“I don’t know how you can do it,” said the Master, staring at this assortment. “You know Donald?”
The Senior Tutor, a lanky, sardonic man, looking almost as young as some of the students, rose and shook hands.
“We’ve been talking about the Ahlbergs. Messy business. Josiah murdered and someone playing practical jokes on Chester,” said Zeke.
The Senior Tutor’s mouth twitched. “It certainly was a humdinger.”
“No ideas about the culprit on that?” asked Nigel.
“None. All we know is that one of the serving women noticed the placard on the door when she came in to ready things for breakfast. I’ve traced the issue of Playboy in which the luscious redhead exhibits herself and someone has looked through all the students’ rooms, but found no copy of the magazine with that photograph cut out: anyway, he’d have taken care to get rid of it.”
“What about the Faculty?” asked Nigel, eating vigorously.
“You mean as the joker? Oh, I think not, though a misguided alumnus presented us with a year’s subscription to the magazine, for the Senior Common Room. I didn’t care for the implication that we’re a sex-starved bunch of elderly voyeurs.”
“So you’re assuming the joker is a student.”
“Nigel!” protested the Master. “You can’t suppose for a moment it’s one of us?”
“I don’t see why not, if it was done out of malice rather than high spirits. Chester has suffered before from this sort of thing. You’d know, Donald, if anyone had it in for him—tutor or student?”
“In for Chester? The answer is negative. I made some inquiries—tactful, hopefully—among the students. It’s a mystery to them. Chester hasn’t flunked anyone lately. They think of him as a nice-enough guy, not very conversable, unobtrusive almost to the vanishing point. What’s most in his favor, from their angle, is that he takes them as seriously as they take themselves.”
“So you’re at a dead end?”
“We’re not a preparatory school,” said the Master. “We can’t apply sanctions—detention for every boy till the culprit confesses. You said just now ‘tutor or student.’ You would agree, would you, Donald, that Chester has no ill-wishers among the Faculty?”
“He certainly hasn’t, as far as I can judge. He’s too unnoticeable to make enemies.”
“Yet someone seems to be laying for him,” Nigel broke into his second egg. “What d’you call them when they’re lying flat on their faces? ‘Sunny side down’?”
The two eminent scholars were at a loss for a reply.
Nigel said, “I happened to see a copy of Playboy here, with an illustration cut out, and—”
“And it was that cunning redhead?” asked Donald.
“It was. I verified it later, from a copy on a newsstand.”
“But, Nigel, why didn’t you tell us? Whose room was it in?”
“Not a student’s. Sorry, Zeke, but I’ve got to play this my own way. These practical jokes may be linked up with the murder of Josiah.” Nigel suddenly stared into vacancy. “Oh, my God, the pistol!” he cried.
Master and Senior Tutor convulsively turned their heads, half expecting to see a masked gunman behind them.
“Must you?” exclaimed Donald. “You’ve given me a heart condition.”
“The mailboxes! Why didn’t it occur to me before?”
“Take it easy!” said Donald in a humoring tone. “What about the mailboxes?”
Nigel explained. “You know they’re six inches deep and a little over a foot long. The shape of a shoebox. Don’t you see?—you could get a pistol or a small revolver into one of them.”
“Sure you could,” said Donald. “And the next time the mailman opened it to put letters in, he’d find a gun there. Surprise, surprise!”
“You could put it in a long envelope.”
“And what about the actual owner of the mailbox?” asked Zeke. “Wouldn’t he find it there?”
“Aren’t there any unused ones in the House?” Nigel asked.
The Senior Tutor thought it over. “Let’s see. The guest rooms haven’t been occupied this fortnight. And there’s Rubin’s: hasn’t come back yet: illness.”
“Hm. Well, Donald, will you have those boxes opened now? If you find a gun, don’t touch it. Shut the box and tell me.”
The Senior Tutor loped off, looking skeptical.
“But, Nigel, you can’t open a mailbox unless you know the combination,” said Zeke.
“Oh, they’re not such a deadly secret. After all, someone knew the combination of Chester’s, to put that offensive object into it. Damn, I never thought of the obvious one.”
“Whose?”
“Josiah’s. I bet no one’s opened it since his death.”
“Then you lose your stake. Brady told the Superintendent to open it every day and hand over the mail to him.”
“Oh,” said Nigel, somewhat dashed. He was still more so when the Senior Tutor returned five minutes later, wearing an expression of skepticism justified.
“You’re right off target this time. They’re all empty.”
“Box, et praeterea nihil,” commented the Master. “Sorry you’ve been troubled, Senior Tutor.”
“You’re welcome, sir.” . . .
It was to turn out a disturbed day for Nigel. Hardly was he back in his room when Lieutenant Brady telephoned, with the news that he was coming to interview Mark and Charles in the afternoon, and that Mr. Ahlberg senior desired Mr. Strangeways to come and see him.
“What the devil does he want of me?”
“He desires to be informed about the progress of the case.”
“But I’m not handling the case. Why doesn’t he ask you?”
“He does. Three times a day at least,” Brady muttered.
“Now, look here, Brady—”
“I just thought, seeing as you extracted some useful evidence from Mark, you might find the old—Mr. Ahlberg senior’s angle on the crime valuable.”
“So you’ve wished him on to me. I don’t believe he ever asked to see me.”
“You’ll ring him and make an appointment, then? He’s stopping at the Brabourne Hotel.”
“He can ring me,” snorted Nigel, “and make his own bloody appointment—to see me here.”
There was a discreet cough over the telephone. “He’s a man who expects people to come to him, not vice versa. And he’s a fairly impatient type.”
“Well, he can damn well wait.” Nigel banged down the receiver.
The next moment, a memory broke surface. “We can wait.” The legend on the wall of the funeral parlor. Chester swerving his car dangerously when Nigel read it out loud that afternoon on the way to Amherst.
“We can wait.” Had that cautious, if unlucky, driver shied to hear his own secret thought repeated by Nigel? “Can wait,” till father dies. His dough, plus Josiah’s share (if Josiah predeceased him) coming to us. Worth waiting for. The “we” would be Mark and himself. Supposing the pair were in collusion to kill Josiah?
What would follow from this hypothesis? Nigel ruminated. Chester flies off to England, leaving Mark to do the deed; thus any suspicion they had planned it together would be diminished. Afterward each of them had behaved quite naturally, each dismissing the idea that his brother could be a murderer. Of the two, Mark had seemed more distressed by Josiah’s death—as of course he would if his distress and revulsion were the aftermath of a murder committed by his own hand.
But these two men, though very different in personality, share a common trait of the academic mind: they tend toward a certain unworldliness or lack of “realism”; they have to convert human problems into abstractions before they can deal with them. Now, supposing two such characters wished to block any idea that there could be criminal collusion between them, might they not decide to do so—theoretical as ever, but more subtle than the common run of criminals—not by quarreling violently in public, but by drawing a more sophisticated red herring across the trail?
Who could
suspect a couple of conspiracy to murder, one of whom was making the other a victim of secret persecution, playing juvenile practical jokes on him?
Mark would certainly know the combination of Chester’s mailbox. It was Mark who had possessed the mutilated copy of Playboy, and left it lying on his table for me to discover. The nature of these jokes points to Mark, with his streak of immaturity and puckishness, as the one who thought them up. Maybe he had planted the horde of cockroaches in Chester’s room, too. When Chester had said, “I don’t have persecution mania, I’m persecuted,” he was deliberately sowing a seed in my mind.
On this theory, the practical jokes are a last line of defense: Mark would only fall back on it if he felt himself hard pressed by the police investigation. This had happened as a result of the student’s seeing him near Josiah’s room on the night of the murder. But why had he returned there at 10:15, only eight minutes after shooting his brother? Shelve that one for the present. If Mark is in danger, he allows me to discover him as the author of the jokes, trusting me as a friend to hush it up. So I must play along with him.
It was Mark’s friendliness (which had survived even the conversation of last night) that stuck in Nigel’s throat. He genuinely liked Mark—that was the trouble—and it was little use reminding himself that murderers sometimes are likable men. Nigel had nothing against Chester either, for the matter of that; except that he seemed a stuffed man, a bit of a bore, a bit unreal—and vaguely pathetic in his unreality.
The telephone bell wrenched Nigel away from his thoughts. It was Sukie, sounding breathless and rather tearful.
“They’ve been at me again. I must see you, Nigel. Can I come and see you now?”
Ten minutes later he heard feet running up the stairs. He opened the door. Sukie ran into his arms, and buried her head on his shoulder, sobbing.
“I’m so miserable! I hate it all. I can’t go on any longer.”
Nigel put her in an armchair and sat on the arm of it, holding her hand, till she began to recover.
“You’ve had Brady round?” he asked.
“Not him. Two men from his homicide squad. They asked me questions for an hour, trying to trap me into admitting I’d hidden John. They even said he’d confessed that I knew where he was hiding.”
“But you didn’t believe them?”
“I certainly did not. John would never betray me,” she said proudly, tears still shining in her eyes.
“So that’s all right.”
“But it isn’t,” cried Sukie. “They’ll accuse him of the murder. I know they will. Oh, why did he ever go to see Josiah? To think I arranged it for him!”
“They won’t—not without a good deal more evidence.”
“They will though. That god-awful old brute is yelling them on—you know, Mark’s father. Mark told me so himself yesterday.”
“What’s he got against John?”
“It’s all of us he hates. Me as much as anyone. He’s a John Birch type, a total reactionary. He’d think it a fate worse than death for Mark to—to be married to me.”
“But surely that wouldn’t influence Mark?”
“Oh, I guess not. I hope not. But he’s so weak in some ways.” Sukie put down Nigel’s hand, decisively as if it was a book and she had finished a chapter. She went to stand by the mantelshelf, her eyes glittering at him feverishly. “You must find the real murderer.”
Nigel gazed back at her in silence. At last he said, “Suppose the real murderer turned out to be Mark?”
The lovely gray eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. “Mark!” she said then. “But that’s absurd.”
“He’s one of the suspects. And he knows it. Has he never talked to you about it?”
“No. No, he hasn’t. I don’t think he’d want to—to— And he is very, very reticent about things. I wish I knew him better,” she added quickly.
“If you had to choose between him and John?”
Sukie looked at him for a moment—then smiled uneasily. “What a thing to ask. That’s like one of those cute questions in the Practical Ethics course—‘If your wife and your only child were drowning, which would you rescue?’”
“All right. Well, forget it,” said Nigel briskly. “Now tell me about you and Charles Reilly.”
Her eyes dilated; then she drooped her long lashes and began to blush. “Who—who told you about that?”
“Mark. And Charles.”
“Well, honestly!—”
“Are you in an honest frame of mind today, Sukie?” asked Nigel, very seriously.
“You know I am.”
“Then tell me the truth about this: after Josiah found you in Charles’s clutches, did he at any time refer to it again?”
“No. I don’t believe I ever met him again, even.”
“I knew Charles apologized, and you made it up with him. Has he ever suggested to you since that Josiah might be going to make trouble for him—or for you—over the episode?”
“Of course not. Never. What makes you ask? Oh, my gracious, do the police suspect Charles too?” But she said it with no noticeable concern and wandered around the room, then stopped and pointed to a cardboard basset hound on the mantelshelf, with a plastic tear fastened to its eye and the legend I MISS YOU inscribed beneath. “My, will you look at this cunning dog! How darling. And someone misses you. Does he belong to you at home?”
“Yes. Clare sent it me. In a satirical moment.”
“Oh. Doesn’t she love you then?”
“Indeed she does.”
The girl considered him. “I can see why she would. I guess I do too. I seem to go for father figures.”
“Well, that’s fine, Sukie dear. But beware of ill-digested psychological terms.”
“Aren’t you a pedantic old man,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“I am not,” replied Nigel, faintly nettled.
She walked straight up to him, fitted her body against his, and gave him a long, long kiss. She was breathing fast.
“Do you usually kiss your father figures like this?” asked Nigel, when he had gently pushed her away to arm’s length.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Well, I must be on my way. ’Bye.” Sukie turned at the door, smiled at him—brilliantly, a little complacently—and was gone.
More complications, grumbled Nigel to himself. Unpredictable girl. What’s she cooking up now? Have to read women between the lines—the printed text is seldom reliable. I wouldn’t put it past her to have set fire to old Charles quite deliberately. As an experiment. The young like playing with fire. Curiosity—all right so long as they don’t elevate it into highfaluting, doctrinaire nonsense about the Right to Experience. I wonder how much Sukie’s had.
The telephone rang again. It was the Master to say that Mr. Ahlberg senior would be lunching with him, and hoped it would be convenient if he called upon Mr. Strangeways at 2:15.
“Do you quote or is that a tactful paraphrase? All right, we’ll give him an audience.”
“And, Nigel, if you don’t have any kid gloves, go out and buy a pair. Remember, he’s the-founder-of-this-House.”
Sharp at 2:15, the great man arrived with the Master, who made the introductions in his most poker-faced manner and withdrew. Nigel muttered some conventional condolence, but Mr. Ahlberg cut it short with a brusque movement of his hand.
“Now, tell me, what is your opinion, as an outsider, of the discipline in this House?” asked Mr. Ahlberg in a flat midwestern accent, poking his head at Nigel like a tortoise.
“The tone seems excellent. As an outsider, I’m really not competent to speak about the discipline. And the Master is an old friend of mine.”
“You academics always stick together,” Ahlberg said testily. “Like a swarm of bees. Brady tells me you’ve had some experience in these matters.”
“These— Oh, you mean detective work? Yes, that is so.”
“I don’t have much confidence in him. If I were satisfied with your credentials, I’d be prepared to hire you, at doub
le your usual fees, to prove the case against my son’s murderer.”
“But, Mr. Ahlberg, I’m not for sale,” said Nigel mildly.
“Oh, rot! That’s for the birds.”
“Every man has his price?” Nigel asked softly.
“Show me one man who hasn’t.”
Nigel surveyed his would-be employer. Mr. Ahlberg had Chester’s small body: the features of his wrinkled, tortoise face carried a distant echo of Josiah’s. He wore a black suit, a black tie, an old-fashioned high starched collar.
“I gather what you’re asking me to do is to prove a case against John Tate.”
“Who else?” answered the old man with appalling frankness. “That young man is trash, just like the rest of his family. I had inquiries made when Chester’d got himself involved with the sister. Trash, I tell you. And the young ruffian had the impudence to accuse Josiah of—” The bloodless old lips munched into incoherence.
“But, Mr. Ahlberg, nothing can be proved against John Tate until the police find the gun or else break him down. I could do nothing about that. And I’m not convinced he is guilty.”
“Huh? Ah, those Tates are paying you, are they?”
“You seem to have money on the brain. You accuse me first of being an academic, secondly of being venal. Neither charge is true.” Nigel’s contemptuous tone penetrated the tortoise carapace. Mr. Ahlberg glanced at him with something like respect.
“I see, I see. Well, then forget it. I like a fellow who stands up to me. I guess I’ve too many yes men in my employ. However, my offer holds good.”
“To find the murderer, or to prove murder against John Tate?”
“What’s the difference?” Ahlberg asked.
“Tate is not the only suspect.”
“Fiddle!”
“There’s quite a strong case against Mark, for instance.”
“My son? This is outrageous! Brady never told me—”
“I don’t imagine he’d have the nerve.”
“Then you’d better tell me.”
Nigel gave a carefully edited version of his theories about Mark. The old man questioned him keenly at certain points; but his initial incredulity turned to uneasiness, and he said at last, “I’ve not been too happy about Mark. I’ll admit it. I tried to bring him up, and Chester too, with a respect for discipline, for duty. But he was always going his own way—saying yes, but meaning no. People said I was too severe with them both; but it was only for their own good. I feared at one time Mark was becoming a playboy, but fortunately he seemed to have settled down here. Josiah was keeping an eye on him—and Chester of course—in loco parentis.”
The Morning After Death Page 10