The Battling Prophet Page 9

  “It sort of grew from the years gone by. At the end of roaring hot days when we’d unyoke the bullocks and was drinkin’ tea and too tired to eat, we’d tell each other what we’d do when we made our fortunes. We agreed we’d build a shack beside a nice cool river where the grass was always green, and where the sunlight was green, too, because it fell through bright-green tree leaves. And we agreed we’d build a private pub at the back of the shack, and stock her to the roof. We’d have a bar counter, and ice-boxes and things, and we’d drink from the best crystal glasses when we felt like it, and tin pint pannikins when we felt like that. The crystal’s under the counter there, and the tin pannikins. Only difference we made to our pub was to sink her underground. D’you think ... Would you like to wet her?”

  Bony refrained from looking at Mr. Luton. He knew what it was to be exhausted by a never-ending hot day on outback tracks, to the point of being unable to undertake the chore of cooking a meal. He knew what it was to crave with a poignant longing to feel iced liquor sliding down his gummed-up throat, and to feast his eyes on cool water lazing along under the moss-green branches of overhanging trees.

  The invitation sprang from pride in having a dream made reality, the humility of spirit that life had been kind to make the dream come true, when reality never came to thousands of others who dreamed the same dream.

  “It would be a pleasure to see you behind that bar, Mr. Luton.”

  Mr. Luton’s smile was reminiscent. Lifting the counter-flap, he passed inside and, with the rows of shelved bottles at his back, gravely asked Bony what he would have.

  “Whisky, with soda if you have it.”

  This was a place where you couldn’t miss. Mr. Luton produced a seltzergene bottle and filled it with water. He fitted a cartridge to the bottle and smiled at Bony without speaking. There was a case on the floor, and this he had to open with hammer and chisel, that the show bottles on the shelves would remain intact. He set up a bottle of Scotch, and from under the counter brought up two remarkably fine crystal goblets. They poured their own drinks.

  Bony made another complete survey of the dream come true. He raised his glass, and over it saw Mr. Luton’s raised glass, and his bright hazel eyes above it. He bowed, and drank.

  Presently, Bony turned back to the cedarwood chest he had not re-locked with his piece of wire. He returned to the bar with the parchment envelope marked ‘WILL’.

  “This, obviously, is your friend’s missing will,” he said. “As you see, the envelope isn’t sealed. I would like to read it for possible light it may throw on Ben Wickham’s life which he did not reveal even to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Bony read, and thoughtfully returned the will to the envelope.

  “The major part of the estate, apparently large, is bequeathed to his sister, Mrs. Parsloe,” he said. “He willed twenty thousand pounds to Mrs. Maltby, ten thousand each to her husband and Jessica Lawrence, and to you he left this property ... house, land, and, in his words, what’s under it. You are to receive also twenty thousand pounds. You have been appointed the sole executor. The executor to present all else in the chest to Dr. Linke.”

  Mr. Luton was frowning.

  “I didn’t want the money, Inspector. I told him so.”

  “Wickham made other provisions,” Bony went on. “He left a thousand pounds each to Mrs. Loxton, the chauffeur, and Knocker Harris. There is one peculiar clause or provision in the will. The beneficiaries are divided into major and minor participants. If any of the major beneficiaries contest the will, and the legal points governing this are most explicit, the entire estate is to pass to Dr. Linke. Tell me, when Wickham said he intended leaving you twenty thousand, did he say, or even hint, that he had informed the others of his intention concerning them?”

  “Yes,” replied Mr. Luton. “Said he had told them what he had done in his latest will. Excepting one thing. He didn’t tell ’em who was to have his weather records and papers and things. I think I can see why he put in that bit sayin’ if any of them contested the will Linke was to get the lot. One or other, according to Ben, might argue the point about leaving the weather secrets to Linke.”

  “What of Mrs. Loxton, the car driver Jackson, and Knocker Harris? D’you know if he told them?”

  “Ben didn’t mention them.”

  “The will doesn’t state who drew up the document. Do you know who the solicitors are?”

  “Parker & Parker, in Cowdry, as far as I know. Ben said that the present Parker’s father was his father’s law man. Eh! Don’t the Reverend Weston get anything?”

  “Not mentioned.”

  “He’ll snort. What’ll we do with the will?”

  “Put it back in the squire’s old chest.”

  “All right! But...”

  “You have been trying hard to convince me that Ben Wickham was poisoned in this very house, Mr. Luton. You knew about that cedarwood chest, and that Ben Wickham added papers to it as late as the day he came to join you on that last bender. You could have a key to that chest, or have opened it as easily as I did with wire. You could thus have gained access to the will, have learned its provisions, learned that you inherit twenty thousand pounds and this property, including ‘what is under the house’.

  “You could have murdered Ben Wickham. None but yourself had such opportunities. That you have tried to convince me, that you have convinced Harris, that you tried to convince Dr. Maltby and the policeman that Wickham did not die as the result of alcoholic poisoning, would amount to very little, because the body no longer exists. All that you know. Nothing can be proved against you, and this you must know also. But the facts that you had easy access to the will, that the testator died under extraordinary circumstances in your own house, would make you a very strong suspect with the police and most especially with the relatives. You understand all that?”

  “I didn’t kill Ben,” Luton said, quietly.

  “I would be the most disillusioned man of this century should I become convinced that you had,” Bony murmured. “So, until I can produce a very much stronger suspect than you, and thus save you from much annoyance, the will shall remain in the chest. Agreed?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Be advised. Henceforth, do not put forward the assertion that Wickham was poisoned, not to anyone.”

  Mr. Luton seemed a trifle less willing to agree, but did so. Bony glanced at his wrist-watch. He pointed out that it was close to midnight, and persuaded Mr. Luton to go to bed and leave him for an hour or so to delve among the records in the chest. To this the old man readily agreed, and departed without a glance at the whisky bottle.

  Bony sat on the cases beside the bar counter, and automatically rolled a cigarette and applied a match. On only one point was he convinced, and that was Mr. Luton’s innocence of murder. But there was the opportunity for someone else to have murdered Wickham, the time of that opportunity being between four in the morning when Luton visited his friend to give him the dose of ‘medicine’, and six twenty-five when Luton was wakened by hearing Wickham laughing. A time period of approximately an hour and a half. Someone could have entered the front room where Wickham was being tortured by the hoo-jahs and offered him a drink containing poison. Wickham must have known who that someone was, trusted him—or her—and, not as strong-willed as Luton, have succumbed to the temptation to accept the drink.

  Who? Any person mentioned in the will? The foreigners who appeared, at least, to have begun negotiations for Wickham’s weather secrets; the office burglars, even the person or persons who had met Wickham in the private rooms of the bank manager; even a hired assassin paid by those powerful interests opposed to Wickham, fantastic though this thought might seem to be?

  The ‘who’ was of less importance than the ‘why’, if the dead man had been poisoned. Mr. Luton did have both motive and opportunity. Then again, Dr. Maltby, Mrs. Maltby, Jessica Lawrence, Mrs. Parsloe, had many thousands of pounds’ worth of motive, while the ex-housekeeper, the chauffeur, Kno
cker Harris, all had motive worth a thousand pounds. There was no beginning. There was nobody to begin with. There was nothing that a man could get his teeth into.

  Bony shuddered and abruptly went to the chest and fell to real work.

  The green notebook baffled him from cover to cover. He could not understand the diagrams nor the terms used to explain them. ‘Baric surfaces’, ‘synoptic codes’, baffled him, and the algebraic problems led him nowhere.

  The files, however, did interest him. There were seven of them, one for each of the last seven years, and apparently they contained correspondence which Wickham had carefully excluded from his secretary. The letters were written from America, from France and Germany, from Finland and Italy. They contained offers of financial support, ranging from a high Government appointment at Washington to the sum of one million pounds from a man signing himself Edward Tilly, and giving an address in Lisbon.

  There were newspaper cuttings either praising Wickham or condemning him, and it could not but be noted that encouragement came chiefly from the United States and vilification from Australia. Only on the last file, and during the last six months of Wickham’s life, was recognition grudgingly conceded by professional meteorologists and any interest taken in his achievements by the various Australian Governments.

  If ever there was a prophet who had received no honour in his own country, and no support in his efforts to improve the lot of agriculturists, and therefore of the world, it was the late Benjamin Wickham. Bony was sickened by the petty jealousy in human hearts, and by the lack of imagination in men of high estate. He experienced relief when Mr. Luton descended with a huge jug of coffee and a dish piled high with buttered toast.

  “Thought it time you had some shut-eye,” Mr. Luton said, faintly disapproving. “Coffee and brandy will make you look for bed.”

  The tray with the coffee and toast he placed on the bar counter, and from the pocket of his dressing gown he extracted the brandy bottle in current use.

  “You should not have risen so early,” Bony admonished him.

  “I didn’t go to bed. I sat up afore the fire.”

  “Oh! Why?”

  “Been doing a spot of thinkin’. You know, I was a damn fool to put those coins on Ben’s eyelids.”

  “I have been wondering why you did it.”

  “Me, too. Could have been several reasons. I remember thinkin’ that Ben would like having his eyes closed properly. Then when the car was coming with the quack, I took the coins off, so’s the quack wouldn’t say I interfered. After we talked about men dying in the hoo-jahs, I come to see that my puttin’ them coins on the eyes stopped the quack believin’ my idea about him being murdered.”

  Bony drank the spiced coffee with appreciation. He said:

  “You could not have deceived a pathologist, however. We know little of post-mortem effects. Wickham could have died through collapse of the heart caused by the action of alcohol, and not necessarily the action of alcohol on the brain. He might well have fallen into a coma. I rather think that if he died when in a coma his eyes would be as you described them.”

  “Then you don’t believe he was given something?”

  “I am admitting neither to belief nor disbelief. You tempted me to come here for the fishing. Then you captured my interest with your remarkable theories concerning the effects of alcohol. Then Doctor Linke furthered my interest by events concerning Wickham during the few weeks prior to his death. From these events stem many things. Result, Mr. Luton? The result is that I continue to probe until I am satisfied Ben Wickham was, or was not, murdered.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A Trade In Information

  REFRESHED by a ‘spot of shut-eye’, they breakfasted late and remained at table as they smoked. Bony, as usual, was well groomed, and his host was wearing a rough tweed suit.

  “What was Ben Wickham’s opinion on cremation, d’you know?” Bony asked.

  “Didn’t ask him,” was the reply. “He never talked about it that I recall.”

  “Were his parents cremated?”

  “I know that one, Inspector. They were buried in the cemetery at Cowdry.”

  “Why, then, was Wickham’s body cremated? He expressed no such wish in the will.” Mr. Luton evaded comment, and Bony went on, “Do you think, if Benjamin Wickham held a decisive view of the manner in which his body should be disposed of, that he would have discussed the matter with you?”

  “Yes, I think he would,” replied Luton. “But he didn’t talk of it, and neither did I.”

  “Then we must assume that the subject of the disposal of the dead was not one of interest to him; that he never spoke of it to his relatives and friends. His parents had not been cremated. From whom did the suggestion of cremation originally come? I should like to know. Death is the profound finality of life; cremation is the finality of death. We may study the bones of a man dead many thousands of years; we cannot study the dust of a man scattered to the four winds. I shall ponder these truths while taking your dogs for a walk.”

  Mr. Luton watched Bony pass through the wicket gate, preceded by the dogs, who were infinitely more keen on hunting than walking. His strong jaw was set to a hardness and his eyes thoughtful. He was still thoughtful when he went to the rear and fed the hens, and returned to wash the dishes and straighten the house, and, later, to carry three empty beer bottles to the river and toss them in. The habit of years stood by him. The empties he had filled with water that they would not float.

  A boy came shortly after eleven with a telegram for Bony, payment of a special rate having ensured its delivery. The Electricity Department’s meter reader came just after twelve, and Mr. Luton paid the account with a cheque. To Mr. Luton, long accustomed to a peaceful retreat, the morning was unusually crowded, and was lighted by the return of Bony, who suggested they split a bottle of beer.

  The glasses were filled, when Mr. Luton remembered the telegram.

  “Ah!” breathed Bony, gazing upon the flimsy, “I’ve been expecting that. It will be a message from my Chief at the C.I.B. in Brisbane instructing me to report at once. I have received many such telegrams, and most I have ignored. Then comes a follow-on message from the Chief Commissioner’s secretary ordering me to report at once, or else. This form of blackmail being unsuccessful, another telegram arrives, suspending me from duty, and unless I report by a certain date I shall be sacked.”

  “That brings you to book,” smiled Mr. Luton.

  “On the contrary. I report when it suits me, and it suits me only when I have finalised an investigation. So I discuss the situation with my Chief Commissioner, who damns and blasts my eyes and swears I’m not a policeman’s bootlace. I have to point out that, despite this relative position, I do bring home the bacon. So all is forgiven.”

  “I can quite believe it,” Mr. Luton said, seriously.

  Bony opened the telegram, and read aloud:

  “FROM SUPERINTENDENT LINTON, C.I.B. BRISBANE. REPORT AT EARLIEST. THIS INSTRUCTION OF TOP IMPORTANCE. ADD MY PERSONAL ENTREATY YOU COMPLY WITHOUT DELAY.”

  Dropping the flimsy to the table, he drank while regarding his host over the glass, as he had done down below.

  “Not the usual wording,” he said. “Slightly ambiguous, the ambiguity being the additional personal note from Linton. Good man, Linton. We all like him, though he isn’t prone to ‘additives’, a word now favoured by oil companies advertising petrol. Normally, ‘report back or be damned’; in this instance, ‘add my personal entreaty you comply without delay.’ And so, Mr. Luton, as someone once said: ‘The game’s afoot.’”

  Mr. Luton could not, of course, understand the basis of his guest’s obvious satisfaction, and naturally could not grasp the real significance of that telegraphed order. He knew that Bony had applied for and had been granted ten days’ leave of absence from duty, but did not see the point that, the leave period being granted, only a reason vitally important would have dictated its cancellation.

  He was not perturbed when Bony ab
ruptly withdrew to the front veranda, there to meditate until called for lunch. During lunch Bony spoke but seldom, so preoccupied was he, and immediately after lunch he went out to the garden without offering assistance with the washing-up. It was three o’clock when Bony reappeared to say that the Reverend Weston was fishing from the bank, and that he had a score to settle with him. And:

  “Afternoon, Padre. Any luck?”

  Light grey eyes were turned upon Bony, and the quick smile did nothing to soften the ever-present hint of harsh intolerance.

  “Ah! Good afternoon. No, they are not biting to-day.”

  “Do you mind if I cast beside you?”

  “Go right ahead. Let your neighbour do unto you what you did unto him.”

  Old clothes and weathered boots failed to detract from this man’s grimly powerful personality. He examined Bony as the latter baited a hook with a bunch of garden worms. The long brown fingers fumbled with the task, and so the parson turned his attention to his own gear. That gave Bony the chance to bait with witchetty grubs.

  Before those grubs had descended three feet they were devoured by a fast-moving kingfish. The water swirled. The tip of Bony’s rod flashed downward.

  A kingfish is a different proposition from a gentlemanly trout. There are no ‘by your leaves’ in his make-up, and he has much in common with Australian politicians and Australian thugs, who invariably mix it, boots and all. Bony was determined to land this fish, and without damage to Mr. Luton’s rod, and the Reverend Weston quickly admitted that he knew how to handle this ruthless fighter.

  It occupied Bony eleven minutes to bring the fish to the gaff expertly wielded by Mr. Weston, whose sportsmanship was adequately proved. Afterwards they sat on the log seat and estimated the weight of the catch as being about fourteen pounds. That subject disposed of, it was time for a cigarette. Then they tried again, with worms, and nothing happened, and Mr. Weston said he really would have to employ someone or other to prepare the boat for trolling.

  These two men found much in common. They were both insatiably curious. The minister was the less patient.