Arthur Upfield: An Author Bites the Dust

“I gave him a hundred pounds, and told him that he would never get any more. But he came back for more, and there was only one way to deal with him. Wearing these old gardening shoes, I studied his habits after dark. I used to watch him through the windows of his hut. Every night he’d read and drink spirits from a bottle. He never drank water or anything with it. Then, during the afternoon of the day before he worked here last, I opened a bottle of whisky and poured some of the dust into it, and then, having carefully resealed the cork, I buried it in the garden. When he came the next day I ordered him to do certain work at which he would be sure to find thebottle. I watched him find it, watched him hide it in his shirt and take it to where he left his case and coat.

“That night I watched him drink from the bottle. He drank almost two-thirds before he lay down and slept. Then I stole into the hut and searched for the bottle and glass he had found near the gate. Both bottle and glass were inside an old portmanteau. I tookthem, and the whisky bottle I had poisoned for him, leaving on his table an empty bottle and another with a little untainted whisky left in it.”

“And the drinking glass on his table?” murmured Bony.

“I knew nothing about the glass. I never saw him drink from it. He did have a visitor the night before. Then the next danger arose in you, Mr Bonaparte. When you visited me that afternoon, you did not convince me you had come from South Africa, not completely, anyway. You see, I have been corresponding with Professor Armberg for several years, and never once did he mention in his letters a tribe called theN’gomo. After you had left us, I referred back to Nancy’s paragraph about you, and I wrote to Mr Lubers asking him to find out what he could about you. He rang up Inspector Snook, and Inspector Snook told him what you are and why you are staying at Yarrabo.”

“Didhe, indeed!” Bony softly exclaimed, and Simes sucked in his breath. “Please go on. What next?”

“This afternoon I was gardening on the far side of the writing-room,” Mrs Blake continued. “I heard Miss Pinkney talking to her cat, and I could see her through the fence. She was placing a tea-tray on a small table just beyond, and as I had seen you there before having your afternoon tea I felt sure you would come to take it this afternoon. So I fetched the coffin dust, and crept in through the hole in the fence and put some of it into the teapot. If you go to the doctor very soon, he will probably save you. I have nothing against you-not now.”

“It will not be necessary, Mrs Blake, because I didn’t drink the tea,” Bony said, his face expressionless, and a little soreness in his heart at his failure on the point of theN’gomo natives. “You see, I saw so plainly the imprints of your shoes about the table, and to and from the hole in the fence. And then I saw you seated here, wearing men’s shoes.

“That was the proof leading to you, but not the culminating proof. I have found in many cases a tendency for important events to take place in rapid sequence once I have begun to put the puzzle together. Within an hour of knowing who left the tracks on the hill-side about Walsh’s hut, and about my tea table, I was informed who I. R. Watts is, and for whom Dr Chaparral brought coffin dust into Australia. Why did you persuade Mrs Montrose to assist you in abducting Wilcannia-Smythe?”

“The note-book was a treasure chest for any writer,” Mrs Blake replied. “It belonged to my husband, but the contents were contributed by people entertained on my money. When I discovered that Wilcannia-Smythe had stolen it, and when he refused to give it up, I wrote, at the Rialto that afternoon, to Ella Montrose and asked her to visit me. I did think of Martin Lubers to help me, for he has been a real friend for many years, knowing that I am I. R. Watts and giving me constant support. Then I realized that his career would be damned if what I proposed to dobecame public property, and so I chose Ella. We disguised ourselves in some of my husband’s old clothes.

“I didn’t prosecute Wilcannia-Smythe for theft because he knows I am I. R. Watts, and because he knows just how my husband treated me and why. If he had made it all public in revenge for my prosecuting him, the finger of suspicion might have been pointed at me.

“He didn’t prosecute us, because he was a thief, and because I could reveal all the rottenness of his school of literary criticism. So we were equally strong. Ella disliked him on personal grounds.” Mrs Blake looked down upon the hand still resting upon her own, and she said, “Take your hand away, Nancy, you mustn’t touch me.” To Bony, she said, “You have a brain, Mr Bonaparte. When did you first suspect me?”

“After seeing your husband’s portrait on the wall of your writing-room,” he answered without hesitation. “The other pictures were placed symmetrically, and the frames were exactly the same. That containing your husband’s picture was a trifle smaller, though of the same wood. Behind it the wall colouring had faded less than the general surface, proving that a larger frame had hung there. When I learnt that your husband’s picture was not included in that gallery as late as the date of his death, it suggested that you did include it to avoid remark upon the absence of it in such a collection of well-known writers and poets.”

“You are quite right, Inspector Bonaparte,” Mrs Blake conceded, and abruptly stood up. “I did think that the doctor’s suspicions might be aroused, and that the police might send a clever detective to go through the house and question us all. You see, I was right. They sentyou, and they say, don’t they, that you never fail. I failed, because you never do. I know, too, that your case against me is much more complete than you have indicated. I shall not attempt any defence. I am too tired, too desperately tired.” She turned to Nancy Chesterfield.

“I’m glad I killed him, and I want you to believe it, Nancy. I hope that during those last moments, when he frantically struggled to open thedoor, that he knew I had poisoned him. I hope that as the light of his life flickered and went out, that as he slipped into the pit of death, he remembered how he had been turning down the light of life for me-turning it down slowly for more than twenty years.”