An Author Bites the Dust

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Thinking to take the ruined ball to his hostess with the ready promise to purchase another, he picked up the wreck-age. 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.

  Did the manufacturers of ping-pong balls place grey powder inside them?

  Another question to confront him and scream for an answer.

  If ping-pong ball manufacturers put powder into them, then why?

  Chapter Twelve

  A Couple of Locals

  After lunch, Bony returned to the shade of the lilac-trees and Greystone Park. Despite the heat, I.R. Watts got it across, for Bony found this book emotionally powerful and soundly written, the characters being clear and strong in their presentation. Watts was a born story-teller, restrained and therefore dramatic, humorous and therefore human. When Bony had read a third of the book he was determined to get in touch with this writer, for he was sure that the author of such a story would also be indisposed to over-statement as well as under-statement.

  He was engrossed by Greystone Park to the extent of becoming oblivious to heat and annoying flies, but the world of historical romance into which I.R. Watts had inducted him was not proof against a lazy voice saying, “Some people has all the ruddy luck.”

  Bony looked up from his book to see a man leaning on a hoe not four yards distant. He was large and disreputable There were pouches under his filmy eyes and purple lines criss-crossing his shapeless nose.

  “It would seem so from your point of view,” Bony said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the casual gardener around here. You a friend of Miss Pinkney?”

  “Yes,” Bony confirmed, and then added as though by an afterthought, “Warm afternoon.”

  “’Tis so. Good day to drink beer, but there ain’t none. Good day for a smoke, too, but there ain’t no tobacco. Things is crook all right. How do you stand?”

  “For beer, no good. For a pipe of tobacco, fairly good.”

  The gardener shuffled towards Bony and held forward a huge and grimy hand for Bony’s proffered tobacco tin. He helped himself generously and stuffed the finely shredded weed into the bowl of a broken-stemmed pipe.

  “Thanks,” he said, without meaning it. “What this ruddy country is coming to beats me. No beer, no tobacco, no meat half the time, and work all the time. It’s ‘When are you coming to my place?’ and ‘You promised to give me a day last week’, and so on until I gets giddy picking and choosing who I’ll work for.” He lit his pipe, from which, in spite of the eternal shortage, dangled streamers of Bony’s precious tobacco. “Everythink’s short,” he went on, becoming fierce. “Couldn’t be anything else but short when we gotta pay for the politicians, thousands of ’em having holiday tours all round the ruddy world. What do they care for the likes—”

  “So you help to keep other people’s gardens in order, do you?” Bony cut in. “Earning good money?”

  The gardener pulled at his pipe, puffed his cheeks and emitted a cloud of smoke.

  “Pretty good,” he replied. “I don’t work for less than thirty bob a day and no Sat’day work. But what’s the ruddy use? Them dopes in the city goes on strike after strike for more money, and about a week after they get the rise the cost of everything catches up with ’em and then they’re still behind. Any’ow, what’s the use of money when you can’t get enough beer and got to scrounge for a bit of tobacco? We was all better off on a quid a week and unlimited beer and unlimited tobacco. What I says is—”

  “How often do you work for Miss Pinkney?” inquired Bony.

  “Whenever she wants me to,” with a leer. “I never says no to Miss Pinkney, and I never said no to Mr Blake next door, when he was alive and kicking. For why? I’ll tell you. Miss Pinkney always gives me a reviver just before I goes, just a little taste, sort of. I likes working for her sort. There ain’t many of them around here. The doctor’s all right, but, ah”—and a sigh floated into the still air—“that Mr Blake was a bonzer bloke. He’d never see a man dying of thirst.”

  “Generous, eh?”

  “Never failed. My name’s Sid Walsh. What’s yours?”

  Bony told him, and Sid Walsh repeated the name, and said, “Seems familiar to me. Musta met you somewhere before. Lemme think.”

  “Don’t. It’s too hot. Is the Mr Blake you spoke of the author?”

  “Yes, that’s ’im,” Walsh replied, expectorating with remarkable accuracy at a waltzing butterfly. “One of the best, he was. He’d come along sometimes when I was working in there and he’d gimme a wink, and that was the office for me to foller him, sort of casual like, to his writing-room or the garage where he’d have a bottle planted nice and handy.”

  “H’m! In the garage as well as his writing-room?”

  “Too right, he did. Always kept a bottle and a couple glasses in a cupboard inside the garage.” Walsh winked, glanced nervously towards the near-by fence, and went on, “His missus uster go crook at ’im for drinking, especially when there was no one staying there, and he’d have plants all over the place. But he was cunning, though. He never left the garage unlocked while I was working for him.”

  “And you have a little luck with the doctor?” remarked Bony.

  “Oh yes, the quack’s all right in his way. He tells me I drinks too much, and then when I’m knocking off and I tells him I’m all a-tremble with exhaustion, he takes me into his surgery for what he calls a tonic. It’s tonic all right. The real McKay from Scotland. Gripes! There’s Miss Pinkney looking at me. I’d better get on with my slavery.”

  Sid Walsh drifted back to his hoeing, and Bony took up Greystone Park. He found it easier to read than to meditate and the next intrusion came when Mr Pickwick sprang up the back of his cane chair and settled himself comfortably on his right shoulder.

  “If you continue to kiss me, you’ll have to get down,” Bony told him, and went on reading.

  The shade cast by the lilac-trees lengthened. The flies continued faintly to irritate the reader of novels. The gardener proceeded with his hoeing, and the third intrusion came when Miss Pinkney said, “Well, I never. Dr. Nicola, I presume.”

  “You refer to Guy Boothby’s famous character of thirty years ago,” he murmured, and then was on his feet with Mr Pickwick clawing for support and the book in his hands. Miss Pinkney had brought him afternoon tea.

  “The same. You are the image of him, and Mr Pickwick is the very identical cat. But please don’t date Dr Nicola—and me.”

  Bony put the cat down and took the tray.

  “The inference cannot possibly apply to you, Miss Pinkney,” he told her gravely. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll bring in the tray later; I have letters to write.”

  “The post closes at five o’clock, remember.”

  “I will.”

  Miss Pinkney departed and Bony sat down. He heard her call to the gardener, “Walsh! Your afternoon tea is in the kitchen waiting for you. You don’t deserve it because you’ve done very little work so far.”

  And then Walsh, “Sorry, Miss Pinkney, but me rheumatism is crook today. This kinda weather always plays hell with me joints.” He staggered after her as though one foot were in the grave and the other almost in.

  Bony smiled, and Mr Pickwick lapped milk from the saucer.

  After another hour with Greystone Park Bony took the tray to the house and there wrote a letter to Superintendent Bolt, saying that he was picking up one or two threads of the Blake case and asking that the Editor of the Johannesburg Age be primed to counter the chance that an inquiry might reach him concerning a member of his staff, to wit Napoleon Bonaparte, now on holiday in Australia.

  Having posted the le
tter and noted that the time was half past four, he walked on down the street with the intention of calling on Constable Simes. Simes was in the narrow front garden of the police station disbudding dahlias and, on seeing Bony approaching, he stepped to his gate, smiled in his broad and open manner, and said, “Having a look round?”

  “No, I am hoping to pay a call on Dr. Fleetwood. D’you think he would be at home now?”

  “Yes, almost sure to be.”

  “I wish you’d go inside and ring him and tell him that an important friend of yours is about to pay him a visit. Nothing more than that. I’ll go along. His house is just round the bend, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Only house there.” Simes regarded Bony steadily. “Any developments?”

  “Nothing, so far. I’ve been reading novels all day. It’s been too hot to engage in my profession. When there are developments, I’ll tell you of them.”

  Arrived at Dr Fleetwood’s house, he was conducted by a maid to the doctor’s surgery where he was met by a tall, stoop-shouldered, ascetic-looking man bordering on sixty.

  “Slight, dark, blue-eyed—that’s the police description and it fits you,” he said with a mere trace of Scotch accent. “Sit down. What can I do for you? You don’t look ill.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I am, in fact, remarkably well,” Bony said, accepting the invitation to be seated. “I have not come to you as a patient but as a police officer engaged upon the recent death of Mervyn Blake.”

  When the doctor again spoke, the accent was more pronounced. “Indeed! Well?”

  Bony told him who he was and who and what he was pretending to be, before saying, “Inspector Snook, who had charge of the inquiry, apparently became satisfied that Blake died from natural causes. Superintendent Bolt, Snook’s superior, is not quite so satisfied, and he prevailed upon me to see what I could do to satisfy him completely that Blake died from natural causes—or—or unnatural causes. Er—I have succeeded in gaining Constable Simes’s confidence. I’d like to have yours, doctor.”

  The grey eyes were steady.

  “Well, go on.”

  “Simes has also consented to collaborate with me,” Bony continued. “So has his sister, whose brother-in-law I am supposed to be. Inspector Snook is an efficient and somewhat ruthless policeman. I was associated with him once and he then incurred a little debt I wish to collect. Perhaps you feel the same way?”

  “Perhaps I do,” and the thin lips barely moved.

  Bony felt he was making no progress. Still he persisted.

  “Having read all the data collected by Inspector Snook, I find that I cannot be as satisfied as he that Blake died from natural causes. My opinion is based partly on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body, and the evidence that led both Simes and yourself to believe that someone entered the room after Blake died and before he was found the next morning. Now, doctor, I’ll be blunt. I want your collaboration.”

  The grey eyes narrowed.

  “Very well, inspector, I’ll do what I can to assist you.”

  “Thank you,” Bony said, making no effort to conceal the satisfaction he felt. From a pocket he took the crumpled envelope containing the powder from Mr Pickwick’s pingpong ball. “I have here a substance that mystifies me. I want it examined and identified. I don’t want to send it to the Victorian C.I.B. Would you analyse it?”

  “I’ll do my best,” assented Dr Fleetwood. “If I do not succeed, I could send it to the University for analysis.”

  Bony unscrewed the envelope and preferred it to the doctor. Fleetwood looked closely at the contents and then rolled it slightly from side to side. He sniffed at it, wetted the ball of his little finger and thus carried a grain, or flake, to his tongue. Finally he picked up a magnifying glass and used that to look upon the powder.

  “Peculiar substance,” he said. “All right! I’ll do my best this evening, or as soon as possible. You have no suspicion of what it is?”

  “None. I came upon it by chance, and that it has any bearing on the Blake case appears at the moment to be fantastic. It might be, let us say, chalk from the downs of England, or heather from the Highlands of Scotland. It might even be dust from the western plains of the United States. It might be—no matter. I want to know what it is.”

  “Very well. I’ll see what I can do to name it. Where are you staying?”

  “I am staying at Miss Pinkney’s cottage.”

  Dr Fleetwood smiled for the first time. “I’ll wager that you’ve gained her confidence at least,” he said dryly.

  “Yes. I like her very much. In her way she is quite a character.” Bony rose, smiled and added, “Another character I’ve met here is Mr Pickwick. I understand that Miss Pinkney gave Blake a tongue-lashing when he threw a stone at Mr Pickwick, threatened to change the position of his face to his—ah—posterior.”

  “Miss Pinkney is downright in everything she does and thinks,” Dr Fleetwood said, and laughed. “A good woman, though. Genuine and all that.”

  “Have you any opinion of what caused Blake’s death?”

  The smile vanished from the lean features.

  “Yes, an opinion based on a probability. His death was not caused by stomach ulcers, from which he had suffered for some time. His heart was sound, meaning that its condition was normal for a man of his years and manner of living. It seems probable that he ate or drank something which of itself is harmless and yet becomes a virulent poison when in contact with something else. For instance, strawberries are harmless and yet in some people strawberries will produce a violent upsetting of their health.”

  “Thank you, doctor. Did you visit Blake, or his wife, at their home?”

  “No. Blake came to me for an overhaul.”

  “Well, thank you for giving me so much of your time Please let me know through Constable Simes the result of your work on that powder, will you? And you will treat the subject of our talk with strict confidence, I know. Thank you again. I must be off. Tomorrow I have to meet a cosmic blonde. Have you ever met a cosmic blonde?”

  “Cosmic?”

  “Yes, cosmic, doctor. I understand that they are more dangerous than the atomic genus of the species.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Cosmic Blonde

  At half past seven the following morning Bony boarded the train for Melbourne, and as this modern railroad wonder took more than two hours to traverse the forty miles, he had plenty of time to prepare for the interview with Nancy Chesterfield.

  Having dawdled through morning tea, he arrived at the offices of her newspaper at half past eleven. He expected to be shown into a cubby-hole of a room, or a vast space covered with reporters in shirt-sleeves either writing furiously or yelling for boys. He found Miss Chesterfield seated in a most luxurious chair on the far side of a magnificent writing desk littered with a hundred and one odds and ends. On the floor was a thick carpet. The room was a fit setting for the jewel of a woman occupying it.

  “Good morning, Mr Bonaparte,” she said, offering her hand as one accustomed to welcoming all who have, or may have, news value. The letter of introduction he had withheld in favour of his card, and his vanity was fed by the belief that his name had paved the way to her presence. She studied him for a fleeting instant before saying, “I’ve seen you before.”

  “Strangely enough, I have that same impression, Miss Chesterfield,” he told her, making his famous bow. “I’ll try to recall where whilst you’re looking at this letter addressed to you by my friend, Clarence B. Bagshott. I trust I am not occupying your most busy minutes?”

  “Of course not. Sit down. Cigarette?”

  “Thank you.”

  “So you are a friend of Clarence B.” she said, accepting the letter and smiling at him, clever enough to put the smile into her remarkably lovely eyes, but not to hide from him that her welcome was professionally cautious.

  He refrained from looking at her as she read Bagshott’s letter. She might be tough, as Bagshott had said, and he had most likely not exagge
rated, but to Bony this morning she did not look tough or even brittle. He sensed a keen brain, and was confident he could match it with his gift of intuition and his mastery of guile. He felt her power, and judged that to be not only the power of sex but, in addition, the power of the successful in a chosen profession. That was akin to the power he himself possessed, and so he was not perturbed.

  “Where, Mr Bonaparte, did we meet?” she asked, looking up from the letter. He brought his gaze from a picture of a saturnine man in a wing collar and a fearful-looking tie to rest upon her flawless face.

  “It was at the Rialto Hotel last Thursday afternoon,” he replied. “You were having afternoon tea with a man with snow-white hair, and I was in the company of a woman with jet-black hair. There were four tables between us.”

  “At Warburton! So it was. I remember seeing you. You reminded me of Basil Rathbone when he played in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Now tell me about yourself, Mr Bonaparte. I like your name.”

  “Permit me to assure you that it is not a fictitious name,” Bony countered, chuckling. “Sometimes I find it a positive burden, but—I am ambitious, you know, and my name might very well assist me to fame. At the Rialto I was entertaining my sister-in-law. My brother would not carry our father’s name and so adopted the name of Farn. He was lost in the fires of ’38. As there is no extra accommodation at the house occupied by my sister-in-law and her brother at Yarrabo, I am staying near by. I visited Bagshott, with whom I have corresponded for several years. It was through him that I learnt a little about Australia, enough to make me want to visit your country. I’m so glad I came to see it for myself.”

  “And he suggested that you call on me?”

  The dark-grey eyes were devoid of guile.

  “No. I suggested to him that he give me a letter of introduction. It was a suggestion that came easily to mind immediately he mentioned your name. He gave me ample warning, however.”