Читать книгу The Battling Prophet - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 7

The Picture

The night was peaceful and cold. The moon at zenith was almost completely triumphant, for the western sky was fast being drained of light. Beyond the garden fence the three mighty gums ruled a magic world of semi-tones, with the silvered pathway of the river in the distance.

This was not the picture Bony was seeing. He was looking at a picture sharp in places, blurred in others, an unfinished picture. A man had died, and he and those associated with him were the subjects of this picture. They were portrayed brilliantly, were at once recognisable. The circumstances surrounding the dead man’s last hour of life were blurred as though befogged by Mr. Luton’s claims of extraordinary knowledge, knowledge which, superficially, was as fantastic as the dreams of the modern artists. Superficially to everyone save those who, like Bony, were familiar with the extraordinary background of the extraordinary race of men represented by Mr. Luton.

This race has not entirely passed away. The last remnants are still to be found living in peaceful old age on the banks of inland rivers and near a township which they visit only on pensions days. It was a race the like of which will never again be seen, for it possessed all the admirable attributes and but few of the human vices. They were born long before motor traction could weaken their bodies and the craze for luxury and mental distraction could weaken their minds. Life made upon them such physical demands that occasional intemperance had no lasting effects, whilst their dependence on one another in a world of vast, semi-arid distances gave to them a spiritual strength rarely found in city and town even in their own times.

John Luton’s background applied only in part to Knocker Harris, a younger man, less intelligent, less stable. He had been brought up on a farm, whereas Mr. Luton had roamed the open spaces of the Interior. He had driven horses in a single-furrow plough, long after Mr. Luton had saved a little money from the pubs and purchased his first bullock team and wagon. Knocker Harris had prospected for gold in Victoria when Mr. Luton was punching bullocks on the far tracks of the Interior. But, like Mr. Luton, he had worked from dawn to dusk, and he had lived with those whose motto was: “If your neighbour needs a pound, give him five. If a down-and-out begs for a crust, give him half your loaf.” There was no sentiment about it. It was just plain common-sensical insurance.

Ben Wickham had been a newchum, a towny, an outsider lost in a rough man’s country. He was a full-grown man when Mr. Luton found him completely drunk on the wood-heap at the rear of a wayside hotel. The publican wanted Wickham away from his yard, and had no use for him in his bar, as he was broke to the wide, wide sky. Mr. Luton was conveying a mountain of stores and grog to far distant townships, and, the day before, he had left Broken Hill without his offsider, who had decided he couldn’t leave the bright gas-lights of Argent Street.

Wickham was, of course, no use whatever to Mr. Luton. He was wearing a flash city suit, horribly soiled, and shoes, instead of he-man’s boots. He had never seen a bullock yoke, and didn’t know which end a bullock hauled with. Mr. Luton took the body off the wood-heap, nursed life back into it, and ultimately fashioned the best offsider he ever had. Twelve months later, Ben Wickham was driving his own bullock team in company with John Luton.

They worked together for ten years. For ten years, summer and winter, they flogged and cursed bullocks up and down all the tracks of outback New South Wales and Queensland, loading wool to the railheads, loading stores and building material and beer and spirits back to the growing townships and the ever demanding station homesteads.

Wickham had been a brilliant student and promised to become a brilliant scientist, and, like so many brilliant minds, he had a weakness for alcohol. Mr. Luton picked him off the hotel wood-heap just in time. Forced abstinence and gruelling work on the tracks, aided by his own intelligence and by Mr. Luton’s remarkable influence, slowly brought Wickham into a world he could appreciate. He had accepted and profited by Mr. Luton’s advice, which was: “Don’t nibble at the grog. Have a gutful when you’re at the trough, and then give it away for a spell.” It was sound advice, too, when the visit to the trough lasted two weeks and the spell following it lasted nine or twelve months.

The partnership was broken when Wickham inherited his father’s estate known as Mount Mario, at the time when the motor truck was banishing bullocks to the abattoirs. Mr. Luton decided to buy a small grazing property, and Wickham took up his inheritance and his meteorological ambitions. What Bony knew of him were tiny pen strokes which brought him into clear perspective in this large picture he was now studying.

That Wickham had been a truly remarkable man was unarguable. He broke away from the orthodox science of meteorology, which was getting nowhere very fast and could only advise my lady what clothes to wear the next day, the airman what conditions he could expect to fly into during the next two hours, and the seaman whose barometer and radio contact with other ships could tell him more.

Like Sister Kenny, he battled with obstruction, a professional jealousy and spite. From a low percentage of accurate forecasts, he had ultimately claimed accuracy of one hundred per cent, and the two years before his death had proved his claim. Without doubt, Ben Wickham had been greatly admired and greatly hated. Twenty thousand people watched the plane rise from the airfield with his ashes to scatter them over the place where he had worked and fought and triumphed.

There was, of course, part of the picture so exceedingly blurred as to be almost undecipherable. Mr. Luton’s idea, if it could be so named, that every spirituous liquor has its own distinct effect on the mind subject to its power—it could be accepted only as an idea, barely as a theory. Who on this earth, other than Mr. Luton, with the possible exception of Knocker Harris, would accept as fact that hallucinations created by whisky were distinctly different from those created by gin? Who else would be even faintly interested by this subject, this idea, this theory, this utter rot? A man aged seventy-five existed on gin and nothing else for three weeks. Of course he would have delirium tremens. What was more remarkable was that he didn’t die before reaching that stage. He had had a sick heart. The doctor had warned him.

And still Mr. Luton stood forth in the picture, clearly sane, mentally virile, without question speaking of something in which he believed and of the truth as he understood it. He had sent for Napoleon Bonaparte, believing that only one reared in and habituated to the bush could be expected to believe that Wickham had not died of too much gin.

Well, it would be something to exercise the mind while he was fishing, and there were ten days of fishing ahead, a leave long due and, in his own opinion, well deserved. Ah ... Then Mr. Luton’s booming voice issued from the front door, calling him to dinner.

The kitchen was bright and warm, and Mr. Luton, wearing a cook’s apron, was serving fillets of fish, surrounded by crisp potatoes and garnished with lemons, from the Darling River. They discussed fish and fishing, when Bony learned that the Cowdry River was short and deep and wide, that it was not actually a river, although two streams entered it. In the long ago the sandstone cracked open to let in the sea and admit the kingfish, the flathead and the bream.

Cooking fish is an art distinct from cooking, and Mr. Luton was an artist. He certainly knew how to brew coffee, well laced with brandy.

“That was a truly satisfying meal,” Bony told him when they lazed at table, and the black-and-white cat stretched on the hearth footing the hot stove.

“Plain and good,” agreed his host. “You know, us old geezers in the old days lived on damper bread and meat, and nothing else except tomato sauce, black tea and pain-killer, and got along very well. Ben often trotted down here for a simple plain feed away from his own table, where only high-falutin muck was fed to him. One morning he came in and said: ‘I’ve come down for a beer out of a tin pannikin. You got pint pannikins, haven’t you?’ ”

“He liked everything plain?”

“Yes, took him back to the old days. In his own house he wasn’t the boss, you understand. His sister was and still is. Sour old bitch about sixty. Only one man ever got into bed with her and he dropped dead the next morning.

“Not that she didn’t run the big house all right. She always did that, the servants and all, including Ben when he was there. In the house he was a mouse. Outside he was a lion, and wouldn’t allow her or anyone to say how he should manage his office and his staff. Give her her due, she always did believe he’d win out. She married a Parsloe, of Parsloe Jams, but, as I said, he couldn’t stand it and shuffled off. There’s others as well.”

“Tell me,” Bony prodded when Mr. Luton was about to remove the dinner crocks.

“Well, there’s a sort of retired parson. Been there for a couple of years. Mrs. Parsloe invited him and he stayed on. Ben hated the Reverend, name of Weston. Supposed to be writing a book or something. Then there’s Mrs. Parsloe’s husband’s niece, Jane. She married a doctor and kidded Ben to fork out the money to buy the practice at Cowdry.”

“The same doctor who signed the certificate?”

“The same. Shire councillor. Runs the golf club. Knows everything—in his own mind. Name’s Maltby.”

“And they live at Mount Mario?”

“Been there for four years. Surgery is at Cowdry, only four miles down-river.”

“Oh! Anyone else?”

“One more. Lass by the name of Jessica Lawrence, Ben’s secretary. He thought a lot of her. She’s in love with Dr. Linke.”

“One moment, please,” interrupted Bony. “You said that Ben thought a lot of his secretary. Kindly be precise. In what way did he think a lot of her? For her work?”

“For her work and because he found her straight and easy to talk to. She even gets round me. About twenty-four or five. Started working for Ben four years ago last Easter.”

“And this Dr. Linke?”

“Ben’s chief assistant. Was with him five years. He and the second assistant lived in a house separate from the big house, and they was looked after by Mrs. Loxton.” Mr. Luton chuckled. “If ever I’d have married I’d have chosen her sort.”

“You imply that the assistants do not now live apart from the big house?”

“Correct. After Ben died, the second assistant was sacked by the Parsloe woman, so I understand. Dr. Linke’s still there, and now lives at the house. He’s fallen for Jessica, the secretary. Foreigner. Comes from Germany, so Ben told me. Clever feller, again accordin’ to Ben. Been here once or twice with Jessica. Very interested in the Outback.”

While Mr. Luton was at the wash-bench, Bony pencilled notes in a slim pocket-book, and when Mr. Luton returned to the table he asked:

“Did your friend ever say his life was threatened?”

“He named no name, but you only had to read the papers and talk to people in Cowdry to know he was hated enough for some madman to be mean enough to kill him. Even the local Member of Parliament last year said Ben ought to be gaoled for what he was doing, arguing in the House that the country would lose heavily if Ben was wrong and had led the farmers and graziers to sort of go on strike.”

“Who inherits the property?”

“Don’t know yet. Haven’t heard about a will so far.”

“Did Wickham ever mention to what degree he had taken his assistants into his confidence?” pressed Bony. “I’ll put it another way. Did his assistants know Wickham’s ultimate calculations or formulæ, or whatever it is, making his forecasting a hundred per cent accurate?”

“I can answer that one, Inspector. No. That was his secret he kept to himself. Dr. Linke didn’t tell me in words when he was down here a couple of nights back, but from what he did say I think they’re looking for those calculations.”

“You tell me you believe Wickham was murdered. Why was he murdered? To suggest that someone paid by the finance corporations, or by a big business concern, murdered him is really fantastic. If it was murder, there must be a motive. Was the motive to benefit from his estate? Was it to prevent him continuing his forecasting—which, as I have just said, is really fantastic? Was it to gain possession of his weather calculations? And that is more feasible. Are you a beneficiary under his will, do you know?”

“Could be, but I don’t think so,” replied Mr. Luton. “Ben wanted to put me down for twenty thousand quid, and I told him I had twenty thousand of my own and a bit more.”

“You didn’t quarrel with him during that last bender?”

“Quarrel with him! Me and Ben never once quarrelled.”

“Did you and Wickham, or Wickham himself, ever quarrel with Knocker Harris?”

“Never. Knocker’s always easy to get on with. Used to nurse us with food and soups and things.”

“I have yet to learn this point, Mr. Luton. Did Harris drink with you and Wickham?”

“No. ’Cos why? Because he’s got stomach ulcers and can’t take it without sufferin’ like hell. In fact, I don’t think he ever took a drink in this house.”

“You like him, I should think.”

“Why not? Harmless sort of bloke. Always ready to oblige or do a good turn. Lives quiet and don’t want for anything.”

“Then it would seem that we have a murder without a motive, Mr. Luton. And we have a murder because you believe that when Wickham died he wasn’t having an attack of the right kind of hoo-jahs. His body has been cremated and the ashes scattered over Mount Mario, so that the remains cannot be pathologically examined. What have we left?”

Mr. Luton frowned. He said: “Gumption.”

“That might be the right answer, Mr. Luton.”