Arthur Upfield - The New Shoe

He awoke at seven… one hour before the breakfast gong would be struck… and went out to the front veranda overlooking the lawn and gazed through the shelter trees at Split Point headland and the Lighthouse gleaming white in the early sunlight. The air was frostily still. A blackbird probed lustily for worms, and somewhere a calf bellowed at a rooster whose crowing sounded like splintering glass.

To wait inactive one hour for a cup of tea was unthinkable… and Mrs Washfold did look approachable. Bony walked round the outside of the building to the kitchen door, where he was met by a shaggy brown-and-white dog, a hen and a pet sheep. Within, he saw the licensee eating breakfast.

“Good morning,” Bony greeted him from outside the fly-wire door. “A king once shouted ‘My kingdom for a horse’; you hear me shout: ‘My wife for a cup of tea!’ ”

Washfold turned and grinned a welcome.

“No deal,” he said. “One woman around this joint’s enough for me. Come and get it.”

Bony drew open the fly-wire door and went in. The doorjambed open and the dog followed him. The dog was followed by the pet sheep, and over the large round face of BertWashfold spread alarm. He was in time to prevent the hen entering the kitchen, and in time to shoo out the sheep and the dog, before Mrs Washfold appeared.

“Cup of tea! Of course, Mr Rawlings. You can get a cup of tea here any time of day or night… in the off season. Goin’ to be a nice day. What’s the matter with that dog, Bert?”

“Gottaflea up his nose, I suppose. Lie down, Stug. Sugar?”

“Thanks.” Bony sugared his tea and drank it.

“Heavens! You’ll scald your throat out,” exclaimed Mrs Washfold.“Another cup?”

“Ah! That’s better. Yes, if you please.”

“And what would you like for breakfast? Cereal or porridge? And bacon and eggs or a nice fillet steak with eggs or tomatoes?”

Shafts of sunlight barred his sky-blue dressing gown, and his sleek black hair reflected the light from the door. Looking at him, the Washfolds noted the straight and slim nose, the white teeth and the blue eyes, the face barely stained with the betraying colour of his ancestry… and later disagreed over the ancestry. Bony bowed to Mrs Washfold.

“Madam!” he said. “Am I in a hotel or am I at home?”

“Home,” replied the licensee. “We’re all at home… in the off season. You try out the bacon. Cured itmeself. Recommend it.”

“The fillet steak is also juicy,” added his wife, persuasively.

“And I’ve been urged to go and stay at Lorne,” protested Bony.

“Oh! Who said that?” demandedWashfold.

“Man I met yesterday. Well-built man about fifty or so. Greying brown hair. Grey eyes. Speaks with a faint country accent. He was wearing old clothes and old boots, and he said he owns a couple of hundred sheep.”

Over the cup, Bony blandly watched these two pleasant people.

“Sounds like Tom Owen,” softly stated Mrs Washfold.

“Did he have whiskers sprouting from the bridge of his nose?” asked the large man.

“Yes,” agreed Bony, and Mrs Washfold rose to take air.

“The idea! I’ll give that Tom Owen a tongue-lashin’ when I see him. Lorne! Lorne’s all right for the boys and girls to loll around half-naked in summer time, but not all of us have figures like film stars, although you…” She blushed like a milkmaid. “Not meaning anything, Mr Rawlings. But you know what I mean.”

“Of course. And don’t think I’m likely to go on to Lorne. Why, with such a breakfast as you promise me, I would be foolish. Well, I must dress.”

“And you get about the chores, Bert. Look at the time!”

Later, Bony followed the highway down to the Inlet. The Inlet was like the grass-covered bottom of a fisherman’s creel and on it the creek lay like a silver eel. Beyond the Inlet, the blue sea kissed the land rising to dark-green hills. The meeting of the sea with the land extended in giant curves from headland to headland all the way to Cape Otway.

Bony was satisfied with himself and with this world. There would be no rushing about for him. As he had eaten his breakfast, so would he investigate this murder… without an attack ofindigestion. He was wholly satisfied with his preliminary moves which had brought him as a pastoralist onholiday, and having New South Wales number plates to the car he had borrowed from the Chief of the Victorian Criminal Investigation Branch, he would be able to draw nearer to backgrounds and “sense” influences withheld from known police investigators.

At the bottom of the hill, he turned along a track skirting the Inlet and promising to take him far into the tree-covered mountains of the hinterland.

Passing a house being constructed, he was greeted cheerily by two men tiling the roof. He met a boy driving half a dozen cows, and presently came to a neat little cottage having a low hedge guarding the small front garden. Onward he strolled to a large shed-like building of wood-slab walls and wood-slat roof. It was set back off the road, and against the front wall leaned rusting wagon tyres. The large door was open, and just within a man was industriouslyplaning a board on a bench. His clothes were neat. His body was plump. His face was pink, and his hair was as white as the surf.

He looked up and saw Bony, who called:

“Good day-ee!”

“Good day-eeto you, sir,” came the answer, and because the old man’s pose was an invitation, Bony left the road and entered the building, which resolved into a workshop. Wood shavings lay deep on the floor about the bench. Planks and “wads” of three-and four-ply were stacked at one end, and over near a corner was a stack of oblong boxes. The condition of the bellows behind a forge told of years which would never return.

“Great day, Mister,” said the craftsman.

“It is, Mr Penwarden.”

“Ah, now! How did ’e know my name?”

“The weather hasn’t quite obliterated it from over your door,” replied Bony. “My name is Rawlings. Staying at the hotel for a week or so. You’re very busy this morning.”

“Aye, I’m allus busy, Mr Rawlings, sir.” The old man’s eyes were as blue and as clear as those of the dark-complexioned man who seated himself on a sawing-horse and made a cigarette. He was seventy if a day, and his mind was as alert as it had been forty-odd years before. “You see, Mr Rawlings, the Great Enemy never gives himself a spell. He rushes here and theretappin ’ this one on the shoulder and that one, and it ’pears to me the only way to beat him is to keep as busy as he is. Hedon’t take notice of busy people. Hasn’t got the time when there’s so many folk too tired to appreciate the joys of living.”

“There is certainly nothing better than an occupied mind and busy hands to keep the Enemy you mentioned at bay, Mr Penwarden.” Bony knew, but he asked the question: “Have you been long in this district?”

“I built this forge and workshop pretty near sixty years ago,” replied the workman. “Twenty-one I was then, and just out of me apprenticeship to a wheelwright. Nomotee cars and trucks them days. No flash roads to Lorne and on to Apollo Bay. Only the old track from Geelong. In summer the track was feet-deep indust, and in winter yards-deep in mud.”

Bony gave another cursory glance about the ancient building, ancient but still sound. Verging upon a discovery, he left the saw bench to study the wall and roof beams and rafters at closer range. The old man watched him, in his eyesan expression of enormous satisfaction, but on Bony returning to the saw bench he was working with the plane.

“You didn’t drive in one nail,” Bony said, almost accusingly. “All you used were wood pins, and I can’t see where they were driven in.”