He said, “I like this room—very, very much.”
The anxiety vanished, and the words came tumbling.
“Oh, I’m so glad you like your room, Mr Bonaparte,” she cried. “It used to be my brother’s room, you see. He loved it. He was a sailor, you know. He commanded ships. We were very happy here at Yarrabo, though he missed the sea after he retired. Poor man, he died four years ago. If you wish, I will show you the bathroom and the dining-room and the lounge. Then I’ll serve you with afternoon tea. Do you like afternoon tea?”
His deep blue eyes beamed at her and he gave her a hint of a bow, saying, “Madam. I like tea at any hour of the day and of the night.”
The dining-room contained additional evidence of the departed sea captain, but the lounge belonged entirely to Miss Pinkney. The floor was covered by a white and gold Chinese carpet. Books rested everywhere. Framed photographs on the mantelpiece flanked the enlarged portrait of a vitriolic-looking man in the summer uniform of a captain in the mercantile marine. It was a woman’s room with its cut flowers, its soft divan, and inviting pouffes.
Mr Pickwick came in and parked on the hearth rug. Miss Pinkney entered trundling a tea wagon, and Bony rose to assist her. Fifty and lonely, celibacy had not soured her. He had expected to meet an eccentric woman who lived alone with her cat, and he was feeling the warmth of a mind that life had never defeated. She was as excited as a child of twelve, and she made no attempt to conceal the pleasure his advent gave.
The cat advanced to his feet, and he put down the fragile blue and white cup and saucer on the trolley that he might stroke Mr Pickwick. Mr Pickwick loudly purred and rubbed himself against Bony’s elegantly trousered leg, and Bony said, “Mr Pickwick, you have that which few cats possess—personality.”
“Mr Pickwick is a character reader,” averred Miss Pinkney. “He likes you. You are doubly welcome, for the liking is dual. Please don’t think Mr Pickwick takes to everyone. Oh dear, no.” She spoke directly to the cat, saying, “Now Mr Pickwick, show Mr Bonaparte how to play ping-pong.”
She moved her arm like a baseball thrower and the cat walked sedately from the room. Bony observed that he was expected to be silent. Miss Pinkney sipped her tea and smiled. In came Mr Pickwick, walking with the appearance of having no weight. He stared up at Miss Pinkney, and she deliberately looked out through the window.
Whereupon the cat, finding no encouragement in that quarter, approached Bony and placed on the carpet at his feet the ping-pong ball it had been carrying in its mouth. What he was expected to do was plain to Bony, and he did it Mr Pickwick flew after the ball Bony rolled towards the door. He punched the ball into the passage beyond and there skidded and bucked and punched the ball about the bare and polished floor, watched by the admiring Bony and the proud Miss Pinkney. That the ball was a little “dead” Bony attributed to the repeated assaults upon it by claws and mouth.
“I taught Mr Pickwick to fetch and carry when he was quite young,” remarked Miss Pinkney. “Another cup of tea? He just loves to play with a ball or a little wad of paper. You’ve made him accept you as his friend. Ah, here he comes!”
Again Mr Pickwick did his act and Bony picked up the ball. His finger-tips told him that the ball was firm and hard, but his mind was occupied with the expression of simple delight registered on his hostess’s unadorned face. The cat disappeared after the ball, and Miss Pinkney rose and left the room without explanation.
Ah! Bony leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea, sipped it from fragile china far removed from a tin pannikin.
Comfort! Comfort surrounded him, solid and real, and no man was better able to appreciate comfort than he who but recently had come back from the interior, where he had been investigating a disappearance. Mr Pickwick again entered the room and this time laid himself down beside the ball, flanks working like bellows, mouth wide open. Miss Pinkney returned, in her hands a silver cigarette-case and a silver lighter.
“I like a cigarette sometimes,” she said, and then giggled. “The sometimes is as often as the ration will allow. Please offer me one.”
On his feet, Bony opened her case. She took one and insisted that he should do likewise. Then he needs must take her lighter and find that it would not work, and whilst he held a lighted match in service, she said it was a shame that in these days the garage people didn’t know their business.
“I have been visualizing a stern lady who would denounce tobacco and forbid me smoking in the house,” he told her, smiling.
“My dear Mr Bonaparte, you may smoke when and where you like,” she said. “I’d hate to think of you lying with your head in a cold fire-place and smoking up the chimney. I am glad you smoke. My brother used to say, ‘Never trust a man who doesn’t smoke or drink or swear when he hits his thumb with a hammer’. Mr Pickwick distrusts them, too. He hated Mr Wilcannia-Smythe when he was staying next door at the time Mr Blake died. I’ve seen him lying on top of the division fence and hissing at Mr Wilcannia-Smythe. Afterwards, someone told me that Mr Wilcannia-Smythe neither smoked nor drank. And, I assume, never used an inaccurate adjective.”
“What was Mr Pickwick’s attitude towards Mr and Mrs Blake?” Bony asked.
“Mr Pickwick hated Mr Blake,” replied Miss Pinkney. “Mr Blake would sometimes throw a stone at Mr Pickwick if Mr Pickwick happened to be in his garden. Once I saw him do it, and I remonstrated with him. He was very rude to me.” Miss Pinkney smiled. “I’m afraid I spoke to him somewhat after the fashion of my brother!”
“H’m! Did you see much of Mrs Blake?”
“Very little. I used to see her on occasions playing ping-pong. They have a table on the back veranda. We can see it from the fence. They must have lost a ball when playing, because Mr Pickwick brought one in from their garden. He will wander at night, although why I don’t know, because I had him doctored and he’s quite, quite happy about it.”
“I read of the affair in the Melbourne papers,” Bony murmured. “About the sudden death of Mr Mervyn Blake. There was a house full of guests, I understand.”
“Oh yes, there was a house party for a week before Mr Blake died,” Miss Pinkney said. “Several well known people, you know. The Blakes often had writers and personalities staying with them. But they wouldn’t associate with anyone in the district. Er—well, you know what I mean.”
Bony was not sure that he did know. He said, “It was most peculiar Mr Blake dying so suddenly. I wonder if he was tired of life?”
“Not a bit of it,” Miss Pinkney cheerfully stated. “No man who drinks like he did would think of ending his life. He was so well known. Someone told me that if he condemned a book the book was a certain failure, and it would be a success if he praised it. Oh no, there was no reason for him to commit suicide. Someone hated him enough to murder him. This evening, when it’s cool, I’ll take you into the garden and show you the little building where he died.”
Chapter Three
The People Next Door
Having eaten an excellent dinner, Bony was in the proper frame of mind to appreciate the view from the front veranda of Rose Cottage, Yarrabo, in the State of Victoria.
Before the flower-embowered house passed a main highway to the city from the vast timber country of Gippsland. Beyond the road, beyond the narrow valley, the trees marched up the steep slopes of Donna Buang. There were no clouds beheading the mountain this summer’s evening, and the setting sun was painting the escarpments with deep pink which, even as he watched, was turning into cloudy purple.
Seated in luxurious ease, completely satisfied with the accommodation found for him by Constable Simes, and confronted by a puzzle promising to tax his intelligence, Bony felt calmly happy.
The Blakes had certainly chosen wisely when they purchased the property next door and called it “Eureka”. Old Captain Pinkney had also been wise, though his main objective in retiring to Yarrabo was to