“Your taste in broadcast talks is excellent, Lubers,” he said, “but your judgment of literature is, shall we say, peculiar. You wireless people are like the film people. You cannot divest your minds of the idea that popularity spells artistic quality. There was never yet a best-seller that had any claims to being good literature, literature as understood by the cultured. We are interested, Lubers, in Literature with a capital L, not commercial fiction that receives the approval of the common herd.”
“Well, before I go up in smoke and flame, I’m firing my last shot,” Lubers growled. “The greatest best-seller of all time, you will agree, is the Bible, read by the cultured and the illiterate all over the world. The common herd can and does appreciate literature provided it says something worth hearing with the mind.”
Twyford Arundal opened and moved his mouth to mock but not the tiniest sound issued from it. Then he fell off his chair and his forehead came in contact with the edge of a stool. When he had been picked up and put back again, the powder for Blake’s next shot was drenched with the general sympathy for poor Twyford Arundal, who continued to work his mouth without result.
The unpleasantness had cleared by half past eleven, when Ella Montrose said she was going to bed. Everyone seemed ready to retire, and the party moved into the hall and broke up. There Blake asked Wilcannia-Smythe to lock the back door after he left the house for his writing-room.
“Be sure to go to bed, Mervyn,” Ella Montrose advised, and softly laughed. “Don’t go making love over the fence to the extraordinary Miss Pinkney.”
“I would much prefer, my dear Ella, to cut Miss Pinkney’s scrawny throat,” he countered.
Nancy Chesterfield slept soundly all through the night until half past seven the next morning when the maid brought her early tea. She was returning from the bathroom when she met Ella Montrose. Ella was whimpering like a child recovering from punishment. Nancy asked her why she was so upset, but could obtain no explanation, and she took the distraught woman to her own room, where she pacified her.
At last Ella managed to say between sobs, “Mervyn! The men went to call Mervyn to breakfast They say he’s dead. He’s lying just inside the door of his room. The door was shut, and he couldn’t get out. He tried to claw the door open, but—he—couldn’t get out.”
Chapter Two
Miss Pinkney’s Lodger
Like a fledgling bird, Miss Pinkney was all a-flutter. Her heart was fluttering with excitement, her feet fluttered in and out of the rooms of her cottage. Once she went to the front veranda to gaze with critical eyes at the crazy pavement extending to the front gate. Once she went to the back of the cottage and gazed over the well-tended vegetable garden to the line of lilac-trees masking the rear fence and partially obscuring the cream-painted building beyond, the building in which Mervyn Blake, the great Australian author and critic, had died from apparently natural causes.
Miss Pinkney was finding life most interesting. Indeed, she had found it so the moment she learnt that Mr Mervyn Blake had rented the property beyond her own. Thereafter her sedate and somewhat bucolic life was enlivened by interest piled upon interest in the visits to the Blakes of famous authors, artists, and radio personalities.
Then came the discovery of Mervyn Blake dead in his writing-room at the bottom of his garden, the building just beyond Miss Pinkney’s back fence. For days the police were all over the place. They even raised their heads above the division fence and stared at Miss Pinkney when the hem of her skirt was pinned to her waist and she was wearing old shoes and gardening gloves, being then engaged with her vegetables.
She had wanted to pay a call on the poor little widow, but she felt that it would not be appreciated by a woman who had never given the faintest sign of neighbourliness. And the peculiar thing about the matter was that it seemed the coroner could not make up his mind what Mr Blake had died of.
That was weeks ago, and then, just when life threatened to become once more bucolic, that nice Constable Simes had stopped her in the street and told her he would be much easier in his mind if she got someone to live with her, since there was a positive crime wave in Melbourne. She had told Constable Simes that she hadn’t a relation or a friend who could possibly come and live with her, and at that the dear constable promised he would find a boarder for her, someone quiet and genteel.
The very next day he had called to tell her he had found just the ideal gentleman he had had in mind, and she had consented to accept this paying guest. Now he was due to arrive and she and her house were dressed in their best. But wait!
Where was Mr Pickwick? She had actually forgotten to change Mr Pickwick’s collar. What a mercy she had remembered it in time. She flew to the kitchen, then out to the back garden crying, “Mr Pickwick! Dear Mr Pickwick! Where are you?”
An enormous all-black cat emerged from the shadow cast by a camellia bush and followed Miss Pinkney to the house. There she removed a stained blue silk collar looking much like an early Victorian garter, and placed about Mr Pickwick’s neck a similar item of orange. It was then that someone knocked upon the front door.
Uttering a little cry Miss Pinkney rushed to the mirror hanging behind the kitchen door, patted her hair and the collar of her old-fashioned bodice, and fluttered along the passage to the hall and the front door.
“Miss Pinkney?” inquired the caller.
“Yes! Oh yes! You are—”
“Napoleon Bonaparte. Constable Simes has told me about you and that you are willing to give me a haven of rest and peace for a week or two.”
“Yes, that’s right, Mr Bonaparte,” she hastened to assure him. “Oh, I see you’ve brought your luggage. Will you bring it in? I’m so sorry I haven’t a domestic—please do come in.”
Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte had removed his hat and now smiled upward at Miss Pinkney who was standing on the topmost of the three steps to the veranda. He saw a slim woman dressed in grey, her hair greying, her small face coloured by excitement, her prominent grey eyes bright and warm.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll get my case. What a charming house you have. What a beautiful garden. Oh!”
The enormous cat appeared beside Miss Pinkney’s brown house shoes.
“This, Mr Bonaparte, is my Mr Pickwick,” announced Miss Pinkney.
The cat marched down the steps, tail erect, great golden eyes examining the stranger. Bony stooped and stroked the animal and Mr Pickwick purred.
“You adore cats, I can see,” Miss Pinkney cried happily.
The paying guest admitted that he adored cats, and when he turned and walked to the gate for his case Mr Pickwick waddled after him. He waddled behind Bony on the return journey to the front veranda.
“Please come in,” Miss Pinkney cried. “I’ll show you to your room. Yes, do come in. It’s so warm out in the sun today.”
She preceded her guest into the hall, on the panelled walls of which hung three large pictures in oils of sailing ships. Bony’s gaze passed from them to the ship’s oil lamp suspended from a bracket fixed to the wall near the opposite door. Miss Pinkney halted beside a door on the right, and she smiled at him and gave a little bow of invitation for him to enter.
Murmuring his thanks, he went in. The walls were of wood stained mahogany. The bed was a ship’s bunk, broad and long and inviting. Above the bunk was a ship’s brass port, the inside painted bright blue to resemble the sky. The floor was polished and unspoilt by coverings. A large table and two easy chairs, an open-fronted case filled with books, a standard lamp and a brass spittoon completed the furniture. Bright cretonne curtains ornamented the casement windows.
Bony put down his case and