The Battling Prophet. Arthur W. Upfield
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“Not that she didn’t run the big house all right. She always did that, the servants and all, including Ben when he was there. In the house he was a mouse. Outside he was a lion, and wouldn’t allow her or anyone to say how he should manage his office and his staff. Give her her due, she always did believe he’d win out. She married a Parsloe, of Parsloe Jams, but, as I said, he couldn’t stand it and shuffled off. There’s others as well.”
“Tell me,” Bony prodded when Mr. Luton was about to remove the dinner crocks.
“Well, there’s a sort of retired parson. Been there for a couple of years. Mrs. Parsloe invited him and he stayed on. Ben hated the Reverend, name of Weston. Supposed to be writing a book or something. Then there’s Mrs. Parsloe’s husband’s niece, Jane. She married a doctor and kidded Ben to fork out the money to buy the practice at Cowdry.”
“The same doctor who signed the certificate?”
“The same. Shire councillor. Runs the golf club. Knows everything—in his own mind. Name’s Maltby.”
“And they live at Mount Mario?”
“Been there for four years. Surgery is at Cowdry, only four miles down-river.”
“Oh! Anyone else?”
“One more. Lass by the name of Jessica Lawrence, Ben’s secretary. He thought a lot of her. She’s in love with Dr. Linke.”
“One moment, please,” interrupted Bony. “You said that Ben thought a lot of his secretary. Kindly be precise. In what way did he think a lot of her? For her work?”
“For her work and because he found her straight and easy to talk to. She even gets round me. About twenty-four or five. Started working for Ben four years ago last Easter.”
“And this Dr. Linke?”
“Ben’s chief assistant. Was with him five years. He and the second assistant lived in a house separate from the big house, and they was looked after by Mrs. Loxton.” Mr. Luton chuckled. “If ever I’d have married I’d have chosen her sort.”
“You imply that the assistants do not now live apart from the big house?”
“Correct. After Ben died, the second assistant was sacked by the Parsloe woman, so I understand. Dr. Linke’s still there, and now lives at the house. He’s fallen for Jessica, the secretary. Foreigner. Comes from Germany, so Ben told me. Clever feller, again accordin’ to Ben. Been here once or twice with Jessica. Very interested in the Outback.”
While Mr. Luton was at the wash-bench, Bony pencilled notes in a slim pocket-book, and when Mr. Luton returned to the table he asked:
“Did your friend ever say his life was threatened?”
“He named no name, but you only had to read the papers and talk to people in Cowdry to know he was hated enough for some madman to be mean enough to kill him. Even the local Member of Parliament last year said Ben ought to be gaoled for what he was doing, arguing in the House that the country would lose heavily if Ben was wrong and had led the farmers and graziers to sort of go on strike.”
“Who inherits the property?”
“Don’t know yet. Haven’t heard about a will so far.”
“Did Wickham ever mention to what degree he had taken his assistants into his confidence?” pressed Bony. “I’ll put it another way. Did his assistants know Wickham’s ultimate calculations or formulæ, or whatever it is, making his forecasting a hundred per cent accurate?”
“I can answer that one, Inspector. No. That was his secret he kept to himself. Dr. Linke didn’t tell me in words when he was down here a couple of nights back, but from what he did say I think they’re looking for those calculations.”
“You tell me you believe Wickham was murdered. Why was he murdered? To suggest that someone paid by the finance corporations, or by a big business concern, murdered him is really fantastic. If it was murder, there must be a motive. Was the motive to benefit from his estate? Was it to prevent him continuing his forecasting—which, as I have just said, is really fantastic? Was it to gain possession of his weather calculations? And that is more feasible. Are you a beneficiary under his will, do you know?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so,” replied Mr. Luton. “Ben wanted to put me down for twenty thousand quid, and I told him I had twenty thousand of my own and a bit more.”
“You didn’t quarrel with him during that last bender?”
“Quarrel with him! Me and Ben never once quarrelled.”
“Did you and Wickham, or Wickham himself, ever quarrel with Knocker Harris?”
“Never. Knocker’s always easy to get on with. Used to nurse us with food and soups and things.”
“I have yet to learn this point, Mr. Luton. Did Harris drink with you and Wickham?”
“No. ’Cos why? Because he’s got stomach ulcers and can’t take it without sufferin’ like hell. In fact, I don’t think he ever took a drink in this house.”
“You like him, I should think.”
“Why not? Harmless sort of bloke. Always ready to oblige or do a good turn. Lives quiet and don’t want for anything.”
“Then it would seem that we have a murder without a motive, Mr. Luton. And we have a murder because you believe that when Wickham died he wasn’t having an attack of the right kind of hoo-jahs. His body has been cremated and the ashes scattered over Mount Mario, so that the remains cannot be pathologically examined. What have we left?”
Mr. Luton frowned. He said: “Gumption.”
“That might be the right answer, Mr. Luton.”
Chapter Four
The Conspirators
There was that about John Luton, ex-bullock-driver, D.T. expert, which forbade familiarity. It was the character of the man as presented in his eighty-fourth year, and was due only in part to his age. Seated in a high-back chair to one side of the sitting-room fire, he appeared to be relaxed though he sat upright, like a king on his throne. His eyes were steady. His great gnarled hands were passive. The expression on his large face was of calm confidence in his body and mind. It seemed that the natural form of address to this man, in acknowledgment not only of his age but of the inherent strength of character, was Mister Luton.
A man can be great though a bullock-driver. A man can be a king and yet a weakling. Mr. Luton had gained and was to retain Inspector Bonaparte’s respect.
Bony sat on that side of the fireplace having his back to the outer wall, in which was the door and the window. The black-and-white cat lay curled on the rug, its broad back pressed against the carpet slipper of Mr. Luton’s right foot, and not for twenty minutes had Mr. Luton moved that foot, that the cat be undisturbed.
He spoke of Ben Wickham as an equal, evincing no inferiority to the famous meteorologist, and Bony knew that this was the result of the man’s distant background where all men were equal, and all men were respected, provided they were not damned by meanness of thought and of act. All else was merely incidental.
Speaking of Wickham disclosed Mr. Luton’s deep affection for and loyalty to the dead man. And there was the wisdom of the old, which isn’t tainted by intolerance, smugness, bigotry.
He talked about those old days, revealing to Bony a picture of a young man who was lost to himself—a self he could not understand, and another of that young man grown tanned and physically strong, striding the length of fourteen pairs of bullocks, and wielding an eighteen-foot whip swung from a twelve-foot heavy handle, and able to flick the thong against any chosen inch of hide, to contact the animal like a fly or a flail; a third picture, that of a heavier man, of flowing white hair and dark eyes alive with ambition and the joy of achievement, the square face and alert eyes of the man who learned to