The New Shoe
( Bony - 15 )
Arthur W. Upfield
Arthur W. Upfield
The New Shoe
The Split Point Light
THE EVENING sky was a true prophet. Smoky-yellow cloud-fingers presented as clear a warning as the yellow-gloved hand of a traffic policeman, and all the birds obeyed the warning save the foolish one.
The cloud-fingers turned to crimson, and tinted the Southern Ocean with opalescent hues. The foolish one sported with the little fish, diving and turning in the colours, and when the colours had gone and the sea mirrored the stars, he slept contentedly on the deep.
The wind came before the day, came swift and cold and strong. The day brought rain to scat upon the grey water from the grey sky, and to reveal the land far distant and shrouded in sea-mist. Unlike the gulls and the gannets, the foolish one couldn’t fly, but he could swim, and with frantic haste he steered for the sanctuary of the shore.
His dinner suit kept him warm for a little while and gave him buoyancy, but steadily the white horses grew in number and in strength, charging down upon him, thrusting him deep beneath their salted hooves, each one taking a little of his buoyancy before speeding onward in the race for the land. The end was as inevitable as Greek drama: the price exacted for all foolishness. He became a spent and water-logged vessel, and the cold clamped about his valiant heart. Then lethargy quieted all his fears.
The sea surged him onward to the rocks footing the headland bearing high the Split Point Lighthouse. It failed to whiten more his shirt front, or dim the blackness of his dinner jacket, but its anger increased because its triumph was cheap and its revenge was thwarted by the currents which carried the body clear of the rocks, to deposit it at the feet of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The sea thundered its rage and the wind shrieked its fury. A gull cried with grief, and Detective-Inspector Bonaparte took up the half-grown penguin, carried it above high-water mark and buried it in the dry sand.
He thought no one was near to laugh at him.
It was late afternoon in May. The rain had been swept from the sky and the clouds were being torn to shreds by the wind which whipped the overcoat about his legs and carried the spray to sting his eyes. The one venturesome gull vanished from this place of rock and water, cliff and narrow beach, and when Bony turned his back to the sea, the wind pressed against him in effort to make him run.
Split Point is not unlike the distended claws of an angry cat’s paw, forever thwarted by Eagle Rock standing safely out at sea. Bony surveyed two of these claws rising sheerly from the beach for a hundred feet and more, and then at the less precipitous slope of paw rising to the base of the Lighthouse. At the base of the right cliff two caves offered cold shelter, and within the rock funnel in the face of the left cliff the wind swirled grass and dead bush round and round without cease. At his low elevation, he could seeall the Lighthouse save its foundation upon the grassy sward, a tapering white stalk holding aloft the face of glass beneath the cardinal’s red hat.
Thirty years before, Split Point Light was changed from manual to automatic control, since when it is inspected four times annually by an engineer from the Commonwealth Lighthouse and Navigation Department.
On March 1st an engineer had begun his tour of inspection at nine in the morning. He found the Light in perfect operation, and saw nothing to indicate anything unusual until he discovered the body of a man entombed in the thick wall.
Before nightfall that same day, the investigators from Melbourne were like ants in a piece of rotten wood. They dusted for fingerprints, and they searched high and low for the dead man’s hat, his boots and his clothes. Subsequently, they interviewed a hundred people, and scratched their heads over the result. Hope that they would swiftly draw an ace murderer from the pack dwindled till finally the only card they held was the Joker.
They preserved the body in a glass tank of formalin, and scattered pictures of the dead face to every newspaper in Australia. They chivvied the crooks in Melbourne and other capital cities, and annoyed respectable folk by their questioning. Some became red with anger and others white with frustration, and in his office at Police Headquarters in Melbourne Superintendent Bolt glared at the Joker.
A day nine weeks after the engineer had found the body, Napoleon Bonaparte, on his way back to his department in Brisbane, called on Bolt to talk about the weather. Bolt took him home and talked about a dead body no one knew, or wanted to. He admitted failure to his superior in tenacity if not in rank, and he agreed to all Bony’s demands and plans for attacking the case.
Thus was this product of two races in time to bury a drowned penguin at the very foot of the now famous Lighthouse, and hoping no one was laughing at him. Hope was banished.
At the edge of the cliff to his right stood a woman. She was almost directly above him. She swayed against the buffeting wind, and, did she take one step forward, she would plunge to death. She appeared to be young, and certainly was dark of hair. The grey skirt fluttered like a flag at a mast-head.
It was lunacy to stand there at the edge of that weathered cliff, before her was a drop of a hundred feet at least, and Bony’s reaction first was of admiration for her courage, changing then to ire at the woman’s stupidity. She seemed to lean against the wind, oblivious to the possibility of a sudden fall in pressure which would suck her into the gulf. He shouted up to her to draw back, but either she did not hear, or, hearing, ignored the plea.
Then she slid her right foot forward to the very verge. It seemed she was going to jump. In Bony, perturbation changed to horror. The foot was withdrawn. The woman turned a fraction, and as though from her heels there rose behind her a man. The man was shorter and more stockily built. He appeared to wrap his arms about the girl’s waist, and proceeded to drag her back.
For a step or two only. She stamped her heels on his feet. She struggled to release her arms from the clamp about her waist She exerted all her strength to drag him with her over the edge. Bony could see her frenzied face, and just discern the stony grimness on the face of the man.
Abruptly the man released her, caught her jacket with his left hand, swung her back from the cliff’s edge, and neatly upper-cut her. As she collapsed, he caught her again in his arms and carried her back from Bony’s sight.
“Ungentlemanly, but necessary,” Bony thought, and decided to make sure all had ended well.
There was no way round the eastern claw of Split Point, and no way up to the Lighthouse save by walking the beach for several hundred yards the other way, crossing the bar of the Inlet and negotiating the rocks which had fallen from the cliffs. As he proceeded into the Inlet, the back of the headland came down to meet the level ground, and from this point he could take the long slope to the Lighthouse.
The slope took Bony high above the great basin with its sandbar raised by the sea to keep the creek water within. He passed by two graves of the original pioneers of this district, on and up to skirt the eight-feet-high iron fence about the Lighthouse. To his left were the houses once occupied by the keepers: to his right, low clumps of tea-tree bush scattered upon the grassland to the verge of the cliffs.
The wind hissed about the corners of the iron fence: the white towering structure ignored it. On passing into the clear beyond the fence, Bony saw no one. He proceeded to the place where the girl had appeared, and, keeping safely back from the cliff, was undecided what next to do. Below was the narrow strip of sand-beach whereon, written plain, were his own tracks and the mark of the shallow grave he had dug with his heels. Here on the verge were the tracks of the girl’s shoe heels.
There had been time for the girl and her rescuer to leave the headland by passing between the government buildings and down the opposite slope where
several summer cottages were set within their hedges oflambertinna. As it would be useless to search among the bush and scrub, Bony turned back from the cliff… to see a man standing a dozen yards away and calmly watching him.
He was stockily built. His face was square, and his greying hair was short and straight. He was, obviously, a permanent resident.
“Good day!” Bony said, on advancing to the motionless figure.
The watcher merely nodded.
“Have you seen a young woman and a man within the last fifteen minutes?”
The man shook his head.
“How long have you been up here?” pressedBony.
“Half an hour. Per’apslonger.”
“And you’ve seen no one?”
“No. And if I have, what’s your business with ’em?”
The box-red face was blank, but the grey eyes were hard. Bony’s voice was soft.
“I was down on the beach and thought I saw a man struggling with a young woman. Were you the man?”
“No. I don’t struggle with women. Good day-eeto you, Mister.”
It was Bony’s turn to watch as the man strode to the low crest of the headland, finally disappearing between two clumps of tea-tree. He memorized those bushes, and proceeded to examine the ground.
The surface was grey and comparatively hard, but yet retained the woman’sheelprints. The man’s tracks were less in evidence, but he wore a boot size seven, and they were down at heel. The taciturn man was wearing well-conditioned boots size eight. Bony had automatically noted that.
Thus early, he found himself at a slight disadvantage, for he was here as a visitor on holiday and not as an expert bush tracker. To remain in character, he must decidedly not behave as a tracker, and with casual mien he walked back to the crest and passed between the memorized bushes. Here the ground was softer. Here the ground plainly retained the tracks of boots number eight, and also boots number seven and a woman’s shoe size six. All three persons were proceeding away from the cliff.
Chapter Two
Strangers are Suspect
LESS THAN EIGHTY miles from Melbourne, Split Point is situated between the holiday resorts of Anglesea and Lorne. Behind the Point lies the Inlet and back of the Inlet one can be a thousand miles from the city.
During the winter months visitors are rare at SplitPoint, and at the Inlet Hotel Bony learned he was the only guest until the next day, when a Navigation Department man was expected. However, on entering the small bar he found several men who were obviously locals… soft-speaking and reserved. Their conversation ceased on his entry, and eyes examined him with an apparent lack of interest.
The licensee was large, round, bald and beery, an incarnation of the innkeepers of Dickens’ novels. His dark eyes were like those of a kookaburra, his nose a wondrous blob of blue-veined red marble.
“Go down to the beach?” he asked, drawing a glass of beer for Bony.
“Yes, Mr Washfold. A wildafternoon, and cold. Pretty place, though. I’m going to like it.”
“Looks prettier when the sun shines,” returnedWashfold. “Been around a bit myself, and liked no place better. You can haveMelbun, all of itincludin ’ the pubs. A shilling’s my price for that hole any day.”
The licensee shot a glance at the other men, received their tacit approval, and waited for opposition from this guest.
“No one living in those houses down from the Lighthouse?”Bony questioned.
“Don’t think. Summer houses they are. You been up there?”
“Walked up to see the Lighthouse, yes.”
Bony was conscious of the silence, and the licensee moved along the short bar counter to re-fill glasses. Then one man asked another if he had sighted the hardwood boards on order, and yet another admitted he had obtained roof guttering without much trouble. Washfold returned to Bony.
“Haven’t put you down in the Lodgers’ Book yet,” he said. “Taking a longish spell, Mr…er…?”
“The name is Rawlings,” Bony replied. “Yes, I always have a good holiday when I get my wool cheque. The wife goes to Melbourne. I clear out on my own. Good for domestic bliss, you know.”
Washfold’s hairless brows rose a fraction, and for the first time his beady eyes were friendly.
“In sheep, eh! My bit of wool’s being sold next week. Whatd’you reckon? Prices hold up?”
“I think it’s likely,” replied Bony, pushing his glass forward. “Almost sure to now that the reserve stocks in America are low.”
“That’s what I was saying the other day,” agreed the licensee, and Bony felt he was now beginning to be accepted. “Sheep is wool these days, Mr Rawlings. Myclip’ll go into one bale. How many sheep you got?”
“Five thousand,” Bony smiled. “I’ve five thousand sheep and no hotel, and you have a hotel and a few sheep. You’re better off.”
A wide grin overspread the full round face. What the licensee would have said was prevented by the house gong announcing six o’clock and that dinner was ready.
“A drink on the house for the road,” the licensee offered, and seized upon the glasses. The last drink was downed quickly, and the company filed out, Bony through the rear doorway to make for his room.
The solitary diner was waited on by the licensee’s wife. Mrs Washfold was also large and round, but her hair was thick and grey and her eyes were large and brown. She was friendly at once, giving Bony a choice of soup and main dish. Her culinary gifts were quickly established, and her curiosity well controlled.
Bony was glad he hadn’t to make politeconversation, and his mind passed over the scene in the bar and the quiet orderliness of men having a few drinks at the close of a day’s work. Neither they nor the licensee evinced suspicion of him, behaving normally as men in isolated places towards the stranger.
The voice of Superintendent Bolt entered the silent dining room.
“You’ll find the place almost deserted. No holiday people. Few men down there on house building and other contract work. Round about, and at the back of the Inlet, are several farms. Prosperous farms. Wish I could park at that hotel for a fortnight. Do me. Bit of fishing… if you know where to go and when. Goodtucker, and the sea air adds relish to the beer.”
The “tucker” was certainly high above average. When Mrs Washfold had left for her kitchen, the Superintendent’s voice came in: heavy, easy, pleasing.
“You won’t see Split Point as it was on March the First when the nude body was found in the Lighthouse. On that date the place was full of visitors… people staying at their own seaside shacks, renting houses, or merely spending the day. There were twenty-seven people at the only guest house, and fourteen at the only pub. In addition to the visitors, there were the locals.
“I’d say that on March One there were three hundred people within two miles of that Lighthouse, and today there would be a bare fifty. The trail is two months cold, and we can give you nothing to start with. Even now we can’t establish the identity of the dead man. We don’t know whether he was shot inside or outside the Lighthouse. We haven’t been able to find his clothes, and no one will own him although his picture must now be familiar to tens of thousands.
“Theories, of course, we do have. Like the armchair cops, we like to theorize. We think the dead man was a member of a gang down there for a rest, probably living in a rented house, and that a rival smoked him out and plonked him one. Right up your alley, Bony. Busman’s holiday.”
The Official Summary, a skeleton of a thing, was now in his suitcase. As yet he had had no opportunity to go through it and, if Bolt’s assessment was correct, there was nothing much of value in it, anyway. Crafty Bolt! He knew the case Bony could never resist. And he knew, too, the fate destined for Napoleon Bonaparte should he fail to finalize this one which he, with all his experts, all his scientists, could not crack.
“No, we don’t know who the victim was,” said the deep and easy voice. “Don’t know anything about him, and can’t contact anyone who does. The dead man’s prints were
on the rail of the spiral staircase, and also the engineer’s. No bullet marks on the walls of the Lighthouse. No bloodstains. Doors locked and unlocked either with duplicate or skeleton keys. Not a thing on the body, either: not even the shoes. Fingernails tell nothing. Exceptionally little dental work done and that a long time ago. No such thing dropped by the killer as a handkerchief nicely initialled or a gun neatly branded. She’s all yours, Bony old lad: one of the best.”
Wily old Bolt. The knack of putting men on their mettle had carried him high. He had relented before showing his guest to his room at one in the morning.
“It’s the toughest job we’ve ever had to bash open, Bony, and honestly, you think ten times about tackling it. Remember what you told me years ago? An ordinary policeman can afford to fail, but you never. The finest weightlifter that ever was didn’t try to lift a Pyramid. But the sun and the wind and the rain will eventually wash a Pyramid away to dust, and Time may give us a hammer heavy enough to crack this nut.”
The cheese was very good, so Mrs Washfold said, and departed to bring his coffee. As he lounged at the table and sipped the coffee, he heard the voice of the boaster:
“Patience, Super, with the addition of a little intelligence, will solve any problem. I’ve inherited patience from my maternal forebears, and something of the intelligence of my white progenitors. Did you ever hear the story about one of Pharaoh’s granaries, filled to capacity at the beginning of the seven lean years, and found empty when the disbursers went to draw grain for the starving people? No. A little mouse gnawed his way into the granary and stole one grain of wheat. He returned and stole another, and again to steal another grain of wheat… until there wasn’t one grain left. Seven years it took that mouse to empty the granary. It might take me seven years to solve this Lighthouse murder. Solve it I will. As recently you so aptly remarked, it’s right up my alley.”
The Official Mind had often ranted about his dilatoriness, and the unthinking had often claimed that any real policeman would finalize a case in half the time. He wasn’t a real policeman. He had never claimed such distinction, and his Chief Commissioner in Brisbane had more than once madehimself plain on this point. But the old boy had grudgingly admitted he was a hell of a good detective.
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