The Deadly Joker

by Nicholas Blake

  “Yes. The perpetrator of the jokes is also the murderer,” I said, looking straightly at one of those present. The tension in the room was so great now, one expected an almighty snap.

  “Can’t we have some more windows open?” asked Ronald Paston, whose swarthy face was running with sweat.

  Charlie Maxwell opened wide the lower half of the sash window: a light breeze blew in, and we could hear the call of an owl from the direction of the Chantry wood.

  “The practical jokes,” resumed Wright, “had more than one aim. Some of them were, ostensibly, directed against Mr. Paston. Some—the anonymous letters, for instance—aimed at general disturbance and dismay, but also at one particular target in the midst of all this. The monk on stilts and the killing of Miss Waterson’s dog looked at first out of series, so to speak; but in fact they, like the other jokes, had one basic object—to pile up suspicion against a certain individual and make him later the chief suspect for the murder. I am not speaking of the two earliest jokes, for which Mr. Alwyn Card has admitted responsibility and apologised in the right quarter. These could be termed pure mischief; after them, the joke campaign ceased to be a joke. Charlie Maxwell here came to the conclusion that the criminal saw his opportunity in Mr. Card’s early efforts and carried on from there.”

  “In which case,” said Ronald Paston, “it’s obvious who the criminal is. I admit I have no firm alibis. But I’d hardly set fire to my own ricks, and I’m incapable of tearing about the countryside on stilts.”

  “Out of condition,” Bertie put in. “All those expense account lunches.”

  “And your brother is a bit past all that physical activity, so—”

  “So the answer is me?”

  “You’re the obvious person, yes,” said Wright.

  Alwyn looked terribly distressed. “I can’t allow this. Bertie, I’ve never doubted you, there must be some other explanation. I—”

  “And your brother,” Wright interrupted, “would profit by your death. He needs money badly. He’d get it if you were put away for the crime.”

  Alwyn’s face crumpled: he buried it in his hands.

  “The trouble is,” said Wright in a changed tone, “that Bertie Card is too obviously the person, if we assume the joker acted alone.”

  “You mean, he perpetrated some of the outrages and his brother the rest? They were in it together?” asked Ronald.

  “That might be possible. But what had they to gain, as a couple in complicity, from your wife’s death?”

  “They—”

  “No, no, Mr. Paston. Practical jokes are one thing, murder’s a very different one. You don’t conspire to murder a man’s wife because you dislike him, however much you dislike him.”

  “Back to square one,” said Bertie, popping out his eyes at Ronald in a derisive manner.

  “Which is where I’ll ask Mr. Waterson to take over,” said the inspector. “He has formed an interesting theory about the practical jokes, which I think you should all hear. And he’s not only a disinterested observer but a remarkably good one.”

  Wright gave me a little bow. It was an embarrassing moment: I’d had no idea that I should be called upon in this way. But, as I took my seat on the edge of the desk and saw Vera’s murderer before me, I had no hesitation in playing my part.

  “We approach the truth,” I said, “through a telephone, a biblical quotation, and a bee—” and at once became aware of Wright’s quizzical eye upon me. I was lecturing and like all effective lecturers, including Wright himself, I evidently had a streak of the show-off in me. At any rate, I had gripped my audience.

  “The telephone here is just outside the door of this room. Anyone speaking on it can be heard in the study. Let us take the Mills bomb incident first. A few minutes after it happened, I rang up Pydal. Alwyn answered. He was breathing heavily. Later, when I came over here, he said he’d been in the study when I rang. You don’t get out of breath just going through this door to the telephone.”

  “Oh, pish, my dear fellow,” said Alwyn.

  “The second episode in which I was directly engaged, leaving aside the anonymous letters, was that of the bogus monk. I’ll cut this as short as possible. Not long before, Bertie had made an appointment to meet my wife that night in Chantry wood: he spoke to her on this telephone here. The only person who could have heard him, the Cards’ housekeeper being deaf, was Alwyn. It was inconceivable that Bertie, having just made an assignation with my wife, should queer his own pitch by dressing up as a monk and trying to frighten her. Alwyn, on the other hand, was as jealous of what he assumed to be Bertie’s new conquest as he had been of his successful affair with Vera, who had turned Alwyn down. By masquerading as the monk, he achieved two objects: he would wreck Bertie’s assignation; and since his brother would be up there by the wood, he’d come under grave suspicion as the perpetrator of this latest outrage. Alwyn, to thicken the brew, hinted to one of young Gates’s gang that they should lie in wait there again for the gipsy boy.”

  Absent-mindedly I reached out for the lecturer’s carafe of water. Needless to say, there was none.

  “This is perfectly extraordinary,” muttered Ronald Paston.

  Bertie was giving his brother a covert look, perplexed and incredulous, as if the familiar person were turning into a chimaera before his eyes. Alwyn himself appeared to be sunk in lethargy, occasionally puffing out his cheeks as if in impatient contempt while I was speaking.

  “We now turn to the killing of my daughter’s puppy. For reasons of our own, my son and I gave out that Buster had strangled himself in a rabbit-snare. The truth of the matter is that we found the dead puppy dangling from the chandelier in my hall.”

  “Blow me down!” ejaculated Charlie Maxwell.

  “In conversation with me recently, Alwyn referred to this as ‘the Haman episode.’ You are all familiar, no doubt, with the quotation about hanging as high as Haman. But nobody had told Alwyn that the puppy had been hung from a chandelier. How could he know about it, unless he’d done it himself? He said he’d put a note through our letter-box that afternoon, but not come in, so—”

  Levering himself upright, Alwyn interrupted me. “Just a minute, my dear fellow. I must admit to a small fib there. I did go into your house. I found the puppy—where you said.”

  “Why didn’t you—what was the point of lying about it?”

  “I was afraid,” replied Alwyn after a reluctant silence, the words seemingly dragged out of him, “I was afraid Bertie had done it.”

  “But Bertie didn’t get home till after five, after you’d been up there.” I turned to the others. “Bertie was lured up to my house by a forged note, apparently written by my wife, making an assignation with him. It’s clear enough who wrote the note—Alwyn, in another attempt to incriminate his brother for the outrages. He misjudged badly there. Bertie is hot-tempered, but he doesn’t take it out on animals,” I said, remembering Bertie’s behaviour on the occasion of Corinna’s first riding lesson.

  “So much for the telephone and the biblical quotation. We move on to the bee.”

  “Another bee in your bonnet,” said Bertie, but with less than his usual empressement.

  “This afternoon,” I said to him, “you smelt one of my roses and jerked your head back, with a look of consternation. There was a bee in it.”

  “What in God’s name are you maundering about?”

  “The point will be abundantly evident in a moment. You see, what convinced me that Alwyn knew nothing about the poison that had been introduced into the spray was the stupefaction on his face when he’d used it and Vera was beginning to die. I could have sworn that expression was not faked. And I would have been right. It was genuine. But that stupefied horror was not occasioned by the effect of the spray on poor Vera. Alwyn was terrified for himself. He could smell the peach-blossom smell. He realised he’d inhaled too much of the stuff—or feared that he had. He thought he was going to die, together with his victim.”

  I had been gazing steadily
at Alwyn. In the dusty, smoky light of the little room, I perceived a horrible thing. Two glistening trails, like those left by a snail, began to crawl down from the sides of his mouth. He was dribbling saliva.

  Bertie was at his side, looking protective. Wiping away the spittle, he whispered something forcefully in Alwyn’s ear, then turned to Charlie Maxwell. “Can’t you see my brother’s ill? Let him have a bit of air, for God’s sake.”

  Charlie moved away from the window. Alwyn still had the look of a small, fat animal shamming dead under the shadow of the hunter.

  “All this has been very interesting,” Bertie said to me. “Now, will you please tell us why my brother should wish to kill Vera Paston.”

  By now, I was heartily sick of the whole affair. But Vera, an invisible presence, came to my side. I seemed to smell her fragrance. I had to go on.

  “He hated her because he wanted her and she laughed at him. His sort of joker doesn’t like to be made a figure of fun.”

  “Only to make other people ridiculous,” said Ronald.

  “Shut up, you slob! Keep out of this!” Bertie turned to me again. There was a desperate appeal in his voice. “You don’t really believe that?”

  “No. It was not motive enough in itself. He hated you still more. You’d always been the favourite son. And now you’d become an increasing threat to his security. I thought at one time you’d done all these things to incriminate him and get his money. It was the other way round. You’ve squandered the money he got from selling the Manor. You’ve been running up debts, living far above the allowance he gives you. He couldn’t send you packing because he was afraid of you, morally and physically afraid, and because of a certain family pride. Now, with Ronald buying up the riding-school land, you’d lose what money you were making. Don’t you see how this festered in his mind? If you were out of the way, that drain would cease. If not, he’d have to leave the village. And Netherplash is the only thing that, in his warped way, he loves.”

  “I see.”

  “You’ve seen it for some time, haven’t you?—suspected it, anyway? You’ve done enough now for loyalty.”

  Bertie gave me a ghost of his mocking smile. “So the prodigal son must share the blame?”

  “Waterson, you’ve abused my hospitality, my friendship.” Alwyn was on his feet now. The speedwell-blue eyes blazed at me in pure hatred. The tubby figure had a sort of dignity now. “Inspector, I assume you don’t take this man’s preposterous allegations seriously?”

  Wright remained silent.

  “Great Scot, man, don’t stand there mumchance! Take these persons out of my house.”

  Wright still said nothing.

  “I absolutely deny what—have you any evidence? I repeat, have you any evidence, any proof? Do you propose to make a charge? … I thought not. Good God, murder that poor woman?”—the voice went up into falsetto—“do you think I’d be so mad?”

  “Yes, Mr. Card,” said Wright, “I’m afraid you are mad. Mad as a hatter.”

  “It’s no good, Al, you’ve had it,” said Bertie, yawning, slowly stretching his arms above his head where he stood under the electric light fixture. In the same movement, his right hand seized the bulb and crushed it.

  In the pitch-dark room, a body cannoned into mine. Then Wright shouted “Stop him!” We were all milling around. Nobody had a torch. I found the door handle, but the door was locked. Against the dim light of the window, I could see two figures struggling: one of them hurled the other away from the window, and I heard a slam as it was shut.

  I yelled out that the door was locked. Wright’s sergeant it was who shoulder-charged it and finally burst it open. As the passage light streamed in, it revealed Ronald Paston cowering under the desk, Maxwell rising dazed from the floor, one arm hanging limp, and Wright clambering out of the window. Alwyn and Bertie were no longer present.

  “Sergeant! The telephone. Roadblocks. Jump to it,” shouted Wright from outside. “Come on, the rest of you!”

  Groaning with pain, Maxwell crawled through the window. Then he started blowing a police whistle as we followed Wright to the garage.

  Through its open doors the Bentley was backing out fast. As it stopped, to turn in the yard and move forward, Wright leapt on to the running board and snatched out the ignition key almost before the driver was aware of his presence.

  “Come out, Mr. Card,” Wright ordered.

  “He’s not here, chummy.” It was the voice of Bertie, euphoric with action. “Diversionary manœuvre. Had to give the poor old sod a run for his money. Sorry about your arm, Charlie.”

  True enough—Alwyn was neither in the body nor the boot of the car. His brother’s elastic loyalty had stretched one point more. It was Bertie who had locked the study door, and fought Maxwell away from the window long enough to let Alwyn escape; he then intended to lead the pursuit a wild-goose chase in his Bentley. But the hand he had burned and lacerated, crushing the electric bulb, slowed him up in getting the car out.

  “Where’s he making for?” snapped Wright.

  “Search me.” Bertie nursed the damaged hand under his armpit.

  “Is he armed?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Just before the light went out,” said Ronald, “I saw him make a move towards that corner of the study. Where the golf clubs and things are piled. Was there a shotgun there?”

  “No,” said Bertie. “No lethal weapons—unless you count a bow and arrows.”

  “Don’t be flippant. You’ve done enough damage already.” Wright was in a white-hot rage. “Paston, run over to the pub. Get some men out to block the Tollerton road. Where the hell’s that sergeant? Oh, there you are. Rouse up the village. I want a search party. Muster ’em here.”

  But, roused by Maxwell’s whistle, a number of men were already streaming towards us across the green.

  “What about me?” asked Bertie with mock plaintiveness.

  “You’ll be dealt with later. Charlie, back to the house, ring the doctor and have that arm set! Give Mr. Waterson your whistle.” Wright turned to me. “Take four of these men and search along the lane past your house. If you see him, whistle us up.”

  We hurried along the track to the left of the green. As we reached its junction with the lane, a car swept by in front of us. It was my own car, and Jenny was driving. She had left the roof light on. In the back seat, leaning forward, was Alwyn Card.

  This made the worst moment of all, for me. Somehow, Alwyn had forced her to take him in the car; he could not drive himself. He would compel her to drive him to some lonely spot, then he would kill her. He would kill her because I had exposed him, and he hated me, and that would be the most deadly revenge he could take.

  Frantically I blew the whistle, and we stumbled up the narrow lane in hopeless pursuit. Then, not far ahead, we heard the blast of a horn, and as we rounded a corner a headlight’s beam lit up my car. The thousand to one chance had happened. Just beyond the gate into the Chantry wood field, Jenny had met a car coming down the narrow, unfrequented lane. There was no room to pass. She had got out, to consult with the other driver which of them should back. When she got in again, her passenger had disappeared: even he could hardly murder her with another motorist only a few yards away.

  Not that the idea had been in Jenny’s mind. She could not understand my extreme agitation, or what I was doing there at all. As she told me later, Alwyn had come panting to our front door, with a story that the police were after his brother, who had broken away from them and run off along the road past the Manor farm: he might be making south-east then, across country, to the main road, and the inspector wanted her to drive Alwyn the two miles along the lane and try to intercept him. The noise of the police whistle seemed to substantiate this story—not that she questioned it, in the flurry of the moment, for I had never told her my suspicions about Alwyn.

  “What on earth are they for?” she had asked, pointing to the bow and quiver.

  “They’re the only weapon I have. Snatch
ed ’em up. He’s dangerous, y’know, my dear …”

  The other motorist told me that Jenny’s passenger had jumped out of the car and disappeared into the field. I asked Jenny to back down the lane to where it broadened. My companions streamed through the field gate. They shouted when they saw Alwyn’s figure on the skyline for a moment, and raced off in pursuit.

  A minute later, Inspector Wright arrived with another posse of men from the village. We all went up the hill, where my own party told us that Alwyn had darted into the wood. It was all he could do, with a desolate, roadless stretch of open country beyond the ridge, and us behind him.

  Wright rapidly posted us at intervals all round the wood. It was a dark night, but Alwyn could not hope to break out of his sanctuary, so thick was its undergrowth, without betraying himself to our ears.

  I found Bertie Card beside me, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “Bow and arrows,” he muttered. “You can’t even shoot yourself that way.”

  “Why on earth did he lumber himself with them?”

  “Just a mad impulse. We’re a mad family. Poor old Al. He used to be a dead shot with that antiquated weapon.”

  Poor old Al, indeed! After his murdering Vera and designing to have his brother hanged for it, and only being prevented by a providential chance from killing Jenny too, I could hardly think of him in such easy terms. As we stood, silent and listening, round the dark wood where he had gone to ground, there was leisure to meditate his iniquities. Alwyn had run the gamut from mischief to evil, battening and growing madder on his own success. Bertie might be a “moral idiot”; he certainly lacked any great measure of intelligence—his lie about seeing Ronald poison the container was clumsy enough, but at least its object was not a selfish one: whereas Alwyn’s misdeeds had been from start to finish calculated and purely egotistical.