“Yair.”
“But she wanted Phil Gough and he never came back from the war.” Moss chewed his cigarette. “Life’s funny, ain’t it?”
“Bloody funny,” agreed Dick, and Bony detected a snarl in his voice. “Why bring all that up? What’s past is past.”
Dick Lake’s mood was to Moss as puzzling as it was to Bony, and he said, chidingly:
“Okey doke, pal. You got plenty of spiders up your way, Mr Rawlings?”
“Tarantulas, trap-doors and red-backs.”
“Ants by the millions, I suppose.”
“By the trillions,” replied Bony. “Today has been just it to bring them all out. I was interested in Fred’s story of the flying spiders, though. I’ve seen them drifting in the breeze.”
“So’ve I. Ah, here she comes. Push her, Dick.”
Dick “pushed her”. Within a minute the rain bounced on the engine bonnet and reduced visibility to fifty yards. Three minutes later the driver had to handle a bad skid. Five minutes after that they reached the better road at the Wessex farm.
“Can be lucky,” growled Moss.
The wind came, from the nor’-west, beating against the edge of the depression which had sprung from the Southern Ocean to confound the weather men. One moment the rain was falling straight down, the next it was slanting to ricochet off the bonnet and smash against the windscreen.
“What’s the time?” asked Moss, and Bony said twenty-past five.
“Better go to the pub, Dick,” suggested Moss.
“All right. We’ll stop to get our coats. Walk back from the boozer.”
Presently they came to Penwarden’s workshop. The door was closed. A few yards farther on, the truck was stopped and Moss cleared it to race through the storm to the camp for their coats. Bony said nothing, and apparently forced Lake to offer a comment.
“If this keeps up, the Ocean Road will be blocked at a dozen places between Anglesea and Lorne.”
“Landslides?”
“Yair. Where the road cuts into the foot of the hills. Country round here is all loose. A drop or two of water makes it sludge.”
The habitual grin was absent. The voice had lost its pleasing lilt. If Lake was in a raging temper he didn’t show it, and Bony could recall no cause for his mood.
Moss charged back into the cabin, and they went on to stop outside the hotel bar, and so close that Bony merely had to step from the running board into the doorway.
The licensee leaned against his side of the bar and, as though to keep the counter in position, Senior Constable Staley leaned against the opposite side. No one else was present.
“Drunks and babies are blessed with luck,” said Staley. “You fellers are extra specially blessed. You’ll be taking the Slide once too often.”
“Aw, she’s all right,” countered Lake. “What’a we having?”
“You got out in the nick of time, anyway,” said Washfold. “’Nother half-hour and you wouldn’t have got to Eli’s place. Full load, too.”
“Did you go with them?” Staley asked Bony.
“Yes. Had a great day, in fact. Extraordinary country. And extra good drivers.”
“Can drive all right. When sober.” Staley grinned at the truck men and called for drinks. He was at the end of the row, with Bony next him, and none saw him slip an envelope into Bony’s side pocket. “How’s your Dad, Dick?”
“Pretty good, considerin’. Got a new brace for his leg what’s much better than the other one. Was askin’ about you.”
There was no smile, no lilt in the voice. The policeman said he would fall for it.
“Pop hoped you’d go along and sample a new brand of cider he’s got comin’ to the boil. Wants you to pass out for a day or two while he markets a coupler thousand possum skins.”
Staley chuckled, and Bony estimated the fine two thousand possum skins would bring to the law breaker.
“You haven’t got those skins planted in your load, I suppose,” asked Staley. “You would go crook if I ordered you to shift all those logs right outside this pub.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” snorted Moss Way. “Shut up kiddin’, Dick. Ain’t we done enough work for one day?”
“Yair. Fill ’em up, Bert.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Storm’s Contribution
THE RAIN STUNG the iron roof of the Inlet Hotel, and the wind bayed about the eaves. The sea’s embattled hatred of Split Point could be distinguished beyond the nearer uproar.
Staley had departed for Lorne, and the wood carters had retired to their camp. The Washfolds were completing the day’s chores, and Bony sat before the leaping fire in the bar lounge.
At any time the sea air will pay hot plates against the eyes of a visitor, but when the wind carries the sea spume inland for many miles, a pleasant lethargy becomes an irritation. Relaxed physically, Bony commanded mental activity to traverse the events of the day and the communications he had received from Senior Constable Staley.
The result of Staley’s interview with Penwarden was definite. The old man said that no detective had entered his workshop, and that Superintendent Bolt himself had called at his house one evening and taken him in a police car to view the body which had been placed in the old school building. Bolt reported that no member of his team had visited Penwarden at the workshop.
The members of the Repair Gang, then in Melbourne, had been interviewed, and all had stated they had not visited Penwarden’s workshop. They were indignant that the shavings examined with other litter and swept by the detectives against the wall on the lower floor had been left by them. Having completed their work they had, in accordance with routine, swept clean the entire Lighthouse.
At first Engineer Fisher denied making the litter and then admitted that he had utilized part of his time in constructing a rocker for his small son. He had not swept out the litter, believing that no one would enter the Lighthouse between then and his next inspection.
The litter, therefore, had been left by Fisher during his inspection carried out on February 3rd and 4th, and thus the Repair Gang could be eliminated as the agent of the transference of the red-gum shaving from Penwarden’s workshop. As Fisher stated that never at any of his visits to Split Point had he entered Penwarden’s workshop, he too could be eliminated. There remained the victim, his murderer, and possibly the murderer’s accomplice.
The ring brought nothing, but the watch had. A jeweller trading in Ryde, Sydney, had received the watch for repairs on January 19th, and had delivered the repaired watch to the customer, who called for it, on February 17th. The jeweller’s records provided the customer’s name as being Thomas Baker.
The jeweller failed to recognize his customer in the photographs of the body preserved in formalin. He agreed to the approximate age and general appearance of the man, and added that he thought he was from a ship. However, he was greatly helpful when he recalled that when the customer called for the watch, he had been accompanied by a woman, and that during the transaction the woman had removed a glove and he had noted that her fingers were covered with rings set with opals.
Opal Jane! Opal Jane was a gentleman’s friend. She was clever and respectable! She had more money in more banks than any “lady” in the Commonwealth. Yes, she knew Thomas Baker. What he did she didn’t know, but “had the idea” he was a ship’s officer. Yes, she had recognized Baker in the published pictures of the man in the formalin bath, but she had not come forward as she had no liking for “being mixed up with a murder”.
Persistent interrogation failed to elicit further information from Opal Jane. She was “requested” not to leave Sydney.
Either the woman lied, or actually believed that Baker’s front name was Thomas. Were he the same man, and there was no reason to assume otherwise, and he had given the initials B B when purchasing the suit of clothes from the Adelaide tailor ... B.Baker. Bony found this oddity a little annoying, for a man will readily change his surname and rarely trouble to change his Christian name.
>
Although Bolt had reported nothing about the signet ring engraved with the letters B B, Bony was confident that the hunt for the jeweller who had cut and soldered with a wrong solder would go on. There was certainly a thread passing from that ring to the dead man, as there was a strong thread from it to Fred Ayling. The thread passed through Ayling to Mary Wessex, who knew something of the Bold Buccaneers, among whom were Dick Lake and Eldred Wessex.
Eldred Wessex! Everyone said that on receiving his discharge from the Army he had gone to America. Dereliction in filial duty had wounded his father ... to the degree that no picture of him was in the living room at the homestead.
Were Opal Jane’s statement accepted, the man found dead in the Lighthouse could not be Eldred Wessex, the young soldier whose picture Bony had that day seen at Ayling’s camp. The dead man’s mouth and chin denoted tenacity, the chin and mouth of the soldier were weak. The dead man’s forehead was broad: the soldier’s forehead was narrow. No facial operation could create so wide a difference.
There was a plain thread between the cave in which the dead man’s clothes were found, undoubtedly the imaginary headquarters of a juvenile gang of buccaneers, with Fred Ayling, who owned a similar ring to that found in the pocket of the raincoat.
Fred Ayling! There was a decided chain of reactions in which Ayling was an important link. Ayling had accepted him, Bony, the previous afternoon when, together, they had left the Wessex homestead. At parting, the wood cutter had warmly invited him to visit with Lake. Shortly after that parting, Mary Wessex had spoken to Ayling. On visiting Ayling with Lake, the former’s demeanour was subtly changed. He had certainly not approved of Lake’s action in drawing attention to the picture of the heroes three.
After lunch Ayling and Lake had walked to the first of the wood stacks, and together were in the truck when it was driven across the Slide. Prior to lunch Lake’s attitude to him, Bony, had been cordial, but afterwards, when they were driving back to Split Point, Lake was surly to the extent of being noted by his partner.
The cause of the changed attitude in these two men must be in what Mary Wessex had said when she stood beside Ayling’s car. Had she given a warning? She was sane enough to convey a warning acceptable to Ayling.
Mary Wessex! Mary Wessex was the person who had tiptoed across the Lighthouse yard that afternoon Bony was inside with Fisher. Mary Wessex had tiptoed to the house from the barn when Bony was with her father, childishly enjoining the dogs to be silent. Her tracks left at the foot of the veranda steps were the same as those left in the Lighthouse yard ... when she was wearing the same boots.
It was reasonable to assume that Mary Wessex had seen him go down the ledge to the cave, and that she had waited for him to return ... with a rock as a weapon to kill him. A man would have made sure, with a second blow. A determined and normal woman would have made sure, too.
It was clear that the unbalanced Mary Wessex knew all about that cave. It was possible, even probable, that she knew nothing of the dead man’s clothes deposited there, but were she a member of the Bold Buccaneers, she would place extravagant value on the secrecy of the cave to three boys and herself. To her he was a threat, a revenue officer, even the captain of a British frigate.
To Ayling, when told of his descent to the cave, he became a far greater threat—must have done, to change a sane man’s attitude and influence the attitude of Dick Lake.
Ayling knew of the dead man’s clothes and suitcase in the cave. So, too, did Dick Lake. Knowledge that he had visited the cave had made them wary of him.
Reviewing all this, Bony reached the opinion that when Mary Wessex apparently tried to throw herself off the cliff and was restrained by Dick Lake, actually she was about to step down to the ledge to visit the cave. Had Lake prevented her from doing so because he thought the descent too dangerous for her, or because he could not permit her to discover the dead man’s effects? How it happened that he arrived at the cliff in time to prevent her could not at this stage be answered.
The rings! There were, to Bony’s knowledge, two identical rings. The letters B B more likely than not stood for Bully Buccaneers. Including the girl, there were four Bully Buccaneers, and it could be possible there were four identical rings. A jeweller might fail to recall using the wrong solder on one of them, but no jeweller would forget having sold four signet rings and engraving each with the same letters.
When the ring found in the dead man’s coat was presented to Bolt, the second ring had not appeared on Ayling’s finger, and thus Bolt’s team would concentrate on capital cities to find the jeweller who had used wrong solder. It certainly seemed now that the jeweller would be found ... if alive after all these years ... in a nearby town like Geelong or Colac, even in Lorne.
Despite the storm, Bony slept soundly and late, waking to see the sun trying to stand still upon the racing clouds, and the trees about the hotel attempting to fly. At breakfast Mrs Washfold told him that the roads to Anglesea and Lorne were blocked by landslides, and that it was expected traffic would be halted for two days. After breakfast he decided on a tramp to the sea, and, of course, Stug accompanied him.
He made another decision shortly after leaving the hotel. To look down upon a stormy sea from a height is to miss much of its majesty and everything of its power, and he chose, therefore, to visit the beach.
The road was clean and the gutters still ran water following a rainfall of over four inches. The wind slid across the headland, slid over and about Bony like a pervious glacier and almost as cold. The colour of the Lighthouse was off-white, and the coast towards invisible Lorne was stained dirty-yellow by the spume.
Something tremendous had happened to the Inlet. The winding creek was five times as broad and, when he reached it at the picnic ground, there were more water birds than he had ever seen there. The creek was flowing inward, and much of the sand-bar had been eaten away by the pounding surf. Each charging wave broke far out, rushed to charge the sandbar and empty most of its content over it into the creek
The temper of the sea was vile. The wind raised a sand blast to sting Bony’s face and slam pain against the dog’s nose, and when they reached the beach and Bony paused to watch the cataracts of water emptying into the Inlet, Stug promptly sat with his back to the sea and shut fast his eyes.
The mark left by high tide was plain, as the tide was ebbing, and but here and there did it lie at the feet of the cliffs. At the main Point the black rocks boiled in the cauldron off the little beach where the dead penguin had come ashore, and Bony walked with effort along the sand to reach it.
He came again to the funnel in the cliff face where, as previously, the debris was in the power of perpetual motion. The stinging spray forced him to turn up his coat collar, and Stug to proceed at an absurd angle. Strongly elemental, Bony feared the elements, and, fearing, was fascinated. Here the sea’s fury was awe-inspiring.
Hate controlled the sea, and hate burnished the dull-gold faces of the cliffs. Other than the man and dog, nothing lived along this battleground where motion contended with frozen implacability. When the Lighthouse came into view, it held no association with the scene, reminding Bony of a picture of a patrician lady gazing above the heads of the screaming rabble.
Coming to the beach where he had buried the penguin, his mind was wholly enthralled by the pitiless striving of giants, and there, as once before he had stood with his back to the sea, he gazed upward at the point where Mary Wessex had appeared.
Clearly he remembered the configuration of the cliff edge against the sky, and he saw now proof that the place where Mary Wessex struggled with Dick Lake was within a yard of the upper end of the ledge down which he had sidled to reach the cave. He could even see the ledge ... knowing now it was there to be seen ... and could visually follow it to the overhang. There was no possible doubt that, had he succumbed to the blow he had received on that ledge, he would not have survived the fall. He would have dropped like a stone down the yellow face to the rubble at its chin. To lie ther
e ... there...
An object dark and foreign lay just where he would have lain, and, with the dog at heel, he strode up the shelving sand to investigate.
It was a young man dressed in working clothes. On his feet were rubber-soled shoes. He lay broken and still, and his face was towards Bony. The face was unmarked, the grey eyes wide.
Bony gazed upon Dick Lake, his throat constricted, all experience failing to control the rising horror, for he had grown to like this once casual and happy man.
Chapter Eighteen
Tragedy at Split Point
THE DOG CREPT forward and sniffed at the body. It then slunk away, sat and howled. A cloud passed from the sun, and the light, pouring through the spume, laid gold to the rocks and gilded the dead face.
Automatically, Bony noted the time. Training beat upon and submerged natural reactions.
Lake had worn no overcoat when he fell, and he had turned up the collar of his working coat and fastened it with a safety-pin. The clothes were as wet as though immersed in the sea. There was no watch to give the time of the fall, and nothing whatever in the pockets save a quantity of strong light rope.
Bony sat on a rock and gazed at Stug, and Stug lifted his head and wept at the passing of one of his many friends. During the dark night or at early break of day, Dick Lake had ventured down the ledge to reach the pirate’s cave to find if Mr Rawlings had removed the clothes and shoes and suitcase, and, if not, to dispose of them at some other place.
Either he had slipped, or the rain-sodden ledge had given way. Proof of his intention to visit the cave rested with rope in a pocket and rubber-soled canvas shoes on the feet.
For no other reason than the marked difference between finding the body of a person unknown to you and that of a man with whom you have laughed, Bony removed his overcoat and placed it over the body of Dick Lake, weighting the corners with stones. Feeling the lack of the coat, he walked as smartly as the beach sand would permit to the Inlet, and finally up to the Lighthouse and to the cliff. Flat on his chest, he peered over the edge, observing that the ledge now ended several feet short of the overhang, and that the rain had removed all traces of the breakway.
The New Shoe Page 13