The New Shoe Page 6

  What they said, the barking of the dogs prevented from being heard. The woman went inside and was followed by Owen. The veranda light was turned off, but the front door was not closed. Bony waited ... for no tangible reason. The stars said it was a few minutes after eight.

  The barking of the dogs dwindled to desultory complaint. In the tree branches above Bony a kookaburra throatily guffawed like a satisfied devil pleasantly dreaming. Then the silence pressed down upon the invisible earth until a sepulchral voice moaned:

  “Ma ... poke! Ma ... poke! Ma ... poke!”

  It was restful standing there against the excessively rough bark of the tree, only the watchful mopoke aware of him. This was Bony’s world where Time meant nothing and the lives of even the grandest men of no more moment than the nuptial flight of the termites. Bony felt no curiosity in Owen’s visit to the Wessexes. These people were good neighbours.

  Four miles! Four miles back to the hotel, and a leaping log fire and a drink before bed. Bony had actually left the tree when the veranda light sprang up and he returned to the ironbark to wait till the truck’s lights would not reveal him.

  Tom Owen appeared. He was followed by the woman Bony was sure was Mrs Wessex, and after her came a younger man whom Bony thought to be the hired hand, Dick Lake’s brother. The three left the veranda and approached the utility. The dogs again broke into excited barking.

  The lights of the truck being extinguished, the three persons were indistinguishable when they stopped at the rear of the vehicle. The tailboard fell with clang to the extremity of its supporting chains, and then Bony could just make out that something was being taken from the truck, a heavy object requiring both men and the woman to lift. Burdened thus, they moved towards the garden gate, where they were careful to negotiate the narrow entrance.

  Now the veranda light held them, to reveal Tom Owen proceeding first and taking the weight of the forepart of the object, with the youth taking the other end and determinedly assisted by Mrs Wessex.

  Along the short path they staggered and lurched to the veranda steps, where Owen managed to turn without losing his grip and proceed backwards up the steps.

  What Bony thought they carried drew him from the tree, in through the gateway, to the very fence encircling the house. The carriers lifted their load to the veranda and immediately beneath the light. The object gleamed redly as slowly, slowly, it was taken into the house.

  It was a coffin, the casket in which Bony had been invited to lie that Penwarden might be assured it would take comfortably the body of Mrs Tom Owen.

  Chapter Eight

  A Man and a Dog

  AT ELEVEN BONY retired to his room, his programme for the next day altered by the message left by Dick Lake that the trip over Sweet Fairy Ann was “off”. At eleven-fifteen he turned out the light and sat on the side of the bed, wearing his overcoat and hat and his pocket weighted. At eleven-thirty he opened and closed the bedroom door without noise, and as silently closed the front door after him as he stepped out to the veranda.

  Stug shifted himself off the doormat just in time to escape being stepped on. It was so dark that Bony couldn’t see him, and thereafter he knew the dog accompanied him only by the occasional touch of a cold nose to a hand.

  Man and dog crossed the lawn, climbed through a fence, walked down the slope of an open paddock, and so gained the highway without nearing the road lights.

  Ten minutes later they reached the gate in the tall iron fence surrounding the Lighthouse, and here Bony squatted on his heels and fondled the dog. Even thus he couldn’t distinguish the animal, but knew by its behaviour that they had not been followed.

  Under the snarl of the everlasting surf the night here was as quiet as it had been at the gateway to the Wessex homestead. Above man and dog the Light pierced the sky with faint lightning flashes ... four within the period of twelve seconds, followed by the eclipse.

  “As we cannot hear anything suspicious, Stug, we must begin work,” he murmured, and the old dog softly whined his pleasure in his voice. “I am going to leave you outside the gate and hope, I expect vainly, that should the gentleman who tiptoes about lighthouse yards come this way, you will warn me. You know him, of course. You recognized him when he entered the yard yesterday, and I bet he made a fuss of you, and you pranced about him. I know because you were panting when I came out of the Lighthouse. He was a small man, and he came and went away on his toes when there was no real necessity. You think matters over and then tell me who he is, what he’s like to look at. If you don’t, I’ll tell you, perhaps.”

  Stug objected to being shut out, and Bony heard him scratching at the bottom of the gate and ordered him to be quiet. It was, of course, the safest hour to make this visit without being observed. And the safest time of the year, too. Back on March 1st there were people living in the Lightkeepers’ houses, and in those on the slope behind them. Then the weather was warm, and the sea enticed. It did happen, however, that late in the afternoon of February 28th it began to rain, and continued steadily until after midnight. The rain would have kept people indoors.

  In the beam of his flashlight the banks of gas cylinders looked like rows of medieval armour. For a moment he stood directing the beam on the bottom step of the spiral stairs, and, when he switched off the torch, a light gleamed on the metal steps, went out and again gleamed, as though someone higher directed his torch downwards. It was the indirect reflection of the Light passing down the stair well, and Bony decided it was possible to mount to the Light by the aid of those distant automatic flashes. It was also possible for a man to watch another ascending the steps and shoot him.

  Down here, however, the light was too weak to enable him to locate the case on which he had sat talking to Fisher. He found it pushed behind the bottom step, and placed it before a small heap of refuse swept against the wall. Seated on the case, with the torch to assist him, he proceeded to delve into that heap.

  There wasn’t much of it and he knew what he wanted. There were scraps of oily waste, a short strip of oiled paper, fibrous material used for packing joints, and wood shavings. There should have been dust and other material, but it had been swept together by the investigating detectives, and they had removed all items likely to provide a clue.

  Bony recalled the litter of wood shavings in Penwarden’s workshop, and remembered also seeing among this rubbish a shaving similar in colour to those which sprang from the coffin maker’s plane. He found the shaving of red wood among those of Victorian hardwood, a mere inch and a fraction wide, the width of the board from which it came indisputable.

  He compared it with shavings taken from Penwarden’s workshop. The grain appeared to be identical. The colours seemed to match, but only daylight could make him sure on this point.

  He found no other shavings of red-gum among the many in the refuse. There was nothing else of any value ... Bolt’s men had seen to that ... and no one would have attached value to the solitary red-gum shaving save the man who had spent, what doubtless Bony’s superiors would term, an idle hour, at a coffin maker’s bench.

  He had himself flicked a wood shaving from a trouser cuff, following a call on old Penwarden. If the shaving found here was identical with the red-gum shavings in the workshop, it must have been attached to someone’s clothing and been thus conveyed to the Lighthouse.

  Whose clothes? If through elimination it could be proved that not one of the investigators and not one of the Repair Gang had entered the workshop, it would be reasonable to assume that either the victim or the murderer had been inside Penwarden’s workshop on the night of February 28th.

  Moving the case so that he could sit with his back to the wall and face the bottom steps, Bony rolled and slowly smoked a cigarette. It was utterly silent. With the door shut not even the sound of the pounding sea could intrude. He smiled at the thought of hearing Stug giving a warning of the tiptoeing gent, and this thought sent him to the door with a short splinter of wood from the refuse.

  The door could no
t be locked from within. As it did not swing freely, nothing save man-force would open it. He was tempted to withdraw the key, but as this might arouse suspicion in the mind of anyone interested in him, he ignored the key and set the splinter of wood against the door. Should anyone open that door whilst he was up top, he would at least know of it.

  Back on his case to finish his cigarette, he pondered the possibility that this investigation was at last about to break before the implacable assault of patience. Did the wood shaving found here prove that either the victim or the murderer had brought it from Penwarden’s workshop, then the old man knew him. And as the old man had failed to identify the victim, then the shaving must have been brought by the murderer. Thus Penwarden knew the murderer, but not necessarily that he was a murderer.

  Bony began to mount the steps, and the noise of his shoes on the latticed steel was like the falling of small hammers on an anvil. He tried to move more softly, and found that, no matter how softly he trod, his feet made a noise which appeared to fly upwards and race about the top floor like the feet of small children. The steps offered no litter which might have been overlooked. He passed the first of four little slot windows in the massive wall, and was careful not to direct his torch through it.

  Coming to the first landing, he paused with a foot on the first of the next series of steps, and pictured the murderer standing there like that. A little farther up was the locker in the wall, and it was opposite the locker that the victim’s prints had been found on the stair rail. He recalled that the post mortem had indicated that the killer was higher than the victim when the fatal shot was fired.

  He went on up, to halt at the locker. As at his previous visit in the day time, so now was he assured that the door to the locker could not be noticed by anyone ignorant of it. At night, with his own torch turned off, the reflected flashes from above revealed neither its shape nor outlines against the wall. The murderer must have known the situation of this locker.

  He recalled an assumption with which he agreed. The body weighed eleven stone, or 154 lbs, or something like one and a half hundredweight. That would be about PM pounds less than a three-bushel bag of wheat. For the purpose of deduction, the weight of a filled wheat sack would approximate to the weight of the dead body.

  During the mid-summer months, at every rail siding in the wheat-growing areas, men carry filled wheat bags from truck to stack, often trotting up narrow planks to the higher elevation of the growing stack. They do it all day long ... men who have acquired the knack in the use of shoulder and neck muscles.

  From the bottom to the step on which he stood at this locker there were forty steps, and any toughened wheat lumper could carry a hundred-and-eighty-pound bag of wheat up these steps. The bag would be hard and unyielding, and would be balanced on the man’s shoulders.

  Carrying a body up these steps would be an entirely different tax on human strength. The body would be yielding. A toughened wheat lumper could carry up a dead man, and arrive “blown out”. A lesser man could not accomplish it.

  Assuming the murderer to be merely the average man, and unaccustomed to wheat lumping, it would be easy for him to drag the body down the steps and lift and put it into the locker. The foundation of the assumption that the murder had been committed on the steps, or at the top, was firmly laid.

  Yet the cement of the foundation for this assumption was not expertly mixed. The murder could have been committed outside the Lighthouse, and the body brought to the picnic ground by car or truck. Although it was raining, it was not cold that night, and people sleep with windows open on summer nights. Someone would certainly have heard a car or truck going to and returning from the Lighthouse itself.

  Bony was inclined to think that the crime had been committed by two or more men who had brought the body in a vehicle to the picnic ground and then carried it. That certainly indicated intention to place the body in the locker, intention based on the knowledge that it would remain there undiscovered at shortest for two months.

  Bony decided to erase from his mind the temporary inhabitants and concentrate on the permanent residents.

  Arriving at the upper floor, called the Light room, he employed his torch to probe behind fixtures, and his hands where the torch could not probe. He found nothing. He did think of unbarring the door and passing outside to the balcony, but the thought was not one that lingered. Instead, he mounted the steps to stand beside the Light, a moth fascinated by the recurrent strokes of lightning, waiting in the dark of the eclipse for the brilliance to return.

  Again in the Light room, a flash illumined his watch to tell him it was ten minutes after four am. He was astonished by the passage of hours, and dawdled no longer. His torch stabbed downwards into the stair well, and as he descended, often he leaned over the railing to send the beam far down ... to be sure no one waited. With relief, he passed the locker, and on reaching the lowest landing, needed to control the impulse to look back and up. Imaginative and acutely sensitive to strange surroundings, he had never conquered, despite varied experiences, fear of violence and of death.

  Arriving at the door, he found the wood splinter as he had left it. Thrusting the door open, he sidled round the frame, just in case someone was waiting. But no one was there, and he locked the door and passed silently to the yard gate. He locked that, and, pocketing the keys, became aware of Stug.

  Stug bumped against his legs. An invisible tail flailed him. A hard object was crashed against his knee. He spoke softly to the dog, and started off for the hotel. Then he became aware that the invisible dog was vigorously worrying something, growling and racing about with it. He told the animal to “drop it” and behave himself, and Stug banged his “find” against his ankle.

  “All right!” he said, faintly exasperated. “Give it to me.”

  A shoe was thrust hard into his hands. Unable to see the dog, he knew it waited to rush away after the tossed shoe. He raised an arm to throw the shoe, desisted, brought his arm down and felt the shoe.

  Beneath the dog’s saliva, it was quite dry. It was also quite new.

  Chapter Nine

  Treasure Trove

  IT WAS ONE of Bony’s axioms that Time is the investigator’s greatest ally. Time, through his inherited gift of observation, provided him with the shaving which, examination in daylight convinced him, had come from the place where a wise ancient laboured lovingly to build coffins. Time, through friendship with a dog, provided him with a new shoe which was to prove to be the hammer with which the shell of this mystery was broken open.

  The shoe was so new that the leather under the instep still retained its original gloss. It was a size seven and dark-brown and, basing his judgement on the price he had last paid for his shoes, Bony estimated the cost of this one, with its fellow, as about five guineas. The maker’s name was stamped on the inside, a name renowned for quality.

  Unfortunately, it was so new that the wear to the sole and heel could give nothing of the character of its owner.

  Stug would not have found the shoe at great distance from the Lighthouse yard. Superficially, it would seem that because the shoe was new it must have come from the inside of a house. On the slope down from the Lighthouse were several houses, but at this time only one of them was occupied. As it was early winter and the nights cold, it wasn’t likely that the occupiers of that house slept with the doors open. Had it been an old shoe ... Old shoes are tossed out with the garbage.

  The murder victim had worn size seven shoes.

  There was no necessity to call the dog when Bony left the hotel shortly after ten the next morning and walked down the highway to the turn-off to the picnic ground. The sun was shining, and towards the ocean the wide bar of white sand shut in the creek and kept out the breakers.

  As Bony mounted the headland slope the cliffs lay to his right, and to his left were the summer houses behind those once occupied by the keepers of the Light. Now and then, Bony softly cried “Sool-em, Stug!”, and the dog ran about with nose to ground and tail vi
gorously flailing. Nothing much happened whilst they were on the slope, save that a rabbit broke from cover and Stug merely glared at it.

  At the graves of the two pioneers Bony halted, watching the dog, and Stug lay down for a rest. From the graves it was but a short distance to the Lighthouse fence, and when they stood outside the locked gate, the dog began to evince additional interest in this adventure.

  He ran about with nose to ground, and then returned to look expectantly at his companion. He remembered the incident of the shoe and that Bony had kept it from him. Bony walked on and skirted a house, whereupon Stug lost interest. No, the houses meant nothing to him. They returned to the yard, and again the dog remembered the shoe.

  This time, Bony proceeded towards the seaward cliff, and almost immediately Stug ran on ahead, nose to ground, following an old path. On the path were the dog’s tracks made the previous night. The path wound among the bushes of tea-tree, finally emerged into the open but a few yards from the cliff and gave out. But Stug ran on to the cliff and disappeared over its edge.

  When Bony stood where the dog had disappeared, the beach below was that section where he had buried the penguin, and from which he had witnessed what then appeared to be attempted suicide. In fact, he was now standing where the struggle had occurred between the girl and the man. The drop was sheer to the sand below ... sheer save for a narrow ledge which began at Bony’s feet and slanted steeply down the face of the cliff.

  The ledge passed from sight several yards to Bony’s left, and beneath a distinct overhang. There was no sign of the dog, who must have gone down that ledge ... for dogs do not fly off into space. One could step from the cliff verge to the beginning of the ledge, did one have nerve enough to stand on a pathway nowhere wider than twelve inches, and often less. At its higher end grew tufts of grass, and brush sprouted from the cliff face. Lower down there was nothing save rocky protuberances an experienced alpine climber could use for hand-hold.