“Please come in.”
Eli Wessex sat between the window and the brightly burning fire. He was wearing a dressing gown, and his pathetic hands were resting uselessly in his lap. At Bony’s entrance he neither looked up nor spoke, and it was his wife who invited the visitor to be seated at the other side of the fire. She drew forward a chair to sit between them.
“Mr Penwarden telephoned that I was on my way?” asked Bony.
“He spoke to Fred Ayling,” replied Mrs Wessex, dully, staring at the fire. “Fred told us. He’s taken Mary away to the Lakes. They will look after her, and so will Fred. Fred has always loved her. You mustn’t blame Fred for anything.”
“Did Mr Penwarden know that Eldred came home?”
The woman shook her head.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Ayling knew that Eldred came home, stopped here?”
“Yes, Inspector. He got it all out of Dick.” Abruptly, she turned to him, a human being divested of its personality. “I am to blame for everything. Upon me is the mark. I am to blame for Eldred. And for Dick. I am to blame for dear old Mr Penwarden, and for my husband.”
Turning, she confronted the fire. Eli said nothing, nor did he move.
“I know already what was done about the killing of the man from Sydney,” Bony said. “I know of Mr Penwarden’s contribution. Tell me how Eldred came to die.”
“You found his grave?”
“Yes.”
A long silence which Bony did not interrupt. When Mrs Wessex spoke, Bony had to lean forward to hear what she said.
“We’d like you to know, Inspector Bonaparte, that we feel no animosity towards you. You are the agent of Nemesis which we were silly enough to think we could escape. Had it not been you it would have been another. Shall I tell him, Father, or will you?”
“You tell it, wife.”
“We had only the one son, and we loved him above all else. I won’t waste time by telling you about his boyhood, excepting to say he was lovable and impetuous, quick of temper and imaginative. You know all that. What I am going to tell you about Eldred we didn’t know until the other day.”
“Early in March,” amended Eli.
“Early in March. Very early in the morning, Eldred came home, and Dick Lake was with him. Eldred wanted to give us a surprise, and he did. He was much altered, for we hadn’t seen him for eleven years, but there was something new about him we couldn’t make out, and didn’t try to at first.
“He told us he wanted to keep his visit a secret, even from the Owens, our near neighbours all ourlives, and we didn’t ask him why because we were so happy to have him home again. Dick went off to his camp about ten o’clock and Eldred went to bed and stayed there all that day. That evening he told us how well he was doing in Sydney, and it was then that I thought the business was ruining his health and that I’d have to insist on his staying home so I could look after him.
“The next morning I heard about the murder. I happened to telephone to the grocer about an order, and he mentioned it. Naturally, I wanted to hear more, and learned that if Mr Fisher hadn’t had to come down specially the body mightn’t have been discovered for months.
“Late that same day, Dick came to see Eldred, who hadn’t got up, and they were together for a long time. After Dick had gone, I went in to see Eldred. He looked awful. He was shaking all over, and he frightened me. When I said I would call the doctor, he shouted at me not to be a fool, as he was suffering only from a bout of malaria he’d got in the jungle.
“He told me to get him a glass of brandy. After I’d done that I took him a bowl of soup and some toast as he said he wasn’t hungry. Then he seemed better, but kept asking me if I’d told anyone he was at home. He’d already seen Mary, of course, but he was desperately anxious that she shouldn’t say anything.
“A cold dread began to creep through me, he acted so strangely. I remembered that when Dick came with him in the early morning, and again that late afternoon, he never once smiled as he always did. The dread in my mind I wouldn’t face, not till Dick came again the next night.
“Dick brought brandy, three bottles of it, and he was with Eldred for more than an hour, Eldred still lying abed. It was about eleven when Dick went, and I walked with him to the road gate. At first he wouldn’t tell me anything. I pleaded with him for some time, I mentioned Father, saying how worried he was about Eldred, and that it couldn’t go on. I’ve known Dick since he was a tiny tot, and I knew he would tell me eventually.
“When he’d told me everything, it was he who pacified me, and I came back to the house having agreed to do nothing and to say nothing.
“But I broke the agreement when I went in to Eldred after I’d put Father to bed. I told Eldred he would have to give himself up in the morning. He shouted that he would never do that. Then he laughed and told me I would see him sentenced to death, how I would live through the second when he would be put on the trap and hanged. He got out of bed and fell upon his knees, and implored me not to betray him.
“Then he boasted about his life in Sydney, the money he had made and how he had made it, how he had at first peddled cocaine and finally had taken it himself. He whimpered like a dog. He said he’d run out of the drug, and that I’d have to get some somehow at Geelong. He got up and drank brandy from the bottle, and I didn’t recognize him as Eldred. He… he wasn’t a man any more.
“He said the man deserved what he got. He blamed him for everything, for smuggling drugs off the ship, for supplying him with other things he sold. He swore about Ed Penwarden suggesting what to do with the body, when they had the chance to take it over to Fred’s camp.
“So it went on for hours, now and then Eldred drinking from the bottle although there were already three glasses on the table by the bed. I thought of Father’s sleeping tablets, and blamed myself for not thinking of them earlier. I fetched two and gave them to Eldred, and presently he fell asleep.
“That must have been near dawn. I sat on the foot of the bed looking at him. He lay comfortably on his back, one arm out-flung, the other under the clothes. All the ugliness had gone from his face. He looked like he did when he went off to the war. He was my boy again. He was safe and asleep in his own room with the two pictures of ships under full canvas on the walls, and the text in the frame above the bed. After all the years, my empty heart was full again.
“When he woke, he was just as bad as he’d been before. I said if he’d not give himself up, then the only thing to do was for Dick to drive him to Melbourne, anywhere to get away. He wouldn’t hear of it, shouting that by now someone would have told the police about him and the dead man in the Lighthouse. I stayed with him most of that day until Dick came in the evening. Dick quieted him just a little, and when he left I went again with him to the road gate. He asked if I’d told Father about the murder, and I reminded him I’d never kept anything from Father. I begged him to think what we could do for Eldred, and Dick said there was nothing we could do exceptkeep him full of brandy until the craving for cocaine passed off. Dick didn’t sound hopeful, and then he told me that what Eldred was suffering from chiefly was fear. Said Eldred’s way of living had rotted him, and fear was sending him insane.
“As I walked back to the house, I thought of Mary, of all that Mary had suffered. I thought of Father, how wise he had been and how foolish I had been to override his views and advice. I thought of Mr Penwarden, and what he had done to save Father and me and Dick. I thought of allthat, was thinking of it as I went into Eldred’s room.
“He was sitting on the side of the bed, the fingers of one hand clawing the side of his mouth, and his eyes glassy with fear and horror. I must have walked slowly to the door, for he shouted at me never to do that again, that I reminded him of the coming of the hangman.
“I said: ‘You’ll have to sleep, son. You must sleep!’ So I went out to the kitchen and mixed him a sedative and took it to him, and he drank it.
“He became calmer, and finally he lay down and I lay with him and held him in my a
rms. All night long, I held him excepting once when I got up to put out the light. When he died… there was no struggle, just no more breathing… I got up and went to Father and told him Eldred was dead.”
There was silence. Eli Wessex, who had been so still that it could be thought he was dead, uttered one short sob. The woman’s voice came again, thin, without tone, reminding Bony of the wind among the white-gums surrounding the little dell in the forest.
“All my love for Eldred was wasted. There was nothing left in me to give but pity. In half a glass of brandy, I gave him ten of Father’s tablets.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Bony’s Greatest Triumph
“AND THEN YOU put Eldred in one of the coffins kept under your bed, and buried him in the forest beyond the road,” Bony said as stating facts.
“In my coffin,” whispered Eli.
“And Owen replaced the casket by having Penwarden make one ostensibly for Mrs Owen.”
“That was so.”
Mrs Wessex glanced at the clock on the mantel, and stood. Saying nothing, she left the room. Old Eli’s head drooped and his lean chin almost rested on his chest. In Bony sprang the urge for physical action that the depression on his mind might be relieved, but he remained quiescent. He was conscious of being trapped. He sought to identify the trap and found it. It was Napoleon Bonaparte, a detective inspector, a tiger-cat that once on the trail never gives up, the personification of Victor Hugo’s implacable trailer of men, Javert. It was the man who had never yet failed to finalize an investigation. That was the trap which closed about Bony, husband and proud father, the man of courage sufficient to conquer all those disabilities imposed by his ancestry, the man whose infinite patience was equalled by limitless sympathy.
Without thought for etiquette, he rolled and lit a cigarette. Sounds were emphasized… the hissing of afirelog, the clock, the movement of Mrs Wessex in another part of the house. Then there occurred that which gave him one of the greatest shocks of his career. Mrs Wessex came in with afternoon tea on a large tray. The one anchor to which she could cling in this time of catastrophe.
He placed a small table for her, and she poured the tea. As she had done that other afternoon when he was there, so did she raise the cup to her husband’slips. Not one of them spoke until the woman had pushed the little table away and again sat between the two men.
“When Dick came that evening,” she said, tonelessly as before, “I told him what I’d done. He went out and I told Alfie to go for Mr Owen. The three of them put Eldred in father’s coffin and carried it out to Mr Owen’s utility. I went with them. Mrs Owen stayed to look after Mary and Father.
“We tried to keep it all from Mary, but it wasn’t any use. She followed me to the truck and we drove across the road and into the forest to the place where the children used to play. That was Dick’s idea. Mary and I stood together while the men dug the grave. They were very careful to bring away all the earth displaced by the coffin and smooth away all traces.
“I never went back. Mary did. I used to watch her, but she was very good. We have tried, Father and I, to forget that time and remember only the years before Eldred went to the war.”
Her voice trailed away, to be captured by the ticking clock, the hissing logs. When Bony began the move to leave his chair, she said:
“I am ready to go with you, Inspector Bonaparte. I’ve packed a change of clothes.”
With a swift rush and a cry like an agonized animal, the woman left her chair and fell upon her knees beside her husband. His hands went up to rest upon her head, the edges of the palms expressing what the locked and helpless fingers could not.
Bony crossed to the wall telephone. He asked Exchange for the Owens’ number. When a woman answered the call, he asked for Tom Owen.
“I am speaking from the Wessex homestead,” he said to Owen. “Would you and Mrs Owen come over immediately? Mr and Mrs Wessex are in desperate need.”
“Leave at once,”came the prompt assent.
They arrived within fifteen minutes, to find Bony waiting on the veranda. The woman was concerned: the man grim.
“They are in the sitting room,” Bony told Mrs Owen. To her husband, he said: “I have something to say before you go in.” He paused, to permit Mrs Owen to leave them, before explaining who he was and giving a swift outline of his investigation. “That, Mr Owen, is the complete tragedy, is it not?”
The man’s grey eyes suddenly narrowed, and he nodded.
“That’s about all of it”
“Now listen carefully. A man was done to death. He was a dope smuggler, among other things. The man who killed him was as bad. The world is well rid of both. The man who was the murderer’s accomplice is also dead. Don’t interrupt… Lake was Eldred’s accomplice. The shadow of that crime has fallen on seven people, one of the seven being you. Another is old Penwarden.
“You know that Penwarden is aware only of part of the whole, that he does not know that Eldred came home, and all that followed. What Penwarden doesn’t know, he must never know, but he must bear the responsibility for the advice he gave Dick Lake.
“Rightly or wrongly, I find I cannot censure Mrs Wessex for what I myself would have done and, rightly or wrongly, I cannot censure you for what you did for them in their extremity. It is for you to guard the secret of the dell in the forest, and to control the minds, and thus the tongues, of those who share the secret with you. It is for me to continue the hunt for the murderer of Thomas Baker to Ballarat and beyond. Clear?”
Tom Owen tried to speak, gave it up, and nodded.
“Go in and comfort them,” Bony said, and went down the veranda steps to pat the waiting Stug and walk slowly to the road.
***
Ed Penwarden was putting on his coat to go home when Bony entered the workshop, and his anxiety was not lessened when Bony swung shut the door and locked it.
“We have, Mr Penwarden, a bone to pick,” announced Bony, slowly and coldly. “Make yourself easy. Tell me, why did you telephone to Fred Ayling, at the Wessex homestead, after I left you this morning?”
“Fred Ayling wasn’t in it. Mr Rawlings, sir.” The old man sat stiffly upright on his packing case and looked steadily upwards at Bony, who had drawn himself up on the bench. “You must believe that. He wasn’t here when murder was done.”
“Then why tell him I was on my way to question him?”
“I did no such thing. All I told him was that you’d found out about the murder and my part in telling Dick and Eldred what to do about it. I didn’t know you were going along. I never saw you pass. All I said was for him to clear off back, to his camp.”
“Which he did,” Bony said, and contemplated the creaseless face, the blue eyes and the long white hair.
“Let him be, Mr Rawlings, sir. He was allus a good lad, and he were terrible upset about Dick Lake. As Dick would say: ‘I can take it.’ Maybe in the eyes of the law I did wrong, but I’m not sorry. I wasn’tthinkin ’ for Eldred, exceptin ’ he got well away from Split Point and his father and sainted mother, and from Dick Lake and all of us. You arrest me, and leave Fred out of it.”
“What about your wife?”
“The old woman! Oh, she’ll bide quiet till I come back.” Bony said:
“You may be away for ten years. Much too long for you to be away from Mrs Penwarden. Like me, you are not normally a fool. Don’t be a fool again, even although a fool is sometimes wise. I think it likely that my superiors will overlook you in their determination to catch up with Eldred Wessex. We will hope that he has left the country, or that he went to sea and was drowned. My work here is finalized. I found out who the dead man in the Lighthouse was, and who killed him. It is for the Victorian police to find Eldred Wessex. Aided by science and wonderful organization, I am confident that they will find him, perhaps in Adelaide, perhaps in London… anyway, far distant from Split Point.”
He slipped off the bench and Penwarden stood, saying:
“It would be grand, Mr Rawlings, sir,
if Eldred did get himself drowned, or something happenedso’s his folk would never know what he did here.”
“I agree,” Bony said. “Now I must be off. I’ll accompany you as far as your house. Don’t worry about yourself, for it’s unlikely you will be bothered by the police. Do we understand each other?”
Anobbly hand gripped Bony’s forearm. A gleam of happiness sprang into the blue eyes, and Penwarden said, earnestly:
“Seems like we’ve allus understood each other, Mr Rawlings, sir.”
They passed outside and Bony waited for the old man to lock up his workshop. Without haste, they walked towards the ancient’s neat little house, the one upright and lithe, the other slightly stooped yet still sturdy on his feet.
“You’ll not go back onacceptin ’ of the coffin, I hope,” said the coffin maker.
“Certainly not. I’ll write giving my home address and nearest railway station… after you have written me what you think of the bloodwood logs. Police Headquarters, Brisbane, will always find me. And when I come again to Melbourne, I’ll try to run down for a little gassing.”
They shook hands. Bonysmiled, his old beaming smile. Penwarden gave his deep-throated chuckle and they stopped outside his garden gate.
“Remember to take a shaving or two from the neck rest,” Bony said. “I showed you just where the rest is a trifle uncomfortable.”
He walked on, and Mr Penwarden tarried at the gate to watch him until he reached the main road.
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