Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

He had been there for perhaps five minutes when for the third time he felt the alteration in air pressure as a door was opened. That was all. There was no sound. No light was switched on. Which of the twenty-six doors in that passage had been opened, he could not distinguish, and whether the door opener had left to steal back along the passage to the front door, or had re-closed the bedroom door, Bony could not decide.

The only sound to register upon his ear-drums was the ticking of the clock in his own room. The overall noise of the wind outside the house appeared to come as from a great distance and failed to master possible sounds within.

Bony waited at his door for many minutes. No light was flashed on to indicate that the intruder had reached the far angle of the passage, and presently he came to believe that the door had been opened to enable a pair of shoes to be placed in the passage for Bisker to clean. That could have been done only by Sleeman, whose shoes had not been outside the door when Bony had passed.

Bony left his doorway and slipped along the passage wall to the door of the next room. At its foot he felt with the stick a pair of shoes. The door was shut. Bony pressed his ear to the panel, and brought his eye to the key-hole. The key prevented his seeing into the room even had the light been on. And as he stooped he heard from within the faint creaking of a wire mattress.

So it was Sleeman whom he had followed, who had left a room in the passage beyond the wine-store. Surely he had not been visiting one of the maids! Their rooms were in that passage where the wine-store, the steward’s room, and the lumber room. And why had Sleeman entered the house by the front door?

Had the man who had entered by the front door been Sleeman? Had Sleeman been out of his room on an amorous adventure leaving his room by the door and returning by the door and was the man who had entered by the front door still prowling about the house somewhere?

Because he, Bony, chose to enter the house by the scullery door instead of through his bedroom window through which he had gone out, it would seem most unlikely that Sleeman had had a similar reason for leaving the house through his bedroom window and entering it by the front door. Bony had chosen to enter by the scullery door because he wanted to examine the lumber room and, perhaps, the room occupied by George, and these rooms could be more easily reached by way of the scullery than through his bedroom. He decided to have a word with Bisker.

Locking his bedroom door and slipping the key into a pocket, he climbed out of his window for a second time that night and eventually, for the second time, clamped a hand about one of Bisker’s ankles.

“Seen anything?” he breathed into Bisker’s ear.

“Not a thing but a star trying to peep out now and then,” answered Bisker. “How did you get on?”

“Well enough. You did not see or hear anyone leaving by the front door?”

“No. I seennothink and ’eardnothinkbar theblinkin ’ wind.”

“You know Sleeman’s room, don’t you?”

“Number seventeen it is.”

“When did you clean the windows of that room last?”

“ ’Bouta fortnight ago.”

“Do they open and close all right?” pressed Bony.

“No,” replied Bisker. “The bottom one jams so badly that it can’t be raised. There’s only one set-not two sets like yours. Miss Jade wasgonna get it fixed, but the carpenter hasn’t been.”

Early in the Morning

ONCE AGAIN in the scullery with the closed door behind him, Bony spent a minute listening before proceeding into the kitchen and from there to the cross-passages. Here he waited, listening for two minutes, becoming confident that his presence was unknown to anyone within the house. Almost, but not quite, he had dismissed the presence of a second prowler as an improbability.

However, he did press an ear against the door of the wine-store and could detect no sound from within. The next door he came to was that of the steward’s room, and although he halted here for a few minutes, he did not enter but went on to the door of the room given over to lumber. Outside this door, he also paused to listen, to be assured that no one was within, before returning to George’s bedroom.

He had with him a bunch of skeleton keys provided by Colonel Blythe when first the Grumman case was assigned to him, but he found on trying the door that it was unlocked and that the key was on the inside. Silently closing the door, he stood for a little while listening. Then he switched on his torch, over the bulb of which he had wrapped his handkerchief.

There was no one there-just as he had thought. He turned to the door and withdrew the key and directed the subdued light of the torch to it. He saw that it was covered withoil, and that the oil was old and not applied that night. Inserting the key, he locked the door.

The blind was down. On the single bed, the blankets were folded neatly at its foot, and on them were the folded sheets and the pillows. The mattress was rolled into a cylinder at the head of the bed, and this struck Bony as queer because George was to be away only the one night.

There were no washing facilities in this room. There was a chest of drawers and on thatwas a stand mirror and the man’s shaving and toilet gear. This was all of excellent quality. A pair of ivory-backed hairbrushes lay beside the leather case. There were pots of shaving cream and hair pomade, a couple of combs and several tooth-brushes and a tube of dentifrice. There were, too, three photographs of groups within small and cheap frames.

All these articles displayed in the dimmed beam of the torch indicated that the owner was careless and slovenly in his habits, and George had not revealed this trait at any time to the observant Bony. There on the bed was displayed neatness in the folding of the bed-clothes, when such folding arrangement appeared to be unnecessary. Here on the chest of drawers all was chaotic. He proceeded to examine the contents of the four drawers of the chest. In them were underwear, shirts and collars, socks and a sports suit. The shirts were washed and ironed. There were five of them and the laundress had folded and ironed them as though they were intended for shop sale. Bony took each from the drawer and closely examined them-to find that the creases and the folds were out of the original. The shirts had been “opened” out and then roughly refolded before being put back into the drawer.

Next Bony gave his attention to a leather steamer trunk, old but still in good condition. The lock was evidently out of order, the lid being kept fastened with only one of three buckle straps. Within lay more garments-a dressing gown, several older shirts, a suit of navy-blue serge, several pairs of shoes, and books and unframed photographs of people on ships and of ships. The contents of this trunk smelled heavily of moth repellent.

Bony went carefully over the blue suit, the trousers of which were keenly creased, as were the sleeves of the coat. The repellent was the same as that which he had noticed on the suit of the man who had held up both Bisker and himself and had taken the empty fountain pens.

Replacing the contents of the trunk, Bony closed down the lid and proceeded to direct his torch into corners and under the bed and the chest of drawers. Beneath the bed was another pair of ordinary shoes and a pair of good-quality tennis shoes. On pegs affixed to the door hung an overcoat and an old felt hat. Questions! Standing and leaning against the wall in the darkness following the switching off of the torch, Bony asked questions and sought their answers.

Was the blue suit in the trunk that worn by the gunman? It was similar. It smelled of the same moth repellent, of which there are many, which had clung to the gunman’s clothes. And the old felt hat on the peg looked something like the gunman’s hat.