The Deadly Joker

by Nicholas Blake

“You’ve told the police now, though?”

  “Good God, no! That’d put the lid on it. They’re only waiting to trace the stuff to me.” Alwyn gave me a poor reproduction of his old impish look. “I’m banking on your not being irreproachably public-spirited, dear boy.”

  “Oh, I shan’t tell the police. Unless—”

  “Unless?”

  “I have to do so, in order to save your life.”

  He stared at me, puzzled. “Your notions of life-saving seem odd, I must say.”

  We were interrupted by the deaf housekeeper, who brought out cups of inferior tea and Marie biscuits on a Georgian silver tray.

  “Anyone else know about these capsules?”

  “Blessed if I know. Wait a minute, though. I seem to remember Bertie mentioning them to Paston, soon after he took over the Manor: they dined with us one night. Fearful bounder I thought he was, even then.”

  “Did your brother actually show them to him, or tell him where they were kept?”

  “Don’t remember.” Alwyn chuckled. “Bertie wrote—this was after we got to know our Ronald better—POISON, DO NOT TAKE, UNLESS YOU ARE RONALD PASTON on the lid of the pill-box. But that’s by the way. I can’t see him walking in here and pinching them.”

  “Some of us do walk in and out of each other’s houses pretty freely in this village.”

  “Ah, you’re thinking of the Haman episode. Which reminds me, I’d been meaning to talk to you about—”

  Alwyn broke off, looking ill at ease. “It’s devilish embarrassing, this. Bertie and I don’t always hit it off, y’know; but I do feel responsible for his—what I mean is, you want to watch out for him,” he lamely concluded.

  “His womanising?” I thought it best to bring Alwyn’s maunderings to the point. A look of relief came over his ravaged face.

  “That’s it, old boy. There’s no real vice in Bertie, but—well, no use beating about the bush, that afternoon you all went to the sea—I mean, we discovered later you’d gone there—a funny thing happened. I met Bertie going out. Wanted to talk to him, but he seemed in a hurry. Patted his pocket. ‘Got something better to do,’ he said. Feeling his oats, was my impression. Then I saw him walk over the green towards your house. When he came back, he was in a foul temper.”

  “Well?”

  “Stupid ideas one gets. I thought he’d arranged to meet your wife, and she’d stood him up,” Alwyn blurted out.

  “It didn’t occur to you that what he patted in his pocket was not a note of assignation but a bit of rabbit-wire?”

  Alwyn stared at me, his eyes protruding with consternation.

  “Oh, no! My dear chap! Bertie’s a bit wild still; but strangling a puppy—I’d never believe that.”

  “Much more heinous than seducing my wife, you feel?”

  “Now, now, that’s not fair, John. Much less in character, is what I meant.”

  “To do it out of pique, or sheer sadism, I might agree. But as part of a campaign against you?”

  “I don’t follow you.” Alwyn’s tone was stiff, but his eyes looked inquisitive and expectant.

  “The anonymous letters, and the outrages that followed your own practical jokes—you must have wondered who perpetrated them.”

  Of course I have,” he replied uneasily.

  “And haven’t you wondered why they were done?”

  “Well, yes. Tell you the truth, I was afraid I’d triggered off some lunatic.”

  “They were done to discredit you—to make you appear really bloody-minded, capable de tout, capable of killing Vera. And they all took place at times for which you had no alibi. There was only one person who could know that you had no alibi for those times.”

  Alwyn pulled himself upright in the chaise-longue. His voice was shrill. “No! It’s preposterous! Why in God’s name should Bertie—?”

  “Who would get your money if you died?”

  “But I’m not going to die.”

  “If you were hanged, or shut up in Broadmoor?”

  “You mustn’t talk like this. You’ve always misjudged Bertie.”

  “I doubt it. He’s heavily in debt; he knows that he’ll come into your property, but the motive would be all too clear if he killed you himself. So he has to make it look as if you were a murderer.”

  Alwyn mopped his brow, speechless for once. I pressed him about the scent-spray idea. He finally admitted, with great reluctance, that he probably had dropped Bertie a hint. His loyalty to this ne’er-do-well brother was admirable, but surely misguided.

  “When you found you’d left the buttonhole behind, you asked Bertie to fetch it?”

  “No, not exactly. I left the platform, intending to fetch it myself. But he asked me what I wanted, and offered to go, so I told him where to find it.”

  “But when he’d fetched it, you didn’t put it on straight away.”

  “I don’t see the point of this catechism,” said Alwyn, looking disgruntled.

  “If you had, the fumes would have leaked through a bit—made you feel ill, at the least. Lucky for you, you didn’t.”

  “By gad, yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” Alwyn mopped his brow again. “I don’t know what made me put the container aside. Providence, maybe. Perhaps I had an idea it would be more sort of intriguing for the audience if I put it on at the end of my speech.”

  “Where did you get the trick container to fill with perfume?”

  “Little joke shop in Holborn. Ran up to Town for the day.”

  So there we had Bertie, with a strong motive, with access to the poison, offering to fetch the container for his brother so that any fingerprints he might have left upon it, while pouring out the perfume and filling it with prussic acid, could be naturally explained. But here I came up against an awkward obstacle. The poison used had been the pure acid: could the contents of the suicide capsules have been dissolved, so that the poison could be used in a spray, without diluting them? And weren’t these pills usually a derivative of the pure hydrocyanic acid—potassium cyanide, or something like that?

  “Forget it, old boy, it’s not on.” Alwyn oddly echoed my thoughts. “I know you mean well. But I do know my own brother. If he wanted to kill me, he’d walk up to me with a gun. He’ll certainly be amused by this ingenious case you’ve brought against him.”

  I was horrified. “You’re not going to tell him?”

  “I’d like to prove, just for my own peace of mind, that you’re wrong. Of course, if you forbid me—”

  “I do. For your own safety. If he wants you dead, and finds the law is unlikely to do it for him, he might have another go at you—a less indirect one.”

  A shadow of fear passed over Alwyn’s face. “Oh bosh, my dear fellow,” he said without conviction.

  “And,” I remarked, “you’ve only his word for it that he destroyed the remaining capsules. Suicide would be a confession of guilt, and it’d not be difficult for him to arrange your ‘suicide.’”

  After tea, Sam and I were sitting out in the garden. He had been as good as his word, and was just returned from Tollerton with another puppy for Corinna. How hard he had been hit by Vera’s death, I could hardly judge: his generation is less romantic than mine, more easily capable of cutting its losses—or so it seems to me. But, whenever Vera’s name was mentioned, his usually equable face darkened; and I knew he had been pursuing some inquiries of his own at the pub and amongst our neighbours. He told me now, for instance, that he had got to the bottom of the “Naboth’s vineyard” episode. When Ronald Paston bought the Manor, he also tried to buy the Quiet Drop—a free house—over the Kindersleys’ heads, with the idea of enlarging it and turning it into a sort of country club. It was evident enough that anything Ronald clapped his eyes on presented itself to him in terms of profit; or perhaps he had to make money, just as he had to breathe. Which made it the more difficult to understand why, comparatively young still, he was retiring from his business commitments. Sam advanced the theory that Ronald had decided to go while the going was good; t
o me, it seemed likelier that, with no more worlds left to conquer but the county, he had determined to make this a full-time job.

  “I’ve been trying to tidy up my mind about the practical jokes, or whatever we call them,” said Sam presently, taking from his pocket and unfolding a foolscap sheet, on which he had methodically typed as follows:

  1. Nocturnal cuckoo. Alwyn admits. Anti-Paston (? to hint at his wife’s infidelity).

  2. Scrawl on Father’s study. Who? Alwyn, I guess. Anti-Paston and/or anti-Waterson. If Alwyn, possibly an unpremeditated impulse:? to upset Jenny (why? pure mischief-making?).

  3. Mastership hoax. Alwyn admits. Anti-Paston. No comment.

  4. Letters. Who? Could be Alwyn, Bertie, Paston—or an X. Anti all (but one) who received a letter. Local knowledge suggests A. or B. rather than P. (and could suggest Kindersley as X). N.B. At this point the “joker” becomes more vicious.

  5. Mills Bomb. Could be A., B., or P., not Fred K. Anti-whom?—presumably to throw suspicion on someone whom the perpetrator knew had no alibi, therefore A. or B. the most likely.

  6. Rick-burning. No proved alibis (? Fred K.). On face of it, anti-Paston (theoretically, might have been done to distract everyone’s attention from X while he does some other dirty work, but no other d.w. done, as far as we know).

  7. Phoney Monk. No proved alibis for A., B., or P. Anti-whom?—? motive as for 5.

  8. Buster. Could be A., B., P. or X. Anti-Waterson; but cf. 5 again.

  “Yes, that seems to sum it up pretty well,” I said cautiously.

  “I presume we discard the wandering gipsy.”

  “Yes. The gipsy is discarded,” I replied, with a pang of grief I hoped I concealed. I could not tell even Sam everything. “And you can count Fred Kindersley out too.”

  “What about Dorothea?”

  “Dorothea? Now that is fantastic. She’s a perfectly charming woman.”

  “What a susceptible old man you are!” said Sam amiably.

  “Oh, pish!”

  “You’ve no notion what thoughts may be harboured behind that pale, dark-haired beauty. The Kindersleys had it in for Ronald Paston. And for Bertie. You’ve told me yourself.”

  “You’re just pulling my leg, Sam.”

  “Well, then, what about a conspiracy? Alwyn and Bertie are the leading anti-Pastonites.”

  “I’ve thought on those lines. But it won’t do. If Alwyn and Bertie were in collusion, they’d certainly give each other alibis.”

  “Unless they were extremely clever.”

  “Perversely clever. No, no.”

  “That leaves us with Alwyn or Bertie, or Paston.” Sam’s face was shut again. “Would Paston kill his wife, and in that way? I’d have thought he’d hire someone to do it for him.”

  I was shaken by the bitterness in Sam’s voice. “He had a motive. He knew she was unfaithful to him,” I said.

  Sam gazed stonily in front of him, saying nothing.

  “But the murder was done in such a way as to implicate the Cards. And, if Paston wanted to ruin one or both of them, he had other means at his disposal.”

  “Well, you may be right. But he strikes me as rather an Old Testament type—an eye for an eye—I say, Father, are you all right?” asked Sam with quick concern.

  “Yes. It’s just that I—you’ve reminded me of something. I’ve got to think it out. But I believe you’ve given me—”

  I broke off. There were footsteps approaching round the side of the house. Bertie Card bore down upon us. He had a shotgun under his arm, and in his eyes a look I found extremely disquieting.

  14. The Younger Son

  “I want to speak to you alone,” he said, ignoring Sam.

  “May I relieve you of the weapon?” asked Sam politely.

  Bertie stared at him a moment without comprehension. “Oh, this? Gun-shy, are you?” Contemptuously he broke the gun, showing there were no cartridges in the barrels, then laid it on the grass.

  “A private conversation,” he said.

  “Do you want a private conversation, Father?” Sam asked.

  “Very well. You might bring us some drinks later,” I answered, with as much coolness as I could muster.

  Reluctantly, Sam went into the house. I saw dear Jenny’s face at the window. Well, I thought, he can hardly murder me out here, in full view of—then I recalled Vera’s death.

  “Why can’t you keep your nose out of our affairs?” he demanded.

  I said nothing. He had made it abundantly clear before now that he thought me a busybody. The eyes in the tanned, thin, dissolute face were glaring at me. I could not dismiss the hints I had received about madness in this family: Bertie’s father, even, seems to have been pretty odd in his later years. A window dazzled in the evening sun, and I moved my chair to turn my back on it.

  My silence infuriated Bertie still more. I was irritable enough myself at his striding in just when Sam had given me the clue and I wanted to lead myself along it into the light.

  “Bad enough having all these damned newshawks camped around our house, without you oiling your way in and pestering my brother! Don’t you realise he’s ill?”

  “Is that any worse than you walking into my house the other day and killing Corinna’s puppy?”

  Bertie was thrown back on his heels by this counterattack. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “The day we went to the sea. You weren’t invited. Or were you?”

  Bertie looked thoroughly embarrassed. Beneath the desperado, he had a conventional streak. But I was resolved to shake him out of this.

  “I suppose you’ll say my wife invited you.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact she did,” he mumbled.

  “By telephone?”

  “She sent me a note.”

  “You knew her handwriting?”

  “Actually no. But—”

  “I can assure you she sent no note. If you don’t believe me, you are at liberty to ask her now. Did you keep it?”

  “Of course not. Tore it up.”

  I questioned him further. The note said she would be alone during the afternoon. He had not received it till about 5.20, when he got back from the riding school. He took a bath, then walked over to Green Lane.

  “You went in? Called out to her?”

  Bertie looked extremely worried. “No. Rang frontdoor bell once or twice, then pushed off.”

  I had no doubt whatsoever that he was lying, and he must have seen this in my face. He fell back on bluster.

  “What a nasty mind you have. Do you really think I go about killing puppies?”

  “Not as a general practice. But you were in a rage that evening. Mrs. Kindersley told me. And, your brother.”

  “Snooping again. And let me tell you this, if I find you trying to make trouble with Alwyn once more, you’ll be sorry for it.”

  “Trouble? Bosh!”

  His very white teeth showed in a furious grin. “Telling my brother he must watch out for me—I might try—you must be insane.”

  So Alwyn had talked to him, in spite of my warning. He’d made a bad mistake there, surely.

  “So you did destroy all the cyanide capsules, did you? Well, there are other methods.”

  Unexpectedly, instead of beating me over the head with his gun, Bertie grew quietly reasonable.

  “You and I don’t hit it off,” he said, after a silence. “I’ll admit I’ve done certain things I ought not to have done. Or tried to. But murder is not one of them.”

  “You want Vera’s murderer to be put out of harm’s way?” I asked flatly, if ambiguously.

  “Of course I do.”

  “You don’t sound entirely convinced of it.”

  “I wish you’d rid yourself of this amateur trick-cyclist approach. It makes me tired.”

  I looked at him steadily. “I can’t make out whether you’re more interested in finding the truth about Vera’s death, or in pretending to protect your brother.”

  “This is screwy. I was very fond
of Vera—”

  “I know that. You had an affair with her. She told me.”

  “Told you! Good God!” Bertie seemed quite at a loss for a moment.

  “And the affair ended not long ago. You had other fish to fry—we won’t go into that now. Was she pleased about your chucking her?”

  “Well, damn it, no woman’s pleased when—”

  “Exactly. And what a woman might well do is threaten to confess to her husband about it if her lover didn’t resume the relationship with her.”

  He sat, regarding me warily.

  “And since Ronald Paston could make things extremely hot for you, she had to be silenced. Can you prove you threw away all the capsules?”

  “Well, blow me down!” he said, with an attempt at lightness. “We don’t need the police, with Sherlock in person operating.”

  “Besides which, if Alwyn were put away for the murder—which seems more than likely—you’d come in for a modest income. You might even manage to pay off your debts.”

  Bertie made an unwonted effort to control himself. His impulse was either to attack me or to stalk out; but he had to discover more of what was in my mind.

  “Have you mentioned these crazy notions to the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Just as well. Slander comes pretty expensive in the courts.”

  “Assisting the police in their investigations is not slander. It’s—”

  —“the duty of every right-minded citizen. Blah!” His derisive expression altered. “Not but what I couldn’t tell them a thing or two myself. Look here, Waterson, tell me straight—do you believe I killed Vera? What I mean is—well, I have killed people, in fairly nasty ways, because King and Country gave me the O.K.—but Vera? with a filthy trick like that?”

  “If it wasn’t you, it has to be your brother. Doesn’t it?”

  “If you expect me to rat on old Al—”

  “Read this.”

  I gave him Sam’s typewritten sheet. His hand began to shake before he had got far with it. At one point he crumpled the sheet into a ball, as if to fling it away, then smoothed it out and read on.

  “So you’ve got it all sewn up,” he said at last. “Your idea is that I followed up Al’s little jokes with some bloody-minded ones of my own—all leading up to Vera’s death and Al being convicted for it?”