Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“Mornin’!” he snarled.

“Morning!” she snapped back at him.“Tea ready?”

“Too right! Makeyerself at ’omeby the fire. I’ll do the serving act.”

Mrs. Parkes dragged a chair along and sat before one of the fires in the central range, and when she sat there was nothing to spare of the chair seat. Her brown hair was not yet “done,” and the absence of her teeth appeared to create an emphatic cleavage between the button of her nose and the line of her wide chin. Brown eyes gazed into the fire, eyes small and now unblinking. Without a word, she took the cup of tea brought to her by Bisker, and not until she had drunk it and handed the cup back to him to be refilled and had taken a cigarette from her apron pocket and lit it, did she begin to articulate.

“Any more murders this morning, I wonder?”

“Dunno. Itain’t light enough yet to discover any corpses,” Bisker said, faint hope in his voice. “The papersoughter beintrestin ’ today.”

“Yes, they ought,” agreed Mrs. Parkes. “You get me all the morning papers when you go down to the store. Thank goodness, I won’t be in ’em.”

Bisker ambled across to the wall bench and filled his cup. He returned to sit on a part of the stove not yet heated by the fires, and cut chips from his plug for another pipe.

“You never know,” he said. “One of them reporters asked me all about the staff ’ere, and I told ’imabout George, and youbein ’ the cook.”

“You would. And a mightylot more about yourself. Any’ow, I’m glad I’m not mixed up in it, for my old man to sling off at me when he comes ’ome. Iain’t sure this is a respectable place any longer. One thing about it, there’s only six guests to cook for this morning, and the name of the place ought to keep more from coming.”

“There’ll be only five guests this morning,” Bisker said. “Mr. Bonaparte went to town late last-night and won’t be back till sometime today.”

“Oh! Howd’you know?”

“ ’Coshe told me. Nice bloke that. Talks civilised, sort of. None of the ‘Haw! Haw! Bisker! Get me a paper!’ about ’im. As for that Grumman bloke, well, Iain’tpartic’ly sorry he’s turned in ’is cheques. ’E wouldn’t even say good day to a man.”

“I wonder who done him in,” Mrs. Parkes said slowly, getting the last “draw” out of her cigarette. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t that Bagshott man. From them books of his he knows all about poisons and how to give them. I did hear that he practises on rabbits and things.”

“You don’t say!” Bisker exclaimed.“No, I wouldn’t put it past ’imneither. I never thought of ’im.”

“And you’d better not think of him now,” Mrs. Parkes said. “Look at the time. What about the boots?”

Bisker collected the boots-four pairs of men’s shoes and the pair he picked up outside Miss Jade’s room. During this work he took from a coat pocket a note addressed to Miss Jade by Bony and this he left on the small table set to one side of the office door. Whilst cleaning the shoes he whistled so loudly that Mrs. Parkes came to the scullery door to tell him to “shut up.”

He had more time this morning, because of the smaller number of shoes to clean, and he wandered round to the main entrance, the door of which was not yet opened. There he visited the shrub tub to smooth the earth he had so rudely disturbed the previous evening. It was as well, for Miss Jade would certainly have noted the disturbance and asked questions. In the light of day, it appeared as though a rabbit had been burrowing. There was the hole from which he had taken the whisky bottle, much larger than when he had made it, and there beside the hole were the impressions of four fingers and a thumb of a man’s outspread hand.

Whilst filling in the bottle hole, Bisker’s mind worked with, what was for it, abnormalspeed. He went over his own actions during the time he had sat on the edge of the tub, and during the last time when he had dragged from the soil the two fountain pens and the bottle and he could not recall that he had pressed either of his hands flat out like that on the soft earth.

Had the impression been made by the hand of the gunman? Bisker worried at this question. There were, of course, no fingerprints, but the shape of the hand was clear, a left hand, and the impression had certainly not been there when he had sat on the edge of the tub the previous evening as dusk was falling. The man whose left hand had made the impression had stood at the tub and used his right to delve into the earth, and the only man beside himself who had had an interest in the tub was the gunman.

“Whay!” murmured Bisker. There was yet another man-the bloke who had buried the pens. The impression might have been made by his left hand.

Now what to do? If he left the impression, the gunman, or the man who had buried the pens might come along and see it, and then press it out. And Mr. Bonaparte might like to see it. He might want to measure it, measure the span and so get to the size of the hand. Yes, what to do?

It was almost full daylight. The sun was due to rise. All was still quiet inside the house, and it was yet ten or fifteen minutes before one of the maids would open the front door and sweep the porch. The idea of placing a strip of tin over the impression occurred to Bisker, and then he saw that this would attract attention to it. So better leave it alone.

He crossed back to the wood-stack and from there passed along the rear of the garages. In this way he came to his hut at its rear, sidled along the wall to reach the door, and at the same time regarded with interest the narrow cinder path he had avoided on going to the house.

Bisker was thoroughly enjoying himself this morning. He shaved with cold water, taking unusual care. He washed in cold water, and instead of leaving his hair to dry in conformity with the cast made by his hat, he combed it, and then, on impulse, hunted for and found among his effects a pair of scissors, with which he trimmed his unruly moustache, taking years off his age and eighty per cent off his appearance of dissipation.

Now ready for breakfast, he buttoned up his old coat, stooped and laced his heavy boots, stood up and regarded his bed upon which the blankets lay in disarray. He lifted the top end of the mattress and tooktherefrom the bottle which had brought him such adventure. It was still a quarter full, and for several seconds he regarded it with desire writ plainly on his weather-beaten face. Then he put the bottle back beneath the mattress, and left the hut to go to the house the same way he had previously gone to it. In the kitchen he sat down to breakfast with George.

“Goin’ to be a nice day,” began the drinks steward.

“Yes,” Bisker agreed.“Won’t last, though. ’Ow’s the old bitch thismornin ’?”

“Haven’t seen her yet.”George poised bacon on his fork and stared at Bisker. He had heard a new Bisker the previous morning when summoned by Miss Jade’s bell, and now he was seeing a new Bisker. He added: “What have you been doing to yourself?”

“Doin’ tomeself?”Bisker echoed. “Wotd’youmean?”

George regarded Bisker with his dark eyes narrowed.

“You’ve been combing your hair and training your mo’,” he said, accusingly, to which Bisker belligerently demanded:

“Wot the ’ell’s wrong with that? I don’t comb me ’air into a quiff like you.”

“All right, don’t get shirty. Get me a paper when you go down to the store, will you?”

“I might! If you pass me a snifter about ten o’clock.”

“That reminds me,” said George, and Bisker cursed himself for reminding George. “That reminds me. You said that Miss Jade ordered a full bottle of whisky yesterday morning, and I haven’t checked up on what became of the bottle.”