The New Shoe Page 9

  Mrs Washfold completed a swift circle and banged a tin box on the counter.

  Everyone laughed and, the grin again in evidence, Dick hastily produced a shilling and dropped it into the box. Mrs Washfold replaced it on the shelf.

  “How’s she comin’ along this year?” asked walrus moustache.

  “No faster for any help you give it,” retorted the woman. “You boys don’t swear as well as the visitors. We got to beat last year’s effort. Poorest along the coast, it was.”

  “Forty-seven quid, wasn’t it, last year?” said Moss Way.

  “And six-and-tuppence. Bert found two pennies on the floor.”

  “Where does it go to?” Bony wanted to know.

  “Children’s Hospital. Over twenty thousand quid the hospital got last year out of the swear boxes,” replied Dick. “Feel like havin’ a go?”

  “Be damned if I do,” Bony said, and was instantly presented with the box. He paid the fine and the box was returned. To Dick he said “You were talking about the bloody spuds.”

  They shouted as he paid another shilling, and Mrs Washfold was happier than had the money gone into her till. She told the story of three anglers who deliberately cussed each other till each had contributed a pound.

  Time passed and the men tended to break into small groups. Bony prevented this by insisting on again calling for drinks all round. He was beginning to feel the effect of the beer, and pretended he was far worse than he was. Clutching Dick by the arm, he said:

  “How much does old Penwarden charge for those coffins?”

  “Ten quid. Them he sends to Melbun.”

  “More for that one I saw in his store room, I suppose?”

  “Too right. Beaut, isn’t she?”

  “Must take him a long time to bring up that surface on the wood.”

  “Months,” said Dick, swaying towards Bony as though bowing to an audience. “Wipes an’ rubs off and on for months. Waste of time on anything to be buried, ain’t it? Old bloke won’t make them red-woods for anyone, you know. Gets the wood down from the Murray.”

  “So he told me. Said that one in his store was for Mrs Owen.”

  “That’s right! Tom Owen took her home last week. Cripes! They can have it for mine. Blanket ’ud do me. Hullo, more playmates!”

  The crunch of wheels on gravel vied with the purring of an engine. A door banged. Within the bar the voices sank to a low hum.

  Two women entered, breasting the bar like men, to stand beside Bony, who happened to be nearest the door.

  “Got back safe!” exclaimed Mrs Washfold. “Had a good day?”

  The younger woman giggled.

  “Tired out. Evening everyone!” She found Bony regarding her, his brows raised interrogatively, a ten-shilling note proffered to Mrs Washfold. “Thanks! Just a tiny weeny one.”

  The men went on talking. Bony appeared to be entranced by the labels on the bottles back of the bar. The women chose gin and bitters, and Mrs Washfold chatted with them about the price of clothes. Presently, she said:

  “This is Mr Rawlings who’s staying for a week or two. Mr Rawlings is down from the Riverina on a buck’s holiday. Mrs Owen and Mrs Wessex.”

  Bony bowed, Mrs Owen giggled, and Mrs Wessex stared her interest. What these women had in common evaded Bony, for Mrs Owen was small and bird-like and Mrs Wessex gaunt and intense. Beside being older than Mrs Owen she betrayed unusual hardship and something of suffering. Labour had bowed her back, and the weather had etched her face.

  “I like my holiday when and where it’s quiet,” Bony told them. “And I couldn’t have come to a better place. I hope Split Point never becomes like Lorne.”

  “It will one day, I’m afraid,” said the gaunt woman, her dark eyes probing.

  “Then I hope not in my time ... having only just discovered it.”

  Mrs Washfold butted in.

  “I was telling Mr Rawlings how poorly Mr Wessex is these days. Might be an idea for him to take a walk out your way one afternoon for a talk with your husband. Cheer him up, maybe.”

  “I would be glad to do so,” Bony took her up, and Mrs Wessex said:

  “From the Riverina! Are you a sheep man?”

  “In a small way, yes.”

  Again her effort to assess him. Well over fifty, she was dressed sombrely in a fashion of twenty years ago. Nodding as though with approval, she said:

  “I’m sure my husband would be glad to see you, Mr Rawlings. One afternoon, perhaps. I shall be about the place somewhere. If I’m not, go into the house if my husband isn’t on the veranda. Ready, Edith? We must get along.”

  Mrs Owen giggled at the company, and the men politely bade them goodbye. After their car had left, the atmosphere of restraint vanished. The licensee appeared.

  “Those women will get home ’fore dark,” he commented.

  “Should do,” agreed his wife. “Mr Rawlings is going to visit Mr Wessex. Have a talk to him.”

  “Added a shilling to the Swear Box, too,” informed a builder.

  “That’s good.” Washfold turned to his wife. “You clear out and tend the dinner, and I might kid these gents to put a bit more in.”

  Washfold “shouted” for everyone when his wife had gone. The conversation continued ... clean ... and Bony, feeling the growth of friendliness, was delighted by it.

  Dick Lake’s grin appeared now to be a fixture. Holding tightly to Bony’s arm, he stuttered:

  “Wash about that trip over Sweet Fairy Ann?”

  “We dig spuds for Tom Owen tomorrer,” interposed Moss Way.

  “So we do. Some other day, eh? Great scenery, over Sweet Fairy. Y’know, Mr Rawlings, you’re good scout. Ain’t he a good scout, Bert? Tell you what, Mr Rawlings, if you wants a real good coffin to shove under your bed, I’ll kid old Penwarden to make you one. Me and him is good cobbers. I’ll see him about it tomorrow.”

  “We dig spuds for Tom Owen tomorrer,” repeated Moss. “Come on. We’ve had enough.”

  Moss winked at Bony for support. Each took one of Dick’s arms and resolutely moved to the doorway.

  “One for the road,” Lake laughingly demanded.

  “We dig them spuds for Tom Owen tomorrer,” repeated Moss.

  “I won’t dig no...”

  Moss clamped a hand over Lake’s mouth.

  “We’re not gonner pay no more shillings to Swear Boxes today,” he said, decisively, and with the assistance of Detective Inspector Bonaparte, he urged the laughing Dick Lake to the heavy truck, lifted him into the cabin and banged the door. Nodding cheerfully to Bony, he climbed up behind the wheel, and departed with the horn going at continual blast.

  Chapter Twelve

  About Those Shavings

  BONY PUSHED AT this Split Point mystery from all sides and heard never a creak.

  Like the hidden root which defies the tree-pusher, there was a root of the local community hostile to his efforts to topple this murder mystery. He had decided that the sequence to the suicide attempt of Mary Wessex in his meeting with Tom Owen, and Owen’s subsequent effort to induce him to go away to Lorne, was in keeping with the general reticence of conservative people. The incident of the person tiptoeing across the Lighthouse yard when Fisher and he were inside was a hair of a different length, and would have had far greater importance in this investigation had Bony been sure that the blow to his head when on the ledge was delivered through human agency.

  Only his will energized by fear of falling to death had saved him, and only the instinct of self-preservation had taken him to the grassy cliff top. There he had stayed for minutes before being able to sit up. He had looked for an assailant ... he had examined the path, and seen only the tracks of the dog and himself.

  Bony remembered how the dog had stood by him and licked the nape of his neck, and barked and shared its concern, probably aroused by the smell of blood. Examination of the cliff edge immediately above the place on the ledge where he had stood when the blow fell quickly disclosed the bed of a fairly large ston
e. Near it was another stone which almost without effort he pushed into space.

  In his search for proof, he sidled down the ledge to stop before those handgrips offered by the cliff, a protuberance of rock and a crevice. He saw that the top of his head was a bare twelve inches below the bed of the displaced stone, and thus could not be certain if he had been attacked or had been the victim of chance.

  He searched the bare sandy places about the headland for a boot-or shoe-print, size small seven or large six, the prints of the tiptoeing person, and had failed to find such tracks, and when he had walked down the long slope to the sea to wash the head wound, the dog had evinced no sign of the intrusion of an unusual scent.

  The Adelaide trip had given much ground for investigation but nothing conclusive. He had called on a detective friend of long standing, and had succeeded in gaining valuable unofficial cooperation. As the watch and the ring could not be linked with an Adelaide jeweller, and he felt his work was at Split Point rather than visiting every other capital city, he had no reluctance in passing these clues to Bolt, knowing that Bolt would bring every State CIB into the inquiry, and pass the result, if any, to him. The Adelaide experts had found nothing of importance in the dust within the trousers’ cuffs, so this item had been kept from the Superintendent.

  The day following his return was uneventful, and toward evening the bar was empty of customers save for one of the builders. This man and Bony were served by the licensee, and the conversation covered wide interests. The day had been dreary and wet and gave no promise of the brilliantly clear day which was to follow.

  Next day, with Stug at his heels, and the sun casting black shadows on the road, Bony went down to talk again with old Penwarden, in his mind linking the clue of the red-gum shaving he had found inside the Lighthouse. To be greeted by the coffin maker was to feel like the prodigal being welcomed by his father.

  “Good day, Mr Rawlings, sir. Come in and sit you down and chinwag awhile.”

  “How are you today?”

  “Oh, just the same. Sleep well and hearty, you know. You haven’t been along lately.”

  “No. I took a trip to Mount Gambier. To look at the country. Better than mine. You’re still busy, I see.”

  “I’m allus busy.” The blue eyes twinkled. The scarred hands gripped the edge of the open sack being filled with shavings. “Old woman, you know. She keeps me up to it. If I’ve told you once, Penwarden, she says, I’ve told you a dozen times to bring me a bag of shavings.”

  “Useful to start fires, eh?” suggested Bony, drawing himself up backwards to sit on the bench.

  “The best thing out for starting a fire, Mr Rawlings.”

  “An aromatic mixture, anyway. Red-gum and Victorian hardwood, with Queensland silky oak and a flake or two of pine.”

  “You’re right.”

  The old man proceeded to fill his sack, and Bony kept the conversation to wood shavings.

  “I assume that red-gum boards are harder to plane than, say, pine?” he remarked.

  “Yes, a trifle. I likes workin’ with pine, though. Likes to sniff the smell of pinewood. Clean kind of smell pinewood has. Makes me think of the days I could go into the forest and fall and cut me own timber. Much pine up your way?”

  “The natural pine, no. Good deal of it farther to the northwest of New South Wales. And that’s no use for milling. Too small. Have you ever come across bloodwood?”

  “No. Can’t say I ever heard of it.”

  Attention to the shavings being rammed into the sack abruptly vanished, and the bright blue eyes in the fresh pink face expressed interest akin to that of the small child when promised a fairy tale.

  “The most beautiful tree in the interior,” Bony said. “Belongs to the eucalypt family. Comparatively rare, the best specimens are about thirty inches through, a few feet from the ground. The sap runs the colour of blood, and the wood is the colour of blood.”

  The bag was left to fall and spill shavings, and old Penwarden came to the bench and sat on the sawing horse.

  “Better’n Murray gum to last underground?” he asked.

  “As to that, I can’t answer. I do know that it’s very slow-growing, and that the slower the growth of a tree the longer the wood will last.”

  “Aye, that’s so, Mr Rawlings, sir. My! I’d like a board or two of that bloodwood.”

  Having aroused keen interest in the subject of bloodwood, Bony passed to another, knowing that in the second subject the old man would be less mentally cautious.

  “When are you going to start work on your next red-gum casket?”

  The effort to follow into this second subject was visible in the old man’s eyes.

  “Well, that’s tellin’. The one inside be took. Owen took her away last week.” Penwarden chuckled. “I’m a bit lonesome without her. Don’t like the place filled only with junk. A real red-gum coffin sort of makes the place feel respectable.”

  Bony smiled, and the old man waited for the joke.

  “Was Mrs Owen satisfied with it?”

  Again the chuckle.

  “Her husband said she was, but she wouldn’t try her out like I wanted her to. You said that blood...”

  “You’ll have to begin work on another, just to keep in your hand and eye. When did you begin on that last one?”

  “Begin on it! Oh, I don’t rightly remember. Musta been six months ago, I suppose. Yes, all of that. Couldn’t put me in a way of a bit of that bloodwood, could you?”

  “Well now ... Y—es, I think perhaps I could. A great friend of mine lives in the top corner of New South. I might persuade him to send you down a log or two. You would have to have it milled.”

  Penwarden rested his hands on the knees of his drill trousers and beamed. The delighted smile completely banished the few wrinkles of age. They discussed ways and means of transporting a consignment of timber across hundreds of miles of virgin country to a Victorian railhead, and then to a milling firm just out of Geelong.

  “I’d have to have a look at them logs before they cut ’em,” Penwarden decided. “Can’t trust no one these days to do anything right. Thank you very much, Mr Rawlings, sir. You tell your friend to send me all the bill of costs.”

  “That will be fixed all right. There’s one condition.”

  “What does she be?” asked the old man, abruptly anxious.

  “That you let me know how the bloodwood turns out for your purpose. It’ll be raw timber and you’ll have to have it cured, and so you won’t know for some time. But my friend and I will want to know what you think of it.”

  The smile flashed bright.

  “Aye, of course I will, Mr Rawlings, I’ll tell ’e what I’ll do. I’ll make you and your friend a pair of book ends that’ll reflect your eyelashes hair by hair. Aye, I’ll do that for sure.”

  Then Penwarden wanted to hear of other woods which never came to market, and Bony described the Western Australian jamwood which is the colour of and smells exactly like raspberry jam. He was extremely disappointed when told that the jamwood is a desert tree rarely large enough for commercial use.

  Bony was hoist by his own petard. He became so interested and so caught up by the enthusiasm of this artist in wood that he failed to direct the conversation where he had intended, and rose giving the promise to call again soon.

  He had proceeded a full hundred yards along the road when he heard the old man shout and saw him beckoning to him to return.

  “I’ll tell ’e what, Mr Rawlings, sir,” Penwarden said, combing his long snow-white hair with his fingers. “There be no one now wantin’ a first-class coffin, and, as you just told me, I must keep me hand in or go sort of stale on the junk. What about one for you, now? A good one to keep out the cold and wet for two or three hundred years? I’ve got the boards, and I could go right ahead.”

  Bony could only wonder at the blessing that such people lived to sweeten this age of raucous vulgarity. Trade certainly did not enter this proposition. He had advanced an offer to obtain bloodwoo
d for no ulterior reason, because the offer was outside the planned conversation, and this humble man desired to counter his offer and so stand on equality. Slowly Bony nodded, and slowly he said

  “I think you are generous, Mr Penwarden, and I thank you.”

  Again the cherubic smile, the eagerness illustrating so clearly the joy of the craftsman whose art is rarely appreciated.

  “You come along soon, Mr Rawlings, and we’ll measure you for your first fit. Why, I declare it’s weeks since I did any proper polishing, it’ll do me good. Meanwhile I’ll look to the boards I has. Must be ... let me see! I’m gettin’ old all right. Yes, I remember. I began the polishing on that coffin for Mrs Owen at the time they found that feller in the Lighthouse. Constable Staley was here asking me about it as I was puttin’ on the first coat. Now you come tomorrow for the first fit, and, if you don’t have no pall-bearers, the shine on her will dazzle them that carry you into the cemetery.”

  With the music of Penwarden’s chuckle in his ears, and in his mind, too, Bony sauntered back to the post office, where he intended to despatch a telegram to that friend who thought more of his bloodwoods than he did of his bloodstock.

  So Penwarden did not know that the coffin he had made for Mrs Owen had gone into the house owned and occupied by Mr Wessex. And Senior Constable Staley had entered the old man’s workshop at the time of the murder, and on his clothes could have conveyed a red-gum shaving to the Lighthouse.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Bony entered Staley’s office. Staley stood.

  “Day, sir!”

  “Good afternoon, Senior. Sit down and let’s talk. If you smoke, do so. No communication for me from Melbourne?”

  “Nothing, sir.” Staley relaxed ... a fraction. From a drawer he produced a pipe.

  “You have been here nine years, I understand, and you know the people at Split Point fairly well.”

  “Yes, sir, I think so.”

  “Know anyone there capable of bashing me on the head with a rock?”

  “Plenty capable, sir, but the record of violence is clean. No out and outer like they have in Melbourne. That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be, of course.”