There's Trouble Brewing

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘All that, of course, was highly theoretical. It depended upon the tramp’s having a fairly accurate sense of time—which was likely—and on The Gannet not having caught fire acidentally—which was more than likely: it was obviously vital for Joe to drug Bloxam effectively, and this put out of court the idea that Bloxam could have set fire to the boat through carelessness.

  ‘Everything so far was consistent with Eustace as murderer and Joe as victim. Proof of the latter could be obtained soon enough by comparing the reconstructed sets of teeth with the jaws of the body. Equally, if the victim was found to be Joe, then it followed almost certainly that the murderer was Eustace; for Eustace had disappeared, and no one else—except Sorn—had an interest in its being established that Eustace was dead. But I didn’t suspect Gabriel Sorn: after all, it was too far-fetched altogether to imagine that he would kill Joe in order to dress him up as Eustace and then throw suspicion on him. Any lingering doubts I had of Sorn were dispelled when he came to see me last night. He evidently believed that it was Joe who had done the murder, was in concealment and had just telephoned him to help in a getaway. Sorn hated Eustace, hated him all the more when he realised he was his father: he had no compunction in helping the man he thought was Eustace’s murderer to escape. Unfortunately, he told his story in a sadly unconvincing way.’

  ‘But I can’t understand why Eustace wanted to disappear like that, to change places with Joe. Making up Joe like himself and putting him in the copper—why, it was sentencing himself to death,’ Sophie said,

  ‘Yes, it worried me, that. When Sorn told me that his mother was a proud creature, I began to understand; and Eustace’s confession has cleared it up. Still, we must gratify your husband’s indecent craving for continuity. Having satisfied myself that Joe was the one who had got murdered, and Eustace the one who’d done it, I was in a much better position to explain subsequent events. You see, I was prepared to believe that Gabriel Sorn, or Mr Barnes, or Herbert were capable of murdering Joe: but I couldn’t believe that any of them would proceed so remorselessly to plant incriminating evidence against him. Only a Eustace Bunnett would murder a chap and then try to prove the chap guilty of his own murder. There was something vindictive in the way Joe’s name was blackened after his death: and Ariadne Mellors was killed in a vindictive way; and worst of all was setting fire to The Gannet with that poor chap Bloxam on board.’

  ‘Good God! You think Eustace realised he was on board?’ said Dr Cammison.

  ‘He has admitted it. This utterly remorseless and vindictive behaviour seemed to me to square up with none of the people connected with the crime except Eustace. It was this that trapped him in the end—poetic justice all right; if he’d not made that last incursion into the brewery on Sunday night, to call our attention to Joe’s passport and emphasise Joe’s guilt still further, he’d probably be a free man today crossing the seas and looking forward to living on the property he had bequeathed to Mrs. Sorn.’

  Dr Cammison nodded his head slowly a number of times. ‘Ah, I see. Of course. I was wondering how—Yes, of course.’

  ‘Eustace’s confession clears up the minor points. I’ll just give you the gist of it. Extraordinary chap. The jury’ll have a job deciding whether it’s Broadmoor or the gallows.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Herbert crisply. ‘It’s an interesting comment on our social system that a fellow like Bunnett, whose whole life was a series of more or less legalised crimes, has to kill three people before we put him where he can’t do any more mischief.’

  ‘The confession, then. Eustace arrived at the brewery five minutes before midnight. Joe met him at the entrance, and spun a story about having received an anonymous letter re the night-watchman. Eustace says his suspicious were aroused at the very beginning by this; he asked Joe how he’d got there, where The Gannet was, and so on. Joe didn’t mind telling him all this, because dead men tell no tales and it was necessary to give Eustace a reasonable explanation of his movements if he was to get him into the brewery. Eustace pretended to accept all this; but he kept a wary eye on Joe from then on. The two entered the brewery and went along towards the bottom of the staircase that leads up to the office: Joe had suggested they should wait in his room till Lock should have finished his rounds. Suddenly Joe whispered, ‘Look out! He’s coming this way”, and made a dash into the refrigerator-room which was the nearest hiding-place. Eustace followed him, taken in for a moment by the trick: if he’d stopped to think, he’d have realised, of course—what Joe knew very well—that by this time Lock’s round had taken him a long way from that part of the premises.

  ‘As soon as they were both inside the refrigerator-room, Joe struck at Eustace, aiming to knock him out. But in the darkness he missed and hit his knuckles hard on that refrigerator by the door. Eustace’s suspicions became certainty. He struck back, knocking Joe down with a lucky blow. Then he saw red. This weakling of a brother, whom he had despised and downtrodden all his life, having the audacity to turn upon him! In a sheer frenzy of rage he flung himself at Joe and strangled him before he had time to recover from the effect of the blow.

  ‘So now Eustace was faced with the question that has worried every murderer from Cain downwards—what shall I do with the body? He didn’t dare risk walking straight out and saying to Lock, “My brother has just attacked me and I had to kill him in self-defence.” No doubt it would have been the best thing to do; and, backed by evidence they might have found on The Gannet, it might have convinced the police. On the other hand, a good case might have been made out for Eustace having lured Joe into the brewery: unconsciously, too, Eustace probably realised that nobody would take his word against that of the dead man—a dead man as popular as Joe was. Anyway, he hadn’t the nerve just then to tell the truth. His mind was habituated to dealing tortuously rather than straightforwardly with any given situation. What shall I do with the body? he asked himself. And then, so he says—a rather patronising interest in literature was one of his minor unpleasing traits, as you know—two lines of Hamlet came unbidden into his head.

  “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!”

  And at once he remembered what had become of Truffles. He would put the body into the pressure copper. But that was not enough. Next day the remains would be found: it would be recognised at once as murder: awkward questions would be asked: somebody might have seen Eustace stealing out of his house into the brewery. It was at this point that the brilliant idea struck him of changing identities with Joe. Joe had planned to murder him, had devised an alibi, had inadvertently left some clues, maybe, pointing to himself. Very well, then, Joe had done everything necessary to incriminate himself except commit the murder. The logical thing was to make it seem that Joe had committed the murder. A simple, coldly logical piece of reasoning. I must say I admire it very much. A pity Eustace spoilt it by over-complication later.

  ‘Very well, Eustace was to be murdered. A change of clothes, some gruesome business with the teeth, and the pressure-copper would do the rest. Joe was of the same physique and height as Eustace. But what would happen to Eustace? He must disappear, and leave not a wrack behind. He could not draw cheques in his own name. Banks will not accept the signature of a ghost. At once his thoughts turned to Mrs Sorn. In his young days, when she was a pretty and inexperienced girl, he had met her abroad and had an affair with her. A child, Gabriel, was born. But Eustace refused to marry her, then: he was ambitious, and she had no money. Deserted by him, disowned by her family, she settled down with her child in the south of France and scraped along by giving English lessons. In due course, Eustace built up the business here and became a rich man. Mrs Sorn, who had always given it out that she was a widow, heard of Eustace’s success and wrote suggesting that he should do something for their child. Whether it went as far as blackmail, I don’t know. Possibly not, but Eustace had become a respectable man: he could not afford to let it be known that he had an illegitimate son and had treated the mother so badly. So he
paid for Gabriel’s education, and later—perhaps under pressure—took him into the brewery.

  ‘When Mrs Sorn got into communication with him again he remembered her beauty and charm; he could afford to marry her now, and asked her; but she—very sensibly—wasn’t taking it. She did not conceal her contempt for him and his past conduct, and in a fit of pique he went off and married the present Emily Bunnett, who was a barmaid in one of his pubs and a fetching enough creature physically in those days. He soon got tired of Emily; but she managed the house all right and was an adequate punching-ball when Eustace was in one of his vindictive, bullying moods. But Mrs Sorn remained his thorn in the flesh. She was his one failure, the one person over whom he could not domineer. And I think it was a grudging admiration for her independence, plus maybe a certain remorse for his past treatment of her, that made him leave her the bulk of his property in his will.

  ‘Now, at any rate, with the body of his brother before him, he was thankful he had made that will; for it solved the whole financial problem. All he had to do was to get out of the country, turn up after a decent interval at Mrs Sorn’s villa, assume another identity and live on the inheritance he had left her. He could rely on her not daring to give him up to the police. Her family pride, of which Gabriel Sorn told me, her passionate love for Gabriel himself, would—Eustace judged—make it impossible for her to betray him. If Eustace was handed over to justice, everything would come out. Gabriel would be branded for life as the bastard son of a murderer. Eustace as a murderer, in fact, would have a far stronger hold over Mrs Sorn than Eustace, the respectable brewer, ever had.

  ‘So that was that. Eustace turned on his electric torch, changed clothes, ring, etc., with Joe’s body, carried it to the pressure-copper and tipped it in. The only things of his own he kept were twenty pounds in notes and the duplicate keys. We’ll see why he needed them in a minute. He then went off on Joe’s motor-bike; it was he whom Sorn heard riding away from the brewery at 12.40 a.m. It naturally took him longer than it would have taken Joe to reach the cove; he knew its position, but he didn’t know the quickest way to it; nor had he ridden a motor-bike since his youth. So he didn’t get to Basket Down till between one-fifteen and one-thirty. He left the bike at the top of the cliff, found the bridle path (he had Joe’s torch), found the dinghy, and rowed out to The Gannet. His idea was to pour petrol over the stern of the vessel and set fire to it, thus—as he hoped—giving the impression that the engine had caught fire accidentally. It was a bit weak, all that, but he hadn’t the time or the skill for an expert piece of incendiarism. Anyway, the main thing was to get rid of the yacht so that the police would be kept guessing for several days about Joe’s whereabouts. He found the spare petrol tins and doused the stern. Then he discovered that he had no matches. He went into the cabin to get some, and saw Bloxam lying there in his drugged sleep. It was a bit of a shock to Eustace. However, he was not to be diverted from his purpose by a trifle like that. He got a box of matches—incidentally laying hands on some soft food, Joe’s revolver, and all Joe’s money he could find—set fire to the boat, left her and Bloxam to burn, rowed ashore, hid the dinghy in the cave, and returned to Maiden Astbury. He concealed the motor-bike in Honeycombe Wood, hoping it would eventually be found and provide a clue against Joe. He had been wearing Joe’s gloves throughout, to guard against leaving fingerprints. He walked down Honeycombe Hill, let himself into Joe’s house with the keys he had taken from Joe’s body, and retired to the attic.

  ‘A rather ticklish problem now presented itself. He had to stay long enough to lay a number of false clues against Joe—to impress the police with the idea that Joe was alive and behaving in a suspicious way: he must not leave the country till the body in the copper was established as Eustace’s, for otherwise enquiries for Eustace might still be proceeding at the English ports; at the same time, every day he stayed increased the risk of his being more or less accidentally found. On Saturday night he crept out and burgled his own house. That’s what he’d kept his duplicate keys for. He stole the Roxby’s papers, but left the file to call attention to Joe’s motive for murder: he stole food, for his own benefit—there was none in Joe’s house, of course: he also got his own passport. Nobody knew of its existence, and therefore nobody missed it. I ought to have thought of it, though. Mrs Bunnett told us he used to go off on rather furtive holidays abroad. The middle-aged gentleman who disported himself in an improper manner on the Continent must not by any chance be identified with the upright brewer of Maiden Astbury. So Eustace had wangled a passport in another name—we found it on him—the name of James Henderson; and it was as James Henderson that he proposed to enter France and arrive at Mrs Sorn’s villa.

  ‘On Sunday he, very suitably, rested—except for a few little matters like smearing Joe’s brilliantine on the cushion in the attic. That night, judging that the police guard on the brewery would have been withdrawn by now, he intended to enter the brewery and leave a few more clues against Joe. His state of mind, as far as we can gather, was very interesting at this point. Brooding over the whole business in his solitary confinement, he’d begun to imagine himself as the hidden hand of justice. Joe, after all, was the real murderer—the murderer in intention: Eustace had killed him only in self-defence: Joe was the real eriminal, and it was Eustace’s duty to see that the police should be made to realise this. Eustace, of course, was always self-righteous enough for three, and all this was merely a rationalisation of his bitter hatred of Joe for having dared to turn upon him and put him in such a perilous position. But it was a powerful enough rationalisation, for all that. Joe must be pursued, even in death: his good name must be blackened; he must be exposed as the cowardly murderer that he had tried to be.

  ‘It was this that caused Eustace to over-reach himself. He should have made his getaway that night, instead of visiting the brewery; especially after he’d killed Miss Mellors. He had just climbed down from the attic when he heard somebody entering the house and coming upstairs. He’d not time to climb back into the attic; so he darted into the study and picked up the poker. Miss Mellors came in, and that sealed her fate, poor thing. Eustace got another of his fits of blind, panicky rage, and went on battering her long after it had ceased to be necessary. After a pause to recover himself, he went on to the brewery; there he was surprised by Lock before he could get into Joe’s room. He nipped downstairs, but found his escape cut off by the constable, whom he heard running in: so he slipped down the passage and hid in the store-room.

  ‘So there he was, properly trapped; all through his overzealousness for justice. Tollworthy missed him in his search: he didn’t examine each sack, and I don’t really wonder. So Eustace got a reprieve of a sort—if you call standing up inside a sack for the best part of twenty-four hours a reprieve. He could shift his position as much as he wanted, of course; the storeroom is not constantly visited during the day. Still, it must have been a painful enough business—and serve him damn well right. At about eight-thirty, when the coast was likely to be clear and he knew Lock would be elsewhere, he slipped out, went up to his private room and telephoned Sorn. He disguised his voice, of course, and accounted for the curious sounds he must have made by saying that he had to whisper. He told Sorn he was Joe Bunnett speaking from Mrs Bunnett’s house, played up to his sympathies, and begged him to make a diversion which should aid him to escape. It was a hell of a gamble, of course. But he banked on Sorn’s romantic agin-the-law nature, his hatred of Eustace and his affection for Joe. He safeguarded himself up to a point by pretending that Mrs Bunnett had given him sanctuary. If Sorn split to the police, they would search there first. However, Sorn ate it, all right. He agreed to come to me with a story—in which Eustace coached him over the phone—that the murderer was hiding in Honeycombe Wood and proposed to make a getaway with the aid of Sorn’s car, that night. This, of course, was to draw the police away from the brewery, and it would certainly have succeeded if I’d swallowed Sorn’s story.

  ‘What Eustace—in the chara
cter of Joe—told Sorn he was really going to do was to dash off in the opposite direction in Eustace’s car, make for Southampton, and get a boat abroad. To do this, he said, he must have his passport. He’d made one attempt to get it and failed. So he asked Sorn to get it for him and bring it to Eustace’s house. That was a very clever move on Eustace’s part. If Sorn succeeded in getting Joe’s passport, it would be because the coast was clear, and, therefore, Eustace would already be on his way to Southampton: he was intending to use his own car all right. If, on the other hand, the police were not tricked by Sorn’s story, they would catch him as he entered Joe’s room and that would provide a diversion during which Eustace might manage to escape.

  ‘Well, as you know, it was the latter that happened: or nearly. Sorn signally failed to suck me in with his story. We had every bolthole from the brewery blocked up; so, when Sorn crept in by the side door, took the master-key from the office, and let himself into Joe Bunnett’s room, he got the fright of his life. In fact, he acted up better than Eustace could have hoped; he lost his nerve and kicked up such a shindy that Eustace very nearly got away under cover of it. He as near as nothing got past the constable at the side door. Failing there, he shot back into the brewery and led us a dance that makes a good many gangster films look like cold mutton. But you know about that.’

  ‘It must have given you a turn when you heard the boiler safety valve begin to blow off. We could hear it from here,’ said Herbert.