Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“Good idea, I think,” Bolt said, slowly.

“Sound sense,” Bony stated, and then smiled: “But you know what any Government Department is like.”

“Ya,” growled Bolt. “And I know particularly well what Australian Government Departmental heads are like. The only way you could get that school of yours started was to have gone abroad and called yourself Spiffoski, and then the Police Department of every State would have adopted the scheme saying what a great thing it would be in crime detection.”

Bony’s eyes opened wide and then half closed in laughter.

“Spiffoski!” he repeated, throatily.“Bony Spiffoski! I’ll have to get the Russian for Bony. Ah-Boniski Spiffoski! When I go back to Brisbane, I’ll ring through to the Chiefs secretary and say: ‘Morning, Lowther. Tell the Colonel that Inspector Boniski Spiffoski has reported for duty this morning.’ It’ll sound good. And I’ll be in the clerks’ room directly below the old boy’s office, and I’ll be able to hear him bouncing about in his chair and demanding Lowther to tell him who the hell this and that. But then, it wouldn’t work. Lowther wouldn’t have the courage. Well, I’ll get along to your records room, Super.” He rose, still smiling. “And give consideration to the idea of making a bust of Marcus’s head. I’ll ask Colonel Blythe to send along the photos from Scotland Yard.”

Also on his feet, Bolt said they “would give it a go.” He accompanied Bony to the door, smiled broadly and shook hands, then passed back to his desk to give orders to the Records Branch to serve Inspector Bonaparte. When Inspector Snook entered a few minutes later, Superintendent Bolt did not mention Bony’s scheme for the recording of footprints.

It was a Friday, and it was half-past five when Bony emerged from Police Headquarters in Russell Street, coming out through a small door into a back street. There he paused to light one of his cigarettes and to take stock of all persons in view. There were fewer than a dozen, and there had been fewer still when he had entered the great building through that same innocuous doorway. Before he reached Swanston Street viaSpring and Flinders streets, he was reasonably confident that he had not been followed either going to or coming from Headquarters.

He spent half an hour in a tea-shop, and then became a unit of the river of humanity flowing towards the one railway station. The speed of the stream was that of a fast walk, and the few people who battled against it in the opposite direction were buffeted and jostled. Bony was halted at the Flinders Street intersection, a unit of the river temporarily dammed, a dam which appeared about to burst all restraint when the traffic lights showed green and the traffic policemen beckoned.

To Bony, the experience held exhilaration. He was swept across the street, up the steps of the station entrance, across the great hall and through the barriers, a unit of a river which flowed in flood for more than an hour. Whilst waiting on the platform for his train to Manton, he watched the river pouring down the ramp and flowing up the sub-ways to be halted for a space thick against the edges of platforms. Trains came in and the river flowed into them. They whirred out filled to capacity, taking the “edging” with them, and immediately the human stream would once more grow thick along the platform edge, waiting to be poured into the next train. Brisbane had nothing to show like this.

It took his train just short of an hour to reach Manton. When he arrived at the waiting bus it was almost full and he got a seat at the front end just in time to avoid having to stand. The seating was arranged along the sides and at the back, and he had for neighbours a man on his left hand and an office girl on his right.

At the foot of Mount Chalmers, a little more than halfway to Wideview Chalet, the bus was barely half filled, and the girl on Bony’s right who had been talking to another girl mentioned softly the name of Clarence B. Bagshott. That name brought Bony from a bout of meditation, and he came presently to understand that the author of mystery novels was also travelling in the bus.

A little further along the road, his neighbour’s friend alighted, and after a little period, he said in a whisper:

“Am I right in thinking that Bagshott, the author, is in this bus?”

The girl nodded, and regarded him sharply. Bony smiled.

“Please forgive me for speaking to you,” he pleaded. “You see, I have read several of Bagshott’s books, and I am curious to see what he is like.”

When she spoke again, her lips barely moved.

“That’s him in the far corner,” she said.

The interior lighting was good-for a bus-and with interest he studied this man who had been reported to him via Bisker, via Mrs. Parkes, as addicted to experimenting on rabbits with poison, that the data obtained might be put into his crime books.

Bony felt disappointed. Never before had he consciously seen an author in the flesh, and he had somehow built up in his mindthat authors were a particular species of the race, a species not quite like poets and not quite like artists. He had thought to see in Bagshott a man with massive brow, large and staring eyes, a loud and penetrating voice, and distinctive clothes.

Clarence B. Bagshott’s appearance was disappointingly ordinary. He was wearing a raincoat over a navy-blue suit. His hat was lying on his knees, so that Bony was able to study his face. His brow was low and narrow, but the back of his head was exceptionally wide. His eyes were constantly alert, and when he smiled he seemed human enough. Even whilst Bony was unostentatiously observing him, he lifted his hat and crossed his legs, and it was then that Bony noticed his shoes. They were exceptionally large-the only oddity in all his make-up.

Unfortunately his feet were in the shadow cast by the legs of a man seated at the side, and Bony was undecided about their correct size. They were certainly higher than tens. The girl said:

“Whatd’youthink of him?”

As a man, Bony thought him to be quite ordinary. He had looked up his name in the Who’s Who, with the result that he was aware of this author’s record in the writing world. He thought the girl’s question was put to him to elicit his impressions of an author, and, in consequence, he replied:

“Not much.”

Already becoming familiar with her travelling companion, the girl said:

“Heain’t much, neither.”

“Indeed!” Bony murmured, encouragingly.

“No,” she said out of the corner of her mouth whilst she gazed straight ahead. “You see the girl he’stalkin ’ to?”

Bony admitted that he did.

“Well, she’s single.”

Bony waited to be enlightened further, for he could distinguish nothing out of place that Bagshott should be talking with a single or a married woman in a public conveyance. Then his travelling companion supplied further information in the form of another question. She said, still out of the corner of her mouth:

“You see the child sitting at the girl’s side? That’s hers. And some say that it’s his, too.”

“Dear me!” murmured the “shocked” Bonaparte. “Is that really so?”

His deepening interest warmed his travelling companion.

“They say it is,” she told him, and he asked:

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Oh, everyone about the Mount,” she replied airily. “He’s married, you know. Lives in that place opposite the top garage. Big hedge around it. You never see his wife. Hedon’t let her come out. I know what I’d do if I was the policeman.”

“What?” asked Bony, thrillingly.

“I’d walk in once every week just to see if Mrs. Bagshott was still alive. I wouldn’t put it past him to kill her one night and bury her in the garden, so’s he could marry that girl with the kid. Nasty bit of work, Isays.”