Читать книгу The New Shoe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 6

Strangers are Suspect

Less than eighty miles from Melbourne, Split Point is situated between the holiday resorts of Anglesea and Lorne. Behind the Point lies the Inlet and back of the Inlet one can be a thousand miles from the city.

During the winter months visitors are rare at Split Point, and at the Inlet Hotel Bony learned he was the only guest until the next day, when a Navigation Department man was expected. However, on entering the small bar he found several men who were obviously locals ... soft-speaking and reserved. Their conversation ceased on his entry, and eyes examined him with an apparent lack of interest.

The licensee was large, round, bald and beery, an incarnation of the innkeepers of Dickens’ novels. His dark eyes were like those of a kookaburra, his nose a wondrous blob of blue-veined red marble.

“Go down to the beach?” he asked, drawing a glass of beer for Bony.

“Yes, Mr Washfold. A wild afternoon, and cold. Pretty place, though. I’m going to like it.”

“Looks prettier when the sun shines,” returned Washfold. “Been around a bit myself, and liked no place better. You can have Melbun, all of it includin’ the pubs. A shilling’s my price for that hole any day.”

The licensee shot a glance at the other men, received their tacit approval, and waited for opposition from this guest.

“No one living in those houses down from the Lighthouse?” Bony questioned.

“Don’t think. Summer houses they are. You been up there?”

“Walked up to see the Lighthouse, yes.”

Bony was conscious of the silence, and the licensee moved along the short bar counter to re-fill glasses. Then one man asked another if he had sighted the hardwood boards on order, and yet another admitted he had obtained roof guttering without much trouble. Washfold returned to Bony.

“Haven’t put you down in the Lodgers’ Book yet,” he said. “Taking a longish spell, Mr ... er ... ?”

“The name is Rawlings,” Bony replied. “Yes, I always have a good holiday when I get my wool cheque. The wife goes to Melbourne. I clear out on my own. Good for domestic bliss, you know.”

Washfold’s hairless brows rose a fraction, and for the first time his beady eyes were friendly.

“In sheep, eh! My bit of wool’s being sold next week. What d’you reckon? Prices hold up?”

“I think it’s likely,” replied Bony, pushing his glass forward. “Almost sure to now that the reserve stocks in America are low.”

“That’s what I was saying the other day,” agreed the licensee, and Bony felt he was now beginning to be accepted. “Sheep is wool these days, Mr Rawlings. My clip’ll go into one bale. How many sheep you got?”

“Five thousand,” Bony smiled. “I’ve five thousand sheep and no hotel, and you have a hotel and a few sheep. You’re better off.”

A wide grin overspread the full round face. What the licensee would have said was prevented by the house gong announcing six o’clock and that dinner was ready.

“A drink on the house for the road,” the licensee offered, and seized upon the glasses. The last drink was downed quickly, and the company filed out, Bony through the rear doorway to make for his room.

The solitary diner was waited on by the licensee’s wife. Mrs Washfold was also large and round, but her hair was thick and grey and her eyes were large and brown. She was friendly at once, giving Bony a choice of soup and main dish. Her culinary gifts were quickly established, and her curiosity well controlled.

Bony was glad he hadn’t to make polite conversation, and his mind passed over the scene in the bar and the quiet orderliness of men having a few drinks at the close of a day’s work. Neither they nor the licensee evinced suspicion of him, behaving normally as men in isolated places towards the stranger.

The voice of Superintendent Bolt entered the silent dining room.

“You’ll find the place almost deserted. No holiday people. Few men down there on house building and other contract work. Round about, and at the back of the Inlet, are several farms. Prosperous farms. Wish I could park at that hotel for a fortnight. Do me. Bit of fishing ... if you know where to go and when. Good tucker, and the sea air adds relish to the beer.”

The “tucker” was certainly high above average. When Mrs Washfold had left for her kitchen, the Superintendent’s voice came in: heavy, easy, pleasing.

“You won’t see Split Point as it was on March the First when the nude body was found in the Lighthouse. On that date the place was full of visitors ... people staying at their own seaside shacks, renting houses, or merely spending the day. There were twenty-seven people at the only guest house, and fourteen at the only pub. In addition to the visitors, there were the locals.

“I’d say that on March One there were three hundred people within two miles of that Lighthouse, and today there would be a bare fifty. The trail is two months cold, and we can give you nothing to start with. Even now we can’t establish the identity of the dead man. We don’t know whether he was shot inside or outside the Lighthouse. We haven’t been able to find his clothes, and no one will own him although his picture must now be familiar to tens of thousands.

“Theories, of course, we do have. Like the armchair cops, we like to theorize. We think the dead man was a member of a gang down there for a rest, probably living in a rented house, and that a rival smoked him out and plonked him one. Right up your alley, Bony. Busman’s holiday.”

The Official Summary, a skeleton of a thing, was now in his suitcase. As yet he had had no opportunity to go through it and, if Bolt’s assessment was correct, there was nothing much of value in it, anyway. Crafty Bolt! He knew the case Bony could never resist. And he knew, too, the fate destined for Napoleon Bonaparte should he fail to finalize this one which he, with all his experts, all his scientists, could not crack.

“No, we don’t know who the victim was,” said the deep and easy voice. “Don’t know anything about him, and can’t contact anyone who does. The dead man’s prints were on the rail of the spiral staircase, and also the engineer’s. No bullet marks on the walls of the Lighthouse. No bloodstains. Doors locked and unlocked either with duplicate or skeleton keys. Not a thing on the body, either: not even the shoes. Fingernails tell nothing. Exceptionally little dental work done and that a long time ago. No such thing dropped by the killer as a handkerchief nicely initialled or a gun neatly branded. She’s all yours, Bony old lad: one of the best.”

Wily old Bolt. The knack of putting men on their mettle had carried him high. He had relented before showing his guest to his room at one in the morning.

“It’s the toughest job we’ve ever had to bash open, Bony, and honestly, you think ten times about tackling it. Remember what you told me years ago? An ordinary policeman can afford to fail, but you never. The finest weightlifter that ever was didn’t try to lift a Pyramid. But the sun and the wind and the rain will eventually wash a Pyramid away to dust, and Time may give us a hammer heavy enough to crack this nut.”

The cheese was very good, so Mrs Washfold said, and departed to bring his coffee. As he lounged at the table and sipped the coffee, he heard the voice of the boaster:

“Patience, Super, with the addition of a little intelligence, will solve any problem. I’ve inherited patience from my maternal forebears, and something of the intelligence of my white progenitors. Did you ever hear the story about one of Pharaoh’s granaries, filled to capacity at the beginning of the seven lean years, and found empty when the disbursers went to draw grain for the starving people? No. A little mouse gnawed his way into the granary and stole one grain of wheat. He returned and stole another, and again to steal another grain of wheat ... until there wasn’t one grain left. Seven years it took that mouse to empty the granary. It might take me seven years to solve this Lighthouse murder. Solve it I will. As recently you so aptly remarked, it’s right up my alley.”

The Official Mind had often ranted about his dilatoriness, and the unthinking had often claimed that any real policeman would finalize a case in half the time. He wasn’t a real policeman. He had never claimed such distinction, and his Chief Commissioner in Brisbane had more than once made himself plain on this point. But the old boy had grudgingly admitted he was a hell of a good detective.

And that was the heck of a good dinner. If he wasn’t careful at this Inlet Hotel, he’d grow a tummy. Nothing like a smart walk after dinner to keep lean and hard.

His shoes crunched the gravel of the short road to the highway and clip-clopped as he took the curve downwards to pass the base of the headland and cross the marshland of the Inlet. The stars were out, but the highway was dark and only one having good sight could have kept to it after leaving the last of the three road lights marking the turn-in to the hotel, the café and the post office store. The wind was from the south, coming after him to whisper promises of triumph.

He had expected to see the Light casting a straight beam in a giant circle and he had to gaze hard towards the invisible headland before seeing the four flashes through a chink of the blackout windows to landward. Although there was no observable beam, the light could be seen by ships twenty miles away.

Ahead of him, beyond the Inlet, a car came snaking down the coastal hills, its headlights probing to find the bridge across the creek. It passed Bony with singing tyres, leaving him in deeper darkness. His shoes thrummed on the bridge planking, and beneath the sound they made, and seemingly beyond the noise of the car as it climbed the great curve, he fancied he heard the echo of his own feet on the road he had just left.

The wind said listen to the swans on the creek, and the swans honk-honked their awareness of him.

Bony crossed the bridge and proceeded a farther half-mile, when he decided to return to the fire promised by Mrs Washfold. He was now high above the Inlet, and far away were the three red stars of the distant road lights.

This road was never straight and, even in the dark, never the same. From the top of an electric power pole a mopoke “Ma-parked” at him as he passed, and later still a curlew screamed like a kurdaitcha spirit is alleged to do when after an aborigine away from his camp at night.

A car was coming down the slope on the far side of the Inlet, and it seemed to dance on the flat floor of the invisible marsh. Its headlights held on the bridge as Bony neared it, and they showed a man leaning against one of the guard rails.

The car passed in a flurry of sounds, and the sounds chased it and left the bridge to the peaceful voices of the swans. Bony expected to meet the man he had seen leaning against the railing, and didn’t see him until he had fallen into step at his side.

“Good night!” said the man. “Wind tendin’ easterly, looks like.”

“What does that foretell?” Bony asked.

“More wind before she blows out.”

Face and clothes were impossible to distinguish. It was a formless bulk keeping step with him. Bony’s shoes sounded sharply on the road, the feet of the other sounded dully as though the boots were dilapidated.

“You a visitor here?” came the question in the tone of a statement.

“Yes ... for a few weeks. Staying at the hotel.” Silence for a dozen paces. “Are you a permanent resident at Split Point?”

“That I am. Where d’you come from?”

“I’ve a small place out from Swan Hill, on the Murray. Sheep. Having my annual away from the wife. You married?”

“Aye.”

Another silence. The step to step was almost military in precision.

“That, apparently, is not a revolving Light?” Bony presently remarked.

“That’s so. Sheep, you said. What class of sheep?”

“Corriedale strain, mostly. You farm sheep?”

“Coupla hundred. Not much of a place, Split Point, for a holiday at this time of year. Better over at Lorne. More life. There’s fishin’ if you like it. None hereabouts. Nothing here for visitors in the winter.”

“I’ve never been to Lorne,” Bony admitted. “Fashionable, I understand ... in the season.”

“And out of season. More there to occupy your time. How big’s your place?”

“Hundred thousand acres. On the road to Balranald.”

“Out from Swan Hill! How far out?”

Bony named a small station and its position owned by a relative of Bolt’s whose name he had adopted. There appeared to be purpose behind this garrulous questioning. It was like being vetted for a Security Service job, and as they began to mount the long curve to the first of the road lights, Bony’s companion asked:

“How do they call you, Mister?”

“Rawlings. What’s your name?”

“Rawlings,” repeated the man slowly. “Rawlings, on the Balranald road out from Swan Hill. Dammit! I’ve passed my turn-off.”

Halting abruptly, without further word he dropped back and vanished. Bony went on ... listening for the other’s footsteps beneath the noise of his own. He heard nothing.

Having passed down this road and upwards to return from the headland, he knew there was no turn-off save one at the edge of the marshland a full half-mile back.

But the first of the road lights was a bare hundred yards ahead, and the voice of his walking companion was the voice of the man who had watched him at the edge of the cliff where another had wrestled with a woman.