Malice in Wonderland

by Nicholas Blake

  “Strychnine. I’m afraid I can’t tell you at all exactly what time it happened. I’m no vet. Three to six hours ago, maybe.”

  “Possibly, sir, a post-mortem would——”

  “No. I won’t have that,” exclaimed Bingo’s owner. “I don’t want my poor doggie cut up. I’m going to bury him.”

  “Quite. It would be little use in any case,” said the doctor with soothing tact. “There are five hundred people in this camp, and knowing what time the dog was killed wouldn’t get us much nearer to finding out which one of them did it.”

  A girl said: “Mr. Wise was out last night, hiding the clues for the treasure-hunt.”

  Mr. Thistlethwaite inflated himself. “Young woman, random insinuations are both unreasonable and otiose. Let us hear no more of them.”

  “All right, all right,” replied the girl, much aggrieved. “There’s no need to jump down my throat. I was only trying to be helpful. What I meant was, Mr. Wise might have seen someone prowling about near here.”

  “In that event, he will communicate the information to the right quarters.”

  “And I don’t see what business of yours it is, either, bally-ragging people and chucking your weight about. And what a weight!” the girl added, sensing an advantage.

  To Paul’s intense embarrassment, Sally commented in a whining travesty of the girl’s tone, “Boo-hoo! I want to go home to Mother.”

  The imminent scene was averted by the arrival of Teddy Wise in person. He declared that he’d seen no one suspicious during his night operations.

  “We may take it, sir, you were not in the immediate vicinity of Pets’ Corner?”

  “Oh well, that’d be telling secrets. If I said yes, you’d know that one of the clues was hidden near here. Not so good. I can tell you this, though. Members of the staff were keeping an eye on the chalets and the main buildings all night—and they’ll go on doing it for the duration. So you ladies can shut the glad eye o’ nights quite regardless. Unfortunately, we never imagined the joker would take a stab at Pets’ Corner, so there was no one watching here. Bad show. Well, chaps, the breakfast’s getting cold. Let’s trek along. Oh, and by the way, my brother says the management will give you another dog, Miss Lightfoot. Not the same thing, I know. Old friend, and all that. Can’t really replace ’em. Still, we’ll get you a fine little chap—any one you like to choose. Pop you in to Applestock this morning, if you like, and have a look round for one.”

  This announcement of Captain Wise’s bounty was received with a strangled sob by Miss Lightfoot and gratified murmurs from the rest. The management did not normally hold itself responsible for the health of animals brought to the camp.

  At breakfast, the conversation was largely occupied by the Mad Hatter. He was still, to most, more of a curiosity than a menace: but his latest exploit, together with the second part of the questionnaire, had evidently stimulated interest.

  “I suppose,” said Mr. Morley to Paul, bobbing his head and wiping his mouth with a paper napkin in a way that contrived to be both ungainly and self-deprecatory, “I suppose this business is going to interfere with your own investigations, Mr. Perry.”

  “Well, yes. I’m afraid it may make them quite impossible. You see, the object was to present a survey of normal life in a holiday camp. And things seem to be getting less normal every minute.”

  “I’ve been filling in my questionnaire paper, Mr. Perry. Very interesting it was to me. Though I couldn’t always follow what you were driving at. That bit about whether you prefer to be a spectator or a player of games, for instance.”

  “Well, the object of that was to find out if visitors behave in a different way here from their ordinary life. Almost everyone at Wonderland goes in for some of the recreations. I wanted to see if they played the games here simply because—well, because they’re out to get their money’s worth, or because they always play games when they get the opportunity.”

  “Oh. Ye-es, I see,” said Albert Morley, who palpably did not. “But I still don’t see what’s behind it. What good does it do to find out that sort of thing? If it was a statistical survey on behalf of a business firm, it’d be different: that’s part of the science of salesmanship: I’ve studied it a bit, mind you—I like to keep up with the times, and you never know when it’ll come in useful. Suppose I got the—decided to join some other firm, say. What I mean to say is, I read a book about Mass Observation once. It had all about how people behave in pubs, how they light their pipes, what they say when they invite another chap to have a drink—well, honestly, it had me beat. I thought it a lot of fuss about nothing.”

  “You don’t believe in anthropology—in acquiring knowledge about the behaviour of human beings?”

  “It’s all right for scientists, I suppose,” said Albert dubiously. “But you won’t get the general public interested in it.”

  “The general public seems quite interested at the moment. Look at all those people studying their questionnaires.”

  “You haven’t got my meaning right, sir.” Mr. Morley looked baffled, but pertinacious. “What I’m trying to say is, the public doesn’t want science to tell them what they know already, like——”

  “So much the worse for the public. Anyway, they don’t know it. All sorts of new institutions, new manners, new modes of behaviour are springing up to-day, mixing with survivals of past customs. Human life is always shifting, like sandbanks, and someone ought to keep it charted.”

  Mr. Morley beamed all over his rosy little face. “Ah, now you’re talking. That’s more like it. That’s the romance of science.”

  “Science isn’t romantic.”

  “Oh, but it is, Mr. Perry. Believe me. Think of the stars. I’ve read them—Jeans and Eddington—I read quite a bit in my spare time. All those worlds burning away, billions of miles up there, all part of the cosmic dance. And then some of these youngsters say they don’t believe in God. I’ve often wished I could afford a telescope—a proper astronomer’s one——”

  “We seem to have got rather far from the subject,” said Paul coldly. He had all the novice scientist’s contempt for the layman. He did not really intend to snub Mr. Morley, perhaps, but the little man’s wanderings had driven him almost to distraction. It was difficult, also, to keep one ear open for Albert Morley and at the same time listen to the talk going on all round. Paul had a separate note-book, in which he hoped to collect the conversational subjects of the camp. It was already divided into red-ink headings—the life of the camp, gossip about visitors, sex, the films, politics, occupational talk, sports, clothes, home life, and so on. The relative frequencies of these subjects, worked out to two decimal places, would help to round off the picture of holiday-camp life.

  But the Mad Hatter, whether he was lunatic, practical joker or deliberate sabotageur, was certainly going to falsify such statistics. The tables were all agog with him, and Paul noticed how quickly heads were raised and a brief, expectant silence fell whenever a member of the staff entered the dining-hall. What is Captain Wise going to do about it? was the main theme, worked out with many variations of inquisitiveness, flippancy, indignation, pessimism or wild fancy. One thing the visitors were evidently going to do about it: they had no intention of starting off upon the treasure-hunt severally: single individuals would be far too vulnerable a mark for the Hatter.

  “I don’t care what the rules are. I’m not starting off alone, Leonard, so you can take it or leave it. If you don’t want to partner me, of course,” said Miss Janice Mears archly, “I expect I can find another gentleman.”

  “Oh, I’ll come. Anything for a quiet life. But suppose I’m the Mad Hatter?”

  “Get on, Leonard! Suppose I’m Greta Garbo!”

  That’s another interesting thing, reflected Paul. They’ve at last been forced to take the existence of the Hatter seriously, but they are still unable to envisage him as possibly one of their own acquaintance. A simple defence-mechanism at work, of course: if that were broken down, we should have all th
e conditions for panic.…

  There were no further manifestations that morning. After lunch the treasure-hunters, about a hundred strong, assembled outside the sports pavilion. Sally, sensibly dressed in blue slacks and a blue jersey, got away to a good start with Paul. She led the way round the copse, past Pets’ Corner, over the dilapidated stone wall and uphill.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the hermit’s wood,” she said, showing Paul her clue.

  “Isn’t it time you explained what——?”

  “Wait. I want to be sure we’re well away from the others.”

  How women revel in petty secrecy, thought Paul indulgently: it’s just a way of exercising power; and it always defeats itself sooner or later: the Pandora complex.

  The turf on this rising slope was springy under their feet. Thyme and harebells grew here, and the sky above them gave back the misty, delicate blue of the harebells. Paul, unusually charmed by the afternoon’s beauty, paused to look back over the sea that fitted snugly, like jig-saw pieces, into the indentations of cliff below.

  “Come on,” said Sally, tugging at his sleeve. “We’ve got to hurry. You can admire Nature some other time.”

  “I don’t admire Nature. I think she’s capricious, wasteful and a deceiver. Just like a woman.”

  “But she’s beautiful and you can’t get away from her. All right—don’t look so scared. I’m not going to lead you astray, you solemn old misog—— What is it?”

  “Misogynist. You do love bossing people about, don’t you, Sally?”

  “Well, you oughtn’t to be yearning over Nature. You ought to be admiring me.”

  “Oh, I do. I think you’re very pretty.”

  “Jeepers-creepers! Put some conviction into your voice, my pet. ‘I think you’re very pretty’”—she rendered an exact imitation of his stilted, reluctant tones. “I can see I shall have to educate you.”

  “Heaven preserve me!”

  “Well, you needn’t be nasty.”

  Sally looked crestfallen, her lip pouting. She went from mood to mood like a butterfly. The next moment she was dragging Paul down under shelter of a stone wall, as though she had seen a sniper in the wood that broadened out into the distance, its apex resting on the road opposite them.

  “Here we are alone,” she sang under her breath, “out of cigarettes … Yes, that must be the bush in my clue. See those white flowers. They’re Old-man’s-beard.”

  “Well, aren’t we going to look for the second clue? It’ll be hidden in that bush somewhere.”

  “No, my pet, we’re not. Let’s sit down and be comfortable, and your auntie will tell you a nice story.” Their backs were against the stone wall; her shoulder pressed confidingly on his. “We came a short cut. The other people who’ve got this clue will be pounding along the road. We’ll let them go past.”

  “You’re certainly a mistress of suspense.”

  “Do you know who lives in that wood?”

  “Some hermit or other, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And do you know who he is?”

  “John the Baptist?”

  “He’s the Mad Hatter,” Sally whispered.

  Paul stared at her incredulously for a moment. Then he laughed, and said:

  “Why, of course, how stupid of me! I’ve often seen him skulking about the camp in his long, grey beard. A quite unmistakable figure.”

  “Are we sarcastic or are we sarcastic? Just listen a minute. Teddy told me all about the hermit. Before they built the camp here, he used to live alone in a sort of shack near the cliffs. He was a simple-lifer—a bit daft, but quite harmless. He’d been here for years, and the chap who owned the land let him have his little patch rent-free. And then—golly, what’s that?”

  Paul swivelled round and popped his head over the top of the wall. “It’s all right,” he said presently: “only some of the treasure-hunters. You’ve chosen rather a public place for your narrative, haven’t you?”

  “I wanted to be here so that we could see if the hermit’s at home. He’ll come bouncing out at these people if he is. Well, the chap who owned the land lost his money and had to sell. That was about three years ago. Nobody’d buy it, though, till the Wonderland people came along and decided it’d be a good place for a holiday camp. There was a terrific row on the local council about it, apparently.”

  “I bet there was. Beauty-snobs versus main-chancers.”

  Sally glanced at him, puzzled for a moment. It occurred to Paul that Esmeralda Jones would have taken the point at once—and that Sally looked rather plain when she was out of her depth.

  “Some of the council said they ought not to allow the camp, because it would spoil the look of the countryside—the coast just here is supposed to be a beauty spot—and would bring a lot of riff-raff into the district. People like you and me, my pet. They were the retired colonels and landowners who said that. And others said the camp wouldn’t spoil the countryside, because look at the lovely plans Wonderland had sent in, and it would give employment and help the shopkeepers and the rates and so on.”

  “And they were the local builders and shopkeepers who said that, no doubt,” Paul commented.

  “Well, anyway, the council was torn between two opinions——”

  “My dear, it sounds like something out of the Acts of the Apostles!”

  “Oh, do shut up! Some bird from London was called in to give evidence, and a sort of commission was held. You know—people giving evidence. The hermit was one of them. He fairly went up in smoke about the camp, apparently: said it would make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a spinsters’ knitting-bee, and only over his dead body, and all that. Well, finally the pro-camp side won. Wonderland bought the park and a chunk of the cliffs and foreshore, and the poor old hermit was evicted. It took quite a posse to shift him, too. But Hermie was an obstinate old boy—just like you, my pet. He settled down again on the nearest spot he could to the camp——”

  “Protesting, doubtless, his need for lebensraum.”

  “—Which was this wood, and proceeded to make a nuisance of himself.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” said Paul thoughtfully.

  “He certainly did. The first summer camp started, he used to sprinkle nails all over the road here, Teddy, says, so that the camp bus got punctures. Things like that. They had to get an injunction or whatever it is against him in the end. That put a spoke in him, and he’s been pretty quiet ever since, except for popping out of the wood and gnashing his teeth at the Wonderland visitors every now and then. The management keep pretty dark about him—when I was here last year I never even heard of his existence—because they can’t do anything more: the chap who previously owned all the land, still owns the wood, and he said it was O.K. by him for the hermit to live there. As I say, he kept quiet, till this week.”

  Sally paused dramatically. The voices of the last pair of treasure-seekers gabbled away into silence. There was nothing now to be heard but faint, intermittent stirrings within the wood across the road.

  “But, my dear child, it’s absurd. Granted this hermit has a better motive than any we’ve yet heard of for making trouble in the camp. But remember the duckings. Somebody’d be bound to have noticed if a long grey beaver was swimming around.”

  “I’ve thought of that——”

  “And then there’s the green disks that everyone at the camp has to wear. They’re meant just for that purpose—to ensure that no unauthorised person gate-crashes on the Wonderland amenities. You have to give them back at the end of your visit. How on earth could he get hold of one?”

  “Oh, that’d be easy. People lose them sometimes. He probably picked up one that’d been dropped near here. I dare say it gave him the whole idea of Mad-Hattering the camp.”

  “And how do you explain away his beard?”

  “It’s false.”

  “But——”

  “Do listen! He cut off his beard, went clean-shaven to a shop and bought a long false beard, reappeared as the same old hermi
t. Whenever he wants to enter the camp, he just takes off his beard, has a general clean-up, puts on more respectable clothes.”

  “But he must be fairly old to have had a grey beard at all. A man as old as that would show up in the camp.”

  “Why should he? There’s quite a sprinkling of oldish people here. And amongst five hundred of us he’d not be particularly noticed. Everyone’s very free and easy in the camp, and they’re not here long enough for either themselves or the staff to begin picking out individuals much. If you’ve got a green disk on, you’re O.K.”

  “Yes, there’s something in that. But look here, he’s an old man. An old man wouldn’t be strong enough to hold Captain Wise under water.”

  “But he’s a strong old man. I told you, he’s a simple-lifer. Eats acorns and things. And Teddy says he walks into Apple-stock—that’s eight miles away—once or twice a week, and brings back food in a sack.”

  “Acorns, I suppose? And, if he frequents Applestock, he’s not a hermit.”

  “—So he must be hefty enough.”

  The hysterical laughter of a jay broke from the wood. A ladybird was climbing diligently along Sally’s blue-trousered leg. Paul watched it, his heart stirring uneasily; he tried to shut out from his mind the feel of Sally’s hand as it brushed against his, to postpone somehow—if only by absorbing his eye in the ladybird’s progress—the full consciousness of what her words implied.

  “Well,” he said at last, “there may be something in it. It’d be worth suggesting to Captain Wise.”

  “Yes. We’re going to find out a bit more first, though, if we can.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “We’re going to find the hermit’s lair—or whatever it is a hermit lives in—and see if he’s left any clues.”

  “No, damn it, we can’t do that. Supposing he’s there?”

  “If he’s there, we’ll just say we’ve lost our way, and sheer off. You’re not afraid of a dotty old man, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” said Paul, too quickly.

  “Well, I am. That’s partly why I came. When I opened my envelope with the first clue this morning, I was scared stiff. You see—oh, I haven’t time to explain: but, when you’re afraid, you ought always to go and face it out straight away. And I’ll feel quite safe with you.”