Читать книгу The New Shoe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 11

Rebounding Influences

A full week, and the little gained wasn’t worth writing to Superintendent Bolt.

Bony had explored the locality both on foot and in Bolt’s car. Regularly before each meal he had appeared in the bar and had drunk too much beer. Forced by his pay and responsibilities to keep a tight rein on his generosity, he met with no necessity to squander money, as these people were too sturdily independent. There were some, like Lake and Moss Way, who accepted him: others were more reserved chiefly, he guessed, because they wouldn’t risk being drawn to the spending level of the pastoralist.

The Washfolds he found reticent about themselves and unhesitant to talk of others, but as they had been here only three years, they were in the same category as himself.

Behind this life at the hotel was another which was an influence on the general community rather than of it. Strangely enough old Edward Penwarden appeared to be the representative of the inner life, this ever-present influence behind the community at Split Point.

By inference rather than reference did Bony learn from the old man of this section of the community. It would seem that it had withdrawn itself before the march of intruders who had bought land and built holiday homes, had withdrawn itself into its own country behind the Inlet.

There were the Wessexes, Eli and his wife, their son who had gone to America after the war, and their daughter who had suffered mental illness following the death of her lover. There were Tom Owen and his wife, a childless pair, and Fred Lake and his wife who had borne fourteen children.

There were two other families who, also, had been here for generations. And as far as Bony knew these people seldom called at the hotel for a chat and a drink.

Excepting Dick Lake.

He was an ordinary, easy-going Australian to whom life is a game to be played always with a smile no matter what the jolts. You meet this type in the Interior, and it is these men who have brought all the honour to the country’s arms in war. Nothing daunts them, nothing makes them wince, and within them are forces which only extraordinary circumstances ever bring into action.

The incident of what appeared to be an attempt at suicide seemed to have no bearing on the murder at the Lighthouse. Bony was still not certain that the girl had intended suicide. He had memorized her footprints made with low-heeled shoes, and although he had not again come across them, he had seen again the prints made by the man who had knocked her out and dragged her from the cliff. That man was Dick Lake.

At that scene, or shortly after, was the man Tom Owen, who had denied seeing either the girl or Lake, and later had joined Bony on the dark road and pressed for information, at the same time urging the attractions of Lorne as against those of Split Point.

From conversations with Penwarden, there was no doubt that the girl was Mary Wessex, and that that afternoon was not the first time she had evaded her watchful mother. It was understandable that Lake would hurry her home, and that Owen would deny having seen her, for Bony, the witness, was an intruder from whom must be kept family skeletons.