Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“I don’t know. It makes me think things, John Parkes,” he said. “I beenworryin ’ a lot lately, and I oughtn’t to be worried at my age. I still got the old woman to think on, and the hotel and everything. Ferris wouldn’t be too bad without Jim. If I knew a bit more I could order him out of the place for keeps. You better go. You better leavetomorrer.”

“I was thinking of doing so.”

“You get away and look for old Ted O’Brien. Tell him I sent you along. Find out if he’s all right and why he left without saying a good-bye to me. He knows something, does Ted. Told me he did. You tell him I been worried a lot over how things are going on here.”

“And you really don’t know why your son went down to Portland today?”

The old man became petulant. “I told you about that,” he said.

“So you did. Did you ever hear of a man named A. B. Bertram?”

“Gimmeanother little drink. It’s good for the memory.”

Bony retrieved the glass in the dark. He said nothing, guessed the measure, and passed the drink to the invalid.

“A. B. Bertram,” repeated the old man. “Yes, I know him. He’s stayed heremore’n once. Bit of a German, I’ve always thought. Plays the fiddle. Uster play it with Jim playing on the organ. What’s he done?”

Jim Simpson’s Decision

BONY heard the Buick returning a few minutes before four o’clock, the silent night admitting the sound in time to enable him to see, through the open window of his bedroom, the clearing illumined by its headlights a moment before it passed to the garages.

Simpson did not appear before or during breakfast and, feeling well satisfied with the world, Bony greeted the cockatoo, seated himself in an easy chair on the veranda, and rolled a cigarette.

The sky was cloudless and the sunshine even this early was hot. The March flies were an annoyance, for they make no sound in flight and alight on the skin without betrayal, to suck more blood than a leech if given the time. They had not been so bad for a dozen years.

Recent developments had added a swift increase of interest in the disappearance of the two young women, and this, instead of making Bony desirous of prolonging his stay at Baden Park Hotel, firmed his intention of leaving that morning.

The chief objective was to establish the fate of the two young women, and he was not going to be side-tracked by the fate of Detective Price and that of O’Brien, excepting that through the fate of either or both of the men he could proceed to learn the fate of the women. Price was dead, but it was far from certain that the old yardman was dead, and equally as far from certain that the girls were dead, despite all the circumstances which had to be accepted.

He had, as it were, attacked the investigation into the disappearance of the two women by the front door. He was held in suspicion by Jim Simpson, who, with the assistance of Glen Shannon, kept him constantly under observation. There was but the one way to evade the attention of both the licensee and the yardman, and that was to attack the investigation through the back door.

Simpson suspected him of being other than he had announced himself to be. He knew the man A. B. Bertram, and it appeared obvious that he had communicated with Bertram, who, in turn, had communicated with Frank Edson. It was possible that Simpson had not gone to Portland at all, that he had merely got out of the way whilst the men sent by Bertram dealt with his mysterious guest.

The mysterious guest was to be got rid of from the hotel, and there had to be no tragedy to achieve this desire. A slight accident during a drunken quarrel, perhaps, but no more. A point of interest was if the desire to be rid of him was on account of what he might discover or on account of having him away from the hotel on March twenty-eighth. Another death in these Grampians would most certainly be followed by tremendous police activity.

Assuming that the two girl hikers had been murdered, assuming that O’Brien had been murdered because he had learned something of the fate of the two girls, assuming that Detective Price had been murdered because he knew something concerning the fate of the girls or of Yardman O’Brien, then the motive for killing the girls must be exceedingly powerful.

The picture of Baden Park Hotel was out of focus and unbalanced. Jim Simpson had no place in the hotel itself, a dead-end place, a dead-end career for a man who was nothing if not ambitious. Simpson’s present yardman also had no place in the picture. Beneath the pleasant exterior of the man there was ruthlessness, and an unbalance of the man when set against the work he was doing, an unbalance equally sharp, as if a hotel chef should undertake to clean the boots.

Bony was lazing in his chair and thinking of Ferris Simpson, who, if she did not know any of the three men who had arrived the evening before, might well have known why they came, when abruptly the licensee appeared.

“I’d like you to move on,” he said, without preamble. Bony expressed surprise. “I’m not saying your name isn’t what you say it is or that you’re not what you’ve given out to be, but what happened last night makes it clear that those crooks came here to do you over. They have something against you, and I’m not going to stand for any gang warfare in my house.”

“But were I a crook, or connected with those fellows, the police would have arrested me too,” objected Bony. “As far as I understand it, the wrestler became cranky with drink. He might have done me an injury but for the timely intervention of your yardman, but that they came here for that purpose I have distinct doubts. Had I been sure on the point, I would have complained to the police.”

“That you didn’t complain to the police clinches my opinion,” snapped the licensee. “I don’t want any argument about it. I want you to leave.”

Bony pretended hurt astonishment, and Simpson departed. On the face of it, the man was justified, but Bony was sure that his reaction was assumed to achieve the result not achieved by the three visitors the previous evening.

The reaction of Ferris Simpson was equally interesting. She was stripping his bed when he entered the room to pack his cases, in her eyes anger and about her mouth the stubbornness of the weak. She looked at Bony with a steadiness he liked.

“I’m sorry you have to go,” she said, so loudly it was evident she wanted Simpson to hear. “My brother isn’t acting reasonably, but he’s the boss, and there it is.”

Bony gave the merest hint of the bow which so illumined his charm to women.

“Thank you,” he said gravely. “However, I appreciate your brother’s position and in his place might reason as he does. After all, you know, it isn’t nice to have people on the premises who are arrested on sight by the Licensing Police, when they chance to come. I’ve enjoyed my stay here very much.”

The girl’s mouth melted into a wistful smile and, without speaking, she snatched up the used bed linen and left. Bony packed his suitcases and carried them to the hall where Simpson stood behind the office counter and silently presented his account. Bony paid, thanked the man for the change, and proceeded through the front door to the veranda.

Old Simpson in his chair was there.

“Cheerio, Mr. Simpson!” Bony called to him. “I’m leaving this morning. All the best.”

“Nuts!” murmured the cockatoo. “Whatabouta drink?”

“Good-bye to you,” replied the invalid. “Hope you had a good time.”

Bony was passing down the steps when the bird napped its wings and raged:

“Get to hellouta here!”

The staid, the correct, the polite Inspector Bonaparte turned, gazed up at the bird, and actually vented a raspberry. It was not until he was in his car and driving across the clearing that he permitted the scowl to leave his face, the scowl assumed in case the licensee was watching him from within the building. A moment later the humour created by the cockatoo vanished before the thought that old Simpson’s appearance on the veranda might have been timed to provide a witness of his departure.