would mean quite a lot to him still. Mustn’t let the Cards down. He’s rather stupid, really.”

  “So he might lie to preserve the family honour? Would he lie to get an enemy into bad trouble?”

  “In the course of duty—as a cloak-and-dagger chap, say, or an intelligence officer—yes, he’d not think twice about it.”

  “But a personal enemy?”

  “No. That’d be against his code.”

  “Would he lie for personal gain—money?”

  “Oh, dear, what a difficult question!” Jenny rumpled her feathery hair with a cooking-spoon. “On the whole, I’d say not. He’s accustomed to easy living, as the birthright of his class; and that’s why his sort can run up debts without feeling guilty about them. In a way, money is like women to him—something you use, get pleasure from, but really despise.”

  “Aren’t you contradicting yourself? You said he’d lie to get a woman. Wouldn’t he lie to get money, if he despises that equally?”

  “Perhaps he would. I dunno. Depends on the lie. But if you want someone who’d tell any lie, do anything to make money, Ronald Paston’s the man. It’s positively ethical, in business, to mislead your competitors.”

  “Aha!” I said, and went out to the telephone. Inspector Wright was in the bar at the Quiet Drop, where he was staying. He said he would come round after he’d had dinner and done some paper work.

  It was about nine when he turned up. He listened for the best part of an hour, his attention never wavering, his eyes hardly blinking, while I gave him a résumé of the Netherplash incidents as I saw them now, and of my conversations to-day with Alwyn and Bertie. One of them had said something which revealed to me beyond doubt the author of the practical jokes; but this was personal conviction, not proof. One of them had handed me the lever to remove the most awkward obstacle in my mind. I must hasten to add, by the way, lest I give the impression of being one of those officious and omniscient amateurs in detective fiction who invariably outsmart the professionals, that I gave this impromptu lecture at the request of Inspector Wright himself.

  “Yes,” he said when I had finished, “I think your conclusions may be correct. But until we’ve traced the source of the poison, it’d be premature to—don’t want to go off at half cock, you know, Mr. Waterson.”

  The telephone rang. I went out to answer it. Charlie Maxwell’s voice spoke. Was Inspector Wright still with me. I fetched him to the telephone and retired.

  He came in again shortly. “Charlie’s just caught Bertie Card breaking and entering.”

  “What? the Manor?”

  “Yes, Paston’s study. He’d got in somehow and was running off with an I.O.U. made out to Paston and signed by Bertie himself.”

  15. The Joker and the Pack

  Wright had instructed Charlie Maxwell to take his prisoner back to Pydal, and Ronald Paston, it transpired, had gone there with them; not that he would have been much use if Bertie tried to break away. Bertie, I felt sure, could handle those two without any trouble, if he wished: it was significant that he had not wished.

  Five minutes later, Wright and I entered Alwyn’s study, which was already sufficiently crowded. Alwyn Card was semi-reclined on a shabby couch along the far wall. His brother, sitting by Alwyn’s feet, gave me a mocking look as we came in. The window was partly concealed by the bulk of a sweating Charlie Maxwell. At the desk to the right of the door sat Ronald Paston, studying his fingernails. One got the impression that nobody had spoken a word for the last five minutes.

  “About time, too,” said Paston. “Take this man in charge, Inspector, and we can all get to bed.”

  “What am I to charge him with, sir?”

  “Breaking into my house and—”

  “Balls to that,” remarked Bertie. “I walked through the french window of your study. It was open.”

  “—and taking something out of my desk,” continued Paston, as if Bertie did not exist. “What the devil did he take, Charlie, anyway?”

  Removing the foul-smelling pipe from his mouth, Maxwell handed his employer a sheet of paper. Ronald studied it, his brows knitted, mouth shaping the words as he read—a habit I particularly dislike.

  “What the hell’s all this about? I never lent you any money. Might as well flush bank-notes down the toilet as lend them to you.”

  “That’s what you say now. Very kind of you to forget the debt. So I can tear this up?”

  Wright moved swiftly between them and took the note of hand. “What was it doing in your desk, then, Mr. Paston?”

  “It never was there. I don’t know what Card is playing at?”

  “In which case, there is nothing to charge him with.”

  “Unless you’re interested in the murder of my wife.”

  “You have evidence to support this new charge, sir?”

  “Of course he hasn’t,” said Alwyn, whose voice quavered with anxiety. “It’s positively ridiculous. And I don’t remember inviting you into my house, Paston.”

  “Don’t fuss, Al. I’ll tell him what I was playing at.” Bertie straddled a chair, leaning his arms on its back. He appeared perfectly cool, as he repeated the story he had told me this morning. In the middle of it, Inspector Wright’s sergeant came in, adding to the congestion of the stuffy room. “So you see why I wanted to get this I.O.U. back,” Bertie ended, “before our Ron was taken off to the cooler.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that you’ve been concealing evidence of murder, just to prevent your debt to Mr. Paston becoming known?” said Wright.

  “The bastard’s lying!” shouted Ronald, his face gone a yellowish hue. “I never went near that container. I—”

  “But you had access to hydrocyanic acid, sir.”

  “Have I ever denied it?”

  “And you brought some down here earlier this summer, to destroy wasps’ nests,” Wright continued, “or so your head gardener informed us. Yet he didn’t use it on them.”

  “I’ve told you all this”—Ronald was quite frantic now—” my gardener was afraid of using it, and then the bottle disappeared.”

  All this was news to me. Why had Wright kept it from me?

  “Alwyn Card knew where we kept it, though.”

  “Yes,” said Bertie, “you took care to tell him, so that you could prove later he knew where to get a supply. What a nasty bit of work you are!”

  “Now, now, gentlemen, let’s not get heated.” Wright’s eyes had been flickering between the speakers: the more heat was engendered, the better he obviously liked it. “We seem to have stra
yed from the point. Mr. Card says he took the I.O.U. from Mr. Paston’s desk. Mr. Paston denies there ever was an I.O.U.: if he is speaking the truth, it means that Mr. Card was caught when about to plant the I.O.U., not when taking it away.”

  “That’s a grotesque theory,” said Alwyn.

  “Possibly. It will easily be proved or disproved. The note is dated July of last year. Our experts can tell us whether it was written then or to-day.”

  Bertie fingered his moustache, looking disconcerted.

  “That’s obviously the explanation,” said Ronald triumphantly. “He and his brother have had it in for me ever since I came here. They’re utterly unscrupulous. I’ve no doubt at all they worked up this filthy poison trick together, and tried to inculpate me—”

  “But why, dear boy, why?” piped Alwyn. “Whatever we thought about you, we liked your wife.”

  “Liked! Your brother liked her a damn’ sight too well, and you know it. Bloody gigolo!”

  “So you killed her out of jealousy. Typical of someone brought up in the gutter.”

  “You can talk!” Ronald glared furiously at Alwyn. “Vera told me once you’d made a pass at her yourself. A broken-down old pansy like you!—it makes me laugh. It made her laugh, too. At you. I don’t expect you enjoyed that, having your seignoral rights mocked at.”

  “What an incurably vulgar mind you have,” said Alwyn calmly; but I had noticed a spasm distort his face, as I’d noticed once before in this context.

  Wright’s eyes sparkled encouragingly at the pair, but they seemed to have exhausted their antipathy for the time being.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “we shan’t get any further on these lines. One thing we can be quite sure of: the murderer of Mrs. Paston”—he made a dramatic pause; there was a bit of the show-off about Wright—“is in this room.”

  We all avoided one another’s eyes, in a laughably deprecatory way.

  “Mr. Card, his brother and Mr. Paston, all had motives for the crime, and opportunity, and each of them knew where to obtain the poison that was actually used. The crime could have been committed by two of them in collusion. And this brings me to what we must call, for want of a nastier word, the practical jokes. They are tied in with the murder—don’t you agree, Mr. Waterson?”