Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

The steward came down the steps to them. His face was as politely placid as always.

“Know anyone with feet as big as those?” Downes asked, pointing to the marks.

“No, sir, I don’t,” replied George, looking steadily at the questioner. He placed one of his shoes over a mark, and to Downes said: “I take a size seven.”

“I’m curious to know when it was done, too,” Downes said. “You being a countryman, Lee, ought to be able to tell us that.”

“Yes, Mr. Lee, you should be able to give an estimate,” Miss Jade added.

Lee looked a little uncomfortable.

“When was the lawn mowed last?” he asked.

“Let me think,” pleaded Miss Jade. Then: “Yes, I remember. The last time it was cut was last Saturday week.”

“Well, then, the marks weren’t made before last Saturday week,” Lee grinned. “Helpful, aren’t I? What about you, Bonaparte? Can you give an opinion?”

“Lawns are outside my general knowledge,” Bony said. “That at my place is of buffalo grass, and a steam roller would not injure it. I think that those marks have something to do with frost.”

That brought further questions, but Bony evaded giving a plain answer to any of them. He had evolved a theory which might explain how those footprints came to be so ineradicably imprinted on Miss Jade’s lawn, and he was strongly inclined to the belief that they were made on the night that Grumman was murdered.

Of momentary interest was the reaction displayed by Dowries, Miss Jade and the steward. Subtract the natural annoyance in anyone owning a well-kept lawn, and still Miss Jade’s anger appeared to be unnecessary. Bony thought that perhaps her anger was assumed to hide anotheremotion, or it might be to conceal an expression of knowledge, say the knowledge that the marks had been made by the feet of Clarence B. Bagshott. It would certainly be a remarkable coincidence if there were two men living on Mount Chalmers who wore boots or shoes size twelve.

The interest displayed by Dowries might well be based on the type of mind called scientific. He wondered what Downes was, where he came from, and he determined to ask Bolt to establish all that could be established about him.

As for George, well, George had become somewhat of a mystery. On first seeing the marks, the man had suddenly stuttered and looked ill. He had explained that he had a slight headache, but he had not shown any indisposition when he arranged the chair for Miss Jade and the table.

And now, dash it! further to complicate the matter, Fred was actually almost running to and fro across the lawn with his mower and was whistling: “TheCampbells Are Coming.” And that followed the scolding he had had from his employer.

After dinner, Bony announced to those in the lounge that he was going for a walk, and he passed out from the lounge through the reception hall and the front entrance, and then walked down the drive, humming a tune. Arrived at the open gates, he returned up the drive, keeping off the gravelled surface and under the bordering trees. Before coming to the open space at the front entrance, he veered towards Bisker’s hut, passing that at its rear, and noting that the interior was in darkness. In this way he came to the rear of the garages and eventually to the open gateway leading to the top road.

To avoid sound, he walked along the edge of this road down to its junction with the highway. Then he continued up along the highway past the junction of that road at the bottom of which Fred lived and opposite which was the fruit shop where he had called earlier in the day.

Presently he came to the service garage and the Police Station. Here there was an electric road-light, but there was no way of avoiding anyone seeing him enter the Police Station. In the office, he found Sub-Inspector Mason, and Mason jumped to his feet and welcomed him with a smile.

“How’s the world treating you?” asked Mason.

“Fairly easy. And you?”

“Fairly hard,” replied Mason, “Chair?”

“Thank you. Kindly shut the door and lock it. Any of your men about?… Good! Ask him to lounge about the front gate while I’m with you.”

On returning, Mason found Bony occupied in making several of his cigarettes.

“Now, what’s the latest?” Bony asked.

“Nothing of much importance, I’m sorry to say. I was wondering how to contact you, though, because I have a letter for you from Headquarters. Here it is.”

Bony ripped open the envelope, to find enclosed a note from Superintendent Bolt, saying that a plaster head had been made from the photographs of Marcus in the possession of the Victorian Police. They had been assisted in this work by a Professor of anthropology who had stated that the result, whilst not completely accurate in measurements, was sufficient to give a picture of the head of the photographed man which could be added to other data confirming identification. When the photos arrived from London, they would be checked with the bust and alterations, if necessary, made.

Bony passed Bolt’s letter across the desk to Mason, and smoked whilst the Sub-Inspector read it.

“How has the search gone up here?” he asked.

Mason pursed his lips.

“We’ve made a thorough job of it, I think,” he replied. “We have gone into everyone living up here permanently, and have examined all the persons renting furnished houses. We found a sly-grog joint, four gambling joints, and a man wanted for theft, but not a trace of friend Marcus.”

“H’m! Disappointing! You have a neighbour named Bagshott. Know anything of him?”

“Plenty,” Mason answered, smiling broadly. “Read all hisbooks, know all about him from a cousin over inW. A. in the C.I.B. in Perth. Called on him three days ago to get him to sign a paper. He’s a Justice. When I mentioned the cousin whom he knows very well, he called for afternoon tea. I was in a hurry, and he said if I didn’t stay and meet his wife he’d read the Riot Act.”

“Notice his feet?” Bony asked.

“Not particularly. Why?”

“You should always notice people’s feet-particularly, Mason. They tell more about the character of a man than does his face. Then, again, people cannot get around without their feet. Some people’s feet even scorch a perfectly green and virile grass lawn.”

“How so?”

“Take pen and paper and write a few notes whilst I describe what has happened on the lawn at Wideview Chalet.” When he had described the foot-marks, and Mason had jotted down memoranda, Bony went on: “I have a theory about those marks, but as it is merely a theory please keep it toyourself. Your notes on the marks I want you to present to one of the City Park curators and obtain his opinion of their cause. It might be necessary to obtain the opinion of two such men. You remember that the body of Grumman was dressed in pyjamas under a dressing gown, and that it was evident that the body had been laid in that ditch and an attempt made to conceal it. It is my theory that the marks on the lawn were made by the feet of the man who carried Grumman’s dead body from his room down to the ditch, and that the double weight on grass made excessively brittle by the severe frost that night, followed by a very rapid thaw just at sunrise, so crushed the grass stems and the surface roots that life became extinct. If that is so, then those boot-marks were made by Grumman’s murderer. And I am beginning to think Grumman’s murderer is Clarence B. Bagshott.”

“Eh!” exclaimed Mason.

“Bagshott wears a size-twelve shoe,” stated Bony. “And the size of the shoe which burned its outline on Miss Jade’s lawn is number twelve. You will admit that so large a foot is rare. Remember, however, that I said I am beginning to think, not that I do think, that Grumman’s murderer is Clarence B. Bagshott. I have to check up on Bagshott’s tracks against others I have observed in the grounds of the Chalet. So you see the importance of obtaining expert opinion how those marks came to be made on the lawn.”