The Morning After Death

by Nicholas Blake

  “No, dear Sukie. No. I assure you of that.”

  She flung back the sheet, and her hand strolled about on him. “I was wondering something, too.”

  “Yes?”

  “Whether you’d care to have sex with me again.”

  “Now you’ve really asked for trouble!” exclaimed Nigel.

  “Give it to me then.” . . .

  The lamps had lit up on the paths across the Common when Nigel walked back, in a daze but without regrets. Surely there were none for Sukie either. Kissing him good-by, she had been lustrous and innocent as a Christmas tree; had asked him if he would stay with her for his last days in Cabot. “I’d love to,” he had said. “But we might become an addiction for each other. And that would never do.” And she accepted it, shining at him. “It’s all right, Nigel my darling. It’s fine. I shall be all right now. Don’t worry about me. I feel like—like Danaë. After the shower of gold. Oh, that’s not fawning, is it?”

  He’d touched her cheek gently and they’d said they would never forget each other; and they never would.

  Nigel continued to walk slowly until he got to K entrance in Emerson House, where he studied the name board, saw Mr. S. Andreyevsky, and climbed one flight of stairs. He had arranged the interview by telephone from Sukie’s flat, much to her interest. Andreyevsky opened the door and welcomed him hospitably: a solemn, unsmiling young man, he was too polite to ask at once the reason for Nigel’s visit. First he inquired after “the health of my esteemed colleague, Chester Ahlberg,” was assiduous with drinks and cigarettes, spoke about Cabot’s chances in the Yale game on Saturday and his admiration for London.

  “Do you come over to London often, Mr. Andreyevsky?” Nigel asked.

  “Alas, not as often as I could wish. I haven’t visited Britain but the once a year ago—nearly fifteen months in fact. But it is all very vivid to me, and it will be so.”

  Nigel found it curiously difficult to get past the barrage of words and approach his objective. Somehow he felt that to make his bizarre request would be like asking a floorwalker at Fortnum & Mason’s what color were his underpants.

  “You know the Ahlbergs pretty well, I suppose,” he temporized.

  “Well, you can say that in respect of Chester certainly. We went through college together, and found each other highly congenial. Of course we had met first at our preparatory school, St. Paul’s, but I actually didn’t see so much of him there. He was in a different set. Though I do remember we were assigned the parts of Sebastian and Viola in one end-of-term production—in the comedy Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare.”

  “And Mark Ahlberg?” Nigel cut down on the reminiscences.

  “Well, I got acquainted with him through his brother, after I obtained my tutorship at Cabot.”

  “A nice fellow.”

  Andreyevsky considered the proposition. “Well, yes. That is to say, he’s a very popular tutor, from what I hear.”

  “But you have reservations?”

  “Well, frankly, in conversation with him, I’ve found his stance toward my own area of study a little—how shall I phrase it?—a little frivolous. With a father like his, I’d have figured he’d appreciate more keenly than he does the paramount importance today of all that comes within the ambit of commercial and industrial relations.”

  “All this fiddle with literature?” Nigel asked.

  “I don’t mean that, exactly. I have great respect for the achievement of those who are eminent in the cultural field. It’s in the context of broader contemporary issues that I find Mark’s viewpoint somewhat circumscribed.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Apart from which,” Andreyevsky ground on, “he’s not overly reliable. Chester has found him somewhat of an embarrassment on occasion. It’s a certain lack of maturity, of a responsible attitude.”

  “Not a good citizen?”

  “I think you’ve put your finger on it, Mr. Strangeways.” The host nodded with portentous approval. “But I hope these most unfortunate occurrences in Hawthorne House may compel Mark to, er—”

  “To grow up?”

  “Precisely.”

  Nigel took a swig of his bourbon. “You may have heard,” he said, adapting his pace to Andreyevsky’s funereal one, “that I am acting for Master Edwardes in an advisory capacity over these unfortunate occurrences.”

  “So Chester has told me.”

  “It’s on this subject that I wished to see you tonight.”

  “Ah, yes. I see. But I don’t exactly see how I could be of any assistance to you there.”

  Nigel could not keep up the slow march any longer. “What I want is to see your passport.”

  “My passport?” Andreyevsky took off his horn-rimmed spectacles, as if to get a better view of this extraordinary request.

  “Yes. If you’ll be so kind.”

  “But that’s—I mean—how can it possibly—?” The tutor’s measured periods had broken up like a log jam.

  “I am not at liberty to divulge the reason for this request,” said Nigel impressively. “I can only assure you of its relevance.”

  “Why, certainly, then. I’ve certainly no objection.” He began to root around in the paper-stuffed drawers of a bureau. “I guess it’s somewhere here. As I mentioned, I haven’t had occasion to use it for quite a time. Ah, here we are.”

  He handed the passport to Nigel. Who held his breath as he flipped over the pages. “Look there,” he said.

  “But I said I’d visited Britain.”

  “Yes. But it has two date stamps.”

  “But that’s impossible. I’ve traveled there only once.” Andreyevsky put on his spectacles again, to scrutinize the document more closely—or prevent his eyes falling out with astonishment. “Yes. Why, that’s only three weeks ago. I don’t understand it. I really don’t.”

  “Nobody, to your knowledge, has borrowed it?”

  “Borrowed it! Certainly not. You know passports aren’t transferable.”

  “Have you missed it from the drawer any time during the last month?”

  “No. Mind you, it’s a drawer I use only for documents I seldom need to refer to. Such as my will, for example. And certain testimonials. Birth certificate. That sort of thing.”

  “I suppose some of your friends would know you kept the passport there?”

  “My friends? Possibly. I couldn’t say for certain, but it could be possible.”

  “Do you remember any of them asking to see it?”

  The tutor thought hard. “I can’t say that I do. There have been—no, no, I’m wrong. I remember Chester and Mark and some other people were here one night—in April, I seem to remember. And we got talking about passport photographs. Mark asked me to show him mine. They’re always so startling. They razzed me about it a bit. But that was all.”

  “Was Chester interested?”

  “Not particularly, I’d say.”

  Nigel rose. “Well, I’m grateful to you. Got a key to the drawer?”

  “Why, yes, I do. But I don’t always remember to lock it.”

  “Well, put the passport back, and lock the drawer, and don’t let go of the key.”

  Andreyevsky did as he was asked. “I would be interested to know why you’re interested. Would you want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “You’ve got state exhibit Number One in there.”

  “Is that so?” His face was lively with interest, and his language had come down off its perch now that his curiosity had been aroused. “What you’re saying—somebody took my passport and used it? But how would that be possible? It would have to be someone who looked just like me—or faked the photo to look like him.”

  “Or faked himself to look like the photo. And not much faking needed.”

  “But what in the world did he want to do that for? Didn’t he possess a passport of his own? He must have been in a hell of a hurry to get somewhere if he couldn’t apply for one.”

  “He was certainly in a hurry.”

  “Bu
t who?” asked Andreyevsky.

  “Can’t say now. I will know soon enough. Have to go.” And Nigel left.

  Back at Hawthorne, Nigel phoned Lieutenant Brady, only to be told he was out of town for the night—maybe two.

  “Did he leave any message for me?”

  “Yep. Said to tell you he’s following a new lead; figured it’d give him a piece of clinching evidence to complete the case.”

  “Case against whom?”

  “Mark Ahlberg. Who else?”

  Nigel put paper and carbon into his typewriter, removed his jacket, and set to work. He had not finished the first page before his head nodded and he fell asleep. He was wakened by loud knocking on the door. Charles Reilly stood outside. Brushing past Nigel, he gave the typewriter a casual glance and plunked himseld down in the best armchair.

  “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  “I’m composing a letter,” Nigel explained.

  “Where’ve you been all day? I tried to get you.”

  “I’ve been bored to extinction, and run to earth a great treasure in the process. Before that, I was seduced.”

  “D’you tell me so? Well, let’s hope it’ll make a better man of you. Y’know, I’ve sometimes wondered if you were human at all.”

  “What do you want, Charles?”

  “A drink, for one thing.”

  “You can have one drink, and then I’m going to bed.”

  “Listen to him! Isn’t bed where you’ve just come from? Sure, you’ve neither decency nor stamina. Tell me, lad, who’s the enchantress?”

  “Mind your own business, you prurient old pest! Here you are. Drink it up. Now, what is it you want?”

  “Just to tell you I rang poor old Chester this afternoon and had a pleasant gab. He’s much better, I’m glad to say. They’ll discharge him in a day or two. Fit as anything. Why, when I told him I was taking you to the Yale game on Saturday, blessed if he didn’t say he’d be there. Sure, him and football seem a queer combination, but he’s got a ticket, he says, though it’s nowhere near where we’re sitting.”

  “And you woke me up to tell me this?” asked Nigel, outraged.

  “Ah, well, will you wait now? I’m coming to the gravamen of my subject. Chester said also that he wanted to see his brother, or at least talk to him. So off I went and tried to find Mark, and I couldn’t at all. Fella was last seen at a midday seminar. Seems he’s canceled a lecture and some other engagements—didn’t tell the Master he was going. And Zeke’s worried about it.”

  “They’re thinning out,” Nigel muttered.

  “But how did he manage to disappear like this? Sure, I thought the police were keeping an eye on him.”

  “So did I.”

  14 By Hand

  WHAT WITH ONE thing and another, Nigel was not able to complete his letter till the Friday evening, when a telephone call and conversation he’d had that day required additions. He took out the last page and the carbon copy from his typewriter, and laid them on the two heaps. He picked up the top copy and began to read:

  Dear Ahlberg. The time has come to acquaint you with certain facts. Most of them you know, of course: some you may have suspected: but there are others which will give you an unpleasant shock.

  The murder of Josiah Ahlberg, the practical jokes and the episode of the cleaning fluid (which might be described as the culminating or pay-off joke) were all part of a pattern and the work of one man. The man is you.

  What were your motives? Hostility to Josiah, for one of several possible reasons: greed (or need) for money: fear of some exposure.

  The more I thought about the original crime and its subsidiaries the more they convinced me as the work of a person who was (a) extremely clever, (b) extraordinarily naïve, (c) fantastically lucky. They were like a mimic campaign, brilliantly planned on paper by an academic staff; the umpires would see men falling, but these would get up and go home at the day’s end, and the planners were concerned only with maps, timetables and logistics.

  In plain words, you have no sense of reality. In plainer words still, you are mad.

  But it is a calculating madness. You planned, as an abstract thing, not only your offensive but your lines of retreat. And it was your madness upon which you could in the last resort fall back.

  You are also an academic; and this led you to overcomplicating things. You arranged that not only your brother but John Tate should come under suspicion, for example. And this was your downfall.

  You were given the “news” of Josiah’s death, you got very angry because you “hadn’t been told sooner.” You knew that Josiah had been shot on the Thursday night, yet it was not till five days later that you were informed of the murder. You could not know John Tate would conceal the body. And why would you assume there’d been a five-day delay in telling you about the murder, unless you’d committed it yourself?

  I only discovered this disastrous reaction of yours when I talked with Mark today, who’d been away secretly visiting your father, to tell him the facts about the carbon tetrachloride episode before a more sinister interpretation of it came to his ears.

  I am not a censorious man, but I have nothing but contempt for the way, time and again, and with repellent subtlety, you tried to poison our minds against Mark—sugar-coated poison pills. I don’t think you hated him, except perhaps when Sukie left you for him: little megalomaniacs feel superior to hatred. Mark was just in your way, as Josiah was. You coveted the whole of your father’s estate (had you plans for knocking him off later or were you in a “we-can-wait” frame of mind so far as he was concerned?).

  You were so insensately ambitious, and so humorless, with your absurd paper plans for what you would do with all that money and power. You conveyed it to me—do you remember?—on that trip to Concord, when you also conveyed something a great deal more fatal to your scheme.

  I used the phrase “the mourners shuttling back and forth.” It made you come over queer, for it associated in your mind with the New York shuttle plane; and this enabled me to see how your alibi could be broken.

  Of course, only a megalomaniac would—not have the fantastic luck—but envisage what luck would be needed to pull off such a scheme. You know the details—how you flew back here via New York shortly after you’d arrived in London, shot your brother, and returned in time for your first conference in London. Did you ever think about the multiplicity of things, all along the line, which might have gone wrong? I doubt it. Your crazy self-confidence (which you very effectively concealed) would have surmounted such trivial details.

  But you had to use Andreyevsky’s passport for the secret journey. A false mustache was all you needed—hadn’t you and he played Sebastian and Viola once? But the passport is stamped by the British authorities for the day you returned to London; and that cooks your goose: as well as the fact that an Andreyevsky is down on the passenger lists, Lieutenant Brady has just told me, of two separate airlines, one flying to New York on that Thursday morning and the other returning at midnight.

  The revolver, I’ve little doubt, was thrown off a bridge into the Thames. It’s significant that, with all the resources of the police over here, it should never have been found.

  The night you shot Josiah you’d faked a note from him to Mark, so you had one “suspect” on the scene of the crime shortly afterward. And I don’t believe you ever arranged an interview between Josiah and John Tate—your brother wouldn’t have consented: you just told Sukie you’d arranged it. So there was another “suspect” in position.

  But what would you have done if Josiah hadn’t been working in his office, as he usually did? Gone to his house and killed him? Called the operation off? We shall never know. Until you confess. Being the person you are, you’d never commit yourself to a crime before you actually committed it: you would always leave yourself a loophole.

  Which brings me to the practical jokes. They were intended to work two ways. If they were pinned on Mark, it would create a scandal which might well get him cut out o
f your father’s will. But if the worst came to the worst, and you were arraigned for murder, you would confess to having done them yourself. Think what a powerful plea your advocate could make! Only a deranged mind could play nasty jokes on its owner. The prisoner therefore is off his head, not fit to stand trial—or at least not to be sent to the electric chair.

  What interests me most, though, is the light these jokes shed upon your character. That placard outside the hall made a fool of you. Only a monomaniac could face the idea of turning himself publicly into a figure of fun. But you didn’t mind—though you put up a great show of indignation: you were above such petty contumelies, hugging to yourself your cherished objective, your secret knowledge of the power you had and the vaster power you aimed at.

  This is indeed laughable, when one thinks how negligible you really are, what a total nonentity.

  However, as the days went on, and Mark was not arrested, you had to give things a nudge. You brought a reserve plan into action. You had read about the effects of carbon tetrachloride. So you held that party, arranging favorable conditions for its operation. You appeared to drink far more than usual, neatly suggested to Mark that black coffee was needed, neatly spilled it over yourself in such a way that no one could be sure it wasn’t he who’d done the spilling, and allowed yourself to be copiously rubbed down with the cleaning fluid.

  The idea was to demonstrate that Mark had made a diabolical attempt on your life. Again, you were taking a chance: you could not be certain of steering events just the way you wanted them to go. But you relied on your brother’s good nature, and it did not fail you.

  What a fearful risk you were taking with your own life, though! Or were you? You certainly had a desperate look on your neat little face during the party. But, as usual, you had organized an out for yourself. You had discovered that promethazine, in the form of Phenergan tablets, counters the toxicity of carbon tetrachloride. You took some of the tablets before the party, so you were in no real danger. What you should have done was to hide the bottle of tablets better, not just leave them tucked at the back in your well-stocked medicine cupboard for me to find.