The Grindle Nightmare

by Q. Patrick

  After having lived in the very midst of the crimes, sleeping, eating and drinking them, as it were, it was curious to find oneself on the outside, depending entirely upon the newspapers for information. It was curious, too, and a little disconcerting to realize what a difference Gerald Alstone’s disappearance had made in arousing public interest. There is, apparently, nothing of particular significance in the strange death of an obscure gardener and his little daughter. A small paragraph on a middle page was all that it had rated in the minds of the newspaper editors. With the intrusion of Mr. Alstone’s grandson, however, the affairs in Grindle suddenly became headline news, and the less reputable tabloids made the day hideous with their lurid accounts of “the dread events that were taking their grim toll in the terror-stricken vale.” Hourly, it seemed, the news-stands fed, to the public, papers black with “Mystery Slayer Still Loose in Small Rural Area.”

  … “Is Steel-Magnate’s Missing Grandson Next Victim?” … “Appalling Atrocities Inaugurate Reign of Terror.” … “Blood under Bridge Hints of More Horror to Come.”

  During the following weeks any ambitious Dillinger with a yen for publicity would have been disappointed to find his latest killing relegated to the second page. A famous radio crooner who selected that particular moment to get divorced, had to be satisfied with his photograph ignominiously placed beneath those of Polly Baines, Gerald Alstone and Roberta Tailford-Jones.

  Fot Roberta had been enjoying herself thoroughly in print. Posing as a distinguished society leader, she gave interviews and described in a spirited and vivid journalese her reactions to the descent of Polly Baines’ coipse from the tree. There was, however, very little of Polly in these narrations and a great deal of Roberta. She hinted that, owing to police incompetence, she felt it as a “sacred debt to society” to take the matter in hand personally, and threw out a few dark remarks about “suspicions which I do not yet feel justified in bringing to the public’s notice.” Which, I supposed, meant me, although at that stage she did not actually have the effrontery to name names.

  But for all this sensationalism, the papers had nothing really tangible to offer. Only a percentage of the actual evidence was published. The real causes of Polly’s death were wisely withheld, and a general statement was issued to the press to the effect that she had been shot and hoisted dead into the tree and that five bullets had been taken from her body. The loss of Mr. Alstone’s setter, too, was kept quiet, and, in every way, Bracegirdle acted with dignity and discretion. He stated time and time again that full precautions were being taken to prevent any further outrages, and that everything was being done that could throw light upon the identity of the murderer.

  During the bad weather work was very heavy at the hospital, but I found my mind constantly returning to Grindle and the unpleasant phase through which it was passing. I bought all the latest editions, skimming through the padded columns and amusing myself with such passages as:

  “Dr. Swanson, the famous experimental scientist, was interviewed today in his town apartment whither he has fled to escape the menace of the unknown horror. He expressed the opinion that this case provides one of the most interesting psychological problems that the world has ever known ….”

  My “town apartment” was a small room in the medical building, and the paragraph was the outcome of a brief conversation with an unavoidable blonde during the course of which I had remarked that I remained at hospital because I just could not take the daily drive in the snow, and that the murderer was obviously a psychopathic case. But, by then, we were all newspaper fodder and had no life to call our own. I had less reason to object than Toni who was referred to as “the grim-lipped handsome surgeon who preserved a steadfast silence when approached by our special correspondent.”

  If there is one thing that any self-respecting pathologist resents, it is to be called a surgeon.

  Toni’s comments were acid.

  “Why not a chiropractor and have done with it?”

  That was in one of his lighter moments. For ever since our removal to Rhodes, he had been acting very curiously. I felt more and more strongly that he knew something which he intended to keep to himself—something which made him avoid being alone with me and parry any attempt to discuss the affair. I have always believed in respecting other people’s moods and did nothing to discover what it was that caused his reticence, but I found myself constantly involved in conversations which seemed to have some implication that I could not grasp. Luckily for my peace of mind, I was too busy—or too stupid—to work out its real significance.

  During the week I paid frequent visits to Peter Foote in his private room at the hospital. In the past I had known him only as one of the more promising students in my class; now I discovered that he had surprisingly good sense and a wide knowledge of subjects outside medicine—a most unusual attribute in a medical student. The first shock was over now and he seemed eager to talk about Gerald and to elaborate a theory he had evolved.

  “I know I haven’t much to back me up,” he said, leaning forward, his dark eyes strained and restless, “but I can’t believe anything’s happened to Gerald. Up till now the murderer’s been a very sensible person—and a very sound psychologist. He’s deliberately chosen his victims among the sort of people who don’t get much attention from the public or the newspapers. Polly Baines, Jo Baines, even a few more Baineses might have been killed without the whole force of the police stirring and setting about it. But, once you start doing away with the grandson of a rich and famous person, you’re asking for trouble. Every eye in the nation is on Grindle; everything that money can buy has been put into the case. The murderer’s chances for escape are small—and what’s probably worse from his point of view, it’s practically impossible for him now to indulge the impulse to kill when it comes on him.” He thumped the bedclothes with his fist. “Don’t you see? He can’t have been such a fool as to bring this on himself!”

  “Very ingenious!”’ I murmured, pulling a grape from an expensive-looking plate of fruit beside the bed. “And I agree with you up to a point. From now on it’s going to be very difficult for the murderer to make a killing. But, isn’t it extremely unlikely that Gerald should happen to disappear at the right moment?”

  “Not if you know him. He’s been my best friend ever since I came to college and I suppose I understand him better than anyone else does. Now this is in confidence—” he lowered his voice—“but I’ve known for some time that he’s been wanting to get away from Grindle. He’s scared stiff of old Seymour. Hates him. And not only that, he’s terrified of failing in medical school. A short time back he had quite a scene with his grandfather about the low grades he was making. After it was over he told me he couldn’t stick it out any longer. Swore he’d clear off, but I managed to talk him out of it. Now supposing he’d been in one of those moods on the night you found Polly Baines. He’s a mild guy and rather nervous as you know. Seeing that body drop from the tree might quite well have been the last straw. He could easily figure out that if he were to disappear then, everyone would think he had gone the same way as Polly.”

  “I see what you mean,” I broke in. “Seymour would search for his body, but wouldn’t think of searching for him. It was a pretty good moment for a getaway.”

  “Sure, Dr. Swanson—” Peter’s youthful passion for theorizing was well under way—“and I was laid up with a broken leg, goddamn it. I wasn’t on the spot to stop him. Now, you remember that ’phone call that came through for me the night he disappeared? I’m sure it was from Gerald, telling me what he was going to do. If only I could have spoken to him, I could have done something.”

  I leaned forward in interest. “Well, supposing you’re right, Peter, where would he have gone?”

  “Have they interviewed his mother?”

  “You don’t think he was with her!”

  Peter shook his head. “No, I’m afraid it won’t be as easy as that. Still, he might have got some money from her. His father gives him a very sm
all allowance, you know.”

  “Is Mrs. Alstone wealthy?”

  “She gets quite a large sum in alimony from Franklin, I believe. She’s not the sort to be generous, but she might have done it to spite the old man. She hates Seymour for having come between her and her husband.” Peter lit a cigarette, and I noticed that his fingers were trembling with eagerness. “Has Bracegirdle checked up on all the outgoing boats?”

  “Of course they’ve done all the routine things.”

  “Gerald was always keen to travel. Seymour kept him stuffed up in Grindle all his life. I sometimes used to tell him about the places I’d been to and he was just crazy to see them for himself.” Peter stared at me fiercely. “If only the police had had some sense, I’m sure they’d have found him at one of the ports.”

  “It’s easy enough to criticize the police—and I hope you’re right,” I said, straightening the bedclothes which had slipped away from the cast, “but aren’t you forgetting the two most significant points?”

  “You mean the gun-room and Mrs. Baines’ story? In a sense they are difficult to explain, of course, but they can be fitted in from the psychological angle. You see, Gerald’s the most thorough person I know. Once he’d made up his mind to disappear, or rather, to pretend to be murdered, he wouldn’t be satisfied with leaving it all to chance. I believe he staged the gun-room scene just to make it more convincing. Chairs and tables upset, guns out of place, a revolver missing; it’s too obviously an encounter with a homicidal maniac to be the real thing.”

  “And the blood on the floor?” I asked.

  “Just the finishing touches. Of course, I don’t know exactly how he managed—but it’s not too difficult to get blood with all those chickens around. It’s the blood on the door handle more than anything else that makes me believe it was a put-up job. The murderer himself doesn’t seem to run to anything so crude. He gets them out of doors, strings them behind a car and …”

  “Strings them behind a car, exactly,” I put in. “How about the car Mrs. Baines saw? How about the trail of blood under the covered bridge?”

  “Oh, that’s another matter.” Peter stubbed his cigarette and his voice rose excitedly. “You may think this is farfetched, but I believe these things are much more likely to be far-fetched than the police make out. I believe Mrs. Baines’ story. But I don’t believe it was Gerald she saw.”

  “So you suppose there’s still another corpse in the neighborhood?”

  “No, I expect it was a sheep or a dog. You see, I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking while I’ve been lying here; and I’ve a theory about the murderer, too.”

  I smiled. “Let’s hear it,” I remarked.

  “Well, I think that there’s always some reason for the fit of homicidal mania coming on him—some external irritant. I think that the murderer was on the coon-hunt; saw Polly Baines’ body discovered; and then, the actual sight of one of his victims started the old blood lust in him. So you see—it wasn’t just chance that the car Mrs. Baines saw and Gerald’s disappearance coincided. They were both motivated by the same thing—the discovery of Polly Baines.”

  “You’ve been reading the text books, Peter,” I said, glancing at the table where several manuals on psychiatry and morbid psychology were heaped among his favorite travel books.

  As I turned, I noticed Toni standing with his back to the door, flipping over the leaves of Cannibal Quest.

  “So you’re interested in the psychological aspect of this case, Foote?” He was speaking to Peter, but his eyes, strangely enough, were fixed on my face. “So am I.”

  For a moment none of us spoke, then Toni continued.

  “I see this book’s about the East Indies. Ever been there?”

  Peter smiled. “Yes, twice. Once in Borneo. Once in New Guinea. Wish I were there now, out of this damn snow.”

  “Must be interesting.” Toni turned over a page casually. “I’ve always wanted to study primitive sociology. You must take me there some time,” he added, grinning, “and show me the ropes.”

  The conversation then became strictly medical. The cast was to come off Peter’s leg that night, and the next day he would be able to place his foot on the ground. The fracture had united beautifully.

  As I left, I laughingly told Peter that I would speak to Bracegirdle about his suggestions.

  And I was destined to see the sheriff’s deputy sooner than I had anticipated. The next day I had just come in from buying an evening paper and was looking at the headlines. At first I could hardly believe what I read. Scrawled across the top in heavy black letters were the words:

  LAST WIND-UP

  IN GRINDLE VALLEY.

  MANIAC TRAPPED

  BY POLICE!

  From our special correspondent comes the sensational news that Mark Baines, part-time gardener and son of Jo Baines, one of the victims, has been arrested by the Rhodes police today in connection with the death of his father and little sister, and the disappearance of Gerald Alstone. There are also additional charges for torturing and slaying several animals including Mrs. Tailford-Jones’ marmoset. Our readers will recall how, in her last article in this paper, Mrs. Tailford-Jones hinted that such a result might be expected …

  It went on to give a lurid pen-portrait of poor Mark and his curious mode of living, explaining also how he had had no alibi for any of the times of the killings, and how he had already been charged with hurting two little girls several months earlier. As I read this, I recalled how Valerie and I had come across him on the night of the coon-hunt. Things looked pretty tough for him, although I was convinced he had nothing to do with the affair. I was angry, too, with Bracegirdle for arresting him without, as I felt sure, sufficient evidence. It was with relief that I remembered Mr. Foote’s thousand-dollar check which still reposed in my pocketbook. At least, it would help Mark to get good legal advice.

  Throwing down the paper, I called up Bracegirdle. I was told he was not in his office—and, what is more, he was actually on his way to the college. About ten minutes later he arrived looking very much thet worse for wear. He accepted a drink with gratitude and, sinking down on my two-by-four bed, threw his legs up on a chair.

  “What’s this about Mark?” I asked. “You don’t think he did it, do you?”

  “Wel-l, Doctor,” Bracegirdle smiled wearily, “I’m ready to believe anything. He’s as likely as anyone else. His alibis are utterly vague, and Hall did see him hanging around the Alstones’ house the night Gerald disappeared.”

  “Is that all?”

  “There’re certain other things against him. He’s queer—just the sort that might go hay-wire. Besides, he obviously knows something.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “He’s been holding out on us ever since the arrest. In my job you get used to telling whether a man’s coming clean or not.”

  “But surely that’s not enough to justify a warrant!”

  “He ought to be grateful it is,” said Bracegirdle grimly. “If we hadn’t shut him up when we did, there’s no telling what might have happened to him.”

  “What on God’s earth are you driving at?”

  “Just what I say. Of course, you’ve been out of the valley for several days now. You don’t know what things are like down there. But, believe me, it’s getting more and more like Hell every day. The whole countryside is hysterical, and now that Mrs. Tailford-Jones has started acting this way—” “What’s Roberta been up to now?”

  “Don’t you read the papers? In her clean-up of the valley she picked on Mark, and made things so hot for him that, if we’d been a bit further south, he’d have been lynched by now. That’s one of the reasons why we arrested him.”

  I whistled. “God, what a woman! I’ve a good mind to spill a few pornographical beans about her.”

  “I should be a bit careful.” Bracegirdle was watching me shrewdly. “Mrs. Tailford-Jones has also stated that Mark had a confederate. Of course, I’m not suggesting anything, but in public I should pipe
down on that sympathy for Mark if I were you.”

  “So dear Roberta’s still getting at me!” I crossed to the table and took a cigarette. “Nothing else’s happened, I suppose?”

  “Nothing important. Mr. Alstone has put up a five thousand dollar reward for the recovery of his grandson, dead or alive. Incidentally, this came for him in the morning mail.”

  Bracegirdle fumbled in his pocket and handed me an envelope. It had a Grindle postmark and contained a sheet of ordinary white paper on which was typed the following unsigned note.

  “Now you are getting the kind of treatment which you have shown, to other people and which you so richly deserve. You think you can buy yourself out of it, don’t you—just as you’ve always been able to buy yourself out of things in the past? Well, this is one thing that all your money won’t pay for. I hope you’re enjoying it.’

  I handed it back to the deputy.

  “At least Mark couldn’t have written that,” I commented “What do you make of it?”

  “When things are in this state,” he replied, “I don’t take much stock of anonymous letters, but—you never know. Have to look into them just as a matter of routine.”

  ‘Talking about a matter of routine,” I replied, “a most unpleasant individual wrested my finger-prints from me this morning. Am I under suspicion?”

  Bracegirdle smiled. “I’m having everyone in the valley done, Dr. Swanson. We might get something out of it. There are those finger-prints on the gun-room door to check up on, you know. That’s the only thing we can do until the snow melts. It’s no good digging blindly for the body, and bloodhounds are useless.”