Arthur Upfield - An Author Bites the Dust

She returned about ten minutes to ten, alighting from a car that came from the direction of Warburton and continued towards Melbourne. She came trippingly along the crazy path from the gate, and did not see him until he spoke.

“Oh! There you are!” she cried, the current of excitement in her voice. “Come along in. I’ve something to tell you, something terribly interesting.”

When he reached the door of the lounge, she was lighting a standard lamp.

“Now you sit here and make yourself comfortable,” she ordered. “I’m going to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea, and I’ll cut some sandwiches, and we’ll sit here and have our supper and gossip over our adventures.”

“Why not allow me to go with you to the kitchen?” he suggested. “I like having supper in a kitchen. I always do at my own home. My wife says that it saves sweeping up the crumbs.”

“Oh!” Miss Pinkney stared at him. “So you are married. Well, well! Let’s go to the kitchen. Where is your home?”

“Johannesburg,” he answered, and stepped aside to permit her to proceed from the lounge.

Arrived at the kitchen, she exclaimed, “You’ve been here before! Why light the hurricane lamp? Why not the table lamp? It gives so much better light.”

“I lit the hurricane when I came here looking for you,” he said, lightly. “You deserted your post, you know.”

She pushed paper into the stove and kindling wood on top of that. Casually, she dashed kerosene into the mixture and fired it. To the accompaniment of flame roaring up the chimney, she filled a tin kettle from the sink tap. Not a word in answer to his charge until the kettle was on the stove and she had seated herself at the table. Then out came the cigarette-case and the lighter he had repaired.

“Offer me a cigarette, please, Mr Bonaparte, and then tell me all that you did and saw.”

“First of all I would like to know why you left the fence,” he said, his voice firm but his eyes beaming. He held her lighter in service, and because her mind was so crammed with memories she omitted to thank him.

“Well, when you crept through the fence, I went back to the banana case,” she began, at first slowly, regarding him steadily across the table. “I could see nothing at all, not even you, and I couldn’t even see a light in Mr Blake’s room. I could hear nothing either, except timber trucks and Mr Pickwick moving about somewhere in the trees.

“Oh, my poor legs and ankles! I thought of rushing back to the house for the citronella, and then I remembered I had promised you to keep watch. I’m sure I scratched ladders in my stockings.” She slewed herself sideways and stretched her legs, keeping her body between them and Bony. “No, I haven’t. It’s a wonder, though. Anyway, I was being a terrible martyr for your sake when I heard a car turn off the main road and then saw its lights sweep round before it stopped at the Blake’s front gate.

“That will be Mrs Blake, I thought. When she comes in through the gates the light will shine along these lilac-trees and maybe the writing-room and on you. So I mimicked Mr Pickwick to give you plenty of warning. When I saw the light go on in the living-room, I wondered why you didn’t come back. I kept on caterwauling, and presently, as I knew he would, Mr Pickwick joined in. He can never bear with my caterwauling. Either it’s such a poor effort or it’s so realistic he thinks it’s a lady cat.”

Miss Pinkney paused for breath and a lungful of smoke. She was thorough in everything she did.

“Well,” she proceeded, “there were Mr Pickwick and I singing to each other, and we were still at it when I heard what I thought was you coming back along the fence, and on the other side, too. I stopped my caterwauling, but Mr Pickwick kept it going and I heard a voice that wasn’t yours say, ‘Stop your screaming, you little bitch’.

“I very nearly fell off the case, and I might have, too, if I hadn’t been holding on to the fence. Instead of climbing through the hole in the fence, this person clambered over it by holding to the branch of a lilac-tree. He dropped down on my side and passed me so closely that I could have kicked him. I just saw him taking the path towards the house, and I thought if he thinks he is going to burgle my home I’ll let him see that it can’t be done.

“So I hurried after him. Then, just before I could reach the kitchen door, I saw him at the front gate in the lights of an approaching car. He closed the gate, and I rushed to it and was in time to see him walking down the road. He was Mr Wilcannia-Smythe.”

Again she paused for breath. Rising hastily, she crossed to the stove on which the kettle was now boiling. Having made the tea, she left the pot beside the stove and returned to Bony, saying, “I followed that man all the way to the Rialto Hotel, which is this side of Warburton and three miles away. I’m sure he never saw me, not once. I saw him walk through the gateway and along the short drive to the terrace, and I saw him walk up the steps to the terrace and there talk casually with several of the guests before he went inside. The terrace is brilliantly lit, you know. He must be staying there. He wasn’t wearing a hat or anything. He couldn’t be Mrs Blake’s guest now, and I can’t understand why he didn’t stop and meet Mrs Blake instead of sneaking over my back fence to get away from her. What did you see?”

“I watched him reading one of Mr Blake’s books,” replied Bony. “When he saw that Mrs Blake had returned, he left hurriedly and I lost him in the darkness. His behaviour is very strange. Er -don’t you think the tea is brewed now?”

“Of course! How silly of me.”The subject of the tea, craftily introduced, placed a brake on her interest in his adventures. She spread a cloth and proceeded to cut sandwiches, while she ran on and on in circles after a solution of the mystery.

Presently he said, “Did you see much of theBlakes?”

“Quite a lot, Mr Bonaparte,” she answered, and laughingly added, “over and through my back fence. Oh dear, Mr Pickwick! Please be patient one more minute.” The cat “mirrilled” and almost tripped her on her way back from the stove with the teapot. “I’m afraid I’ve spoilt Mr Pickwick. Don’t you spoil him, too, MrBonaparte. ”

“I’ll try not to,” Bony promised. “Did theBlakes entertain much?”

“A great deal. They had a house party at least once a month.”

“Well-known people, I assume?”

“H’mI suppose so.” Did you see evidence of too much drinking?”

“Oh no! No, nothing like that.”

“You never overheard any quarrelling?”

“No, never. TheBlakes were excellent hosts, and their guests were always well behaved, though they were literary people and artists and radio announcers and that kind. Now this tea ought to be ready. And time, too.”

“Shall I pour?”

She looked swiftly into the blue eyes, smiled, and might have giggled, but didn’t.

“If you like,” she assented.“Plenty of milk for me. I’ll clear away the bread and things. I wonder if Mrs Blake’s cook did go to the pictures. I think she did. I’m certain the picture bus stopped at the corner.”

“If she went, what time would she return?”

“About half past eleven. We’ll hear the bus coming up the hill, and I’ll slip out to the gate and see if she gets off it. Dear me! My hair must be a sight.” She flew to the mirror hanging behind the kitchen door. “Why didn’t you tell me it’s all upsidaisy?”

“I didn’t like to,” he confessed, chuckling. “It looks quite nice as it is, anyway. Have you read any novels by Mervyn Blake?”

“No. I don’t care for Australian novels. I borrowed one of Wilcannia-Smythe’s just because I saw the man in the next door garden. It was all about the bush, you know, and gum-trees and things, but the characters were just too terribly, crashingly boring. He’s frightfully clever, you know. At least the paper says he is. I like a book that tells a story-youknow, books by Conrad and John Buchan and S. S. Van Dine.”