The Grindle Nightmare

by Q. Patrick

  “If I said anything brilliant, I assure you it was unintentional.”

  “Your words, my dear Douglas, were not brilliant per se, and certainly they were not brilliant intentionally. You said, if I remember correctly, There’s not a single person in this valley who is capable of doing these things.’ Do you see the significance of that word, singlel”

  Smiling pityingly, I passed the whiskey to Peter.

  “I can’t say that I do—unless you mean single as opposed to married.”

  “Come, Doug, this is no time for sex. I mean nothing of the sort. I merely mean single as opposed to double. In short, our murderer is two murderers!”

  “Phooey!” I exclaimed. “There’s about a ten million to one chance against your finding two similar maniacs in the same small place at the same time. Where’s your respect for statistics?”

  Toni sighed and looked down the pages of his text book.

  “If you don’t believe me,” he chanted, “and if you think I lie, go to Dr. Schalkenbaum and he will tell you why. Now, Doug, this is the said Schalkenbaum’s book on insanity—used, incidentally, in all the medical colleges from Rhodes to Stamford.” He looked up at me, grinning. “In this standard text-book, we find a clue. Ah, yes, Miss Agatha Christie, the so exquisite and ’ow you say, needful clue. It has all come out of the little grey cells of Dr. Schalkenbaum. It has a French name which Poirot could pronounce far better than I, and all the literature on it is either in French or German. Hence Mr. Foote, my polyglot secretary. He’s dug up all kinds of stuff today and translated it for me. Now, you listen, my boy. It will do away with all your scruples about twin-maniacs, because it officially recognizes them. You can even have some of your beloved statistics.” Toni passed the book back to Peter. “Here, you’d better read it. My foreign pronunciation is lousy, and dear Doug’s so sensitive.”

  Peter smiled and took the book.

  “I think it’s a knock-out, Dr. Swanson,” he remarked. “Just listen to this!

  Folie à deux, or. communicated madness. This condition was first accurately described by Laseque and Fabet in 1877 and later by Regis under the name folie simultanée in 1880. It is a condition in which one person, (known as the primary patient) usually a stronger or domineering type, infects another person, usually of weaker or inferior intellect, with his or her own insanity and delusions. The process is often a gradual one and is seen most commonly in persons of the same family where an older member usually infects a younger one. Sexual perversions, isolations, and religious inhibitions are often contributing causes, which may account for the fact that this condition is most frequently met with in lonely country districts. This form of insanity may often pass unnoticed for many years since the patients generally present all the outward appearances of sanity when encountered individually and apart from each other. But in its later stages, it forces itself upon public notice when the patients, overwhelmed by the strength of their delusion, commit outrages or other anti-social acts which give cause for complaint. The condition is essentially one in which the delusion or frenzy of one individual is communicated to another, who is known as the secondary patient. True cases of folie à deux are rare, but there are common manifestations of the same underlying neurosis in the excitation which is imparted from one person to another in revivalist and other mass meetings. Suicide pacts may often be traced to this disorder. Diagnosis is difficult and the treatment is such as one would normally adopt for insanity.

  Peter put down the book and eyed me eagerly.

  “What do you think of that?”

  “Very interesting!” I said sceptically, “but it smells of the lamp. You may be right, you may be wrong—”

  “Oh, Douglas, Douglas—” Toni kicked his legs into the air—“don’t you see that it’s the only explanation. Think of the alibis, man. Everyone in the valley has some sort of an alibi. But this splits them wide open. ‘Where were you, Dr. Swanson, on the night that Roberta’s marmoset was murdered?’ ‘Please, sir, I was with my friend, Dr. Conti.’ ‘All right, pass along.’ But—” he leaned forward peering into my face—“What if you were with your friend, Dr. Conti—and, at the same time, you were in the very act of eviscerating the hapless Queenie?”

  “There’s no need to be so pictorial,” I said. “But, go on.”

  Toni winked at Peter.

  “It must be right, Doug. Why, there’s so much humor in it—so much good clean fun. Isn’t there something in you, some deep secret part of your nature, that wouldn’t enjoy going off in a car at night with a well-chosen companion. Lassoing nasty little girls and stringing ’em up in trees; catching poor, hard-working gardeners, and sticking them in their own muskrat-traps; wringing the necks of nice plump geese—shooting squawking kittens; mutilating Sancho Panza, doing old Seymour in the eye by killing his hunting dogs and his grandson. Hoopla! Why, man, the thing is just too fascinating for words, but I do insist—and here’s the point—I do insist that it wouldn’t be any fun alone. These are not the sort of crimes that are committed by a repressed tortured maniac. They are the handiwork of someone with a robust, Rabelaisian humor. And that someone would have to have a crony. A good back-slapping pal. Someone to laugh with when Polly gets stuck half way up the tree—someone to …”

  “For God’s sake, shut up!” I cried suddenly.

  For some reason I found a curious apprehension creeping over me. Until today I had never seen the unemotional Toni like this. His eyes were black and gleaming, and his voice had a tense, high quality which I did not like. The wildest and most horrible suspicions raced through my drink-fuddled mind. Could all this be leading up to a disclosure which neither Peter nor I had expected?

  I glanced at Foote, but he smiled reassuringly,

  “Let him finish,” he said.

  “But—” Toni swallowed what was left of his drink—“there’s another thing. Don’t run away with the idea that our murderers were just maniacs. Oh, no, not by a long shot! Their killings are as motivated as those of the best Chicago gangsters. Think how they happened? Our two friends are on one of their nights out. They see a kitten. Goody, goody, they shoot it. But then what? Polly Baines comes tripping along after her darling pet! They see her, and she sees them. She’s only a poor little half-wit girl—but she can talk.” Toni was almost glaring at me. “She can run home to mother and say, ‘I saw so and so, and so and so shooting my kitty.’ She has only to do that, and the game is up. So what do our murderers do? They run and catch her. It’s not much of a step from animals to humans. It must have been fun to tie Polly up in that tree. But it wasn’t only fun—it was policy, too.”

  “I see what you mean,” I broke in. “The animals were just killed at random, but Polly, Baines and Gerald were all murdered deliberately because they had found out something. You’re most likely right, but that doesn’t help us discover who did it. And it doesn’t help to prove your theory that two people are responsible.”

  “Maybe not, Doug. But haven’t you noticed how everyone in the valley does hunt in twosomes? Think of all the copulating couples that swarm in Grindle! How do we know what orgies are indulged in by Seymour and Franklin when doors are barred and shutters are closed? Have you ever tried to imagine the private life of Charlie and Millie Goschen after the children are put to bed and the last highball is drained? Take our own dear Middletons. Why shouldn’t they turn into gnarled witches as soon as Sancho is disposed of for the night? Why shouldn’t they perform the mystic rites of Hecate, clad in their night-attire? Then, there’s Mark and Mrs. Baines consorting with the skunks, toads and foxes. And there is, or was—Peter and Gerald, young bucks who’d do anything for a lark. Perhaps they used to make clay figures of old Dean Warlock—God bless them—and stick pins into him. There’s you and me, too. People who torture poor harmless guinea-pigs in a vain effort to cure suffering humanity. We’re capable of anything in the eyes of Roberta. Why shouldn’t we have developed a passion for killing animals, and then murdered Polly to stop ourselves from being struck
off the medical rolls? And Edgar—Edgar and Roberta. But when you come to Roberta the combinations are as infinite as spirocetes. Don’t you see, man?”

  “I see that you’re drunk, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh, Douglas is going prim on us. Oh, you naughty, naughty boy. Go to bed!”

  “There’s an awful lot of sense in it, Dr. Swanson,” put in Peter, who was holding his drinks better than either Toni or I. “Apart from anything else, it makes the actual murders so much easier to understand. I mean, from a physical point of view. It’s hard to get a little girl up a tree or a grown man into a trap if you’re working single handed. But, if there’s two of you, and both possessed of that extraordinary strength of a lunatic!” With youthful confidence in chapter and verse, he picked up another book from the pile at his side. “Now, here’s something else. I found it in Dercum on Mental Disease.”

  His eyes scanned the page, then he read:

  The secondary patient is always feeble and degenerate and lacking in individuality.

  The boy’s eyes were shining excitedly as he looked up from the book.

  “Don’t you see how that helps? All we have to do is to find someone in Grindle who answers that description!”

  In spite of myself, I was beginning to get seriously interested.

  “Franklin Alstone,” I suggested.

  “Mr. Tailford-Jones,” put in Peter.

  “Douglas Swanson,” shouted Toni.

  I started to laugh weakly. A glance at the clock checked me.

  “Listen,” I said, as calmly as I could, “the time is now nine-fifteen. We have exactly forty-five minutes in which to discover something real, definite and tangible. Instead of getting down to it, we’re getting drunk and indulging in an orgy of wild speculations. It’s not me who’s going to be arrested, so I have no personal interest in the affair, but I do suggest that we try and be sensible, if only to save the most promising young pathologist in Rhodes from his own marble slab.”

  Peter smiled and Toni clapped uproariously.

  “Personally,” I continued, “I don’t think a great deal of your theory. In the first place, it is a theory. In the second, I have no faith in folie à deux, Schalkenbaum or no Schalken baum, Dercum or no Dercum. It is my own belief that it was invented by alienists of small scruples in order to save wealthy murderers from the death penalty. No one had ever heard of it until the Loeb-Leopold case, and no one would have heard of it then, if a bunch of millionaires hadn’t been involved.”

  “Douglas, Douglas,” put in Toni, “I was waiting for you to bring that up. The Loeb-Leopold case was something quite different. It was sexual. The examination of the victim’s body definitely proved that. Now, our little affair has nothing to do with sex. I maintain that it started off as an escape mechanism—a frenzy springing from an ebullient and youthful lust for sport. Later, through force of circumstances, it developed into a half-sadistic, half-panic-stricken killing of witnesses or supposed witnesses.”

  “I’m not so sure you’re right.” Peter was leaning forward eagerly. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t have been sexual in a less obvious form. The bodies weren’t violated, but you notice that, at any rate, the first two victims were not dead when they were hauled up the tree and pushed into the trap. There were no bullets in them. Now—” his voice rose excitedly—“it’s quite a common form of perversion to feel a desire to hurt without actually killing. Why shouldn’t two people who, for some reason or other, were unable to have ordinary relations, have indulged in this sort of thing instead?”

  “Good God!” I broke in. “Edgar and Roberta! That’s the first sensible thing that’s been said today.”

  Toni was smiling curiously. “You’re right there, Doug. That’s another of your so very brilliant remarks. It’s the first definite piece of evidence we possess.”

  In the brief moment of silence that followed, I consulted my watch.

  “Nine twenty-two!” I exclaimed. “What are we going to do about it? There’s not much time.”

  “There’s time enough,” said Toni.

  He rose suddenly and stood in front of us. His smile had faded and his mouth was twisted in an ugly curve. His eyes still on ours, he moved slowly to his coat and took something from it which he slipped into his trouser pocket.

  I stared at him, feeling a spasm of alarm.

  “What on God’s earth are you doing?” I asked.

  He plunged his hand into the pocket.

  “Toni, what have you got there?”

  He did not speak.

  We all three gazed at each other in silence as he produced a ball of thick cord. Involuntarily I rose and crossed to Peter’s chair.

  Then, Toni pounced.

  I received the full strength of his enormous. body on my shoulder and, crashing to the ground, hit my head against the edge of the table. Dazed and horrified, I scrambled to my feet to find him bending over Peter, twisting the cord round and round him and binding him to the chair. My room-mate’s lips were moving, but I could hear no sound coming from them. Peter was struggling fiercely and kicking out with his one good leg.

  “Toni, you’re crazy,” I shouted.

  “Crazy, am I?” Sweat was gleaming on his forehead as he turned abruptly and stared into my eyes. “I’ll show you.”

  I made a move toward Peter who was now strapped tightly to the chair, but my room-mate gripped my shoulder and held it firm. His face was utterly transformed.

  “You see that boy, do you?”

  I nodded weakly.

  “Well, take a good look at him. He may be the only specimen of his kind you’ll ever see. He’s—he’s our—primary patient.”

  Chapter XVI

  The blow on the head, combined with the liquor, had temporarily stupefied me. For a moment I could do nothing but stare at the amazing spectacle before me. Toni, huge and wild, was standing over the bound figure of Peter Foote, his fist clenched. He seemed utterly to have forgotten my existence.

  “You killed Polly Baines,” he was shouting. “You killed Jo Baines. And, incidentally, you killed Gerald Alstone. You think I’ve got nothing on you, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong. And, what’s more, you’re going to do a little bit of talking, too.” He gave a short laugh. “You see that clock over there? The hands point to nine twenty-nine. In just one minute the cuckoo will pop out, and in just thirty-one minutes Bracegirdle will be here. Now, don’t you think it would be nice if we could tell him the whole story before he takes you away?”

  Peter was staring up at him, his face a picture of studied bewilderment. He moved uncomfortably on the chair.

  “This is hurting my leg rather, Dr. Swanson,” he said calmly. “I wonder if—”

  Toni swung round on me like an angry bear.

  “You keep out of this, Doug. It needs an Italian on the job. We make good gangsters and we know how to make little rats squeal!”

  “God knows what you’re doing,” I exclaimed, finding my voice at last, “but I can tell you right here and now that if all this is a bit of cheap drama, you’re cooking your own goose and, what’s more, you can’t expect any sympathy from me.”

  As I finished speaking, the bird shot out of the clock and cuckooed once.

  Toni laughed.

  “That’s the answer to you, Doug.” He turned back to Peter. “Now, I’m going to tell you what I know, and, afterwards, I’m going to make you finish the story. Come on, Doug. You’re so goddam punctilious, you can be the jury.”

  “Dr. Swanson, I wonder if I could trouble you for a cigarette.” Peter’s voice was casual.

  I lit one and put it in his mouth, loosening the cord around his broken leg.

  “Are you quite comfortable?” I asked.

  “Yes, I don’t mind.”

  My room-mate pushed me aside. He had rolled up his sleeves and was standing squarely in front of Peter, his eyes fixed on the boy’s face.

  “In the first place, Peter Foote,” he began, “you’re a nasty spoilt brat who knows
all the answers just because he took a trip around the world. In the second place, animals don’t like you—and that’s never a healthy sign. Valerie’s wretched dog growls whenever it sees you. Did it growl, by the way, that night you lassoed it and started dragging it behind a car?”

  “If this is the best you can do, Toni,” I broke in, “God help you. And God help me for being such a fool as to let you do it.”

  “It’s all right, Dr. Swanson,” remarked Peter. “Let him have his fun.”

  Toni bent his arm, revealing the strong muscles that rippled under the skin.

  “Fun later,” he said. “Business now. Those horses kicked you the night you went in to fetch them out of the barn. Pretty canny of them to recognize a killer even when you were saving them, wasn’t it?”

  “Most absorbing!” murmured Peter. “Why don’t you write to Ripley about it?”

  “I expect you’d like it if I did,” went on Toni swiftly. “You enjoy publicity, don’t you, Foote? That’s why you went into the fire—to be the center of attraction. Exhibitionism is only another manifestation of sadism, after all.”

  “At any rate,” I put in, “you can’t say it wasn’t brave of him.”

  “Brave! All his week-ends in the valley were brave and dramatic. Incidentally, have you ever realized how all the crimes happened over the week-end?—” He turned to Peter—“The only time you were in Grindle. It was lucky that Baines found out about you on Saturday, wasn’t it? If it had been any other day, you’d have had to make a special trip to kill him, and then, even the dear dumb Bracegirdle might have cottoned on to something.

  “How d’you mean, Baines ‘found out’ about him?” I asked.

  Toni turned to me excitedly.

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you to wonder why Baines was so eager to see you? He wanted to tell you he’d discovered the criminal! Most likely he had caught Peter snooping around Grindle Oak, noticed the buzzards, and drew his own conelusions. Of course, we can’t be certain of the actual facts, but that’s the way it happened. He didn’t tell the police, simply because he was too much afraid of old Seymour to say anything against one of his guests—his grandson’s chief buddy at that!”