An Author Bites the Dust

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Bony reasoned that if Mr Wilcannia-Smythe was a guest and was inside the house Mrs Blake would have placed two cups and saucers on her tray. A few seconds later she entered the kitchen again, this time to turn out the lamp. Bony decided to return to Miss Pinkney and allay her curiosity with a partial outline of what he had seen.

  Without difficulty, he found the hole in the division fence. Once inside Miss Pinkney’s garden, he walked along the fence to the banana case. Miss Pinkney was not there. He called her name, softly, and received no reply.

  The rear of the house was in darkness. On going round to the front he was astonished to see no light in any of the rooms or in the hall. He passed up the steps to the veranda, crossed it to the front door, and found it wide open. In the doorway he stood listening. He could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining-room, and the faint ticking of a smaller clock distant in the bowels of the dark house.

  With matches, he lighted his way to his bedroom where he found his torch. With that to help him, he went from room to room calling Miss Pinkney’s name, not hesitating to enter even the bedroom she occupied. He became most uneasy. Miss Pinkney was nowhere in the house. Mr Pickwick was; Bony met him in the passage.

  Chapter Five

  The Amateur Sleuth

  Having found out the mechanism of the ship’s lamp and lit it, Bony occupied a chair on the front veranda and rolled a cigarette. Miss Pinkney’s disappearance was extremely odd, for she had promised to remain at the fence until he rejoined her.

  When at the expiration of five minutes Miss Pinkney was still absent, he left his chair and took the path to the rear fence. He recalled that she had been wearing a dark-grey suit and light stockings which, he knew, would be easily distinguishable if he came across her body.... It was by no means likely, but still...

  On reaching the banana case, he proceeded along the fence to the gap through which he had entered the garden next door, and then onward until he came to the corner of Miss Pinkney’s garden that was roughly in alignment with the rear veranda of the Blake’s house. Beyond that corner was a vacant allotment.

  The lamp was still alight in the room opening on the rear veranda, and had not the disappearance of Miss Pinkney become a matter of urgency, he would have taken a second walk round the house that evening. He returned to the banana case and as far as the opposite corner without finding any trace of his landlady.

  Back again on the front veranda, he was met by Mr Pick-wick. The cat wanted to be friendly, and he followed Bony from room to room when the second search was made. The grandfather clock chimed the hour of nine, and he decided that if Miss Pinkney had not returned at ten o’clock, he would call on Constable Simes.

  She returned about ten minutes to ten, alighting from a car that came from the direction of Warburton and continued towards Melbourne. She came trippingly along the crazy path from the gate, and did not see him until he spoke.

  “Oh! There you are!” she cried, the current of excitement in her voice. “Come along in. I’ve something to tell you, something terribly interesting.”

  When he reached the door of the lounge, she was lighting a standard lamp.

  “Now you sit here and make yourself comfortable,” she ordered. “I’m going to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea, and I’ll cut some sandwiches, and we’ll sit here and have our supper and gossip over our adventures.”

  “Why not allow me to go with you to the kitchen?” he suggested. “I like having supper in a kitchen. I always do at my own home. My wife says that it saves sweeping up the crumbs.”

  “Oh!” Miss Pinkney stared at him. “So you are married. Well, well! Let’s go to the kitchen. Where is your home?”

  “Johannesburg,” he answered, and stepped aside to permit her to proceed from the lounge.

  Arrived at the kitchen, she exclaimed, “You’ve been here before! Why light the hurricane lamp? Why not the table lamp? It gives so much better light.”

  “I lit the hurricane when I came here looking for you,” he said, lightly. “You deserted your post, you know.”

  She pushed paper into the stove and kindling wood on top of that. Casually, she dashed kerosene into the mixture and fired it. To the accompaniment of flame roaring up the chimney, she filled a tin kettle from the sink tap. Not a word in answer to his charge until the kettle was on the stove and she had seated herself at the table. Then out came the cigarette-case and the lighter he had repaired.

  “Offer me a cigarette, please, Mr Bonaparte, and then tell me all that you did and saw.”

  “First of all I would like to know why you left the fence,” he said, his voice firm but his eyes beaming. He held her lighter in service, and because her mind was so crammed with memories she omitted to thank him.

  “Well, when you crept through the fence, I went back to the banana case,” she began, at first slowly, regarding him steadily across the table. “I could see nothing at all, not even you, and I couldn’t even see a light in Mr Blake’s room. I could hear nothing either, except timber trucks and Mr Pickwick moving about somewhere in the trees.

  “Oh, my poor legs and ankles! I thought of rushing back to the house for the citronella, and then I remembered I had promised you to keep watch. I’m sure I scratched ladders in my stockings.” She slewed herself sideways and stretched her legs, keeping her body between them and Bony. “No, I haven’t. It’s a wonder, though. Anyway, I was being a terrible martyr for your sake when I heard a car turn off the main road and then saw its lights sweep round before it stopped at the Blake’s front gate.

  “That will be Mrs Blake, I thought. When she comes in through the gates the light will shine along these lilac-trees and maybe the writing-room and on you. So I mimicked Mr Pickwick to give you plenty of warning. When I saw the light go on in the living-room, I wondered why you didn’t come back. I kept on caterwauling, and presently, as I knew he would, Mr Pickwick joined in. He can never bear with my caterwauling. Either it’s such a poor effort or it’s so realistic he thinks it’s a lady cat.”

  Miss Pinkney paused for breath and a lungful of smoke. She was thorough in everything she did.

  “Well,” she proceeded, “there were Mr Pickwick and I singing to each other, and we were still at it when I heard what I thought was you coming back along the fence, and on the other side, too. I stopped my caterwauling, but Mr Pickwick kept it going and I heard a voice that wasn’t yours say, ‘Stop your screaming, you little bitch’.

  “I very nearly fell off the case, and I might have, too, if I hadn’t been holding on to the fence. Instead of climbing through the hole in the fence, this person clambered over it by holding to the branch of a lilac-tree. He dropped down on my side and passed me so closely that I could have kicked him. I just saw him taking the path towards the house, and I thought if he thinks he is going to burgle my home I’ll let him see that it can’t be done.

  “So I hurried after him. Then, just before I could reach the kitchen door, I saw him at the front gate in the lights of an approaching car. He closed the gate, and I rushed to it and was in time to see him walking down the road. He was Mr Wilcannia-Smythe.”

  Again she paused for breath. Rising hastily, she crossed to the stove on which the kettle was now boiling. Having made the tea, she left the pot beside the stove and returned to Bony, saying, “I followed that man all the way to the Rialto Hotel, which is this side of Warburton and three miles away. I’m sure he never saw me, not once. I saw him walk through the gateway and along the short drive to the terrace, and I saw him walk up the steps to the terrace and there talk casually with several of the guests before he went inside. The terrace is brilliantly lit, you know. He must be staying there. He wasn’t wearing a hat or anything. He couldn’t be Mrs Blake’s guest now, and I can’t understand why he didn’t stop and meet Mrs Blake instead of sneaking over my back fence to get away from her. What did you see?”

  “I watched him reading one of Mr Blake’s books,” replied Bony. “When he saw that Mrs Blake had returned, he l
eft hurriedly and I lost him in the darkness. His behaviour is very strange. Er—don’t you think the tea is brewed now?”

  “Of course! How silly of me.” The subject of the tea, craftily introduced, placed a brake on her interest in his adventures. She spread a cloth and proceeded to cut sandwiches, while she ran on and on in circles after a solution of the mystery.

  Presently he said, “Did you see much of the Blakes?”

  “Quite a lot, Mr Bonaparte,” she answered, and laughingly added, “over and through my back fence. Oh dear, Mr Pickwick! Please be patient one more minute.” The cat “mirrilled” and almost tripped her on her way back from the stove with the teapot. “I’m afraid I’ve spoilt Mr Pickwick. Don’t you spoil him, too, Mr Bonaparte.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Bony promised. “Did the Blakes entertain much?”

  “A great deal. They had a house party at least once a month.”

  “Well-known people, I assume?”

  “H’m I suppose so.” Did you see evidence of too much drinking?”

  “Oh no! No, nothing like that.”

  “You never overheard any quarrelling?”

  “No, never. The Blakes were excellent hosts, and their guests were always well behaved, though they were literary people and artists and radio announcers and that kind. Now this tea ought to be ready. And time, too.”

  “Shall I pour?”

  She looked swiftly into the blue eyes, smiled, and might have giggled, but didn’t.

  “If you like,” she assented. “Plenty of milk for me. I’ll clear away the bread and things. I wonder if Mrs Blake’s cook did go to the pictures. I think she did. I’m certain the picture bus stopped at the corner.”

  “If she went, what time would she return?”

  “About half past eleven. We’ll hear the bus coming up the hill, and I’ll slip out to the gate and see if she gets off it. Dear me! My hair must be a sight.” She flew to the mirror hanging behind the kitchen door. “Why didn’t you tell me it’s all upsidaisy?”

  “I didn’t like to,” he confessed, chuckling. “It looks quite nice as it is, anyway. Have you read any novels by Mervyn Blake?”

  “No. I don’t care for Australian novels. I borrowed one of Wilcannia-Smythe’s just because I saw the man in the next door garden. It was all about the bush, you know, and gumtrees and things, but the characters were just too terribly, crashingly boring. He’s frightfully clever, you know. At least the paper says he is. I like a book that tells a story—you know, books by Conrad and John Buchan and S.S. Van Dine.”

  “There was a Mr Marshall Ellis staying with the Blakes when he died. Did you see him?” Bony pressed, and Miss Pinkney almost snorted.

  “He was English,” she said. “And a big lout of a man. Mr Blake spoke through his adenoids. Mr Wilcannia-Smythe spoke like a Canberra trickster. Mr Lubers spoke like an Oxford man. And Mr Marshall Ellis spoke like an—like an angel. But, oh my! He had a face like a Manchester bargee.”

  Bony chuckled and helped himself to another sandwich.

  “We are getting along famously, Miss Pinkney. Permit me to compliment you on the art of cutting sandwiches. What about the ladies who were at that last house party?”

  Now Miss Pinkney did giggle. She said, “The Montrose woman reminded me of a picture I saw of Marie Antoinette going to the guillotine. Talks with grapes in her tonsils like some of those women on the screen. Used to make eyes at Mervyn Blake. Anyway, that didn’t matter much because when the Spanish gentleman was staying there he used to ogle Mrs Blake and they’d walk arm in arm about the garden.”

  “Indeed! Do you think there were any marital differences between the Blakes?”

  “No, I think not,” Miss Pinkney replied slowly. “You see, the Blakes and their friends appear to be people who were too much in love with themselves to have any capacity to love anyone else. The Miss Chesterfield who stayed there the night Mr Blake died had often stayed with the Blakes. She’s on a newspaper or something. I wish—” Miss Pinkney sighed, and then went on, “I wish I could dress as she does. I wish—but I mustn’t be stupid. Hark! That’s the picture bus coming. I’ll run.”

  Bony heard her hurrying along the passage, and helped himself to another sandwich. Nowhere in the official summary did Miss Pinkney’s name appear, and he wondered if her name was also absent from the official file still waiting to be read by him. He heard the bus pass the house and then stop at the corner, heard it go on. Half a minute later Miss Pinkney returned to say that Mrs Blake’s cook had alighted from the bus; she had recognized her by the hat she was wearing.

  Chapter Six

  Bony Seeks Collaboration

  The police station at Yarrabo was situated at the lower end of the straggling settlement, and the officer in charge was tolerant but efficient. His interests were few and sharply defined. Outside his official duties he had three loves, his daughter, his garden, his painting. From the front veranda one had to bend back one’s head to look up at the summit of Donna Buang.

  There was a picture in oils of Donna Buang, as seen through the policeman’s eyes from his front veranda. The picture was a little distracting to Bony, who was seated opposite the constable.

  “Anything I can do, sir, to help I’ll be delighted. I assume that you read my report, among all the others, on the Blake case.”

  Constable Simes spoke quickly, crisply. If he was yet forty, his face belied it. He was large, hard, fair, blue-eyed and round-jawed. He was impervious to Bony’s examining eyes.

  “I read the entire official file on the Blake case before I went to bed at four forty-five this morning,” Bony stated, as though giving evidence. “Reports and statements, however, are limited to facts, whereas the summary provides a few assumptions based on the known facts. When you and I have to make a report, we confine ourselves strictly to facts as we think we know them. When a person makes a statement, he also sticks to facts—unless he has reason to give false information. Strangely enough, the majority of cases successfully finalized have rested on the ability of the investigator to prove facts from assumption. Care to work with me?”

  “Yes, certainly, sir.”

  Simes said it with official stiffness, and now Bony smiled, and all the little stirrings of hostility towards the Queenslander vanished from the constable’s mind.

  There was genuine happiness in Bony’s voice when he said, “Good! Let me explain a few points that will assist us in getting together. Firstly, I am not a policeman’s bootlace. We have the authority of my Chief Commissioner for that, and he is a man of astonishing acumen. Now and then, however, he does admit that I am that paradox, a rotten policeman but a most successful detective. I am glad to hold the rank of inspector only on account of the salary.

  “My present task is to reveal how Mervyn Blake came by his death. No one knows that, and the medical experts seem to have agreed that he died from neural causes. I am here simply because your own C.I.B is snowed under with work, and Superintendent Bolt doesn’t want the case to grow too cold. He asked me to keep it warm for him, believing it would interest me—which it does.”

  He lit the cigarette he had been making and again smiled. Simes looked at the cigarette, and wanted to smile.

  “I would like you to banish two things from your mind,” Bony went on. “The one is to forget that I am an inspector, and the other is to forget to call me ‘sir’. I want you to be entirely free in your attitude to me, because I want your collaboration off the record as well as on it. I want you to have no hesitation in expressing assumptions and presenting theories, not because I want to use you up, as the current expression goes, but because if you are able to be free with me, you will, doubtless, provide valuable data which you would not do did you continue to regard me as an official superior. I have all the known facts. Now I want your opinions, your assumptions, your suspicions. Do you get it?”

  For the first time, Constable Simes smiled.

  “You make it easy to collaborate—er—er—”

  “B
ony. Just Bony. Now I want to ask questions. Ready?”

  “Go ahead,” Simes invited, and then added, “Of course, not remembering what you asked me to forget, I am permitted to smoke?”

  “Naturally,” agreed Bony. “You see already how well it works. No stiffness, no official barriers. Well, to begin. How long have you been stationed here?”

  “Slightly more than nine years.”

  “Happy here?”

  “Yes. I like these mountains and the people who live among them. I was born at Wood’s Point. I went to school there, and for six years I worked among the timber.”

  “Like promotion?”

  “Of course. It’s overdue.”

  ‘It’s habit with officers who collaborate with me to gain promotion.” Bony said, seriously. “You do that painting?”

  Simes nodded, saying, “Yes, but I’m no artist. Several real artists have told me my work shows promise, and they urged me to study. But I paint to amuse myself, and some day I may have the chance to study.”

  “Not being an artist, I think it a fine picture of Donna Buang. What do you know of Miss Pinkney?”

  “Nice old thing,” Simes said, and Bony was glad he had succeeded in getting behind the policeman’s official facade. “She and her sea-captain brother settled here in the early thirties. He was a bit of a tartar, and he didn’t approve when she fell in love with a timber faller. My sister knew him. Despite the captain’s ruling, they were to be married, when he was killed at his work. Miss Pinkney’s never been the same since, and when her brother died she stayed on and lived alone. You are her first paying guest. Treating you all right?”

  “Better than a paying guest,” Bony asserted warmly. “Does she associate with the locals?”

  “Oh yes. Attends church and works for the Red Cross. I believe my sister is the only real friend she has. There’s a particular bond of sympathy between them, as my sister’s husband, who was a forestry man, was caught in the fires of ’38.”