The Morning After Death

by Nicholas Blake

  “I’ve briefed the senior tutor to give them a statement. If they succeed in getting past Lieutenant Brady. He’s a formidable character, I fancy. I do wish Nigel would show some interest,” Zeke added pettishly. “He said he was going off to bed.”

  “And that’s the best thing you can do, too.”

  4 When Did You Last See Your Brother?

  THAT SAME NIGHT, after dining alone in a restaurant, Nigel found a message from Mark slipped under his door. He went across to Mark’s rooms, where Charles Reilly was already established, with a glass of whisky at his side.

  “Come on in now,” Charles welcomed him. “We badly need you for the post-mortem.”

  “Have you heard the results?”

  There was an unhealthy pallor over Mark’s sallow skin. “They can’t pin it down precisely. But they seem to think my brother died on Thursday night or Friday morning.”

  “Which means Thursday night,” said Nigel.

  “At any rate, when Lieutenant Brady had us all assembled in the hall after lunch, no one had seen Josh on the Friday morning. Bourbon all right for you, Nigel?”

  “Thank you. . . . Anything else come of the meeting?” Nigel asked idly.

  “You’re damn right it did. Brady asked who’d been near Josh’s entry that night, aside from the fellows who room there—he’d already interviewed them, it seems.”

  “Yes?”

  Mark took a gulp of his drink. “One fellow—young Bronsky—said he’d seen me coming away from there about 10:15.”

  “And had he?”

  “He had. So I’m in the doghouse.”

  Reilly’s brilliant blue eyes were fastened on Mark. Nigel said nothing.

  “Well, aren’t you going to ask me about it?” Mark irritably broke out.

  “It’s none of my business. If you want to talk about it, though—”

  “I thought you were interested in hunting criminals.” Mark’s tone was at once pettish and provocative.

  “Why, you’re not a criminal, are you, Mark?” said Nigel mildly.

  “The way they act—one of Brady’s gorillas spent an hour this afternoon examining my clothes. For bloodstains.”

  Nigel was silent.

  “He didn’t find any. And it can be proved I sent nothing to the laundry today.” There was a note of near-hysteria in Mark’s voice, though.

  “Go on, boy, tell him, tell him,” said Charles. “He’s one of these dumb Englishmen.”

  “I had a note from Josh—typewritten, with his initials scrawled on it—asking me to come and see him in his office at 10:15 on Thursday night. I went there, knocked on his door, no reply. So I came away. Period. Just period.”

  “You’d destroyed the message, of course?” asked Nigel automatically.

  “Sure I destroyed it. I don’t keep odd bits of paper lying around. Why should I?”

  “What’s your worry then?”

  Mark’s mouth twitched. “When Brady interviewed me this morning, I didn’t tell him about this. Why should I? I hadn’t heard or seen anything suspicious when I went along to the office.”

  Charles Reilly pushed out his lips in a considering way. “You made a mistake there.”

  “I know I did. But—”

  “Has it been established,” Nigel broke in, “when the Food Man came to your brother’s entrance?”

  “About 10:08.”

  “So you missed him by seven minutes. The murderer had either got rid of the body before you turned up, or he was still in the office when you knocked. Why didn’t you let yourself in?”

  Mark stared at Nigel. “How in hell would I do that without a key?”

  Nigel had not failed to notice the half-movement toward his pocket which Mark had made yesterday morning outside Josiah Ahlberg’s door. But he answered:

  “I mean, tried the doorknob. Your brother was expecting you, so you thought. Might he have left the door unlocked?”

  “You didn’t know my brother,” said Mark bitterly. “He guarded his privacy from us all.”

  “He was a bloody man, right enough, God rest his soul,” said Charles easily.

  “Now, I don’t like to hear you say that. You needn’t say that!”

  “It can’t hurt him, Mark. It can only hurt me, and I’m as hard as a bag of horseshoes.”

  “I rather liked him,” said Nigel. “Why do you say he was a bloody man, Charles?”

  “Oh, Mark has told me about the way he treated him and Chester when they were boys. I’ve heard all about it. Let alone the way he went talebearing to their father when—”

  “Oh, I’ve forgotten all that,” Mark said.

  “You have not, Mark. You may have forgiven it—that’s another matter. It’s your duty to forgive, and you can’t forgive what you’ve forgotten.”

  “Oh, to hell with your sanctimonious Jesuitical logic chopping!” exclaimed Mark without anger. It relieved the thunderous atmosphere which had been building up in the room. Charles Reilly grinned amiably at the two of them.

  “Sorry. Sorry. The trouble with Americans,” he propounded, “is that there’s no give in them. They’re so formal and inhibited that, when something happens to knock them off their beautifully laid tracks, they’re helpless as overturned beetles. The English, on the other hand, don’t run on rails at all. They’re romantics, who conceal their romanticism by behaving half the time like buffoons—will you listen to me, Nigel? You sit there as deaf as a haddock—”

  “I was admiring your Celtic flair for mixed metaphors.”

  “The mixed metaphor, like the so-called Irish bull, is a sign of exceptional imaginative dash. But leave that be. What are we going to do about young Mark here?”

  “Do?”

  “Him with his brother dead and he’s under suspicion from the police as well.”

  “They don’t often charge innocent people,” Nigel said.

  “May God help you!”

  “They have no grounds for suspicion except a perfectly trivial coincidence—” Nigel said patiently.

  “May I be allowed to horn in on this discussion?” said Mark.

  “By all means.” Charles waxed expansively. “What Mark is going to tell us is that he has a motive for the crime. With his brother out of the way, he stands to gain that much more when his father dies. I mean, that is how the Homicide Department will see it.”

  “So?” Nigel asked.

  “Well, for the Lord’s sake, Nigel, don’t sit there like a constipated owl on a rooftree swigging the fellow’s liquor. Which reminds me, my glass appears to be empty. . . . Thank you, Mark. What was I saying?”

  “That Mark has a motive. So has Chester.”

  “But I wasn’t in Britain when it happened,” Mark protested.

  Nigel barely heard him. “So have plenty of others, for all I know. Students, the Senior Tutor, the Master, Charles here, any instructor in the House—or outside it—you all seem to be able to wander in and out quite freely any time of day or night. We can do nothing till we know what concrete evidence the police turn up. Motives are not concrete evidence.”

  “But motive,” said Charles, “must modify their attitude toward the concrete evidence. And forewarned is forearmed.”

  “I don’t consider that last a very meaningful proposition,” said Mark.

  “Listen, my boy. Just you listen. Knowing they know you have a motive, we must anticipate any attempt by Brady to tailor the evidence to fit it.”

  “You mean we’ve got to cook the evidence?” asked Mark. “Oh, really? What evidence, anyway?”

  Oh God, thought Nigel, here we go. Academic circles are too damned articulate, too bright altogether. These sorts of people would talk their way into the dock if they didn’t get there by conventional means. What on earth is Brady going to make of them, all talking away like books and acting like mental defectives? And why is Charles Reilly so keen to get himself embroiled—loyalty to Mark? mischievous curiosity? just a simple desire to be in the middle of any conflict that arises?


  Light feet were running up the stairs. Mark opened the door as a fist beat on it. Sukie ran straight in—into his arms, and out of them, almost pushing him away.

  “They’re after him!” she panted.

  “Take it easy, honey. After whom?”

  “John, of course.” She burst out crying, and fell into a chair. Charles eyed her attentively.

  “You’d better have a drink, my dear.” He poured out a neat Scotch. She took a gulp, then slammed the tumbler down on the table beside her.

  “He was at me for hours—a horrible lieutenant—calls himself Brady. When did I last see John? When did I hear from him last? What address did I have for him?” Her eyes blazed behind the tears. “Who told him about John and your brother? Who? I’ll kill the rat who told him!” she exclaimed with shrill violence. “They’ve had it in for my family ever since dad had that trouble with that McCarthy swine.”

  “Now look, Sukie, it was bound to come out—the row between your brother and Josh—”

  “You mean you told Brady?” Her voice was like splinters of ice.

  “I certainly did not.” Mark’s pale face was flushed. “I’ve been too busy defending my own reputation.”

  “And what did you answer?” Nigel spoke quietly, and it seemed to calm the overwrought girl.

  “Answer?”

  “To Brady’s questions.”

  Nigel seemed to intercept a glance from her to Mark.

  “I haven’t seen John for weeks. He’s not allowed back at Cabot. And he doesn’t write much. When I last heard, he was in Pittsburgh, doing a lousy factory job.”

  “Well, now, isn’t that a shame—John not even writing when you and he were so close,” said Charles Reilly.

  Sukie went on: “And d’you know, Brady stole his photograph off my desk?”

  “Stole?” Nigel asked.

  “Took it, abstracted it, walked off with it.”

  “Surely he gave you a receipt?”

  “What if he did? I told him not to take the photograph. I dare say the Nazis gave receipts for all the paintings they looted out of—”

  “Whisht, my dear.” Charles’s voice was double Irish cream. “We have a rescuer in our midst. This is Nigel Strangeways, the great criminologist, who is going to melt all our troubles away. Be easy.”

  “I’m damn well not going to,” Nigel said.

  “Ah, you couldn’t refuse a gerrul with eyes like Connemara—”

  “Don’t come the Paddy-Irish over me, Charles.”

  “But you will? Say you will!” Sukie seized Nigel’s forearm with a febrile grasp.

  “But look here—” Nigel protested.

  “Please,” said Mark.

  “Will you listen, you children! I know nothing about American police methods, I have no standing with the police here: if I poked my nose in—”

  “Which,” interrupted Charles, “you’re dying to do.”

  “Shut up!—They’d bloody it for me, and quite right too. Furthermore, I hardly know any of you—”

  “Let me introduce us—” Charles began.

  “I’ve not been here a fortnight yet. And I don’t yearn to hear all your squalid secrets. However—”

  “Oh, bless you, Nigel,” cried the girl.

  “I’m always willing to talk to Sukie—say tomorrow at midday. If she will remember that I take nobody’s part yet in this. And if she decides to tell the truth. Thanks for the drinks, Mark. I’m for bed. Good night.” . . .

  Nigel put down his book and went to the window. He gazed out at the trees in the courtyard, down to the grass beneath them where gray squirrels darted about erratically and pigeons pecked. A blue jay stalked among them, giving vent to an occasional raucous squawk as unpleasing as its color was delightful. Overhead, the sky maintained its uniform blue, uninterrupted by a single cloud, and a shuttle plane to New York slid past, filling up the sky like a bowl with sound.

  Policemen stood talking together at each of the two gates that came within Nigel’s vision. Students, released to their normal tasks, brushed past them, carrying their books in canvas bags. They look so young, thought Nigel: can I ever have been as young as that? There is a firm intention in their walk—they neither saunter nor run, as we used to do, enjoying our brief spell of freedom between school and job: they are already seriously committed to the future. Will that girl turn up?—I doubt it. Do I want her to?—who knows?

  But at five past twelve he saw Sukie coming across from the direction of Mark’s rooms, walking with the long, strangely sexless stride of the American girl, scattering before her the pigeons and squirrels, ignoring the beautiful jay.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, unslinging the bag from her shoulder, “my supervisor kept me.”

  Well, Mark Ahlberg is her adviser on the Emily Dickinson thesis.

  Sukie arranged herself on the sofa—supple, small body, gray eyes, long black lashes. She looked round her:

  “My, what an austere apartment! You should borrow a picture or two from Chester.”

  “I’m only here for a few weeks. It’s hardly worth dressing the place up.”

  “Do you have a nice home in London?”

  “Yes. Early Georgian. In Greenwich, near the Thames.”

  “But you don’t really mind where you live, do you? You live in your mind, I guess.”

  “Only some of the time,” he answered, smiling. “Like you.”

  “Oh.” She frowned a little, her fingers lacing and unlacing in her lap. “I’m nervous of you.”

  “Well, let’s make conversation a bit longer, then.”

  There was a pause, in which she seemed to be trying to screw up her courage.

  “Chester’s back,” she said finally.

  “Oh, yes?”

  “He flew in early this morning. Now he’s sleeping it off, Mark says. Chester can’t sleep on an airplane.”

  Another silence. “Would you care for some bitter lemon?” he asked. “It’s rather good at this time of day, with a drop of gin.”

  Sukie nodded. While he poured out the drinks, his back turned, she asked abruptly, “Why did you say ‘if she decides to tell the truth’?”

  “Because you hadn’t told it, Sukie.” He kept his back turned, to embarrass her less.

  “About what?” she temporized.

  “Your brother.”

  “Oh, what do you mean?”

  Nigel gave her a glass. “In the restaurant that Sunday, Chester said to you, ‘Tell him to go and talk to Josiah next Thursday.’ You were talking about John, weren’t you?”

  “My, do you have total recall?” she asked in a brittle voice.

  “But you told Brady you hadn’t seen him for weeks.”

  “That slob! But I hadn’t either.”

  “Oh, Sukie, Sukie!”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “You mean, he came here last Thursday without seeing you?”

  The long black lashes came down over her eyes. “I don’t know whether I can trust you,” she broke out at last, in an agonized voice.

  “But you have to, don’t you?” he replied gently.

  Sukie looked up again. “I love John better than anyone else on earth. If I’d betrayed him, even without meaning to, I’d kill myself.”

  “You know, at home I’ve got myself involved in this sort of thing occasionally. And I have found that I have never kept anything back from the police—not for long, anyway. But I’ve often had to fight them to accept my interpretation of the facts.”

  She gave him a long, considering look, then jumped up and stood beside her chair with hands clasped, like a schoolchild confessing to a teacher. “I wrote to John, as Chester advised me, telling him to come and see Josiah Ahlberg that night. Chester said he would talk to his brother, and persuade him to give John an interview. I didn’t know whether John came or not. Till yesterday morning. As soon as I’d heard about Josiah, I put through a call to Pittsburgh and told him what had happened.”

  “What did he say?”

 
; “He said he’d been to Mr. Ahlberg’s office, but it was locked. A journey wasted. So he started hitchhiking back.”

  “What time was this interview supposed to take place?”

  “Oh, I forgot. Chester told me later he’d fixed it with Josiah for 10:30 that night. So I rang John to tell him. . . . Oh, I’m so afraid! What am I to do, Nigel?”

  “Ten-thirty? That was a curious time, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, well, Mr. Ahlberg worked till all hours, Mark told me once.”

  “And John is now on the run, I suppose. You know, Sukie—we’ll assume him innocent—he ought to come straight back here and give the police his evidence. They’re bound to catch up with him sooner or later; he’ll simply hurt himself by running away.”

  “But I don’t know where he is now,” she wailed. “And he’s got hardly any money.”

  Nigel sighed heavily. “Did John ever talk to you about this plagiarism affair?”

  “Of course.” Her eyes flashed. “Ahlberg stole his ideas, and then had John sacked for putting them into his thesis. John told me once—” She broke off, her hand going to her mouth in the immemorial woman’s gesture.

  “Yes?”

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  “Don’t keep things back, Sukie.”

  “Oh, very well,” she said meekly. “He told me he’d like to break into Ahlberg’s office and take away that snake’s own article. But of course he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to come inside Cabot for a year.”

  “But he came last Thursday?”

  “That was because Mr. Ahlberg had permitted one visit.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you—Chester said his brother had given the okay. I figured Josiah would have obtained the Master’s consent, if that’s needed.”

  “Well, look, if John does get in touch with you, tell him to come back here, pronto. If he’s innocent—”

  “He is!”

  “—he’s just snarling up things for everyone.”

  “But you’ll help me, Nigel?” Her gray eyes dwelt on his with imploring intensity.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Oh, bless you!” The young woman seized his hand, kissed the back of it, and scooping up her bag, hurried from the room. . . .

  And that is as may be, thought Nigel. Most women are good actresses in an emergency: some don’t even need one. Sukie? Time will tell. She loves John “better than anyone else on earth.” Better than Mark? I suspect so.