Arthur Upfield - An Author Bites the Dust

“On the contrary, Miss Pinkney, we are on terms of great affection,” he assured her, accepting the tray.

“Now do sit down,” he was urged. “I must rush back to the house because I’m running late. It’s your fault for keeping me so late at breakfast this morning.”

Bony smiled into the warm grey eyes, and because he knew it would please her he sat down and rested the tray on his knees. The cat staggered to its feet and came to rub itself against a leg.

“A day for tea,” Bony said lightly.

“It is so, indeed,” Miss Pinkney agreed, and then watched her guest remove the cup from the saucer, fill the saucer with milk, and set it down before Mr Pickwick. “You love animals, don’t you, Mr Bonaparte?” she said.

“I certainly do,” he averred. “Why, if I saw anyone throw a stone at our Mr Pickwick, I’d-I’d probably punch him on the nose.”

The grey eyes instantly hardened and the wide mouth tautened.

“I’d try to,” she said, barely above a whisper, and then abruptly turned back to the house.

Bony watched the angular figure in the neat print house dress, frowned, and sipped his tea. Other questions came crowding forward for attention. He recalled that Miss Pinkney herself had told him she once spoke to Mervyn Blake for throwing a stone at her cat, had “remonstrated with him somewhat after the fashion of my brother”.

Almost idly he looked at the division fence, and then at the loosely hanging boards where he had slipped through into the adjacent garden. Had Miss Pinkney ever gone through that hole in the fence? She was undoubtedly resourceful; the manner in which she had followed Wilcannia-Smythe to the Rialto Hotel proved it.

Perish the thought! He picked upD’Arcy Maddersleigh by Mervyn Blake, flicked up the cover, noted the titles of five previous novels, and began to read. The style waspedantic, the subject matter presented as factual history. He read three chapters before putting it down. If the fire of inspiration had ever burnt in the mind of Mervyn Blake it had died before he wrote that book.

“Must be the heat,” Bony murmured to Mr Pickwick. “We’ll look intoGreystone Park by I. R. Watts. Dear me, I haven’t worked so hard for many a long day.”

He was still readingGreystone Park when Miss Pinkney came to the kitchen door and tapped on a small bronze gong to call him for lunch. He used an old envelope for a bookmark, and, putting the book down on the others, stood up, stretched, and yawned. The next instant he trod on Mr Pickwick’s ping-pong ball.

He set his foot squarely upon it, and instinctively stopped the downward pressure of his shoe before the ball could be squashed flat. For a moment he looked down on the wreck, vexed withhimself, for it would never bounce again to give joy to Mr Pickwick.

Thinking to take the ruined ball to his hostess with the ready promise to purchase another, he picked up the wreckage. It was crushed and split almost in halves. Within was a greyish powder, some of which was spilled on the ground. Carefully he picked up the broken ball and emptied a little of the powder into the palm of his left hand. It was light in weight and rough in texture. The amount of powder still within the ball might have covered a two-shilling piece. He emptied it into the envelope he had used for a bookmark, and the envelope he twisted securely and slipped into an inside pocket.

Did the manufacturers of ping-pong balls place grey powder inside them?

Another question to confront him and scream for an answer.

If ping-pong ball manufacturers put powder into them, then why?

A Couple of Locals

AFTER lunch, Bony returned to the shade of the lilac-trees andGreystone Park. Despite the heat, I. R. Watts got it across, for Bony found this book emotionally powerful and soundly written, the characters being clear and strong in their presentation. Watts was a born story-teller, restrained and therefore dramatic, humorous and therefore human. When Bony had read a third of the book he was determined to get in touch with this writer, for he was sure that the author of such a story would also be indisposed to over-statement as well as under-statement.

He was engrossed byGreystone Park to the extent of becoming oblivious to heat and annoying flies, but the world of historical romance into which I. R. Watts had inducted him was not proof against a lazy voice saying, “Some people has all the ruddy luck.”

Bony looked up from his book to see a man leaning on a hoe not four yards distant. He was large and disreputableThere were pouches under his filmy eyes and purple lines criss-crossing his shapeless nose.

“It would seem so from your point of view,” Bony said. “Who are you?”

“I’m the casual gardener around here. You a friend of Miss Pinkney?”

“Yes,” Bony confirmed, and then added as though by an afterthought, “Warm afternoon.”

“ ’Tisso. Good day to drink beer, but thereain’tnone. Good day for a smoke, too, but thereain’t no tobacco. Things is crook all right. How do you stand?”

“For beer, no good. For a pipe of tobacco, fairly good.”

The gardener shuffled towards Bony and held forward a huge and grimy hand for Bony’s proffered tobacco tin. He helped himself generously and stuffed the finely shredded weed into the bowl of a broken-stemmed pipe.

“Thanks,” he said, without meaning it. “What this ruddy country is coming to beats me. No beer, no tobacco, no meat half the time, and work all the time. It’s ‘When are you coming to my place?’ and ‘You promised to give me a day last week’, and so on until I gets giddy picking and choosing who I’ll work for.” He lit his pipe, from which, in spite of the eternal shortage, dangled streamers of Bony’s precious tobacco. “Everythink’sshort,” he went on, becoming fierce.“Couldn’t be anything else but short when wegotta pay for the politicians, thousands of ’emhaving holiday tours all round the ruddy world. What do they care for the likes-”

“So you help to keep other people’s gardens in order, do you?” Bony cut in. “Earning good money?”

The gardener pulled at his pipe, puffed his cheeks and emitted a cloud of smoke.

“Pretty good,” he replied. “I don’t work for less than thirty bob a day and noSat’day work. But what’s the ruddy use? Them dopes in the city goes on strike after strike for more money, and about a week after they get the rise the cost of everything catches up with ’emand then they’re still behind. Any’ow, what’s the use of money when you can’t get enough beer and got to scrounge for a bit of tobacco? Wewas all better off on a quid a week and unlimited beer and unlimited tobacco. What Isays is-”

“How often do you work for Miss Pinkney?” inquired Bony.

“Whenever she wants me to,” with a leer.“I neversays no to Miss Pinkney, and I never said no to Mr Blake next door, when he was alive and kicking. For why? I’ll tell you. Miss Pinkney always gives me a reviver just before I goes, just a little taste, sort of. Ilikes working for her sort. Thereain’t many of them around here. The doctor’s all right, but, ah”-and a sigh floated into the still air-“that Mr Blake was a bonzer bloke. He’d never see a man dying of thirst.”

“Generous, eh?”

“Never failed. My name’s Sid Walsh. What’s yours?”

Bony told him, and Sid Walsh repeated the name, and said, “Seems familiar to me. Musta met you somewhere before. Lemme think.”

“Don’t. It’s too hot. Is the Mr Blake you spoke of the author?”

“Yes, that’s ’im,” Walsh replied, expectorating with remarkable accuracy at a waltzing butterfly. “One of the best, he was. He’d come along sometimes when I was working in there and he’dgimme a wink, and that was the office for me tofoller him, sort of casual like, to his writing-room or the garage where he’d have a bottle planted nice and handy.”