The Deadly Joker

  “Alwyn Card isn’t exactly my idea of an intellectual,” I protested.

  “Perhaps not. But he’s no fool. Pity he doesn’t employ his intelligence on something useful, instead of pottering about all day. Fact is, he’s become a fossil, a sort of local curiosity: he’s simply opted out of the modern world—quite content to be cock on his own medieval midden. Still, that’s his headache.”

  I had considerable reservations about this judgment, but it revealed a ruthlessness in Ronald Paston which his urbane face and manner had hitherto concealed.

  “Still,” said Jenny. “It’s nice that you get on reasonably with the Cards. It might have been rather awkward, I suppose—”

  “Them staying on in the village, you mean? Oh, they don’t interfere, you know. They’re not bad neighbours. Can’t say I’ve much time for Bertie. But Alwyn’s not a bad old boy, if he wasn’t such a ridiculous snob. D’you know, he actually rang up my secretary to find out who the other guests would be to-night, before accepting the invitation? Dammit, that’s all very well for royalty; but a decaying country gent—well, it’s not so hot.”

  “Decaying, Mr. Paston?” said Jenny. “He seems very well-preserved to me.”

  “I was thinking of his affairs. No concern of mine, but they’re pretty rocky, or so I’m told. Bertie gets through the cash like nobody’s business. I don’t like telling tales out of school, but—well, he’s not tried to touch you yet?”

  “For a loan?”

  “What else? If he does, say no. You’d be lucky to see the colour of your money again.”

  Ronald Paston, I surmised, had been drinking rather heavily. His heavy, clever face looked a bit blurred, and these indiscretions were a deplorable departure from his usual, almost too correct manner. I noticed Corinna had her lips compressed, but she could not keep the words back—

  “Well, I think he’s very nice. He’s the only person who’s talked to me to-night,” she blurted out. “Apart from silly small talk.”

  There was an embarrassed silence. Then Ronald Paston said:

  “I’m sorry about that. You must come again when we’ve got some younger people here. We must all seem dodderers to you.”

  “Now you’re treating me like an infant.”

  “Oh, dear! Put my foot in it again! You’re a very attractive young lady. I don’t wonder that Bertie Card should—”

  “Well, we must be off,” said Jenny. “It’s been a delightful evening. Where’s Mrs. Paston?”

  We collected Sam, found Vera Paston and thanked her. “Any time you feel like having a swim,” she said, “just come over. There’s no need to ring up.”

  The invitation was, on the face of it, addressed to us all; but by some subtle emanation of her personality, Mrs. Paston directed it towards Sam in especial. I observed that he was unwontedly silent as we walked home along the lane.

  “Well, I think he’s a stinker,” Corinna broke out, as though we were in the middle of an argument.

  “Who?” asked Sam.

  “Mr. Paston. Oily and supercilious. And making innuendoes about people. How can she bear to live with him? It’s like—like a pearl in a richly-appointed pig sty.”

  My mind was not on their exchanges, though, nor on this pearl-image of Mrs. Paston which had kept cropping up in different forms during the evening. I was oppressed with foreboding about another possibility altogether—an outcome of the dinner party which, if I had interpreted certain words correctly, would raise a most almighty storm in our placid village.

  4. The Cruel Letters

  The next day was grilling hot. Like any other English village on a Sunday afternoon, Netherplash Cantorum went into a coma. The only audible sound was the swishing of a billhook as Sam attacked the growth of nettles and overgrown hedge at the far end of our garden: I suspected that he was trying to get more than sweat out of his system as he hacked away. Jenny was taking a siesta indoors. Corinna, stretched out on a hammock slung beneath the apple trees, tried to read while Buster, the puppy, tried to eat her book. I had attempted a little reading, but had soon been driven back into the shade of the veranda which George Mills had built outside my study on the west side of the house, and was contemplating a round flowerbed stuffed with columbines in the centre of the lawn.

  Jenny and I are very close. It must have been this telepathy that sent me indoors, up to our bedroom. As I opened the door, I saw her struggling and whimpering. Then she started bolt upright, her eyes staring at me out of sleep, and gave a loud cry. I was at her side in an instant, comforting her.

  “I swallowed it,” she said, coming half awake. Her voice had in it both revulsion and a sort of puzzlement.

  “I swallowed it,” she repeated.

  “What did you swallow, love?”

  There was a pause, as she came fully awake.

  “I don’t know.” She gave me a recognising look now. “Have I been dreaming?”

  “Yes. You called out ‘I swallowed it.’ What was it?”

  “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  “You weren’t dreaming of—well, taking sleeping tablets, or anything like that?” Jenny’s body felt damp. I found that I was sweating, too.

  “I’ve no idea what I was dreaming,” she answered, a bit shakily. “How absurd of me. What’s the time? Let’s all have some iced tea.”

  And that was that. After supper, Sam set off in his car for Bristol: he gets every third week-end off, and he would be back in July for a fortnight’s holiday. We looked forward to seeing a lot of him during the summer.

  Apart from Jenny’s nightmare, it had been a peaceful day. But it was the calm before a storm. Next evening, I strolled down to the Quiet Drop, while Jenny and Corinna were preparing dinner. The pub does not usually fill up until eight o’clock or later. To-day, at six, it was empty.

  “Have you heard the latest village scandal?” asked Fred Kindersley, as he drew me a pint of beer.

  “No. But I dare say I could guess it.”

  “Could you now?”

  “About the Mastership of the Tollerstock?”

  “Aye. That’s right.” He gave me his slow smile. “You must be a thought-reader, then.”

  “We dined at the Manor on Saturday. Mr. Paston told everyone he’d just been approached by the committee about becoming Master. It created quite a sensation.”

  “That’s nothing to the sensation there’s been to-day.”

  “You mean, the whole thing was a hoax?”

  “Mr. Waterson really is a thought-reader,” he said to Dorothea, who had just come into the bar, looking as cool and lovely as ever. “Perhaps he can tell us who’s responsible.”

  I hesitated, but not for long. The Kindersleys were people of good sense, and without malice. As a comparative stranger in Netherplash, I needed the advice of such disinterested people before I could decide what action I should take.

  “Do you happen to know if the hunt has official writing paper—with its name printed on it?” I asked.

  “Yes. They do.”

  And Alwyn Card’s father had been Master, so he could have easy access to an old stock of the writing paper. A typewriter and a forged signature were all he’d need beside. But the most damning evidence against him was Ronald Paston’s telling us that Alwyn had rung up his secretary to find out the names of everyone invited to dinner for Saturday. Obviously, the hoax would be nipped in the bud if any member of the hunt committee were to be present. Thirdly, the hunt secretary was away last week-end, so there would be no danger of Paston’s getting in touch with him before the dinner party.

  I put these points to Fred and Dorothea, who took them calmly enough, though they were not entirely convinced.

  “Of course, you’ll keep it to yourselves. I don’t want to get involved in an action for slander.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Waterson,” Fred replied. “Dorry and I have to be discreet, in our job. But I find it hard to credit—Mr. Card is getting on in years, he’s a respected local figure and all. Whey sh
ould he suddenly get up to these cantrips?”

  “He was a notorious practical joker in the twenties, you know.”

  This was evidently news to both of them.

  “But he’s a nice old thing,” Dorothea protested. “Surely he wouldn’t do something so cruel? Now, if it’d been his brother—” she broke off, flushing a little. There was a pause, then Fred said:

  “Bertie Card made a bit of trouble for us not long after we settled here.” He turned his back to rearrange the packets of cigarettes more neatly behind the bar.

  “I don’t mind Mr. Waterson knowing,” said Dorothea.

  “I wish you’d both call me John.”

  “Well, John,” said Fred slowly, “Bertie started getting free with my wife in the bar here, and one night I had to send him out with a flea in his ear. After that, he tried to have my licence taken away—bringing his friends in, getting rowdy, staying on after closing time—that sort of caper. He’s a bit vindictive, you know. I caught him once, ringing the Tollerton police on my own telephone, telling them they’d find me serving drinks out of hours if they came along in ten minutes’ time. That was a petty thing to do.”

  “And all because—”

  “Oh, it wasn’t because Fred had warned him off,” said Dorothea. “He likes to think he’s irresistible to women. When I told him he disgusted me, it gave a blow to his vanity.” There is a touch of naïveté in Dorothea, the more pleasing for its contrast with her sophisticated clothes and appearance.

  We talked a little about the sensation the hoax had created. Some local people had discussed it in the bar at lunch-time. How the news had got round so quickly, Fred did not know; but he told me there was some quiet glee among the locals at Paston’s humiliation—he was not universally popular in the neighbourhood.

  When Dorothea had left us, to start preparing dinner for a party which had booked a table for seven-thirty, I decided to take Fred further into my confidence.

  “Is Bertie Card good with his hands?” I asked.

  “His women would say so, I expect.”

  “I mean, making things, gadgets.”

  “Not that I’ve heard of. Why?”

  “Alwyn is. I believe he made that cuckoo that plagued us all in May.”

  “Get on!”

  “It’d be quite possible, I think. On the principle of a cuckoo clock, with an electric battery to keep it going.” I explained to him about the alleged bird not flying away at the first shot. “And I went out early the next morning, and found Alwyn already there, poking about. There was no cuckoo to be found: but he had something in his satchel that clinked; and after he’d gone I picked up a piece of wire soldered on to a cogwheel—neither was rusted—they could have been a bit of the mechanism he’d missed.”

  Fred chewed at it for a while. “I see. But it’d have been a very elaborate way of persecuting Mr. Paston, wouldn’t it?”

  “Alwyn Card had a reputation for elaborate practical jokes.”

  “Malicious as well as elaborate?”

  “Ah, that’s a point. From what I’ve heard, not. But he was a young man in those days.”

  “Not that you could call the cuckoo business, if you’re right about it, really malicious. More of a childish prank, I’d say. But this last hoax is something different. A bit spiteful.” Fred’s Viking-blue eyes held mine. “What do you propose to do about it? Tell Alwyn Card he’s been rumbled?”

  “I hinted to him at dinner about the cuckoo. He gave me the sort of look a bright schoolboy gives you when you’ve caught him out in some offence he knows you find more amusing than criminal.”

  “Well, I hear Mr. Paston doesn’t think the hoax at all amusing. I shouldn’t like to be in Alwyn’s shoes, if he was responsible for it. Paston has the big guns, you know. A year or two ago, he was done a nasty turn, and he made things so hot for the chap that did it—”

  At that point, two villagers came into the bar and our conversation was broken off.

  Whatever the repercussions going on now at the Manor—and as I walked home, I wondered, and totally failed to imagine, what Vera Paston’s reactions to the hoax would be—they were only distant mutterings of the storm that, for me, broke at nine-fifteen two mornings later.

  Coming down to breakfast, I collected the letters from the box; some bills, a catalogue of rare books and one or two personal letters for me; one, addressed in uneducated-looking capital letters, for Jenny—possibly a reply to the advertisement she had put in the local paper for a woman to do rough work in our house.

  I settled down to my coffee and toast, and was looking through the catalogue—our newspapers do not arrive till later—when I became aware that Jenny, normally talkative at breakfast, had been silent for some little while. I looked up.

  She was sitting rigid, her eyes staring, as if she’d had a stroke, and holding an object that, from my side of the table seemed to be a playing-card, only it was shaking so convulsively in her hand that I could not for an instant determine what it was.

  “Jenny! Darling! What is it?”

  She gave me the same unrecognising look that I had seen on her face when she was waking from the nightmare on Sunday. Then her eyes focused upon me. She held out the thing in her hand, and in a tone of heart-rending, flat despair, said:

  “It’s started happening again.”

  The thing was indeed a playing-card: a joker. A piece of paper was gummed by one edge to the face of the card. It bore, in the same capital letters as the envelope in which it had arrived, the following legend:

  YOU SICK BITCH NO WONDER YOU’RE SICK MARRIED TO AN IMPOTENT OLD STICK.

  Thank God Corinna was not in the room: we were treating her to breakfast in bed as part of her convalescence. Poor Jenny’s hands were fluttering on the table like maimed birds, and her teeth had begun to chatter. At that moment I could have murdered whoever had sent the letter.

  After a little, I was able to get through to her, and she broke down, weeping bitterly in my arms. I put a stiff dose of brandy in her coffee, and held the cup to her lips. My heart was ravaged with pity and with anger, when I saw the imploring look she gave me.

  “It’s all right, my love. Don’t distress yourself. This doesn’t mean anything, I promise you, except that there’s some nasty person—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” she cried desolately.

  I got her to lie down on our bed upstairs, and gave her a sedative. When I saw it had taken effect, I hurried into Corinna’s room. She was sharing her breakfast with Buster.

  “Jenny’s had a bad shock. I’ve given her something to make her sleep. Put on your dressing-gown and sit with her. If she wakes up before I get back, just try to keep her calm—and don’t ask her any questions.”

  “What’s happened, Father? Is Sam all right?”

  “It’s not Sam. Nothing serious. I’ll tell you later.”

  Corinna is a good girl. She hastened to do as I had asked her, without delaying me a moment longer.

  Two minutes later I was knocking at the Cards’ door. If Alwyn noticed my agitation, he made no comment on it: greeting me in his somewhat flowery way, he led me into his sanctum—an untidy, sunny room which had no doubt been the “morning room” when Pydal was the dower house of the Manor.

  “Did you get an anonymous letter this morning?” I asked, brushing aside his civilities.

  There was a touch of hauteur in the fluting voice as he replied:

  “My dear Waterson, without being over-ceremonious, I’m bound to ask what concern it is of yours if I did.”

  “My wife has just received a vilely scurrilous one. It has greatly upset her.”

  “Really? How appalling! I’m sorry indeed to hear it. But—”

  “People who write poison-pen letters seldom confine their attentions to a single victim.”

  “Ah, I see. You fear an outbreak of this sort of thing. Well, I haven’t received one yet. No doubt it’ll come later. I should be quite offended if the poison pen left me out,” he added fl
ippantly. His overgrown choirboy face grew pensive. “I say, though, it’d look bad for me if I never got one, wouldn’t it?”

  Did I detect a certain morbid inquisitiveness behind his levity? The baby-blue eyes were impossible to fathom.

  “What about your brother?” I asked quietly. “Has he had one?”

  “I’ve no idea. Bertie’s a secretive sort of chap in some ways. But we’ll ask him.”

  We found Bertie, still at breakfast, reading the racing forecasts. Alwyn explained my errand, after his brother had nodded curtly to me.

  “Not that I know of,” said the latter. “Unless it’s in one of those envelopes I tore up. They all looked like bills.”

  And there it was. Amongst the other torn-up envelopes, one addressed in capitals. I handed its contents to him—a playing-card torn in half. It struck me that he must be exceptionally strong as well as incurious not to have noticed the resistance of a playing-card to his fingers.

  “Well, well,” he said, putting the pieces together. “Look at this, Alwyn old boy. The joker.”

  Alwyn’s ruddy face went pale in patches, the red veins showing.

  “God bless my soul,” he said.

  “Chickens come home to roost, eh?” Bertie gave his brother what struck me as a disagreeably gloating look.

  “What does it say?”

  “You can read.”

  Alwyn and I looked over his shoulder. A slip of paper, gummed to the card by one edge, and written on it in capitals:

  WHY DON’T YOU PAY YOUR BILLS YOU MORONIC WOMANISING CLOT?

  “Quite a novel way for tradespeople to dun a chap, isn’t it?” said Bertie coolly.

  I waited, in dread, for what he might say next. He said it:

  “That’s the second time I’ve been called a moron in the last few weeks. I shall get an inferiority complex if this goes on.”

  “Did you get the—the same sort of thing?” Alwyn asked me, in visible consternation.

  “My wife? Yes, a joker, with a message on it.”

  “All we need now is to find the knave,” remarked Bertie, yawning. “Perhaps they’re the same card, so to speak.”