Arthur Upfield: Death of a Lake

“Yes. She showed it to me when Lester gave it to her.”

“Did you see the emerald ring given your mother byMacLennon?”

“Yes.”

“And the pendant?”

“Yes. Why all this?”

“Where did your mother usually keep her jewellery?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Never interested that much.”

“Do you think she would keep her jewellery in an old handbag behind the door of the ladies’tante?”

“Tante! What’stante?”

“Aunt.”The girl laughed, and Bony said suavely:

“Constable, take Mr Wallace and Mr Lester to the room now occupied by Miss Fowler, and bring here any jewellery you may find.”

The girl jumped to her feet andstormed, her voice harsh, her words raw. The sergeant stood and towered over her. The constable and Lester departed, the mystified Mr Wallace following after them. Bony glanced across at the two men again seated by the wall. Martyr was leaning back and resting his head against a wall support. His eyes were closed, and he was smiling. Carney sat tensely, his eyes wide, as horror strangled an ideal which had striven to live.

“Sit down, Miss, and keep calm,” urgedMansell. “The Inspector’s only getting things straightened out.” She looked up at him searchingly, her hands clenched. Abruptly she turned to Bony. Bony was writing a memo, and she sat again and from the cigarette section of the gold compact she extracted a smoke. The sergeant struck a match for her. She inhaled clumsily, and as she spurted smoke through pursed lips, Bony looked up and the light in his eyes caused her to flinch.

“You don’t know where Gillen planted his money, do you?” he asked, softly. “I do. I know how his money came to be in Lester’s room, and who conveyed it thereto. I know why it was hidden under Lester’s bed. And I know who took your mother’s jewellery to thetante, before the fire, and who removed it from thetante just before we all left for Johnson’sWell. Greed is a loathsome vice, Miss Fowler. Beauty is a wonderful gift which should make the recipient deeply humble. When beauty is allied with greed and a lust for power, beauty is as nothing. You, with your possession of beauty, with the addition of a little intelligence, might have created a world of happiness.”

“Clever, aren’t you!”

Sadly, Bony looked into her green eyes, mocking, cold, empty. Wallace came into the shed. The constable entered with Lester. The constable put on the desk gold and gems which caught the hot light from without.

“Lester! Is that the brooch you gave to Mrs Fowler?”

“Yair, it is. And that’s the ring that Mac gave her. And here’s the necklet Harry gave her, too. Isn’t it, Harry?”

Carney made no move from his seat against the wall, and Bony said:

“Would you like to make a statement telling how your mother died?”

“I signed it.”

“That one isn’t quite accurate.”

“I’m signing no other statement,” the girl said, contemptuously tossing her cigarette butt on to Bony’s papers.

“Very well, I’ll tell you how she died, and what you did afterwards. The case is so simple and so clear that the best lawyers in the country would fail in your defence. There is only one point which eludes me, and it is not important, and that is whether you or your mother found the office safe with the key in its lock.

“For years there has rested on the top of the safe a brass figurine, and this morning it was found where the passage door of the office originally swung.

“The doctor is sure that your mother was killed by a blow from that figurine. He is confident that the Government pathologist will support his opinion, and further will agree with him that the body was dragged on its back for some distance to the bedroom where the fire partially consumed it. The fact that a dustpan has been found on the place where the office stood indicates that one of you went there to sweep out the office. And there murder took place over the parcelled money taken from the safe.

“You dragged your mother’s body from the office, along the passage and so to her room. That was before lunch, and Lester would be expecting to hear the gong struck. You called him to lunch at the right hour, and afterwards you collectedall your mother’s jewellery, your own bank-book and what loose money there was, as well as your toilet aids, and hid them in the handbag behind the door of the ladies’tante, dropping a ring on the path as you went there or returned.

“You foresaw that after setting fire to the house you would escape with nothing save what you were wearing. You could wear your own jewellery but not that belonging to your mother, and what place more secure against men than that you selected?

“Doubtless you were a trifle upset by the body in the house. What to do with the brown-paper parcel containing some twelve thousand pounds? The jewellery you could eventually hide down inside your blouse and in your skirt pocket. But not the parcel. That was too large. You would have put it in thetante, but you could not be sure what Mr Martyr would decide about your immediate future. So you looked across to the quarters and saw Lester dozing with his back to the steps, and you stole over with the parcel, silently gained the veranda and slipped into Lester’s room because it was the first room you came to.

“After the fire, you gained your way with Martyr, or thought you did, to let you stay at the out-station, but when compelled to accompany the men to Johnson’sWell for a space, you retrieved the loot you had put in the handbag and stuffed it down your blouse. The parcel, however, you could do nothing with because one of us at least would see it. So I found the parcel under Lester’s bed within two hours after we left inBarby’s utility, and Mr Wallace with the constable and Lester found your mother’s jewellery in the room given you since yesterday.”

“In the suitcase my wife packed and I brought here for her,” supplemented Mr Wallace.

“Damn clever, eh?” commented Joan, calmly.

“Heavens, no, one hasn’t to be clever with you,” replied Bony, pleasantly. “You know, actually, you are extremely dumb. Just listen to this. This is what you said and what you signed before witnesses: ‘I found Mother unconscious from the smoke and I dragged her off the bed. I couldn’t lift her. The smoke was getting my breath, and the room was full of flames. I dragged Mother by her feet to the doorway, then I had to leave her and rush out because the house was all on fire.’ That is what you stated, and signed as the truth.”

“Well, so what, cocky?”

“Come, come, Miss Fowler! You cannot really be as dumb as that. If you dragged your mother off the bed and then by the feet to the doorway, her body would have been found by police and doctor with its feet to the doorway. She was found with her head to the doorway, proving that you had dragged her body by the feet to that place from the passage. From the passage, Miss Fowler, not from the bed. That’ll be all, Sergeant.”

“Just a little conference before I depart with the Boss,” Bony told Lester and Carney and Martyr, he having drawn them to the edge of the bluff overlooking the dreary depression.

“Much will depend on the Crown Prosecutor,” he went on, “but I fancy he won’t take action againsteither you, Martyr, or you, Carney. Martyr, don’t let this episode in your life spoil it. There was no action you could have taken to rescue Gillen that night, for had there been a boat he couldn’t have been reached in time. As for the money… well… with no one to claim it and a mother desperately ill, I believe I would have… thought about it.

“As for you, Harry, cling to your dreams and remember that what one woman kills another can resurrect. Tell me, who did trounce Bob when he climbed out of that tank?”