Bony - 11 - An Author Bites the Dust

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I take it that Wilcannia-Smythe’s work and that of Blake is judged to be literature.”

  “Without doubt.”

  “Judged by whom?”

  “By the members of their societies and by those who have come to rely upon their judgment. But not by the general public.”

  Bony became pensive. He lounged farther down into his chair and gazed upward at an enlarged photograph of a marlin suspended from a triangle. Chalked on the body of the fish was the name Bagshott, and beneath it the weight in hundreds of pounds. Beside it stood the angler, an insig­nificant dwarf.

  “Ah, me!” he exclaimed and, rising to his feet, he whipped out his breast handkerchief and draped it over the picture. Sitting down again, he said, “Damn the swordfish, Bagshott.”

  “Yes, damn everything. Another cup of tea?”

  “Thank you. Just tell me what you know, and what you feel about the late Mervyn Blake and all this literature business. I might then see the obstacle I spoke of. I want to get inside these associates of Mervyn Blake, deeper than the police seemed able to do. If there are currents running strong and deep below the surface, tell me about them.”

  “All right, I’ll blow the gaff and the baloney,” Bagshott assented. “Let’s remember that our civilization in Australia is young and still has many of the silly attributes of youth. The nation came to maturity during the First World War, and during the early twenties evinced a marked interest in the work of its authors.

  “In 1918 or ’19, Mervyn Blake came to Australia from England to join the staff of the local university, and his first novel was published in the early twenties. He and a few friends founded yet another literary society in Melbourne, and they became affiliated with a similar crowd in Sydney, of which Wilcannia-Smythe was the leader.

  “They barged into the few magazines and the city dailies as literary critics, and they boosted each other’s novels no end. They caught the public interest in Australian stories at the crest, and the public bought heavily on their say-so. Alas, the public found itself with second-rate novels and, quite in­dignantly, said, in effect, that if this was literature, it would have nothing to do with it.

  “It wouldn’t, either. Immediately a bookseller or librarian offered an Australian novel, he was almost rudely told to keep it. For years public hostility to Australian fiction remained steady. The Blakes and the Wilcannia-Smythes persisted. They went on and up in the critical field. In the production field they have gone down and down despite all the mutual backslapping.

  “In the early thirties, several men and three women forged ahead as novelists. They cut right away from the gum-tree and rabbit-oh era and presented Australia as she is. They—and the Australian public—were extremely fortunate that in every capital city there were some independent critics who were not novelists with an axe to grind and who were not at all respectful of the Blakes and the Wilcannia-Smythes.

  “Today, the Blake-Smythe faction is still influential,” Bagshott went on. “It’s fascist or communist in its close pre­serve. You are either a member and wear the halo of genius, or you are an outsider, to be ignored or condemned to writing commercial fiction. However, quite a considerable number of Australian authors are doing very well and gaining recognition in England and America.

  “There is, for example, I. R. Watts. The Blake-Smythe crowd have always been blatantly hard on Watts, but his books are selling very well overseas. If you want substantiation of what I’ve said, you dig him up.”

  “Met him?” asked Bony.

  “Never. Don’t even know where he lives. His publishers will have his address, of course. You ask him this question—is there any possibility of internecine warfare within the Blake-Smythe combination? I don’t regard that as improb­able.”

  “I. R. Watts,” Bony repeated. “Could you let me have one of his books to read?”

  “Yes, I can. I have also a copy of Blake’s last book. Take that, too. When you have read the first six pages of Blake’s book you’ll understand why the Australian public is hostile to Australian novels.”

  “But your books sell well in Australia, don’t they?”

  Bagshott grinned again, his eyes vacant of humour.

  “Not as well as they would if the Australian readers hadn’t been led up the garden path by the back-slapping critic authors,” he countered.

  Bagshott’s hostility towards the Blake-Smythes Bony found to be an interesting facet. He accepted it with caution born of the knowledge that Bagshott was given to over-statement.

  He said, “What do you know of Mrs Blake?”

  “I saw her once and then didn’t speak to her,” Bagshott replied. “I think she’s more ambitious than her husband was. Her art is the short story. She writes very well and the praise of her work by the Blake-Smythes is merited. Mrs Blake does a fair amount of public speaking, and she contributes a lot to literary periodicals in which she never fails to mention her husband’s books.”

  “Thanks. What of Martin Lubers, the wireless man?”

  “Heard of him, of course, but I know nothing about him.”

  “Twyford Arundal?”

  “A poet. Limited outlook, but a good versifier.”

  “Mrs Ella Montrose?”

  “Wrote a couple of good novels about twenty years ago. She’s as full of repressions as a general is of bile. Husband died years ago. Nobody blamed him. She’s this and that in a dozen literary societies. Does the book reviews for the Melbournian.”

  “A woman of many parts, evidently. Tell me about Marshall Ellis.”

  “Marshall Ellis! Read the classics less and the news­papers more. You shouldn’t need to be informed about Marshall Ellis,” chided Bagshott. “Marshall Ellis rose to fame by crudely insulting all and sundry, in print and out. Clever bird. Uses vitriol for his ink, and carbolic acid for a gargle. Tries to ape G.K.C. Came to Australia to study growth of our national literature, and even before he left England he was captured by the Blake-Smythe combination. During his visit here, he was never allowed to wander from the fold and, without doubt, he was thoroughly stuffed by his hosts. You can wipe him off. He was just a sucker who ate the pap fed to him.”

  “H’m!” Bony smiled. Clarence B. Bagshott hadn’t changed a scrap since that memorable holiday at Bermagui. “Well, then, what of Miss Nancy Chesterfield?”

  “Ha-a-a!” Bagshott got to his big feet and gently closed the door. Then he exclaimed softly, “What a woman! What a—a—woman! The very thought of her makes me frantic to cast off thirty years. A glorious creature, Bony, but tough. If you could persuade her to talk heart to heart you’d get something worth while. She knows all the self-crowned high­brows in all the arts, all the members of solid society, all the racketeers, and the black marketeers, all the gambling kings and sport barons. She even knows me!”

  Bony’s brows rose.

  “I’m delighted to hear that,” he said. “She is, I understand, a journalist.”

  “Edits the social pages of the Recorder. Writes personality pars on people who are tops,” Bagshott went on. “One weak­ness only. She a valuable ally of the Blake-Smythes!”

  “Could you obtain an introduction for me?”

  “I could, Bony, old boy. But you hesitate. Be your age.”

  “I think she’d be interested in me,” boasted Bony.

  “No doubt of it. That’s why I’m trembling for you. She is catastrophic to anyone having your sentimentality of heart. They talk about atomic blondes—Nancy is a cosmic blonde. She’s got all the doings ten times each way, and why Holly­wood hasn’t snapped her up at a million dollars per diem beats me.”

  “I saw her the other day.”

  “You did!” exclaimed Bagshott.

  “Yesterday, in fact. I’ll need to remember my advanced age. Honestly, she would like to meet me. You see, I’m a South African journalist, a special writer on the staff of the Johannesburg Age. I’m visiting Australia to study the people and to gather material for a novel or two.”

  “You don�
�t say!” Bagshott leaned back in his chair and laughed without restraint. Then, “I’ll write the letter of introduction,” he agreed. “But we must be careful. Nancy will be sure to check up on you by cabling the Johannesburg Age. You’d be sunk then.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Bony calmly said. “Twenty-four hours before I presented your letter of introduction, I should myself prepare the editor of that journal with a message of enlightenment.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Donation by Mr Pickwick

  EARLY the wind swung to the north, and by nine o’clock the temperature was above normal and rising fast. Such a day as the morning promised could not be better spent than in lounging in the shade produced by the lilac-trees at the bottom of Miss Pinkney’s garden.

  Into this inviting shade Bony brought an easy chair, several books, and an easy mind. It was his own time, a day of his leave, and it was nobody’s business how he spent it. He had not been seated five minutes when Mr Pickwick emerged from a gooseberry bush and laid at his feet the ping-pong ball.

  “It’s too hot to play ball this morning,” he told the cat. “I wonder now why Miss Pinkney named you Mr Pickwick?”

  Questions! Endless questions! Bony’s life was a con­tinuous effort to find answers to questions, all manner of questions. They were not unlike living creatures parading before him without cease. Some were aggressive, like “Who killed Cock Robin?” Others were languid fellows, such as “Why had Miss Pinkney named a cat Mr Pickwick?”

  He was in no mood to seek answers to questions this warm morning, and yet could not withstand them. Why had Wilcannia-Smythe burgled Mervyn Blake’s writing-room? Why had he taken away selected pages of typescript and a note-book?

  Wilcannia-Smythe entered the writing-room that evening to obtain data he knew or suspected existed, but did not know in what form. Had he known in what form he would not have had to read the typescript and several pages of the note-book. That indicated that the things he took away actu­ally belonged to the dead author and were not his own posses­sions that Blake had borrowed. And why the excessive caution in wearing gloves? There seemed to be no reason for that unless he thought it likely that Mrs Blake would discover and report the theft.

  Mrs Blake had not reported the theft. Instead, she had gone to the Rialto and taxed Wilcannia-Smythe with the theft, producing his handkerchief in proof. The more clever they are, the more stupid the mistakes they make once they follow an unfamiliar path.

  Convinced that a theft had been committed, the normal procedure to follow, in order to find out what data had been stolen, was to have Wilcannia-Smythe arrested and his pos­sessions examined. That, however, would mean applying to Superintendent Bolt, for Bony could not act officially outside his own State, and he did want to reach the position of placing the completed case before Bolt, and thus putting one over the unpleasant Inspector Snook.

  Then Nancy Chesterfield had not acted normally that afternoon on the terrace of the Rialto Hotel. She was in the company of Wilcannia-Smythe when Mrs Blake arrived. They had not witnessed her arrival; Mrs Blake had been met by the head waiter, of whom she had inquired for Wilcannia-Smythe. The head waiter, it was obvious, had told her that Wilcannia-Smythe was on the terrace with a lady, but he did not know the lady’s name, because had he told Mrs Blake with whom Wilcannia-Smythe was taking afternoon tea, Mrs Blake would instinctively have glanced over the company to find her.

  Mrs Blake had entertained Wilcannia-Smythe for a full week before her husband died, and probably often before that, and yet, following her appeal to him, was rudely left at her table. Instead of returning to Miss Chesterfield, Wilcannia-Smythe walked into the building. And instead of crossing the terrace and greeting Mrs Blake, Miss Chester­field, who had been Mrs Blake’s guest and was her friend, had quietly left and driven away back to the city.

  H’m! Strange people.

  Bagshott’s several assertions might not be very much over­drawn. That he was given to over-statement, Bony was aware, but over-statement is not mis-statement. Were these writing people as altruistic as the public believed? Were these eight people now under review as friendly as the summary gave one to think? He was reminded of shops that have ornate fronts and frowsy backs. Was the Blake’s house party but a facade behind which dwelt jealousy and hate and envy? Had disappointment, disillusionment, sickening sycophancy and greed for fame created the murder lust and released it?

  Oh yes, the case was well worth his attention and the sacrifice of his leave, which ought to have been spent on holiday with his wife. In a day or two he would go to town and call on Miss Nancy Chesterfield with Bagshott’s letter of introduction. That would be an experience, and probably a pleasant one, but he would have to mind his p’s and q’s, and meanwhile study some of this Australian literature, and swot up a few quotations.

  He stretched and sighed. Sleep would have been preferable to the study of literature, but the character he was gradually assuming was going to be difficult to maintain. He had pre­tended to be a swagman. He had pretended to be a wealthy cattleman. He had even set himself up as an opal buyer, an insurance agent, and a drummer, and had once pretended with fine success to be an Indian rajah. He felt, however, that to pretend to be a South African journalist was going to take a lot of effort to achieve even moderate success.

  “Ah well, Mr Pickwick, let’s look into these damn novels,” he murmured to the cat, who had stretched full length at his feet. “I’m sure it will be quite a task on a day like this.”

  In under ten minutes he was finding it so. Wilcannia-Smythe was unfortunate, for the day was distinctly hostile to his work, despite the smooth and balanced prose, the clever simile, the brilliant paradox and the rest. With boredom not wholly generated by the book, Bony read for an hour before forming an opinion. Without doubt the author was a brilliant writer, and equally without doubt he was a poor story-teller. He was able to lay bricks with the tradesman’s proficiency, but he lacked the architect’s vision of the mansion to be built.

  The Bachelor of Arts said to the cat, “If that is first-rate literature, Mr Pickwick, my education was faulty.”

  With grim determination Bony picked up Mervyn Blake’s last novel, published ten years before. The temperature in the shade was now in the vicinity of ninety degrees, and this was emphatically unfair to the dead author. Judgment, how­ever, was delayed when, with vast relief, Bony saw Miss Pinkney emerge from the house carrying a tray of morning tea.

  “Now don’t you get up,” she cried a moment later. “I’ve brought you a pot of tea and a few scones I’ve just baked. Only just a smear of butter, mind you, to recall that we were once civilized and had plenty. Oh, Mr Pickwick! There you are! I hope he’s no trouble to you, Mr Bonaparte.”

  “On the contrary, Miss Pinkney, we are on terms of great affection,” he assured her, accepting the tray.

  “Now do sit down,” he was urged. “I must rush back to the house because I’m running late. It’s your fault for keeping me so late at breakfast this morning.”

  Bony smiled into the warm grey eyes, and because he knew it would please her he sat down and rested the tray on his knees. The cat staggered to its feet and came to rub itself against a leg.

  “A day for tea,” Bony said lightly.

  “It is so, indeed,” Miss Pinkney agreed, and then watched her guest remove the cup from the saucer, fill the saucer with milk, and set it down before Mr Pickwick. “You love animals, don’t you, Mr Bonaparte?” she said.

  “I certainly do,” he averred. “Why, if I saw anyone throw a stone at our Mr Pickwick, I’d—I’d probably punch him on the nose.”

  The grey eyes instantly hardened and the wide mouth tautened.

  “I’d try to,” she said, barely above a whisper, and then abruptly turned back to the house.

  Bony watched the angular figure in the neat print house dress, frowned, and sipped his tea. Other questions came crowding forward for attention. He recalled that Miss Pinkney herself had told him she once spoke to Me
rvyn Blake for throwing a stone at her cat, had “remonstrated with him somewhat after the fashion of my brother”.

  Almost idly he looked at the division fence, and then at the loosely hanging boards where he had slipped through into the adjacent garden. Had Miss Pinkney ever gone through that hole in the fence? She was undoubtedly resourceful; the manner in which she had followed Wilcan­nia-Smythe to the Rialto Hotel proved it.

  Perish the thought! He picked up D’Arcy Maddersleigh by Mervyn Blake, flicked up the cover, noted the titles of five previous novels, and began to read. The style was pedan­tic, the subject matter presented as factual history. He read three chapters before putting it down. If the fire of inspira­tion had ever burnt in the mind of Mervyn Blake it had died before he wrote that book.

  “Must be the heat,” Bony murmured to Mr Pickwick. “We’ll look into Greystone Park by I. R. Watts. Dear me, I haven’t worked so hard for many a long day.”

  He was still reading Greystone Park when Miss Pinkney came to the kitchen door and tapped on a small bronze gong to call him for lunch. He used an old envelope for a book­mark, and, putting the book down on the others, stood up, stretched, and yawned. The next instant he trod on Mr Pickwick’s ping-pong ball.

  He set his foot squarely upon it, and instinctively stopped the downward pressure of his shoe before the ball could be squashed flat. For a moment he looked down on the wreck, vexed with himself, for it would never bounce again to give joy to Mr Pickwick.

  Thinking to take the ruined ball to his hostess with the ready promise to purchase another, he picked up the wreck­age. It was crushed and split almost in halves. Within was a greyish powder, some of which was spilled on the ground. Carefully he picked up the broken ball and emptied a little of the powder into the palm of his left hand. It was light in weight and rough in texture. The amount of powder still within the ball might have covered a two-shilling piece. He emptied it into the envelope he had used for a bookmark, and the envelope he twisted securely and slipped into an inside pocket.