The Squire’s Chest
WHENthey should have gone to bed, they went down into the cellar, Bony carrying the lamp, leaving the table and floor-covering in the living-room ready for quick replacement in the event of interruption.
At this second visit, Bony could not resist the impulse to chuckle at the mental picture of two wily ‘hard doers’ determined to maintain freedom against the onslaught of relations and outsiders. Additional to the neat stacks of spirits, there were a dozen cases of beer, and on a special shelf he had not previously noticed, because it was in a corner opposite the bar counter, he espied six bottles ofDrambuie evenly spaced, obviously by reverent hands.
“Quite a plant, eh?” remarked Mr. Luton.“Whisky there in that pile. Brandy over there. Rum right behind you, and the gin over here. We’d sense enough to be careful of the oil-lamp, and arranged the stock so we could find the right bottles in the dark. Once we camped down here all night, with the trap-door down. Air got a bit foul with the lamp lit, so we turned it out, and afterwards I ran a shaft to come up inside the wood-shed just behind the wash-copper. Could camp here a month with the lamp lit now.”
“Who planned it?” asked Bony, more to keep Mr. Luton occupied while he examined the place.
“It sort of grew from the years gone by. At the end of roaring hot days when we’d unyoke the bullocks and wasdrinkin ’ 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 likeit, 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’youthink… 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 aseltzergene 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 thecedarwood 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 ’emwho was to have his weather records and papers and things. I think I can see why he put in that bitsayin ’ 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’youknow 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 amp; 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 thatcedarwood 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 butyourself 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 barcounter, 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, Knocker 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 ofthinkin ’. 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 rememberthinkin ’ 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 myputtin ’them coins on the eyes stopped the quackbelievin ’ 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.”