The New Shoe b-15 Read online

  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 cafe 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 andproceeded 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 akurdaitcha 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. “Windtendin ’ 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. Whered’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?”

  “Couplahundred. Not much of a place, Split Point, for a holiday at this time of year. Better over at Lorne. More life. There’sfishin ’ 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. Howbig’s your place?”

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

  “Out from Swan Hill! How far out?”

  Bony named a small station andits 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.

  Chapter Three

  The Craftsman

  ON THE PLEA OF being tired, Bony did not long remain in the cosy bar lounge, and, having mastered the contents of the OfficialSummary, he fell asleep with the thought that this investigation would really extend him.

  He awoke at seven… one hour before the breakfast gong would be struck… and went out to the front veranda overlooking the lawn and gazed through the shelter trees at Split Point headland and the Lighthouse gleaming white in the early sunlight. The air was frostily still. A blackbird probed lustily for worms, and somewhere a calf bellowed at a rooster whose crowing sounded like splintering glass.

  To wait inactive one hour for a cup of tea was unthinkable… and Mrs Washfold did look approachable. Bony walked round the outside of the building to the kitchen door, where he was met by a shaggy brown-and-white dog, a hen and a pet sheep. Within, he saw the licensee eating breakfast.

  “Good morning,” Bony greeted him from outside the fly-wire door. “A king once shouted ‘My kingdom for a horse’; you hear me shout: ‘My wife for a cup of tea!’ ”

  Washfold turned and grinned a welcome.

  “No deal,” he said. “One woman around this joint’s enough for me. Come and get it.”

  Bony drew open the fly-wire door and went in. The doorjambed open and the dog followed him. The dog was followed by the pet sheep, and over the large round face of BertWashfold spread alarm. He was in time to prevent the hen entering the kitchen, and in time to shoo out the sheep and the dog, before Mrs Washfold appeared.

  “Cup of tea! Of course, Mr Rawlings. You can get a cup of tea here any time of day or night… in the off season. Goin’ to be a nice day. What’s the matter with that dog, Bert?”

  “Gottaflea up his nose, I suppose. Lie down, Stug. Sugar?”

  “Thanks.” Bony sugared his tea and drank it.

  “Heavens! You’ll scald your throat out,” exclaimed Mrs Washfold.“Another cup?”

  “Ah! That’s better. Yes, if you please.”

  “And what would you like for breakfast? Cereal or porridge? And bacon and eggs or a nice fillet steak with eggs or tomatoes?”

  Shafts of sunlight barred his sky-blue dressing gown, and his sleek black hair reflected the light from the door. Looking at him, the Washfolds noted the straight and slim nose, the white teeth and the blue eyes, the face barely stained with the betraying colour of his ancestry… and later disagreed over the ancestry. Bony bowed to Mrs Washfold.

  “Madam!” he said. “Am I in a hotel or am I at home?”

  “Home,” replied the licensee. “We’re all at home… in the off season. You try out the bacon. Cured itmeself. Recommend it.”

  “The fillet steak is also juicy,” added his wife, persuasively.

  “And I’ve been urged to go and stay at Lorne,” protested Bony.

  “Oh! Who said that?” demandedWashfold.

  “Man I met yesterday. Well-built man about fifty or so. Greying brown
hair. Grey eyes. Speaks with a faint country accent. He was wearing old clothes and old boots, and he said he owns a couple of hundred sheep.”

  Over the cup, Bony blandly watched these two pleasant people.

  “Sounds like Tom Owen,” softly stated Mrs Washfold.

  “Did he have whiskers sprouting from the bridge of his nose?” asked the large man.

  “Yes,” agreed Bony, and Mrs Washfold rose to take air.

  “The idea! I’ll give that Tom Owen a tongue-lashin’ when I see him. Lorne! Lorne’s all right for the boys and girls to loll around half-naked in summer time, but not all of us have figures like film stars, although you…” She blushed like a milkmaid. “Not meaning anything, Mr Rawlings. But you know what I mean.”

  “Of course. And don’t think I’m likely to go on to Lorne. Why, with such a breakfast as you promise me, I would be foolish. Well, I must dress.”

  “And you get about the chores, Bert. Look at the time!”

  Later, Bony followed the highway down to the Inlet. The Inlet was like the grass-covered bottom of a fisherman’s creel and on it the creek lay like a silver eel. Beyond the Inlet, the blue sea kissed the land rising to dark-green hills. The meeting of the sea with the land extended in giant curves from headland to headland all the way to Cape Otway.

  Bony was satisfied with himself and with this world. There would be no rushing about for him. As he had eaten his breakfast, so would he investigate this murder… without an attack ofindigestion. He was wholly satisfied with his preliminary moves which had brought him as a pastoralist onholiday, and having New South Wales number plates to the car he had borrowed from the Chief of the Victorian Criminal Investigation Branch, he would be able to draw nearer to backgrounds and “sense” influences withheld from known police investigators.

  At the bottom of the hill, he turned along a track skirting the Inlet and promising to take him far into the tree-covered mountains of the hinterland.

  Passing a house being constructed, he was greeted cheerily by two men tiling the roof. He met a boy driving half a dozen cows, and presently came to a neat little cottage having a low hedge guarding the small front garden. Onward he strolled to a large shed-like building of wood-slab walls and wood-slat roof. It was set back off the road, and against the front wall leaned rusting wagon tyres. The large door was open, and just within a man was industriouslyplaning a board on a bench. His clothes were neat. His body was plump. His face was pink, and his hair was as white as the surf.

  He looked up and saw Bony, who called:

  “Good day-ee!”

  “Good day-eeto you, sir,” came the answer, and because the old man’s pose was an invitation, Bony left the road and entered the building, which resolved into a workshop. Wood shavings lay deep on the floor about the bench. Planks and “wads” of three-and four-ply were stacked at one end, and over near a corner was a stack of oblong boxes. The condition of the bellows behind a forge told of years which would never return.

  “Great day, Mister,” said the craftsman.

  “It is, Mr Penwarden.”

  “Ah, now! How did ’e know my name?”

  “The weather hasn’t quite obliterated it from over your door,” replied Bony. “My name is Rawlings. Staying at the hotel for a week or so. You’re very busy this morning.”

  “Aye, I’m allus busy, Mr Rawlings, sir.” The old man’s eyes were as blue and as clear as those of the dark-complexioned man who seated himself on a sawing-horse and made a cigarette. He was seventy if a day, and his mind was as alert as it had been forty-odd years before. “You see, Mr Rawlings, the Great Enemy never gives himself a spell. He rushes here and theretappin ’ this one on the shoulder and that one, and it ’pears to me the only way to beat him is to keep as busy as he is. Hedon’t take notice of busy people. Hasn’t got the time when there’s so many folk too tired to appreciate the joys of living.”

  “There is certainly nothing better than an occupied mind and busy hands to keep the Enemy you mentioned at bay, Mr Penwarden.” Bony knew, but he asked the question: “Have you been long in this district?”

  “I built this forge and workshop pretty near sixty years ago,” replied the workman. “Twenty-one I was then, and just out of me apprenticeship to a wheelwright. Nomotee cars and trucks them days. No flash roads to Lorne and on to Apollo Bay. Only the old track from Geelong. In summer the track was feet-deep indust, and in winter yards-deep in mud.”

  Bony gave another cursory glance about the ancient building, ancient but still sound. Verging upon a discovery, he left the saw bench to study the wall and roof beams and rafters at closer range. The old man watched him, in his eyesan expression of enormous satisfaction, but on Bony returning to the saw bench he was working with the plane.

  “You didn’t drive in one nail,” Bony said, almost accusingly. “All you used were wood pins, and I can’t see where they were driven in.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Penwarden, proceeding to adjust the plane. “I’ve a flash house down the road a bit. Old woman had to have her built the years war came, and she’ll be rotted out afore this shop starts to wobble in a sou’-easterly gale. Houses! They build ’emwith raw wood full of borers and plaster and putty and a dab or two of paint. There’s mighty few jobs left these days for a real live tradesman. Me, I won’t work with such trash…exceptin ’ on a certain kind of job which no one looks at for long.”

  “That’s a beautiful board you’re working on now,” Bony observed. “Looks to me like red-gum.”

  The blue eyes shone.

  “Ha, ha! So you know a thing or two, eh? Thought you might when I set eyes on you. Red-gum she is. I get these boards sent down special from Albury. They come from ring-barked trees on the Murray River flats, and ring-barked wood or wood killed by water will last for ever. None of your three-ply veneered to look like silky oak is good enough for my special customers. One time I could give ’emteak. Now it has to be red-gum, and Iain’t sure Ilikes teak the best, neither.”

  “And what are you going to do with it?”

  “Build her into a coffin. Like to see one almost done?”

  “I think I would,” answered Bony, a trifle slowly. The coffin-maker put down his plane with care not to jar the blade, and said:

  “Lots of us take comfort inthinkin ’ we’ll be lying snug when we’re dead. There’s graveyards and graveyards. Some is nice and dry, and some is as wet and cold as a bog. Then again, cremation is against The Book, which says that on the Last Day the bones of the dead shall be drawn together. Can’t be if they’re all burned up.”

  He turned from the bench and Bony stood to follow him. Waving a hand contemptuously to the stack of “boxes’, he went on:

  “Don’t look at them over there. Three-ply and gum and tin-tacks to hold ’emtogether. They’ll give you a squint if youlooks at that trash what I send to Melbourne for ten pounds apiece and are sold to the dead for fifty. Come this way, and I’ll show you what a coffin should be.”

  Bony accompanied the carpenter to a small room and stood beside trestles set up in the centre and supporting something covered with an old and moth-eaten black velvet cloth.

  “You don’t see a coffin like this every day,” Penwarden said as he faced his visitor above the pall. “Timesis changed. People don’t think about next week, tomorrow. They don’t worry about being a nuisance to their relations or the State when they perish. No pride these days… get through work as quickly as possible for as much as possible… and refuse to do anythinkin ’ becausethinkin ’ hurts.”

  He whisked away the cloth.

  The casket was like a slab of ruby-red marble, producing the illusion of colour-depth as does red wine. Save for the two plated handles either side, there was no ornamentation. The surfaces were as smooth as glass and the colour matchless.

  The old man lifted the cover, watching always Bony’s face to detect his reactions. Bony bent over the lid, and stooped to examine the ends and the sides… and failed utterly to see the joins. The cas
ket might have been fashioned in one piece from the heart of a tree.

  Their gaze clashed, and the old man closed the lid when the air faintly hissed at the final compression. Again he raised and closed the lid, and again there was the sound of air being caught in a trap. The lid was raised yet again and poised on the side to which it was hinged, and Bony bent to see into the interior and to note the curved floor to take the back and the curved rest for the neck. Finally, he stood away and gazed at the coffin maker without speaking.

  “Inside is only the natural gloss,” Penwarden said. “I do a lot to the outside to bring up that colour in the wood. Nothing wrong with her to sleep in for a long time, is there?”

  “Nothing,” softly agreed Bony.

  Penwarden caressed the lid before closing it, and his hands fluttered like butterflies as he wiped away the finger marks and drew the cover over the casket.

  “Got two like it at home,” he said, cheerfully.“One for me, andt’other for the old woman. They rest under the bed. Our shrouds are in ’em, too. Now and then the old woman opens ’emup and airs the shrouds and pops a bit of lavender in. My father and mother had their coffinswaitin ’ for ’em, and my grandfather broughthis’n with him on the ship from England. Ah yes, times is changed, but usPenwardens don’t change, and there’s others what don’t change, neither.”

  “They must be rare, these people,” Bony commented, when following the craftsman back to his bench.

  “You say true, Mr Rawlings, sir, you say true. Andgettin ’ rarer.”

  “How long does it occupy to make a coffin like that in the other room?”

  “Well, it would be guessing. I don’t work on one continuous. Tallying the time, I suppose it’d take me thirty ten-hour days… I must have begun that one threemonths back. You see, there’s them other jobs to slap up with glue and tacks. I’m always behind orders with them.”