An Author Bites the Dust

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Admiring Miss Pinkney’s flowers and shrubs and vegetables, he arrived eventually at the far end of the garden where he had sat to read novels in the shadow provided by the lilactrees. Beyond them, and obviously in the next garden, a woman was talking and a man was making short comments. Bony could not resist taking a peep over the fence.

  Standing on the middle of the lawn, Mrs Blake was giving orders to Walsh, the casual gardener. He could not hear what she was saying, but she was pointing to various sections of the garden, and Walsh was nodding either in assent or understanding. Then, when he attempted to argue, she silenced him with a command of her hand, and spoke sharply and loudly enough to reach Bony.

  “That will do, Walsh. I will not be dictated to,” she said, and left the man to gaze after her with the ghost of a leer on his dissipated face.

  The newspapers arrived by bus at half past nine, and shortly afterwards Bony called at the shop to buy the Recorder, in which should be Nancy Chesterfield’s promised paragraph.

  Having purchased a copy of the paper, he stood on the footpath to search for the paragraph, eventually finding it and reading:

  Who should call on me today but an old friend who bears the distinguished name of Napoleon Bonaparte. Mr Bonaparte is an author and journalist of Johannesburg, South Africa, and he is visiting Australia to strengthen his impressions of us and further his knowledge of our literature. The last occasion I met Mr Bonaparte was before the war at a little Queensland village called Banyo, a few miles from Brisbane, and I recall the many stories he had to tell of Queensland, where he seems more at home than we do in Melbourne. I hope to meet him again before he leaves Victoria for Queensland which is, I think, to be his next port o’call.

  Bonaparte raised his head and broke into delighted laughter.

  “Morning! Happy about something?”

  He turned to meet the inquiring eyes of Constable Simes.

  “Very,” he admitted. “It’s a great day after the rain.”

  “Do the gardens a lot of good,” Simes asserted. “I have a message for you. Er—Mrs Farn presents her compliments to Mr Bonaparte, of South Africa, and desires to invite the said Bona—sorry, invite Mr Bonaparte to supper this evening in order to meet Miss Ethel Lacy, one time maid to Mrs Mervyn Blake.”

  “The said Bonaparte—no, sorry, Mr Bonaparte presents his compliments to Mrs Farn. He will be delighted to accept her very kind invitation—say about eight o’clock.”

  “You made a note about who owned the Blakes’ house,” Simes said. “I found out that Mrs Blake purchased the property two years ago for cash. Paid £2,250 for it.”

  “Indeed! She must be in the money. Well, I mustn’t linger, Simes. See you later.”

  With the folded newspaper under an arm and his hands clasped behind him, Bony paused before a bed of Miss Pinkney’s gladioli, seeing in the depths of their colours the face of Nancy Chesterfield. She had caught him out, and now he was interested by his own reactions, finding that he was not mortified but amused. A man less balanced might have felt horribly annoyed, especially a man as vain as Napoleon Bonaparte. It was his sense of humour that saved him on this occasion from temporarily abnormal blood-pressure, as so many times in his life it had helped to maintain that imperturbable suavity.

  He had made, and admitted, the common error of underestimation. He had found what seemed to be a small clique hedging about the death of one of its members, and he had found a possible means of inserting himself into that clique. With all the confidence in the world, he had begun to go for his objective through Nancy Chesterfield, and he had failed by not giving due weight to her intelligence. He had talked to her in her office on the basis of his estimate of her formulated when observing her on the terrace of the Rialto Hotel, whereas, immediately he saw the appointments of her office he should have revised that estimate. A woman occupying such an office must be an important member of the newspaper staff, a position to which no one rises without intelligence far above the average.

  The lesson was salutary, and he enjoyed it. He carried the chair from the veranda to the shade of the lilac-trees, and there reread the paragraph three times. Thereafter he lounged deep into the chair, his hands behind his head, unaware that Mr Pickwick was pouncing upon the paper sheets being stirred by the wind.

  He thought he had captured the spirit of the paragraph writer when she was composing the item for publication. Through some channel or other, she had ascertained what he was. She was not angered by the deception he had practised, but could not refrain from punishing him for it. Had she been angry, she would have published his profession and probable interest in the Blake case, but she was content to slap him with the reference to his stories of Queensland. She wanted him to know that she knew he was a liar, and had then expressed the hope that they would meet again before he left the State. Why? To have the opportunity of slapping him again? The paragraph did not give him that impression.

  Hang it! He had blamed Clarence B. Bagshott for exaggerating, and he had sinned as badly.

  Slightly vexed with himself, he took up The Literature of the Western Pacific Peoples by Dr Dario Chaparral. The copy in his hands had been issued by a London publishing house, and it contained a portrait of the author. Without doubt, he was Miss Pinkney’s “Spanish gentleman”.

  Dr Chaparral had devoted some sixty pages of his book to the history of Australian literature. He wrote lucidly and it was apparent that he treated his subject with respectful earnestness. When he came to his review of the works of the moderns, Bony noted the names, and finally totalled seven. Mervyn Blake’s work was given priority in importance. In receding order were the names of Wilcannia-Smythe, Ella Montrose, and Twyford Arundal. Janet Blake was acclaimed as Australia’s most noted short-story writer, and the remaining two were beyond his knowledge.

  On putting down the book, Bony was inclined to agree with Bagshott that Dr Chaparral had been carefully shepherded in Australia, for the names of several Australian authors and poets that had become household words were not included in the doctor’s survey.

  Bony was, indeed, finding this an absorbing investigation, and was tasting it with the pleasure of a gourmet at a banquet. Here were eight people drawn together with one unifying interest. One of the eight could be safely eliminated—Marshall Ellis, the Englishman, who had apparently been led along the same path as Dr Chaparral. With the exception of Wilcannia-Smythe, they all drank, Blake and Arundal to excess. Of the seven, all played ping-pong but Mervyn Blake.

  If, as Bagshott had said, these seven comprised a clique that arrogated to itself the leadership of literary criticism, there would seem to be no grounds for thinking that one of its members killed Blake. Also, as Bagshott had said, it seemed most unlikely that one of the “outsiders” or the “unmentionables” would be aroused, either by adverse criticism, or by being ignored, to the point of committing murder, that is, assuming that writing people are as sane as any other cross-section of humanity.

  If Blake had been murdered, then it was probable that one of the seven people, or one of the domestics, had slain him. As he had so often thought, the killer would most likely be uncovered once the motive for Blake’s murder was uncovered.

  Of the guests, who might have a motive sufficiently strong to kill Blake? According to Dr Chaparral, Blake was the leader of modern literature, with Wilcannia-Smythe second. But quite a long way second. Supposing that Wilcannia-Smythe disliked the position assigned to him? Supposing that Wilcannia-Smythe was jealous, and foresaw that with the death of Blake he would be first? The fellow’s actions since Bony’s arrival on the scene were extraordinary, to say the least. Did the papers and the note-book he stole from the dead man’s writing-room have any bearing on Blake’s death? Had he been lashed to a tree all night so that those papers might be taken back from his hotel room? Bony thought it quite likely because, having lost them again, Wilcannia-Smythe decided to return to Sydney.

  Martin Lubers, the wireless man, appeared to have a will of his own, and a fe
eling of hostility towards Mervyn Blake. He could not be jealous of Blake professionally, but there could be another cause for murder. He was a member of the staff of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, but despite that organization’s importance and respectability, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that a member of its staff could have and had committed murder.

  Murder! A beautiful word to Napoleon Bonaparte, because here and there a murderer became his adversary, and he had marked respect for those who were intelligent enough to provide exercise for his mind, and his patience—especially his patience. People who killed on impulse were mere children and unworthy of his attention; it was those who planned before the act who captured his interest and his respect—until they made a stupid mistake.

  He did not observe Miss Pinkney until she spoke.

  “Day-dreaming, Mr Bonaparte?” she asked, and came very close to giggling. “I’ve brought you some letters. Oh, look what Mr Pickwick has done to your paper! He’s utterly ruined it.”

  On his feet, Bony accepted the small batch of letters.

  “There’s nothing much in the paper, anyway,” he said. “They are still wrangling about the atom bomb, and they are going to raise the price of cigarettes.”

  “What a frightful government!” exclaimed Miss Pinkney. “My brother used to say that it’s a pity a Guy Fawkes wasn’t born every other month. One in every generation would surely succeed. Now I must run to get lunch.”

  She departed and Bony examined his mail. There was a letter from his wife, bearing the Banyo postmark, and another from the chief of his own department. Its large and sprawling calligraphy he recognized as belonging to Superintendent Bolt. The handwriting on the third letter was strange to him, but on the left-hand corner were the printed words, the Recorder.

  “Dear Mr Bonaparte,” wrote Nancy Chesterfield. “Shortly after you left today, Mr Wilcannia-Smythe rang me to say he was leaving Warburton by the next train, and hoped to catch the evening express to Sydney. I am therefore enclosing a letter of introduction to Mrs Blake. You don’t deserve it, you know, after telling me all those fibs about Johannesburg. Do call in for a chat when you are again in Melbourne.”

  Miss Pinkney had twice to sound the gong for lunch.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bony Makes a Call

  At half past three Bony knocked upon the fly-wire door protecting the front entrance to Mrs Blake’s house. A woman he guessed was Mrs Salter, the cook, answered his summons and, having tendered his private card, he was invited to be seated in the hall. Three minutes later he rose to meet Mrs Blake.

  She was dressed in a linen house frock not unlike a hospital nurse’s uniform. The dark eyes examined the visitor with steady appraisal. Her voice, when she spoke, was low and modulated.

  “You wish to see me, Mr—er—Bonaparte, is it not?”

  Bony bowed as though to vice-royalty, and when his head was low her eyes narrowed and then opened with an expression of gratification.

  “I do hope that the hour is not inconvenient,” he said in his grand manner. “I received by this morning’s mail a letter of introduction from Miss Nancy Chesterfield. It will explain the reason for my visit.”

  Without comment, Mrs Blake accepted the envelope and read the contents, at first hurriedly, and then again with greater care. When again her eyes met Bony’s, the welcoming smile barely managed to creep into them.

  “I am, Mr Bonaparte, a very busy woman,” she said. “However, I’m glad you have called to see me. Pray sit down. Anyone from another country interests me, and I am always glad to welcome a writer to Australia. Nancy says that you are the author of at least one novel.”

  “My novel hasn’t been published,” he said depreciatingly. “I sent it off to the London publishers just before I left South Africa.”

  “Indeed! What is the title?”

  “I have called it I Walk On My Toes.”

  Mrs Blake repeated it, then saying, “Titles are important. They should be arresting, and should not contain a word about the pronunciation of which anyone could be doubtful. What is the story about?”

  There was a trace of eagerness in her voice that gave him courage to proceed. Only now was he beginning to gain confidence that Nancy Chesterfield’s character was not such as to betray him thus early. Mrs Blake’s eyes were empty of suspicion or hostility. They were alive with genuine interest. The liar went on with his lying—to amaze himself.

  “The story concerns the life of a man of the little-known people called the N’gomo, who inhabit a corner of the country, formerly German South-west Africa. The action begins when the young man is persuaded to leave his tribe to become the personal servant of a hunter. On the death of the hunter he becomes the servant of a ne’er-do-well, who deserts him in Cape Town. Eventually he is taken into the service of a rascally fortune-teller with whom he remains for three years.

  “Following the arrest of the fortune-teller in Johannesburg, he makes his way with much adventuring back to his own country, taking with him knowledge of the gullibility of human beings, and many of his last master’s tricks. Having returned to his tribe, he rises swiftly to become its witch doctor and autocratic ruler. They called him Lu-molam Aye-glomph-ah-ee, which, translated, is “I Walk on my Toes.” Thereafter the story relates his rule and subsequent fall, and his influence upon the lives of a small community of white people living on the borders of his country. I have tried to portray the evil influence of white civilization on the savage mind, and how through that savage mind the evil is passed back to the members of that small white community.”

  Bony could have counted slowly up to six before Mrs Blake spoke.

  “The plot of your novel is certainly original, Mr Bonaparte,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, I—I rather like it. I do hope it is successful. You have studied the natives of your country?”

  It was less a question than a statement, and Bony hoped that she knew little, if anything, about the natives of South Africa.

  “I have always been interested in them,” he said, “chiefly, I think, for their diversity of customs and their wide range of intellectual powers.”

  “You have delved a little into voodooism and that kind of thing?”

  “I have merely skated over the surface,” Bony replied, adding with a smile, “The more one skates the more one is conscious of the deeps below.”

  “Yes, that is so, Mr Bonaparte. Have you met Professor Armberg?”

  Luck favoured Bony, for only recently had he read an anthropological work by Professor Armberg.

  “Unfortunately, I have never met the professor,” he said. “I have, of course, heard a great deal about him, and my paper has published a number of his articles.”

  “A learned man, Mr Bonaparte, and a charming correspondent. We have been writing to each other for some considerable time. He can have no equal in knowledge of the savage superstitions and of the practice of black magic. Are you staying long in Australia?”

  “No. My return passage is timed for the end of February. By then I hope to have gathered sufficient material for a travel book about Australia. It can, of course, be only superficial. I have in mind a section devoted to the growth and status of Australian literature, and thus it was that during my conversation with Miss Chesterfield she said I must meet you. I am indebted to Miss Chesterfield.”

  Mrs Blake caught the gleam in his eyes and smiled.

  “Nancy Chesterfield wrote that you are staying in Yarrabo.”

  “For a few days, yes,” he said, a trifle relieved that he could speak the truth—partially. “My brother was Mrs Faro’s husband, who changed his name by deed poll, and when I came to see her, I was so struck by the beauty of the locality I decided to stay for a week at least. She couldn’t put me up, and so she persuaded Miss Pinkney to take me in. A charming lady.”

  The dark eyes momentarily hardened. Then, “As you say, Mr Bonaparte, Miss Pinkney is a charming woman. She is, however, a little inclined to gossip, and you will know what
that means in a small place like Yarrabo.”

  “I do suspect her, just a little,” Bony admitted, lightly. “I’ve had, now and then, to be a little cautious.”

  Mrs Blake smiled for the first time with frankness.

  “Wise man,” she said. “Well, now that we have met, I’d like you to meet a friend who has come from the city to see me. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

  “I do not remember ever declining the offer of a cup of tea, Mrs Blake.”

  “Then come along,” Mrs Blake urged him, rising. “We’ll go to my writing-room.”

  Bony was conducted along a passage to a room that widened his eyes. It was a spacious room dominated by pale yellow and white and gleaming walnut. He received the impression of many eyes watching him, and of one pair of eyes, dark and sombre, set in the tragic face of a tall woman standing with her back to a service trolley.

  “Ella, this gentleman is a novelist and journalist from South Africa. Nancy persuaded him to call. Meet Mr Napoleon Bonaparte. My friend, Mrs Ella Montrose, Mr Bonaparte.”

  For the second time within the hour, Bony bowed low.

  “Mrs Montrose is an established novelist, Mr Bonaparte, and so you two should have much in common,” Mrs Blake proceeded. “Poor me, I am merely a short-story writer.”

  Only in colouring was Ella Montrose akin to Mrs Blake. Her eyes were softer and set in a pale and slightly over-long face. She had the figure of a young woman, though her age was probably verging on fifty. Her clothes were expensive, but a little bizarre. Her voice when she spoke was low and rich in tone.

  “Welcome to Australia, Mr Bonaparte,” she murmured. “I am not going to be so silly as to ask what you think of Australia, but I do hope you like the country and will like us.”

  Bony was induced to sit down and Mrs Blake served tea, at the same time telling Mrs Montrose what the visitor had related about his novel I Walk On My Toes. Mrs Montrose evinced keen interest, and her interest was not assuaged until she had gained the answers to several questions. He talked easily of cabbages and kings against the background of literature, mentioned the titles of Ella Montrose’s two novels which, regretfully, he admitted he had not read, and was cautious in his praise of the work of the late Mervyn Blake and Mr Wilcannia-Smythe. After his interview with Nancy Chesterfield, he dared not mention I.R. Watts.