The Deadly Joker

  “The Mastership hoax was a shot at laughing Ronald out of the county. The ricks belonged to him. The other occurrences were a blind,” Sam went on, “to cover up the real motive—make the whole thing look like the work of a loony.”

  “So it must have been Alwyn?”

  “Or his brother. So far as motive goes. Nobody else here had such strong reasons for clearing the Pastons out. So far as we know.”

  A new thought struck me. “But suppose Ronald did get the cuckoo message—he’s no fool. And then he was humiliated by the Mastership hoax. Couldn’t he have done the other things so as to fasten the blame for them on the Cards, and clear them out? He seems to have no adequate alibis; and I’ve had hints about his vindictiveness when he’s crossed.”

  Sam considered it. “I don’t think that’s on. With all his dough, he could surely think up some simpler way of expropriating the Cards.”

  “He has the money. But he hasn’t all that much influence—not in this neighbourhood. Influence is what he wants, and he’s found he can’t buy it for cash. Isn’t it odd that he should have accepted Alwyn’s apology so tamely?—almost as if he wanted to seem to make light of the hoax.”

  “And thus to hide his motive for the other things? Well, you may be right.” Sam went off at a tangent. “Corinna’s looking much better than last time.”

  “Yes, I’m glad you think so,” I replied cautiously.

  “She wrote to Bertie last night.”

  “Good God! How on earth—?”

  “Oh, people like talking to newspapermen. Even their sisters.”

  “But I thought she’d—she was getting over him.”

  “That’s what she wrote in her letter. Keep off the growing grass. It was a test, sort of.”

  “Test?” I was bemused for a moment. Somehow one fails to imagine the young getting on with their own lives.

  “Yes. She said it hardly hurt at all. Quite surprised herself, the dear girl did. Well, it’s all experience, as I told her out of my deep store of wisdom.” Sam gave me one of his most sardonic looks.

  “I can’t tell you how pleased I am. With you. Both of you.”

  “She told me she’d had a marvellous talk with you. Really set her up.”

  I was silent for a minute, watching Corinna through the window, where she was totally failing to teach Buster some trick with a lump of sugar on the lawn.

  “I hope your store of wisdom is deep enough to deal with your own affairs too,” I said at last.

  “Ah, that’s another matter.”

  “Vera said she hoped you were not going to fall in love with her.”

  Sam gazed at me meditatively. “Why should she hope that? I’d have thought she’d like it.”

  “Doesn’t want you to get hurt, I suppose.”

  “What I mean is, she likes the idea of being treated by the English as a human being, not a sort of exotic curio. After all, she made quite a sacrifice—her family was bitterly opposed to her marrying a white man. And Ronald will treat her as if she were in a cage. Of course, she’s doomed.”

  I started. “Doomed? What d’you mean?”

  “At the mercy of everything. Helpless. She doesn’t have any strong reason for going on living—or for not going on. So she just accepts whatever happens. Less trouble to say yes than to say no. Plenty of brains, but no will. She ought to have had a lot of children. That’d be the answer.”

  “Well, what’s to stop her having them?”

  “Ronald doesn’t like children—got a positive phobia about them.”

  Would Vera be any less lonely, cut-off, I wondered, now that her husband was to live at the Manor all the time? Only later did I realise how adroitly Sam had side-tracked me from his own emotions.

  I was consumed with curiosity to know how Corinna had phrased her letter, but it was not for me to ask. The riding lessons had been stopped, until we could find another instructor in the neighbourhood. The police, I learnt, had found a pair of stilts and the monk’s hooded costume concealed in the depths of Chantry wood: the latter was run up from old black-out material; the stilts were crude wood firmly put together. What deductions could be drawn from this, I was unable to imagine. The injured boy had recovered consciousness, and confirmed Alwyn’s story.

  Netherplash Cantorum seemed less interested now in the outrages than in the forthcoming Flower Show, which roused all the local passions and bad blood even more effectively. Jenny had been put on the committee, so I got full reports of the proceedings. The feud between Ronald Paston and the Cards did really seem to have been patched up; at any rate, Ronald as the committee’s chairman often deferred to Alwyn’s opinions. When he came to live here, Ronald had revived the Flower Show, spent a good deal of his own money on it, and made it quite an important local event, drawing contributors and competitors from some miles around. Cottagers tended their plumpening fruit with solicitous care—and watched their neighbours’ with hostile eyes. The Manor head-gardener daily assumed more of the air of a general staff officer before some crucial operation. School children roamed the countryside at week-ends in search of wild flowers. Jam-making was at high pressure and cakes would soon be baked. The exhibits were to be shown in a huge marquee in the Manor garden.

  One afternoon, while all this was going forward, a friend of Sam’s on holiday at Weymouth asked us all to go sailing with him. We set off at 12.30, leaving Buster behind—he would certainly contrive to hurl himself into the water, or gnaw through some vital rope, if we took him. We had our picnic lunch on board the boat, which was moored to a quayside on the Nothe among a litter of craft of every size and description. Edward, Sam’s friend, discussed their points with a professional expertise lost upon Sam, who affected the gravest doubts about the whole proceeding. Corinna, on the other hand, was in a seventh heaven, Bertie Card and even horses quite forgotten—particularly when, outside the harbour mouth, the sails drawing well in a steady south-westerly breeze, Edward let her take the tiller and gave her a first lesson in sailing. He was a personable, pleasing young man, a year younger than Sam, and I saw in dear Jenny’s eye what might well be the first spark of a match-making idea. Corinna certainly looked ravishingly pretty to-day: Jenny too was at her best, free from care, the wind tousling her blonde hair.

  “What happens if the wind drops?” asked Sam.

  “It won’t,” replied Edward. “Bear away a little, Corinna—like this.”

  “But suppose it does?”

  “Then we use the engine.”

  “Oh, you’ve got an engine. That’s a great relief to my mind. But suppose the engine didn’t work?”

  “Then we’d be swept by the tide into Portland Race and founder. Can you swim?”

  “Portland Place?” asked Sam innocently. “That’s where the B.B.C. is. Why should we founder there?”

  “Your brother is hopeless,” said Edward.

  “He’s a decrepit old longshoreman. When I was first taken to the seaside, I remember he gave the sea one look of loathing and turned his back on it and read a paper.”

  “Tut, tut! We’ll make it on the next tack.”

  We sailed through an opening into the naval harbour and cruised round there for a while, seeing a couple of corvettes and a depot ship at their moorings. Then we ran eastwards along the coast for a few miles before anchoring in Ringstead Bay for a bathe and a cup of tea.

  As we beat back towards Weymouth, against a freshening breeze which threw up an occasional waft of spray over the weather bow, I noticed Edward glancing at Jenny. It was another good mark to him—sailing folk are so often wrapped up in their ploys and forgetful of their passengers. Jenny had gone very white in the cockpit beside me.

  “Are you feeling all right, love?” I whispered.

  “The sea’s a bit lumpy here,” said Edward. “We’ll soon come under shelter.”

  “No, you mustn’t go in yet,” Jenny protested. “It’s too silly. Something walked over my grave just then. It has got a bit cold, though. I’ll put on my jersey.”
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  Ducking into the cabin to fetch the jersey, I noticed a clock and barometer on the wall. The time was 5.12.

  Jenny recovered very quickly, and took a turn at sailing the boat, while Sam ominously asked its owner if there was a basin on board or must he throw up into the scuppers.

  We stayed out till six; then ran down the No the to our moorings with the help of the engine. Edward pressed us to come sailing again soon. Corinna’s eyes were shining as he pulled her up on to the quay and she was contentedly silent during the drive home.

  I happened to go first into the house—we never locked our front door in the country—and saw the body of Buster dangling from the chandelier in the hall.

  I managed to stop Jenny and Corinna from entering—Sam was putting the car away.

  “Jenny darling, would you two like to go down to the pub and get me some cigarettes. I seem to have run out.”

  Jenny caught the urgency beneath my words, and the two walked out into the lane.

  Sam found me a minute later, staring at the puppy. I felt hideously shaken, sick at heart. There was something improbus—beyond measure foul—in this latest occurrence: to kill a young girl’s puppy, and to leave it hanging there so grotesquely—my imagination could hardly take it in. Even Sam, whose work has required him to view two suicides, looked as if the breath had been knocked out of him.

  “Good God!” he said. “If Corinna had come in first, she’d have walked slap into—”

  He reached up and undid the wire from the chandelier. The other end of it had been tightened round Buster’s neck, cutting deep into it. The dog was very nearly cold.

  “Rabbit-snare wire,” said Sam.

  “Look, she mustn’t see him like this. They’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I began to clean up the mess on the floor beneath the chandelier. Before I finished, Sam had disappeared with the dead puppy. He’s remarkably quick in an emergency. When Jenny and Corinna returned, I was able to tell them that Buster must have got out of the kitchen while we were away—I pointed to a window I’d just opened a little at the bottom—and Sam was searching for him.

  “But I could swear I’d left that window shut, except at the top,” said Corinna.

  Half an hour later, Sam returned. He told Corinna he had found the puppy, a quarter of a mile away on the lower slope of the hill. It must have got its head into an old rabbit snare and been strangled. This was a tricky moment. Corinna must have known about myxomatosis: however, all she said was:

  “Poor puppy. And it was my fault. I must have left the bottom of the window open.”

  Once again my admirable son turned up trumps. Realising how the idea might prey on his sister’s mind, he told her it was his fault; he had opened a little window at the bottom, just before we left, thinking that the puppy would need more air on so hot a day and the gap would not be big enough for him to wriggle through: he had not noticed that Corinna had already opened the top.

  “I’ve buried Buster,” he went on. “If you’d like me to show you the place—”

  “Yes, some time. Thank you, Sam.”

  “And I’ll buy you another, of course. Even if it doesn’t make up for Buster.”

  “You’re very sweet, Sam. Oh dear, and it was such a happy day till—”

  Corinna’s voice choked a little; but she was less affected than I had feared. Less than Jenny would have been. And the thought came into my head that normally it would be Jenny who entered the house first. Had this horrible thing been, in fact, aimed at her?

  When the other two had gone up to bed, I said to Sam:

  “You were absolutely first class over this. I am grateful.”

  “Well, it seemed the best thing to do.”

  “I think we’d better not tell Jenny where we found the puppy.”

  “But did she swallow my story—and you sending them for cigarettes?”

  “I’m not sure. But I don’t want to risk her persecution feeling being roused again. No, we’ll stick to your story. I’d like to see this damnable joker’s face when he hears that Buster was found dead on the hillside.”

  “Perhaps you will see it. If you get in first with the story.” Sam sipped at his whisky. “Is Jenny a bit fey? Telepathic?”

  “You’re thinking about on the boat? When she said she felt as if someone had walked over her grave?”

  “Yes. Does Psi operate with the animal kingdom? She certainly did come over a bit queer.”

  “It was twelve minutes past five—well, a minute or two before that.”

  “When the village people are absorbed in their high tea. Not so hot.”

  “I don’t follow you, Sam.”

  “Well, if that’s when Buster was strangled, it was about the only time when X could have got into our house unobserved.”

  “I see. But surely it’d have been a tremendous risk, even at that time?”

  “Not so much if he’d come round from the back and entered by the side door. He’d have heard Buster whimpering to get out of the kitchen.”

  “He must have had the idea before then. Presumably he came equipped with that wire. Anyway, we’ve no evidence at all that it happened at 5.10. X could have no reason to assume we’d stay out so late.”

  “That’s true. Anyway, we’ll probably find that half the village looked in some time this afternoon. Oh, that reminds me: I found this note for you in the letterbox when I went out to bury Buster. Stuck it in my pocket without thinking.”

  I took the note, half expecting it to contain some appalling message from the dog murderer. But it was only a note from Alwyn, asking if I would help with one of the games at the Flower Show.

  “You observe,” said Sam, “that it came by hand. I think the telephone is indicated.”

  I rang up Pydal, and Alwyn answered.

  “Hallo. Waterson here. Yes, I’ll take on that game, if I can master the rules. By the way, what time did you leave the note at my house?”

  “A little after five, I think it was. Why? Nothing wrong, I hope, my dear fellow.”

  “Not really. Only that Buster—that’s Corinna’s puppy—seems to have disappeared.”

  Slight pause—or did I imagine it? “I’m sorry about that,” Alwyn sounded a bit huffy. “But I don’t number dog-stealing among my vices.”

  “No, indeed. I was just wondering if you’d heard him whimpering when you came along, or seen him wandering about anywhere.”

  “Afraid I didn’t, John. But don’t let Corinna worry. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Good night to you.”

  And that, for the time being, was that.

  11. The Flower Show

  Serviceable though our lies had been at the time, they now involved me—as falsehood does—in a continuous effort to be consistent with them. I tried to imagine how X would react on being told that a puppy, which he had left strung up on a chandelier, had disappeared. What motive could he ascribe to me, or to anyone else, for making away with its body? This was, in a sense, his first failure.

  While I walked across the green after breakfast, Sam was beginning to visit the neighbours’ houses, to ask if anyone had been seen entering ours yesterday afternoon. I did not pin any lively hopes on this: in a village like ours, while a stranger’s presence would be commented upon instantly, the inhabitants are so familiar as to be virtually invisible to one another.

  I went to Pydal under the pretext of asking Alwyn some details about the game I was to help conduct. He seemed rather distrait, but gave me the information I needed.

  “Find that puppy of your gel’s?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Alwyn stared at me a moment. “Good. I’m delighted.”

  “Unfortunately he was dead.”

  Alwyn waited for me to enlarge upon this, but I deliberately did not do so.

  “Dead?” he asked then, looking puzzled. “Where? How d’you mean?”

  “Strangled. Sam found him by that warren above our house. He’d got his head into an old rabbit snare and somehow contrived
to choke himself with it.”

  “How very extraordinary.”

  “What’s most extraordinary is how he got out of the house at all. He was supposed to be shut in the kitchen, with just the top of the window open. I suppose he didn’t slip past you when you went in?”

  “My dear chap, I just left the note in your box. Didn’t go in. Saw you tootling off in the car before luncheon.”

  His protuberant eyes were fixed attentively upon me.

  “Someone must have let him out,” I said. “Pure accident, the whole thing.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Sorry, I don’t quite follow you.”

  “Fact is, John, I find this rabbit snare business hard to believe.”

  “But Sam found—”

  “Oh, I don’t dispute that, my dear fellow. But a snare being there at all in this day and age. And a puppy putting his head into it.”

  I was considerably put out to have my story doubted—indignant indeed, as liars are under such circumstances. I gazed back at Alwyn dubiously.

  “You haven’t thought that someone might have pinched the dog and strangled him and left him up there?” he asked.

  “What? In broad daylight?”

  “Easy enough to hide under one’s coat. Little chap, he was.”

  “But it’s quite fantastic—”

  “Probably a crazy notion of mine. But, with all these things that’ve been going on—well, one starts at one’s own shadow.”

  “I see what you mean. It’s a grim thought,” I said slowly, “that we have a raving maniac in the village.”

  Alwyn seemed about to speak, but refrained: he could not, however, conceal an almost comical look of distress.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “your notion will give point to Sam’s inquiries.”

  “Sam? Oh, yes, yer boy. What’s he up to?”

  “Asking the neighbours if they saw anyone coming to our house yesterday afternoon. Apart from yourself.”

  I had not the face to ask Alwyn if his brother had been one such visitor, though—so far as motive went—Bertie was the only person who had cause for feeling vindictive against Corinna.