Arthur Upfield - An Author Bites the Dust

“Just outside his eastern fence-about a hundred yards.”

Bony returned to the bedroom, and examined it more carefully. With the same care he went through the living-room, and on emerging into the glare of the westering sun, confessed that he had learnt nothing from the interior of the hut, save that a cut-glass tumbler was not there, and that a plain glass tumbler was.

Simes, having packed the whisky bottles and the glass into a wooden case, proceeded to load his pipe whilst he watched Bony walking round and round the hut, shoulders stooped, head bent down. He noted that Bony was moving on his toes, and he received the impression that even the report of a gun would not disturb a mind so completely concentrated on reading tracks. Every time Bony completed a circle, he began another and wider, until eventually he had covered all the ground to the distance of fifty feet about the hut.

Abruptly the concentration disappeared from the shambling figure, and Bony came walking with his usual smart step to join Simes.

“That pigeon-toed man who wears a seven in shoes or boots did not immediately knock on Walsh’s door, Bony said. “Before he knocked on the door, he passed on round the house to stand and look in through Walsh’s bedroom window, probably for several minutes. The dog, now-was it found tied up?”

“Yes, over there. That old barrel was its kennel.”

“What kind of a dog?”

“Water spaniel.”

“Friendly?”

“Very. Not much of a watch dog, I should think.”

“Well, we find that the pigeon-toed man came and looked at Walsh through his bedroom window and then went to the back door,” Bony asserted. “I can find no evidence that he entered, because, for one thing, the floor is of boards and was kept reasonably well swept. I wonder why Walsh’s visitor took a cut-glass tumbler and left a plain tumbler in itsplace? There was the smell of whisky in it, too. Strange that. Walsh told me he never drank from a glass except in a hotel.”

The patience of the policeman gave out.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he almost shouted.

“About drinking glasses, cut and plain, expensive and cheap.”

“Oh, damn!”

“No, quarry. Come on.”

Bony was not satisfied with looking down upon a litter of rusted iron, pots and pans, and broken glass reflecting the sunlight. He walked round the quarry to its entrance and proceeded to poke about among the glass, asking Simes to look for pieces of a cut-glass tumbler.

At the end of half an hour he gave up, and suggested they sit on a boulder and smoke, and the now desperate constable silently reloaded his pipe and glowered at Bony’s long, brown fingers engaged with making a cigarette.

Then Bony said, “You’ve been very patient with me, Simes, and in reward I will tell about a ping-pong ball and a cut-glass drinking tumbler.” Ten minutes later, he asked, “Well, whatd’you make of it all?”

“Nothing without the key,” replied Simes. “The toxicologist said he found no poison when, he looked at the insides of Mervyn Blake. That dust might be an unknown poison.”

“Perhaps not unknown. Perhaps the toxicologist looked for a stomach powder when Blake died of a blood poison. I don’t know that I am expressing my ideas intelligently. I often wish I had studied medicine. What Professor Ericson reported was exceedingly interesting, and he certainly exercises one’s imagination.”

“I read a book once-now let me think-where-wait a minute.”

Simes blew a cloud of smoke, which for a moment hung above his head like a crown. “It was a heck of a good book. The feller in it poisoned his wife’s lover with coffin dust. The doctor saying that Professor Ericson thinks that powder is the residuum of a-what kind of animal body was it? Why, what’s the matter?”

Bony’s blue eyes were blazing and big, and Simes blinked and held suspended a mouthful of smoke.

“Did you say coffin dust?” Bony asked.

“Yes, in the book the feller put coffin dust in his wife’s tucker. Bit far-fetched, I thought. I might be wrong, and it might have been the wife’s lover who got it. Anyway, it was a good yarn. My sister got hold of it from somewhere.”

“Is the book still in your house?”

“Couldn’t say. You don’t think that that powder could be coffin dust?”

“What is coffin dust?” Bony demanded. “Did the book tell you that?”

“Yes,” replied Simes, continuing to be astonished by Bony’s intensity of mind. “In the book, the husband went into an ancient churchyard in the dead of night, opened up a vault, opened a coffin and scooped up the dust that was lying underneath the skeleton. The dust was the-what was the word Fleetwood said? Yes, I remember-the residuum. Think we’ve hit on something?”

“So much so, my dear Simes, that I am very glad you lost your temper just now and so persuaded me to tell you about Mr Pickwick’s ping-pong ball. We must find that book. You go back and bring some plaster ofparis. You could return in your car to pick up the case of bottles. I’ll wait for you. We shall want the casts to add to our little collection.”

When Simes had departed, Bony entered the hut and carried out a further examination of the two rooms. Again he found nothing out of place, but one slight oddity. Where the ends of two floorboards came together, the end of one had recently been re-nailed with two new nails. At first, he thought nothing of it, as the boards were much worn and the age of the hut was, at the shortest, thirty years.

Subsequently he admitted that had he not had to wait for Constable Simes he would not have investigated further. For a moment he listened for the sound of Simes’s car and, not hearing it, he went to the lean-to wash-house in which, he remembered, there were several tools. Selecting a crowbar he prized up the newly nailed board, and beneath found a glass jar containing a heavy roll of one-pound notes. There were exactly one hundred.

When Simes returned with the plaster ofparis, he was given the money in the jar to lock away in the police station safe, and Bony proceeded to make casts of the significant tracks. The casts having hardened and the date being written upon them, Simes was instructed to take them also to the station, and then try to find the book containing the story about the coffin dust.

Bony waited for five minutes before leaving the hut and walking slowly along the unmade road to its junction with the highway. There, instead of turning down the hill to Yarrabo, he turned up the highway, keeping to the gravelled footpath and behaving as though he had time to spend admiring the beauties of nature. Not until he had walked a quarter of a mile did he turn about.

Between the wide strip ofmacadamed road and the flanking water-gutter there were lesser strips averaging two feet in width, ground comparatively impressionable. Since turning up the road, he had examined the narrow strip between macadam and gutter, as well as examining every inch of the footpath. He had seen tracks of human shoe leather, the tracks left by dogs and by a horse, but among them were not the tracks of either of the men who had abducted Wilcannia-Smythe, or of their car. Crossing the road, he made the same examination of that side as he walked downhill towards the little township. He arrived presently at theside street down which was Mrs Blake’s house. Crossing that, he proceeded until he had gone several yards beyond Miss Pinkney’s gate, and there he paused and stood as though admiring the church on the opposite corner. Then, crossing the macadam again, he sauntered up the road, passing the church, in which he evinced great interest, and so completed the full cycle since parting from Constable Simes. He had found neither the tracks of the car nor of either of the two men who had assaulted Wilcannia-Smythe. And yet the part-prints of the pigeon-toed man on the path from the highway to the gate proved that he had walked from the highway to visit Walsh and had returned to the highway.