Arthur Upfield - An Author Bites the Dust

A shadow passed across the green eyes.

“She isn’t so extraspecially friendly with Mrs Blake as she made out to the police,” Ethel said in dramatically lowered tones. “In their different ways they were a funny lot. They had only one thing in common.”

“What was that?” pressed Mrs Farn.

“A good opinion of themselves. The worst of the lot was Mr Wilcannia-Smythe. I hope, MrBonaparte, that you don’t get as conceited as he is after you’ve had a few novels published.”

“If he does, we’ll have to take the conceit out of him,” threatened Mrs Farn, and Red-head laughed at Bony who was pretending, successfully, to be self-conscious.

He said, “I hope that no amount of success will make me conceited. How did you get along with Mrs Blake?”

“Mrs Blake is very nice and very kind to everyone. She puts herself out no end. When I first went there, she took me to my room, and asked me if it was to my liking, and said I was to say so about anything that wasn’t. There was no key to the door, and so I asked for one, telling her that men had been known to walk in their sleep after telling me what lovely hair I had, and the rest. She found a key all right. Then, after dinner, when they had several guests, she’d come out to the kitchen and help cook and me to clean up.”

“That was considerate of her,” Bony murmured. “She writes, too, doesn’t she?”

“A lot,” replied Red-head. Her eyes became wistful, and she clasped her hands before continuing, “Mrs Blake’s got a peach of a writing-room. Primrose walls and a primrose carpet. There’s a big walnut writing desk with silver ornaments, and a tall ebony statuette of Venus and-and a man riding a great horse with wings. Oh, I wish I had a room like that. Nothing frilly, you know. And all one wall covered with pictures of her friends. They are all thereexcept- except her husband. But then-”and the girl laughed, softly-“I wouldn’t want to have a husband like that in my room.”

“Marry an author and have such a room,” advised Bony. “I’d ask you to marry me-if I could, Miss Lacy. I suppose Mervyn Blake’s room was almost as luxurious?”

“No, it wasn’t,” she said. “He had his room built in the garden. It’s just plainly furnished with a bed couch, an arm chair, a felt carpet, and a writing desk. There’s hundreds of books in cases and a big typewriter on its special table. In a cupboard he kept brandy and dry ginger and a glass. A great man for his drink. He even had a cupboard in the garage.”

“In the garage!” exclaimed Bony.

“In the garage,” she repeated. “I never knew a man like him. The more he drank the plainer he spoke and the steadier he walked.”

“Did he keep drink in the garage as well as in his writing-room?”persisted Bony, and the green eyes smouldered. She spoke slowly to emphasize the truth of her words.

“I saw him at the cupboard in the garage that night he brought Miss Chesterfield from the city. I had a headache and took a couple of aspirins, and cook advised me to get out in the cool of the evening for a little while before dinner was served. It happened I was at the side of the house when I saw him drive the car into the garage. He went to the cupboard in the far corner, and he took out a glass and a bottle, and he poured himself a drink and dashed it down. A sneaker, I called it. And then he hurried outside and shut and locked the doors.

“And Mrs Montrose waiting on him hand and foot,” Ethel went on. “Came into the kitchen herself for his jug of milk and glass, and took them to his writing-room, saying he’d have had a tiring afternoon in the city and the milk would steady his poor stomach. A slinky, scheming woman, that. Making eyes at him all the time and Mrs Blake laughing up her sleeve at her. Not that he took any notice of the Montrose woman. Not a bit. I reckon he had used her up long ago.”

“He always drank milk before dinner, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Cook said it was to settle the booze in him he’d had in the afternoonso’s he could begin again sober in the evening.”

“Mrs Montrose is a well-known writer, too, isn’t she?”

“Oh yes, written a lot of books, I think. She was telling the Pommy writer about them for hours, and he was putting it all into a large note-book. Insulting, filthy beast.”

“Mrs Montrose, or the-”

“The Pommy writer. Man by the name of Marshall Ellis,” Red-head said aggressively.“Thought it was clever to be rude. Food stains on all his waistcoats. Little piggy eyes, and picked his teeth after eating. But his voice! Oh, his voice, when you weren’t looking at him! If they pushed a voice like his into afillum star, there’d be a screaming riot with all the bobbysocksers in the world.”

“A peculiar man, Miss Lacy. Please go on. What of the others?”

“The others? Oh! Well, there was Twyford Arundal. He was lovely. Give him two gins and squash and he’d recite poetry. Give him four and he’d compose it, and Ella Montrose would take it down. They had to be careful with him after the sixth, because when he’d had about six, he’d still go on composing poetry but nothing would come out of his mouth.

“Then there was Martin Lubers. He’s in the wireless, you know. More than once he’d say something that would rile them, but theycrawfished to him no end. I was telling cook about it one day and she said it was because he had a high job in the wireless, and got them all a lot of publicity. It’s all wheels within wheels, she said, and I think there’s a deal of truth in that.”

“H’m! Well, that’s all most interesting,” Bony said. “Er, they often had people from overseas staying with them, Mrs Farn tells me. Were you there this time last year when Dr Dario Chaparral was visiting theBlakes?”

“Yes, I was. There was the same crowd almost. Wilcannia-Smythe, Ella Montrose, Twyford Arundal, and Martin Lubers, and Miss Chesterfield some evenings. The doctor was a character, if ever there was one. I just used to like waiting at table when he was there. The stories he told! Ooh! Tales about the people in his country. All sorts of tales, and about the natives who cut off the heads of dead people and reduced them to the size of an orange, and that kind of thing. Mrs Montrose would write them down sometimes, even at dinner. And all the time, the little doctor would laugh and smile and look as though he was telling smutty stories.”

“He brought his own ping-pong balls with him, didn’t he, Miss Lacy?”

“Yes, he did. Before he came theBlakes didn’t have one and they couldn’t be bought, either. He gave a whole box of them to Mrs Blake. My! Could he play! He was like lightning.”

Bony thoroughly enjoyed the evening, though it cost him an effort to tell of his own activities in the newspaper world of Johannesburg. Mrs Farn provided a light supper of tea and sandwiches and her brother came inin time to join them.

At half past ten the party broke up, Bony gallantly escorting Ethel to her parents’ home. He was her very first escort who did not evince a passionate desire to kiss her good night, and for several days she was unable to make up her mind whether she was pleased about that or not.

He reached Rose Cottage at eleven. Miss Pinkney had retired, leaving in his room a bottle of whisky and a barrel of biscuits. He spent two hours going through the official file again, and when eventually he poured himself a drink and munched a biscuit, he was frowning.

An Unexpected Ally

IT was Friday morning, and Napoleon Bonaparte strolled along the shady side of Swanston Street, pleased with the world in general and with the prospect of meeting Nancy Chesterfield in particular. He had dawdled over morning tea and the newspapers, and now intended interviewing the Australian publishers of the internationally known I. R. Watts.