The Battling Prophet Read online

  “Inspector Bonaparte,” Colonel Spendor said, a glare in his eyes, “I suggest that you cease believing you are extremely clever, so that you need not be shocked when proved to be otherwise. The verbatim report of the Enquiry into your extraordinary conduct at Cowdry will go to the highest quarters, and the powers may decide that your particular appointment is no longer of use to the State. Meanwhile, I do not accept your resignation.”

  Colonel Spendor ripped and tore the resignation to tiny pieces and hurled them into the w.p.b.

  “I admit, sir, that the act of producing my resignation at the Enquiry was theatrical, and was intended to impress those persons present not of our Department,” Bony said. “At the Enquiry I stated bald facts, but clothed them with loquacity that certain imputations should be strengthened, one of them being that outsiders cannot with impunity tread on our toes.”

  “On our toes!” snorted the Colonel. “On your toes, you mean.”

  “You pink me, sir. My toes.”

  “Damn it, Bonaparte!” roared Colonel Spendor. “Is that all you set out to achieve?”

  “That is all—at the Enquiry. On all other matters, sir, such as the murder of Benjamin Wickham, the wishes of Benjamin Wickham, and certain property belonging to his estate, as well as the justification for my own conduct of the investigation, I am anxious to be guided by you.”

  The Chief Commissioner was visibly rocked. He snorted. He haw-ed. There was a note of desperation when he said:

  “Then I wish you would be guided by me when I have you ordered to report to Department Headquarters.”

  “I felt that the order was not in the interests of this Department. Nor of justice.”

  “Is that so! The message was plain enough. Linton and I agreed it should contain a personal note from him so that you would realise the seriousness of it. You answer me that.”

  “My wife would call it intuition, sir.”

  “Eh? Damn and blast your eyes, Bonaparte! So would mine. Now for this murder you say you uncovered.”

  Bony prefaced his report with Mr. Luton’s thesis on delirium tremens, and interpreted Luton’s character as the product of that early background of an era so vastly different from the present. He then sketched the people in contact with Luton, and the relationship of Luton with Ben Wickham.

  “I tested Luton’s suspicion,” he went on, “by asking Knocker Harris to put it around in the local township that a police inspector was staying with Luton and seemed interested in the death of the famous meteorologist. The early results were promising. I was questioned by Gibley the local constable, by the doctor, and by the Reverend Weston. And then we had a visit from Wickham’s chief assistant, Dr. Linke, accompanied by Wickham’s secretary.

  “Linke informed me that Wickham had been visited by a foreigner who came from Adelaide in a car registered in the name of a staff member of the Hungarian Consulate. This was followed ten days’ later by a telephone call from a person who wouldn’t give his name, and whose voice Linke recognised as that of the manager of the Commonwealth Bank. Wickham was absent, so the man called the house when the people were at dinner. That night, at ten, Wickham went to the manager’s rooms, remained for some time, and left with two men. I then decided to interview the bank manager, and you know what emerged from that interview in addition to the flat denial that Wickham had ever gone there.

  “Linke further informed me that Wickham’s office had been broken into after his death and ransacked, and that Mrs. Parsloe had not reported the matter to the local police. An important green-covered notebook was missing when Mrs. Parsloe opened the safe before the burglary. Eventually, Linke was questioned by a C.I.S. man accompanied by Sergeant Maskell.

  “All these events occurred before I received the recall message, and I claim that in total they provided grave doubt that Luton was in error about his hoo-jahs. And the prodding of intuition told me that the recall move had originated from persons not of this Department.

  “The discovery of the will and that notebook completed the list of those who could have had motive for murdering Wickham. Dr. Maltby was short of money. He knew he was to inherit a large sum, and that his wife also shared in the estate. Luton was to benefit to the tune of $20,000. He had access to the will. The lady secretary also knew she would benefit, and it seemed that Linke knew this, and intended to marry her. In fairness to Linke, I doubted that he knew he was to receive the vital notebook.

  “Knocker Harris was a beneficiary, but I could not suspect him seriously, because it was he who persuaded Luton to invite me for the fishing, to hear Luton’s thesis. Then there were the two thugs who burgled the office, who attacked Luton—agents of the foreign country who had treated with Wickham. Also there was Gibley. Unlikely, but a possible. Gibley was working in with the bank manager. He could have been in league with Maltby, both he and the doctor threatening Luton with removal to Adelaide if he didn’t stop yelling about the hoo-jahs.

  “The opportunity to murder Wickham was between four in the morning, and 6.25a.m. He occupied the front room and, despite the season, insisted on the window being wide open.” Bony outlined the process of ‘the cure’ and went on to tell of entry by one known to Wickham, who brought poison in a glass of gin, tempting Wickham to drink between drinks. During that period the dogs were still chained to their kennels placed two hundred and five paces from the kitchen door. Luton stated that had the dogs barked he would have heard them.

  “Motive. Opportunity. Means. The three cardinal points. Motive, yes. Opportunity, yes. Means, no, for the body had been cremated and the ashes scattered. An autopsy would swiftly have clarified the means, when I would have reported the facts to Superintendent Boase, and carried on with my fishing.”

  “Before you uncovered the person who used the means?” Linton interjected.

  “Of course not, Linton,” snapped the Colonel. “You know damn well that Bonaparte’s just blinding us with science. Go on.”

  “I have to admit, with a feeling of chagrin, that the extraneous cavortings of these cloak-and-dagger gentry obtruded and so obscured what otherwise would have been a comparatively simple case.

  “Belladonna proved to be the means. I recalled seeing in the garden cultivated by Knocker Harris several kinds of herbs, and when Luton told me that an embrocation he was using had been supplied by Harris, I remembered seeing several plants which could be belladonna. I recalled that the symptoms of belladonna poisoning are similar to those of delirium tremens, with the difference that the victim of belladonna dies in a coma, and he of delirium tremens dies with his eyes wide open. When Luton went to Wickham, the latter was laughing at things on his legs, as I have explained. That aroused Luton’s suspicions. When the doctor examined the body and questioned Luton, the eyes were closed and that probably excuses the doctor for thinking that Wickham had died of alcoholic effects on a weak heart.

  “That Harris was familiar with herbs, both edible and medicinal, is supported by his origin on isolated farms where people in those days had to have a smattering of medical knowledge. For him the opportunity was wide open. The dogs knew him; even if they heard him about they would not have given an alarm. Luton would not suspect him. He knew the interior plan of Luton’s house, precisely where Wickham was sleeping. The means I have outlined. The motive was baffling, at first.

  “Here was a man described by the phrase ‘a simple soul’. He lived comfortably enough on his pension and his barter trade with fishermen. He had supported Luton’s booze thesis. He had urged Luton to send for me when they read in the press that I was in Adelaide. He nursed the ‘bender-ees’, he tried to reform Luton, but Wickham defeated his efforts.

  “He had become attached to Luton, a man miles above him in intelligence and experience, and, like so many women, and men too, the attachment was particularly strong when the object of it was sick. He was jealous of Wickham. Wickham was Luton’s friend long before he, Harris, ever met him. Wickham and Luton shared so much from which he was barred. Much younger than Luton,
he could see that Luton was growing older and he wanted to live with Luton, to care for him.

  “Wickham having been removed, Luton fretted and clung to his suspicions. It was the only subject spoken of when Harris went to the cottage. The doctor shunted the idea of murder. The policeman sneered at it. Then they came on my name, which Harris remembered in connection with a relative I had caused to be put away for life. Safe to send for me. The body was destroyed, belladonna and everything. Let the great Bonaparte meet the impossibility of proving murder, and Luton would surrender his phobia and settle down to a quiet and bucolic existence, when Harris could safeguard him, have Luton all to himself.

  “A misplaced, possessive, introverted passion to serve. The night he died, he had wanted to ask if Luton needed anything further brought back from town. With a knife pricking his back, he chose to warn us, not to betray us. Had he been brought to trial, I would have exerted myself on his behalf. When he lay dying, he looked first at Luton, then at me. As his life was fading he tried to tell me he had murdered Wickham and why, and he saw in my eyes that I already knew.”

  There was silence for perhaps five seconds. Linton broke it:

  “So you do admit that you received the recall telegram?”

  “There is no proof that I did,” Bony countered. “Had I obeyed that recall, I would hate myself now.”

  Colonel Spendor rose, and they stood before him. The eyes of this beloved martinet softened when they rested on the colourful tie worn by the man who knew himself. He said gently:

  “Had you obeyed that order, Bony, I would have been damned disappointed.”