An Author Bites the Dust

by Arthur W. Upfield

  When Simes returned, he was accompanied by the doctor. The telegram was dropped on the desk by Bony, who had received it from the constable, and who said, “Doctor, I regret having to ask you to come here, but things to come are taking shape, and a recent event will hurry them forward. I want you to make an examination of the tea in that pot and the milk in the jug, to ascertain if there is or is not some foreign substance in both or either of the liquids.”

  The sparse grey brows rose a fraction.

  “Get me two glasses, Bob,” he requested, and then said when Simes had gone out, “What do you suspect?”

  “Coffin dust,” replied Bony.

  “Ye gods! Where do these things come from?”

  “They belong to Miss Pinkney. They contain the liquid part of my afternoon tea. Now, now! Don’t think what you are thinking. Miss Pinkney is fully exonerated by her own shoe tracks.”

  Dr Fleetwood accepted the glasses from the constable. Putting one down on the desk, he filled the other from the tea-pot and held it to the light coming strongly through the window. Within the amber liquid floated a cloud of whitish particles. The doctor’s grey eyes gazed steadily into the inquiring blue eyes. Then, taking up the milk-jug, he poured a little of the milk into the second glass, wafted it about the inside of the tumbler and then peered at the film of milk upon the glass.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the milk,” he said, slowly. “The tea is full of—a foreign substance of light specific gravity. It is certainly a substance resembling the powder which Professor Ericson and I examined. The tea was made by Miss Pinkney?”

  “Yes. It would be made in her kitchen at Rose Cottage.”

  “Then that foreign substance would not have been contained in the water from her tap. At least, I cannot think so. Do you wish me to make an analytical examination?”

  “If you would be so kind.”

  “Very well. Get me a cloth, Bob, so that I can disguise these utensils from a curious public.” When Simes had departed for the second time, the doctor asked another question.

  “This is a filthy thing,” he said. “Have you any idea who is doing it?”

  “I have sure knowledge who murdered Mervyn Blake, who murdered Walsh, who tried to murder me,” Bony replied. “I’ll telephone you early this evening, and you may be present to hear my report being dictated to Constable Simes. Meanwhile, au revoir, and thank you. Perhaps you will be in a position to be definite when we meet again this evening.”

  “I hope so. Thank you for letting me in on this. I am a nervous wreck through the powerful stimulant of curiosity.”

  Having camouflaged the teapot and jug with the teacloth Simes had brought, Dr Fleetwood departed, and Simes said, “What do we do next?”

  “First we shall pay a visit to the Rialto Hotel,” replied Bony. “Immediately following that visit we shall make another. Bring your handcuffs. It’s just possible you may need them. Ah, the telegram! Permit me.” Bony quickly scanned the eight or nine sheets recording the message from the Colombian Police at Bogota. Then he said, “Yes, we may proceed, Simes, to finalize this Mervyn Blake Murder Case.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Charge

  “You will do well to remember, Simes, always to practise the virtues of patience and courtesy,” Bony said when they were driving back from the Rialto Hotel. “Always remember today, and how courtesy and patience paid dividends in our interview with Ethel Lacy. Keep ever in your mind the superiority of the Bonaparte methods over those of Snook. Practise what I practise, and you will one day control a murder investigation.”

  “I don’t fancy my chances,” growled Simes.

  “On the contrary, I believe your chances are excellent. You have intelligence, and also you possess a gift of greater value even than intelligence, that gift being imagination. Our poor friend Snook is excessively intelligent. He has pertinacity, but he lacks the imaginative man’s perspicacity.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” Simes said, “Well, do we drive into the station garage?”

  “No, proceed to Miss Pinkney’s cottage.”

  The constable’s eyes narrowed, but he made no comment. Bony did not speak again until they stopped outside Miss Pinkney’s gate.

  “Come with me. I have something to show you,” he said, and Simes had to accept it as an order, for the voice was no longer soft and languid. He followed Bony through the gate, and skirted the house to take the path leading to the lilactrees. Having reached the table and the chair, Bony signalled him to stop and himself proceeded to the fence, where for a moment he looked over. On returning to Simes, he instructed him to study the ground about the table. Simes stared at the ground, took a step forward and went down on one knee.

  “The pigeon-toed man’s been here,” he said.

  “To put coffin dust into the tea brought here for me by Miss Pinkney whilst I was having a shower,” Bony supplemented. “He is now on the other side of the fence.”

  The constable stood up.

  “Good! I’ll get him.”

  “Wait,” Bony ordered. “I have first to ask Mrs Blake a few questions. We’ll go through the fence into her garden. Fetch the banana case and put it over two of the boot-prints—the left and the right. Later we’ll make casts of them. That’s right. Now you will observe how Napoleon Bonaparte finalizes a murder investigation.”

  Simes braced himself and followed Bony into Mrs Blake’s garden.

  “Don’t be impatient,” he was urged. “Pigeon-toes cannot escape.”

  It was then that Simes saw the three women seated on the open veranda. As he accompanied Bony across the lawn to the veranda steps, he noted the curious faces of the women, each of whom he recognized. For him they were of no consequence in the balance against the pigeon-toed man. He followed Bony up the steps and halted.

  Finalizing a murder investigation, indeed! Bony was merely paying a social call.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs Blake, and Mrs Montrose and Miss Chesterfield,” he said, bowing and smiling. “Please forgive our intrusion, for the reason is a compelling one. May I ask for the favour of a private interview, Mrs Blake?”

  The three women rose, Ella Montrose to say, “Come along, Nancy.”

  “Stay,” Mrs Blake said commandingly. “I cannot understand why you have called—in the company of Constable Simes, Mr Bonaparte.” She smiled faintly before adding, “One could surmise that you are not what you have represented yourself to be. What do you want of me?”

  “I have to confess that, although my name is Napoleon Bonaparte, I am a Detective-Inspector of the Queensland Police Department,” Bony said, easily. “The reason for my stay here at Yarrabo has been primarily due to a request made by the Victorian Criminal Investigation Branch to examine the circumstances under which the late Mr Mervyn Blake died. The questions I wish to ask you concern those circumstances.”

  “That being so, my friends need not withdraw. Let us all sit down.”

  Mrs Blake was the first to resume her seat. Mrs Montrose sat next to her, and Nancy Chesterfield regarded Bony with wide eyes as Simes brought two chairs and placed them so that Bony and himself were facing the women.

  “May I smoke?” Bony asked, and Nancy Chesterfield reached for the box of cigarettes on the table, which bore the remains of afternoon tea. “Thank you, Miss Chesterfield. Ah! Well, now, I’ll proceed. Mrs Blake, on 9th December you withdrew from your bank in Melbourne the sum of one hundred pounds. The sum was paid out in one-pound notes. Why did you withdraw such a large amount?”

  “For expenses, household and such like. What an extraordinary question!”

  The voice was steady and the inflexion of astonishment real. Simes, who recognized instantly what lay behind the question, was equally astonished. His gaze rose from a pair of worn gardening gloves on the veranda floor to Mrs Blake’s face, to note the dark brows drawn close in a frown and the dark eyes fixed in a stare of bewilderment.

  “I understand that you pay your current expense
s with cheques,” Bony said, and Simes glanced swiftly at the other women and then down at Mrs Blake’s feet. A sensation of chill swept up his spine to lodge at the base of his head. Mrs Blake’s feet were tucked in under her wicker chair, but they could not be concealed. Mrs Blake was wearing a pair of man’s shoes, and the size was almost certainly seven.

  In conjunction with the canvas gardening gloves, it was a feasible assumption that Mrs Blake had been gardening when Mrs Montrose and Miss Chesterfield had arrived, and these being old friends, she had not bothered to change her footwear. But then, some women did wear old shoes at gardening. But then—

  “It seems that you doubt the truth of my answer to your question, Mr Bonaparte,” Mrs Blake was saying, and when again the policeman’s gaze rose to her face he saw thereon a faint flush.

  “I’m afraid I have to, Mrs Blake. You see, the hundred one-pound notes you drew from the bank were found under the floor of Sid Walsh’s hut—after—Walsh—suddenly-died. I suggest that you gave the hundred pounds to Walsh because he had learnt something concerning your husband’s death. Your husband died of the effects of poison placed in the bottle of brandy from which he drank after he retired to his writingroom on the night of 9th November.”

  Mrs Blake moved her feet, and the others became conscious of the constable’s rude stare at them.

  “Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “I suppose you have proof of what you say?”

  “Yes, I have the proof,” Bony replied, quietly. “Perhaps it will be better to place it before you in the form of a story, quite a long story, since it begins several years before the war.”

  “And it concerns me?”

  “Of course, as Mr Blake’s widow. I still think it would be as well for these ladies to withdraw.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mrs Blake said. “I am sure they will be interested in the story you have to tell.”

  “Well, then, to begin,” Bony said, stubbing out his cigarette. “In 1936 a Dr Dario Chaparral, of Bogota, Colombia, visited Sydney, where he was entertained by several literary people, he himself being an author of some renown. Throughout that visit Dr Chaparral did not travel beyond Sydney and so it was that Mr and Mrs Mervyn Blake and Mrs Montrose travelled to Sydney to meet the doctor in the house of Mr Wilcannia-Smythe. Subsequently a correspondence was begun between Dr Chaparral and Mrs Blake, and in one of her letters to Dr Chaparral Mrs Blake asked him if he knew about a little-known poison that she could use in the plot of one of her stories. He wrote back and told her of an extensive belief in his own country that the dust collected from the frame of a long-buried corpse will, if administered to a living person, inevitably kill. In some parts of his country such is the belief in the efficacy of this material that persons having homicidal intent will go to great lengths to procure it.

  “Mrs Blake did use this method of poisoning in her novel entitled The Vengeance of Master Atherton.”

  “Mrs Blake never wrote such a novel,” asserted Mrs Montrose, her eyes suddenly blazing. “That book was written by a person named I.R. Watts.”

  “I.R. Watts is the pen-name used by Mrs Mervyn Blake,” Bony said with slow deliberation. “The royalties earned by the novels of I.R. Watts are submitted in the taxation returns signed by Mrs Blake.”

  Ella Montrose leaned forward and placed her hand on Mrs Blake’s arm. Her voice was low and vibrant, her eyes were living coals.

  “Is that true, Janet?” she asked. “Janet, is that true?”

  Mrs Blake raised her eyes from her gardening gloves to look at Mrs Montrose. She nodded without speaking, and Mrs Montrose turned away to regard Bony.

  “Later, when it was known that Dr Chaparral was to visit Australia for the second time, Mrs Blake asked him to bring a sample of the poison material, known colloquially as coffin dust, on the grounds that she was a collector of curious substances and bric-a-brac, and Dr Chaparral imported some of the coffin dust by making an opening in several ping-pong balls, inserting the dust, and resealing the openings with white wax.

  “Dr Chaparral visited Victoria and stayed here at the beginning of last year. I may be wrong, and I hope I am, in believing that the idea of murdering her husband did not occur to Mrs Blake until some considerable time after Dr Chaparral’s visit.”

  “Janet!” The name was whispered by Mrs Montrose. “Janet—are you listening? It’s not true, is it? It isn’t true? Janet—is he speaking the truth?”

  For the second time Mrs Blake raised her face to look at Mrs Montrose. Again she did not speak, and again looked down at her gardening gloves. Mrs Montrose went limp, and with anguished eyes looked at Nancy Chesterfield.

  “Sometime during the evening of 9th November, Mrs Blake slipped away from her guests and poured a quantity of coffin dust into the brandy in her husband’s writing-room,” continued the voice, which had now become terribly emotionless. “It was necessary to remove the remainder of the poisoned brandy before Mervyn Blake was found dead the following morning, Mrs Blake knowing her husband’s drinking habits so well as to be confident that he would drink most of the brandy in his writing-room before he went to bed.

  “Accordingly, several hours after everyone had retired, she left the house and proceeded to the garage, where her husband kept another supply of brandy and a glass inside a cupboard. That brandy bottle and glass she carried to the writing-room, being careful not to leave her fingerprints on either utensil. She found her husband lying just inside the door. It was raining, and the rain slanted in through the doorway and fell on her husband’s head and shoulders and on the floor covering. The bottle and glass from the garage Mrs Blake exchanged for the bottle and glass on the writing desk, and these she took away and buried near the front gate—for Walsh, the casual gardener to discover. To leave the door open whilst she groped her way over the body of her husband, to reach the writing desk and make the exchange of bottles and glasses, was the first vital mistake Mrs Blake made.”

  “Must you go on?” Nancy Chesterfield cried, and Mrs Blake spoke.

  “Yes, he must go on. The sun must set. We must all die—some time. I’ve been dying for years. Oh yes, he must go on.”

  “I will pass to the night of 3rd January of this year,” Bony continued. “That night Mr Wilcannia-Smythe entered Mervyn Blake’s writing-room and stole a note-book and typescript containing the collection of anecdotes related to Mr and Mrs Blake by their guests. The next day Mrs Blake, having occasion to enter her husband’s writing-room, found proof of Wilcannia-Smythe’s theft in the form of his initialled handkerchief, and the absence of the note-book and typescript. On the terrace of the Rialto Hotel, she accused him of the theft, and he refused to restore the articles to her. Subsequently, in collusion with Mrs Montrose, she abducted Wilcannia-Smythe late one evening when he was out walking, and they took him to a lonely place and securely bound him to a tree where he was not found until the next morning. Meanwhile, in acknowledgement of many little kindnesses shown to her by Mrs Blake, and urged by her dislike of Wilcannia-Smythe, the maid, Ethel Lacy, employed at this time at the Rialto Hotel, ransacked his luggage and found the stolen memoranda, which she returned to Mrs Blake.

  “Wilcannia-Smythe it seems, is a singularly mean person, considering the fact that he was often Mrs Blake’s guest and a friend for many years. It appears that he valued the collection of stories as plots for his future novels, and it would appear that Mrs Blake also valued it on similar grounds. It might be, too, that the collection contains the story of the coffin dust.

  “Anyway, the important point in what appears to be a side issue, is that when engaged in abducting Wilcannia-Smythe, both Mrs Blake and Mrs Montrose wore male clothing and male shoes. The imprints of their shoes left on the ground that night were easily followed.

  “The imprints of Mrs Blake’s shoes were plainly to be seen about the hut inhabited by Sid Walsh, the casual gardener, who died the other night. He also died from the effects of coffin dust placed in the whisky he was drinking.

  “It will be
suggested that Walsh possessed incriminating information and successfully blackmailed Mrs Blake. I shall be able to state that Walsh said he was giving up work. Precisely when and where Mrs Blake suspected I was an investigating officer, I cannot say. She decided to remove me, and the chance occurred only this afternoon. Miss Pinkney left afternoon tea for me on a table just on the other side of the dividing fence. After Miss Pinkney left the tea on the table there, Mrs Blake slipped through a hole in the dividing fence and emptied a quantity of coffin dust into the teapot.”

  “Did you see her do it?” Nancy Chesterfield asked, her eyes wide with horror.

  “Mrs Blake did what I have described,” Bony said. “On the ground about the hole in the fence, and from that hole to the table, are the imprints of shoes Mrs Blake wore when she and Mrs Montrose abducted Wilcannia-Smythe and when she visited Sid Walsh’s hut to remove the poisoned spirit bottle—the same shoes she is wearing now.”

  From Mrs Montrose came a soft, whimpering cry. She rose with feline grace to stand straight with bent head, her eyes blazing at the seated Mrs Blake. When she spoke her voice was husky with anger.

  “I could forgive you, Janet, everything but the one thing. I could forgive you for killing Mervyn, I could even admire you for the courage you must have had to do it. But I cannot forgive you, and I never, never shall forgive you for being I.R. Watts, to smear our Australian literature with common fiction, betraying poor Mervyn, and the rest of us, who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much.”

  Mrs Ella Montrose stepped back, turned and went down the veranda steps, followed the path to the far end of the house and so passed beyond the alert eyes of Constable Simes.

  Miss Nancy Chesterfield, the Cosmic Blonde, supposedly tough, left her chair and occupied that vacated by Mrs Montrose. She leant towards the motionless Mrs Blake and placed her hand lightly upon her arm, saying, “Why did you do it, Janet? Why did you kill Mervyn?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine