Arthur Upfield - An Author Bites the Dust

“I have to confess that, although my name is Napoleon Bonaparte, I am a Detective-Inspector of the Queensland Police Department,” Bony said, easily. “The reason for my stay here at Yarrabo has been primarily due to a request made by the Victorian Criminal Investigation Branch to examine the circumstances under which the late Mr Mervyn Blake died. The questions I wish to ask you concern those circumstances.”

“That being so, my friends need not withdraw. Let us all sit down.”

Mrs Blake was the first to resume her seat. Mrs Montrose sat next to her, and Nancy Chesterfield regarded Bony with wide eyes as Simes brought two chairs and placed them so that Bony andhimself were facing the women.

“May I smoke?” Bony asked, and Nancy Chesterfield reached for the box of cigarettes on the table, which bore the remains of afternoon tea. “Thank you, Miss Chesterfield. Ah! Well, now, I’ll proceed. Mrs Blake, on 9th December you withdrew from your bank in Melbourne the sum of one hundred pounds. The sum was paid out in one-pound notes. Why did you withdraw such a large amount?”

“For expenses, household and such like. What an extraordinary question!”

The voice was steady and the inflexion of astonishment real. Simes, who recognized instantly what lay behind the question, was equally astonished. His gaze rose from a pair of worn gardening gloves on the veranda floor to Mrs Blake’s face, to note the dark brows drawn close in a frown and the dark eyes fixed in a stare of bewilderment.

“I understand that you pay your current expenses with cheques,” Bony said, and Simes glanced swiftly at the other women and then down at Mrs Blake’s feet. A sensation of chill swept up his spine to lodge at the base of his head. Mrs Blake’s feet were tucked in under her wicker chair, but they could not be concealed. Mrs Blake was wearing a pair of man’s shoes, and the size was almost certainly seven.

In conjunction with the canvas gardening gloves, it was a feasible assumption that Mrs Blake had beengardening when Mrs Montrose and Miss Chesterfield had arrived, and these being old friends, she had not bothered to change her footwear. But then, some women did wear old shoes at gardening. But then-

“It seems that you doubt the truth of my answer to your question, Mr Bonaparte,” Mrs Blake was saying, and when again the policeman’s gaze rose to her face he saw thereon a faint flush.

“I’m afraid I have to, Mrs Blake. You see, the hundred one-pound notes you drew from the bank were found under the floor of Sid Walsh’s hut-after-Walsh-suddenly-died. I suggest that you gave the hundred pounds to Walsh because he had learnt something concerning your husband’s death. Your husband died of the effects of poison placed in the bottle of brandy from which he drank after he retired to his writing-room on the night of 9th November.”

Mrs Blake moved her feet, and the others became conscious of the constable’s rude stare at them.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “I suppose you have proof of what you say?”

“Yes, I have the proof,” Bony replied, quietly. “Perhaps it will be better to place it before you in the form of a story, quite a long story, since it begins several years before the war.”

“And it concerns me?”

“Of course, as Mr Blake’s widow. I still think it would be as well for these ladies to withdraw.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Mrs Blake said. “I am sure they will be interested in the story you have to tell.”

“Well, then, to begin,” Bony said, stubbing out his cigarette. “In 1936 a Dr Dario Chaparral, of Bogota, Colombia, visited Sydney, where he was entertained by several literary people, he himself being an author of some renown. Throughout that visit Dr Chaparral did not travel beyond Sydney and so it was that Mr and Mrs Mervyn Blake and Mrs Montrose travelled to Sydney to meet the doctor in the house of Mr Wilcannia-Smythe. Subsequently a correspondence was begun between Dr Chaparral and Mrs Blake, and in one of her letters to Dr Chaparral Mrs Blake asked him if he knew about a little-known poison that she could use in the plot of one of her stories. He wrote back and told her of an extensive belief in his own country that the dust collected from the frame of a long-buried corpse will, if administered to a living person, inevitably kill. In some parts of his country such is the belief in the efficacy of this material that persons having homicidal intent will go to great lengths to procure it.

“Mrs Blake did use this method of poisoning in her novel entitledThe Vengeance of Master Atherton.”

“Mrs Blake never wrote such a novel,” asserted Mrs Montrose, her eyes suddenly blazing. “That book was written by a person named I. R. Watts.”

“I. R. Watts is the pen-name used by Mrs Mervyn Blake,” Bony said with slow deliberation. “The royalties earned by the novels of I. R. Watts are submitted in the taxation returns signed by Mrs Blake.”

Ella Montrose leaned forward and placed her hand on Mrs Blake’s arm. Her voice was low and vibrant, her eyes were living coals.

“Is that true, Janet?” she asked. “Janet, is that true?”

Mrs Blake raised her eyes from her gardening gloves to look at Mrs Montrose. She nodded without speaking, and Mrs Montrose turned away to regard Bony.

“Later, when it was known that Dr Chaparral was to visit Australia for the second time, Mrs Blake asked him to bring a sample of the poison material, known colloquially as coffin dust, on the grounds that she was a collector of curious substances and bric-a-brac, and Dr Chaparral imported some of the coffin dust by making an opening in several ping-pong balls, inserting the dust, and resealing the openings with white wax.

“Dr Chaparral visited Victoria and stayed here at the beginning of last year. I may be wrong, and I hope I am, in believing that the idea of murdering her husband did not occur to Mrs Blake until some considerable time after Dr Chaparral’s visit.”

“Janet!” The name was whispered by Mrs Montrose. “Janet-are you listening? It’s not true, is it? It isn’t true? Janet-is he speaking the truth?”

For the second time Mrs Blake raised her face to look at Mrs Montrose. Again she did not speak, and again looked down at her gardening gloves. Mrs Montrose went limp, and with anguished eyes looked at Nancy Chesterfield.

“Sometime during the evening of 9th November, Mrs Blake slipped away from her guests and poured a quantity of coffin dust into the brandy in her husband’s writing-room,” continued the voice, which had now become terribly emotionless. “It was necessary to remove the remainder of the poisoned brandy before Mervyn Blake was found dead the following morning, Mrs Blake knowing her husband’s drinking habits so well as to be confident that he would drink most of the brandy in his writing-room before he went to bed.

“Accordingly, several hours after everyone had retired, she left the house and proceeded to the garage, where her husband kept another supply of brandy and a glass inside a cupboard. That brandy bottle and glass she carried to the writing-room, being careful not to leave her fingerprints on either utensil. She found her husband lying just inside the door. It was raining, and the rain slanted in through the doorway and fell on her husband’s head and shoulders and on the floor covering. The bottle and glass from the garage Mrs Blake exchanged for the bottle and glass on the writing desk, and these she took away and buried near the front gate-for Walsh, the casual gardener to discover. To leave the door open whilst she groped her way over the body of her husband, to reach the writing desk and make the exchange of bottles and glasses, was the first vital mistake Mrs Blake made.”

“Must you go on?” Nancy Chesterfield cried, and Mrs Blake spoke.