101 Mystery Stories

56 The Joker Betty Ren Wright

The tiny microphone just fit into a hollow in the low terrace wall. Harry stepped back and told himself, with a kind of anguish, that there was no danger of its being noticed. Anyone concerned about eavesdroppers would be looking toward the door into the house, not at the wall with its forty-foot drop to the sea.

He stared over the wall into the deep, foaming pool that had undercut the cliff and polished the walls of the cove to unmarred smoothness. He was terrified by water — Greta was, too — but the lashing of the waves suited his mood tonight. There was the same uneasy surge beneath the surface, the same sudden furious thrusts. The water reflected a Harry that no one — except perhaps Greta — had ever seen.

He really had to smile a little at the idea of Greta and his secret self. He had hidden his fear of being deserted, of being left all alone in an indifferent world, by marrying the kind of woman who would be desired and pursued by other men always.

It was an interesting trick, he thought. One of his best. And if Greta, more perceptive than most people, had recognized her limited role and resented it, he couldn’t help that. Confidence, trust, frankness were expensive toys for a privileged few. He had learned to get along without them.

He shivered, and called himself a fool for being nervous. After all, no one would suspect him of malice in putting the tape recorder on the terrace. His jokes had never been vicious. This time it would appear that for once he had been caught in his own trap. People would talk about it for a long time and pity him, and though he regretted the pity, he relished the talk. There were other ways in which he might have killed Greta (he’d use one of them if this didn’t work out tonight), but in none of them would her friends have seen her so clearly for what she really was. That was important. He hated her now, with the same shattering intensity with which he had wanted her five years ago.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” Harry stood at the French doors and watched her come down the last few stairs and cross to the foyer. She was small, straight, auburn, like a fall candle, and tonight she would make all the cameo-skinned, elegant females at the party wish they had been born with red hair and freckles. He could be quite objective about her now — could marvel at what no longer belonged to him — had apparently never belonged to him. (And that was the bad part — the wound that was not going to heal. She had been Peter Buckley’s girl before their marriage; for the last six months she had been seeing him regularly again. The two facts invalidated all that had happened between.)

It was, predictably, Peter Buckley arriving first. Harry greeted him too loudly, toned it down, fixed him a drink, and went back to the door to meet the next arrivals. During the hour that followed he welcomed at least twenty more people, asked them how their work was going, whether their vacations had been exciting, how they liked their new houses, cars, and spouses. He showed first-time guests around — the fireplace made with not-quite-genuine fossils, the mirror that took your picture when you turned on the light over it, the mounted muskie that inflated while he described what a fight it had taken to land it. He mixed a great many drinks, told a great many stories. And all of this it seemed he accomplished without once taking his eyes from Greta and Peter. Every word they spoke to each other, every casual gesture, every smile was in some curious way a symptom of the disease that was destroying him. He felt like an invalid making bright conversation while at the same time he took his own pulse and found it dangerously irregular.

When Greta and Peter finally went out on the terrace together, closing the door behind them, he was actually relieved. If they had not wanted to be alone, it would have proved nothing except that they were inclined to caution now, when caution was ridiculous. Harry thought of the overheard, whispered phone calls in which she had arranged to meet Peter, the times he had seen them driving together — the bitter afternoon when, coming home early along the shore road, he had seen them driving up from Buckley’s beach cottage. Greta was supposed to be in the city that afternoon; when he asked her, she described in detail where she had eaten, whom she had seen, the antique sale at which, not surprisingly, she had seen nothing worth buying.

“—so marvelous,” a voice screamed in his ear. “Like living in an eagle’s nest. You two must adore the water!”

“Adore looking at it,” Harry corrected with a smile. It was Joe Herman’s wife — a shrill, peevish kind of woman who embodied all the things Greta was not. Ugly, he thought, still smiling at her — ugly, malicious, domineering, and loyal. She might treat poor old Joe like dirt but nobody else had better try it.

June Herman’s face turned red, as though some unexpected acumen let her read the thought behind his smile. “A man with a wife who looks like Greta ought to keep her in an eagle’s nest,” she said viciously. Harry turned, looking for an explanation for her anger, and saw Joe talking to Greta with obvious enjoyment.

The party dragged by, like a hundred others before it. He had been careful to add a few of the ingredients his guests had learned to expect: one of the “gelatin” molds of the buffet was made of rubber; the woman in the painting over the fireplace smiled at people who stopped to admire her, the new bearskin rug growled when Joe Herman stooped to pat its head. “Marvelous,” everyone said when he finally left, and he knew exactly what they were thinking, Good old corny old Harry — he’ll never change. Not one of them knew he existed apart from his jokes.

Peter Buckley and the Hermans were the last to leave. “Thank goodness,” Greta said when the door closed behind them. Harry looked at her sharply, but her expression was as innocent as her tone. She yawned and, as if on cue, crossed to the terrace door and went out into the silver light. He followed. As he crossed the room he seemed to leave his state of fevered alertness and enter into a kind of dull automatism. He did not have to think about what was going to happen next. It was set, inevitable.

“I’m tired,” Greta said. Her face was very white. The yellow dress was subdued fire against the darkness of the sea. Far below her the water lashed against the floor of the cliff.

“You had a terrible time tonight,” she said when he walked over beside her. “Why do you bother with jokes when you’re feeling this lousy? Why don’t you tell me what’s worrying you?”

She had the knack, he thought. She should have gone on the stage; it was wonderful the way she delivered those small lines. Tell the little woman all about it, he thought savagely, aping the sense if not the tone of her plea. He moved a few steps along the wall, picked up the microphone, and waited until she looked at him.

“What’s that?”

“Another joke,” he said and waited again, but she didn’t seem to recognize what he held. “It’s the microphone of the tape recorder,” he said carefully. “I had it set up out here to get an hour or two of private-type conversations. Ought to be good for some laughs.”

Awareness came slowly, just as he had imagined it would, in the long, painful night-hours of planning. And now, it was her voice that was careful, controlled, as she asked, “You had it — out here?”

He nodded.

She took it well, considering the depth of the pit that had suddenly opened up before her. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said. “Funny jokes are one thing, but that — that’s cheap and ugly.”

He pretended to be startled. “You have a pretty poor opinion of our friends,” he said. “What do you think we’re going to hear, for heaven’s sake? A lot of small talk about how pretty the ocean is in the moonlight and isn’t it a dull party and wouldn’t you think that joker would get tired of his little games after a while... that’s all it’ll be. We can play it at the next party if things are slow...” Without looking at her he lifted the tape recorder from behind the column of greenery in the corner and set it on the wall. “Sit down,” he said. “Might as well listen to it before we go to bed.”

She moved then, gliding along the wall so swiftly that he had only a fraction of a second to get ready. Her hands were on the tape recorder, pushing wildly, when he caught her around the hips and lifted her over the wall. One moment he was thrusting her away from him into space, the next his hands were empty. Her scream was cut short when she hit the water.

He had tried to prepare himself for the moments right afterward. Horror was what he expected, and it came, a wild trembling, a violent nausea as he stared down into the water. Doubt, fear, remorse because now he was a murderer and would know himself to be one forever. But he hadn’t expected the overwhelming loneliness which, when it struck, drove every other feeling out of him. With his own hands he had done it, had rendered himself alone in a world that thought he was a very funny man indeed. She was the only one who hadn’t laughed.

Later he thought that he might have followed her over the wall in that moment, might have ended it right then, if the doorbell hadn’t rung. After the third or fourth ring he recognized the sound. And he knew he had to go ahead with the plan.

When he opened the door Joe Herman stepped inside, pulling his wife behind him. “Damn tire,” he snarled and grabbed the telephone in the entry. “That’s the second one this week — I don’t even have a spare...” He looked at Harry more closely. “What’s the matter — too much party? You oughta cut out all that cute stuff.”

“Call the police,” Harry said. “Call somebody. Greta just jumped off the terrace. She’s killed herself.”

He didn’t have to pretend the sobs that shook him when he actually said the words.

The Hermans stared. “Look, funny boy,” Joe said, but something apparently convinced him it was not a joke, for he ran across to the terrace and his wife followed him.

“The cliff walls are smooth as marble for a hundred yards around the cove.” Harry said harshly from the terrace door. He watched them stare over the edge, seeing the churning blackness himself though he didn’t leave the lighted living room. “That was one of the reasons we built here — privacy, no beach parties, nobody peeking in the windows.”

He went back to the phone and called the police himself. When he was through the Hermans were behind him, their faces white and curiously hungry as they struggled to believe the worst. “You... you wouldn’t joke about a thing like this.” Joe said uncertainly. “I don’t believe you would. But why would Greta — do that?”

Harry saw then that they were the right people to have here when the police came. They both knew him as The Joker; Joe had been involved in several of the best. They would believe the picture of the clown and the joke that backfired. They would want to believe it, would want the police to believe it. They would feel, in a way they would not even admit to themselves, that he had it coming.

“I don’t understand it myself,” he said simply. “We were just talking — you know, after-the-party talk. I mentioned that I had had the tape recorder turned on out on the terrace this evening. She looked strange — kind of sick — I asked her if she was feeling all right — she said yes, but then she started to cry and when I switched on the re-wind she started to moan and then she ran across the terrace and just — jumped.”

They looked at him.

“Poor kid,” Joe said. “I wonder why...”

“What about the tape recorder?” June asked eagerly. “Why don’t you play it now and see if there was something on it that might have upset her?”

He knew he didn’t have to let them hear the tape. June Herman knew the whole story already, or thought she did; he had watched her eyes widen when he mentioned the recorder, had seen the eager twitching of lips as she tasted the story she would have to tell.

“Greta never had anything to hide,” he said stiffly “That’s a lousy thing to say.”

Joe shook his head and his wife made a small, protesting sound. “Of course not,” she said soothingly. “But just the same, Harry, you ought to listen to the tape before the police come. You just ought to.”

He thought it over, then shrugged as if he were too tired to argue. The recorder was still out on the terrace; he got it quickly and brought it back in. He knew he was taking a chance, but not a big one; there had been no doubt that Greta had not wanted him to hear the tape. And June Herman was the right one, the absolutely right one, to hear the whole story.

He pushed the re-wind button and waited, while the tape whirred innocently to the other spool. Then the room was full of the sound of waves. Loneliness came back as he listened; he was powerless before it, though he reminded himself that he had lost nothing, that he couldn’t lose something he had never really had. Still he strained to hear Greta’s voice, wanting the sound of it once more, regardless of the words it spoke.

Joe Herman leaned forward and turned up the volume of the recorder. There was the sound of footsteps on stone and then a giggle. Harry didn’t recognize the voice but he could tell June was cataloging this, too, for future investigation. There followed a long pause with nothing but the splash of waves, and then, suddenly and sweetly, there was Greta’s voice.

“It’s more than a joke now, Petey,” she said. “He hasn’t trusted me from the very first, and lately we’ve been farther apart than ever. At first it just seemed as if it would be fun to turn the tables on him — once. Now it’s much more. At first I had no intention of frightening him — now I feel as if shock is the only thing that might bring him back...”

“You’re wonderful,” Peter said. “I think I’ve mentioned that before. When are you going to do it?”

The Hermans frowned, trying hard to follow the conversation. As the tape whirled on, their faces seemed to move farther away, leaving Harry alone on a small island surrounded by Greta’s voice.

“Soon,” the voice said. “I’m not quite sure how I’ll do it, but I can tell you this, Petey — I’ll plan it so he thinks he’s lost me. For a minute or two or maybe more he’s going to face up to how much he needs me — he’s going to value me as a person and not just as part of his pretty little stage set here on the cliff. I want him to wish to heaven he had one more chance to make our marriage work. I want him to know exactly what it’s like to love someone terribly, as I love him, and not be able to reach him...” She took a deep breath. “And I do thank you Petey, for making it possible.”

The entry door opened. Joe saw it first; with a real effort he tore his eyes from the tape recorder and got up clumsily. “It’s the police—” he said and then suddenly stopped.

Harry did not move. In the mirror over the couch he could see two figures neatly framed in gold, a picture to carry with him the rest of his life. Here the tall policeman, puzzled, frowning, and there, just beside him, the small, freckled, red-headed girl in a drenched yellow dress. They had come together in the darkness behind them; the policeman would have seen her somewhere on the beach beyond the smooth walls of the cove, walking slowly across the sand, trying to believe the thing that had happened.

Well, he thought, I certainly found out what she wanted me to. And then he began to laugh, because somebody’s joke had backfired, and if he didn’t laugh now he was going to cry. He laughed for himself, for the wife he had had, and for Pete Buckley who must have spent a good share of the last six months teaching Greta how to swim. He was still laughing when the policeman put the handcuffs on him and led him out of the house.