‘Drink’s on me,’ said Charlie Dabney. He fumbled with his wallet, watched anxiously by three eyes and one cunningly constructed of glass. Athol Cudby retrieved the wallet when it fell to the floor.
‘Drinks on me. Inshish, inshish,’ proclaimed the little old mortician. He momentarily stayed the waggling of his cigar when Salter leaned across and held a match to its end.
‘Allow me,’ said Salter. The hand holding the match was shaking badly.
Several more rounds of drinks were served and consumed and still the small heap of silver in front of the stranger remained intact. Athol Cudby, quick to recognise opportunism in a rival, studied the newcomer covertly with a beady and suspicious eye. His fingers, when they were not occupied with either a glass or a cigarette, fidgeted in the lining of his trouser pockets. In his sulky preoccupation he failed to hear the blandishments which prevailed on Charlie Dabney to suddenly hand over his big gold watch to the stranger. Athol Cudby started violently.
Salter took up a position half-way around the oval bar, from whence he was clearly visible to all present.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. His tone of voice, his great height, the bow tie, contributed to a presence which commanded and was granted a sudden silence. The murmur of several voices tailed off resentfully.
‘I have ‘ere in mer hand,’ said Salter, holding up by its chain the outsize gold watch, ’the timepiece of our good friend and well-known citizen, Mister Charles Dabney. None of us have
the slightest doubt but that it is a very valuable gen-u-ine gold watch of great antiquity and reliability. In addition to its value as a gen-u-ine gold timepiece, I am also informed by its owner that its sentimental value is incalculating.’
Salter laid the watch on the bar in full view of everybody and stepped back. He pushed back his sleeves and tucked them under to keep them there. He held his hands aloft, fixing the watch with a glittering gaze. His wrists, bared and curving, were like necks of geese.
‘Great Scott,’ said Charlie Dabney, enjoying himself immensely.
Salter now produced a large handkerchief and, holding it by the top corner, displayed to all that it was innocently empty back and front. He gave the handkerchief to a man standing nearby. The man examined it gingerly at first but, reassured by its cleanliness, thoroughly enough. Salter emitted a throaty chuckle. He dropped the handkerchief over the gold watch on the bar.
‘Yer will observe,’ he said, spreading the handkerchief out with one or two gossamer flicks of his long fingers, ‘that this most valuable timepiece is still visible through the thin material. If anyone present entertains the slightest doubt they are at liberty to investigate.’
No one moved. Everyone was watching intently. Salter stooped down and removed one of his shoes. ‘This little illusion, which I bring you tonight,’ he announced, ‘is known as “The passing of time”, or, in certain circles in the
mistykeist
, “The crack of dawn”.’
Salter brought the heel of his shoe down with a splintering crack on top of the handkerchief. He raised his hand again, but Athol Cudby leaped forward and caught his upraised arm. Salter fixed him with his weirdly compelling gaze. Athol Cudby
fell back.
‘Great Scott,’ mumbled Charlie Dabney.
The heel of the shoe fell savagely several times. No one had any doubt by now that the stranger in their midst was as mad as an elephant with earache. But nobody moved. The tall lunatic gathered up the debris of the watch in the handkerchief and held it aloft like a miniature plum pudding in its cloth.
‘I see by all yer faces,’ he said, ’that the ruthless destruction of this valuable timepiece of incalculating value has not left a single one of yer unmoved. By the powers of magic vested in me, I will now endeavour to undo the damage I have done. Only endeavour, mark my words. I can make no promises. Only if the gods of darkness and magic are favourable, can I restore Mr Dabney his precious gen-u-ine gold timepiece.’
A low moan escaped the owner of the watch. Salter began a mumbled incantation and then shook out the handkerchief. A gasp greeted the fact that it was empty. Salter dropped the handkerchief and flashed his weird eyes around the bar. He approached Athol Cudby and lifted, from that horrified gentleman’s head, his battered slouch hat. He groped in the hat and withdrew from it, held delicately by the chain, the late-lamented gold watch.
‘Great Scott,’ exclaimed Charlie Dabney in vast relief. ‘A magician. A jolly ole wizard. The lights won’t go out all night.’
Salter, having modestly consumed the double schnapps with which his skill was rewarded, now proceeded to hoax and amuse the patrons of the Federal Hotel back bar for some time. At last he declined to perform further on the ground of excessive weariness. He became involved in a deep conversation with Charlie Dabney.
‘Great Scott,’ the undertaker exclaimed from time to time. ‘Sensational, magnificent. We’ll amalgamate, sir. With your skill and my coffins we’ll rock this town to its foundations. We go together like Gilbert and Sullivan. We gravitate to each other like a boiled carrot to a hunk of corn brisket. Nicely put?’
‘Very nicely—’ began Athol Cudby.
The undertaker struck the bar in great excitement. ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for. Athol here knows I’m investing in one of those neon signs. Off and on all night. Too many of the old families in these parts going past ole Charlie lately. Have a wagon sent up from one of those upstart undertakers to take ole Dad’s body all the way to the crematorium at Highriver would they? It’s degrading. Fellows are a disgrace to the profession. Not even got a decent hearse with flowers painted on it. It’s high time people around here were made to realise it’s just as important to die in a dignified way as it is to live graciously. You’re the answer to my prayer, Mr Salter.’
The tall man rubbed his hands together gleefully.
‘Yer may count on me, sir,’ he chuckled.
‘Neon sign going off and on all night.
The dignity of death. The dignity of death.
How does that sound, eh, eh—’
‘
Cremations arranged
,’ put in Athol Cudby. ‘I thought that was what it was gunna be. I like that better.’
The cigar ceased to waggle as the undertaker digested Athol Cudby’s interjections.
‘
Cremations
—’ began Athol Cudby, but Charlie Dabney held up a stern hand to silence him. He spent a few moments in rapt cogitation and then slapped the bar triumphantly.
‘Great Scott! A revelation! I’ve got it! See it clear as the tadpoles in that water carafe. Heh, heh. Episode closed. Can’t
you see their faces! Can’t you see their mouths hanging open like the addled-brained nincompoops they are, when they see that sign flicking on and off all night! And dear ole frien’ here, Mr Salter, in the window sawing through a coffin with some young popsie in a nightdress inside it. It’ll create a furore. Dabney and Son, the ole firm. Great Scott, we’ll put these upstarts over at Highriver clean outa business.’
Monday, tongue in cheek, dawned bright and clear. Les Wilson walked half-way home with me in the dinner hour and we were the happiest. Victor Lynch had not even looked in our direction at school and his lieutenant, Skin Hughson, had actually nodded at Les, so Les informed me.
I ran along our dirt path, saw a tall man standing on the verandah, without taking much notice. Then I saw his helmet, missed the top step and hit the deck flat on my face. The cop gave me a hand up. Ma was in the kitchen wringing her hands. Out came Uncle Athol, shaky and bloodshot-eyed, with a pink singlet done up around his neck and showing above his grey shirt. He was as unshaven as an albino hedgehog, but he had his teeth in.
‘C’mon, Cudby,’ said the cop. ‘Oi know, Oi know. It’s all a terrible mistake, but we’ll straighten everything out down at the sta-hayshun.’
I went into my bedroom. I could not tell if I was shaking with fear or relief.
Herbert was still in bed, which was not actually a new development. We watched the cop and Uncle Athol get into a big sedan car (in which, I little dreamed, I was to have one of the most hair-raising rides of my life) and drive off. Herbert lit a cigarette with a shaking hand.
‘What a start for the day,’ he said. ‘Cripes, that give me a turn. That’s undone all the good of a night’s rest, that has. What’s the old tit done?’
‘Dunno.’ I went to take one of Herbert’s cigarettes, but he grabbed the packet.
‘Thought yuh wanted to be a six-footer.’
‘I’ve changed muh mind, I’m gunna be a jockey.’ I made a grab for the smokes, but just then Ma came in carrying on something awful.
‘What a disgrace!’ she cried. ‘There’s Athol dragged off in handcuffs to the cop-shop and yuh father as drunk as a coot on a Monday. This is the end of us around this burg. I might as well give up the ghost right now. Many’s the time I’ve said there’s trouble just around the corner and now it’s all coming true on a bloody Monday. Yuh father’ll be picked up for being drunk-in-charge as sure as eggs’re eggs and that’ll be the stone end of the whole caboosh. If Grandma uz here, she’d drop down stone dead from shame, and so would I. What a beginning for the week with a tub full of washing. Poor little Eddy, get yourself some bread and jam, yuh poor little boy. Yuh mother’s nearly all in and can’t bring her mind around to thinking of food. I’ve had a terrible shock seeing that cop standing there on the doorstep, and yuh father as drunk as a coot.’
Pop was standing with his back to the stove, the nape of his neck against the mantelpiece and his hands behind his back. I had noticed the Dennis in the yard so there had obviously been a rescue expedition to Te Rotiha. By Pop’s appearance, the operation had not been all work and no play. I could tell by the way his head was wagging from side to side, he was a real job all right. I had to work in behind him to see if there was any stew in the pot. There was a spoonful of stew with a carrot in it.
‘Ducashun,’ said Pop. ‘Sathing. Ducashun. Be lawyuh, doctuh. Go school, get ducashun. Breeding gets yuh nowhere. Gotta have lottsa dough and ducashun. Police got no breeding. Got no friggin’ ducashun either. Poor ole Athol. Whitesh man Chris’ ever put breath into. Gunna miss ole Athol. Get legal counsel. Bes’ money can buy. Kayshee if neshry. Money no object. Disgrace firm Daitch Poindexter. Gross miscarriage jusch.’
I got some bread and butter and sat up at the end of the table with my spoonful of stew.
‘Fowls,’ said Pop. ‘Hic.’
That was one spoonful of stew that bore a charmed life. I put it back on the plate.
‘Fowls,’ Pop went on. ‘Ole Athol wouldn’t stoop to stealing fowls. Can’t stoop anyway. Got a rupchuh.’
He started chortling idiotically.
‘Couldn’t pull a friggin’ fowl off the nest,’ he gurgled.
I heard Prudence coming in and pounded out to head her off. Dolly and Monica were right on her heels, so I beckoned her into the washhouse.
‘Crummy,’ she said, when I told her the goings on. I paced up and down the washhouse like a nut. Prudence came back.
‘It’s fowls, awright,’ she said. ‘That’s what the police have got him over. He’s been raffling fowls all over town every Saturday and they reckon he’s been stealing ‘em. Ma said it was Lynch’s fowls that got pinched. Whatcha gunna do, Ned?’
I sat down on the W.C. seat. As far as I was concerned this was the end of the trail.
‘Whatcha gunna do?’ Prudence worried. ‘He never took any fowls. You did. Maybe he’s got an alleyway.’
I said nothing. What could I say? Prudence said, ‘Well I gotta have something to eat. I didn’t have any brekker this morning.’
I high-tailed it down to Wilson’s and now it was my turn to spoil someone’s dinner. I will grant Les this, he made the only sensible suggestion to date.
‘Well, one thing’s fuh sure,’ he said. ‘We can’t go to school. We gotta go somewhere quiet where we can use our brains.’
The thought of locking ourselves in Fitzherbert’s shed with all that gang of poultry was too much, so we headed for the dam. We stretched out under a pine tree, which grew out over the water. The pine sadly contemplated its image, impaled on the reeds, while we tried to marshal our wits.
‘The trouble is,’ Les kept pointing out, ‘we haven’t got enough grata. We don’t know what to do because we don’t know what’s going on. The old boy might have wriggled out of it. We’ll just have to have more grata.’
‘I’ll just have to confess, if he hasn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not a complete ratbag.’
‘Neither am I,’ said Les hotly. ‘I’ll confess too. But I’ll tell you something, Ned Poindexter, and that is I know who is a ratbag.’
‘Who?’
‘Yeruncle Athol,’ he said. After a while he said, ‘How d’yuh
know it wasn’t our chooks he stole? How d’yuh know it wasn’t yuh preshus Uncle Athol who took our Black Orphingtons and not Victor Lynch at
tall
?’
We gaped at each other.
‘It adds up,’ said Les excitedly. ‘These fowls he was raffling. That musta been on Saturday. Pru told yuh it was Saturday. The raid on our coop was Friday night. Doesn’t that ring a bell?’
‘By cripes, but we did the Lynch job on Saturday night. How do the police tie that up with Uncle Athol raffling ’em on Saturday in the daytime? Howja count fuh that?’
‘P’raps he’s been at it all along. P’raps he’s been flogging chooks right and left for a long time. This job of ours mighta just been the last straw.’
‘But Les, he helped us build that coop. Surely he wouldn’t be such an absolute barstid?’
‘According to my father,’ Les said firmly, ‘he’s the biggest barstid yud meet in a day’s march. According to my father, if Mr Cudby was around and yuh had any gold in yuh teeth, yud be running an awful risk going to sleep with yuh mouth open. According—’
I winced. ‘Don’t keep on saying “according to my father”,’ I rasped. ‘I heard yuh the first time. Awright then, so Uncle Athol is a ratbag, but the point is he’s in the boob for stealing chooks and for all we know it might be the same chooks we took from Lynch’s. Pru said it was Lynch’s chooks the stink was over. We gotta find out where we stand. We gotta know what’s happening.’
‘Well, didn’t I say that?’ said Les. ‘We gotta have more grata. That’s what I said before. Unless we get some more grata we just can’t figure anything out at
tall
. We just don’t know what
course of action to ‘dopt. Not without grata, Ned.’
It seemed no time at all before we heard the school bell in the distance.
‘Time sure goes a lot quicker playing the wag than it does at school,’ Les observed gloomily. ‘Almost wish we’d gone now. Now we’ll be in the cart at school on top of everything. It’s not as if we’ve been able to figure anything out. We just haven’t got the grata to think anything out. Now if only we could see a young lady, in the nood, with her throat cut, floating on that pond, like those jokers in the city did, we’d really give the cops something to think about.’
‘Yeah,’ I said absently. ‘WHAT!’
‘Well, wouldn’t we? That ud stop all this fuss about a few chooks. And if they blamed yeruncle Athol for it, it wouldn’t be any of our dern business.’
‘That’s a terrible business, Les. I told you I saw her aunt and cousin on the train, didn’t I? And they haven’t caught anybody yet. Ask me, all the cops are good for is hounding down poor devils like Uncle Athol and me’n you. I wonder who it was?’
‘Now how in hell should I know! Thas one thing you can say about living in a sleepy hole like Klynham—yuh don’t meet real bad sods like that. I wonder what those kids felt like when they saw her floating on the pond with her throat cut from ear to ear? Water red as red ink like as not. Can’t yuh just imagine what that poor sheila musta looked like, Neddy, floating there with her throat gaping open from ear to ear, in the nood, and the water red as ink all around. Can’tcha just see the sorta bubbles—’
‘Now look here, Les,’ I said, having had just about enough of this, ‘the way you’re going on you’d think
we had
found her. I’ve just about had a gutzfull uv the way you go on and on
about things. Honestly yud think nothing would please yuh more than if yuh did find a nood sheila with her throat cut from—floating on the lake.’
‘In the nood,’ said Les. ‘According to my father he’s a necro something or other.’
‘Who is?’
‘The guy that cut this poor sheila’s throat from ear to ear. According to my father—I listened to what he was saying outside the door—he’s a guy that has inter something with sheilas when they’re conked. According to my father the police have found out that this guy conks them first and then roots them and that makes him the saddest guy and a necro something.’
‘Now is that so? Well, Les, you certainly surprise me. I’m not quite sure I quite understand this conks and then roots them business.’
‘Well neither am I, Neddy,’ Les confessed. ‘But you can take it from me thas the general idea. It’s what my father said to my mother and he wouldn’t be kidding
her
.’
‘Well it makes me sick.’
Les made no answer and after a while I looked over at him. He was stretched out with one arm and one leg held stiffly up in the air, and he had the screwiest look on his face as if he had thrown a fit. It gave me a nasty start.
‘Les,’ I said uneasily, ‘Whatta hell. Snap out uv it.’
‘I’m conked,’ he informed me out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Root me.’
‘I’ll root you awright,’ I hissed, pouncing on him, ‘and I’ll cut yuh throat and chuck yuh in the lake too, you see if I don’t.’
Some days I could beat Les and some days he could beat me
and some days nobody won. In the end we would just collapse. This was one of those collapsing days. After the battle royal we made our way back to town and bid each other an exhausted ‘Abyssinia’ at the corner—just a couple of good pals, with muddy knees, sweaty spines and a toss-up who had the most pine needles down his shirt.
The very youthful policeman, who came to our place on Monday night with a portable typewriter, was called Ramsbottom. I am not going to divulge what we called him. No amount of kidding around, ‘Oh go on, do tell,’ will prevail. It is just too vulgar altogether.
The whole business was highly irregular, as I can see. The police wanted us to go to the station, but Ma had apparently gone into a flat spin and it does not surprise me in the least, knowing how Ma can go when she gets into overdrive, that the cops threw in the sponge.
When the cop arrived he asked for a side room to take our statements in, one by one, and Ma went into another nose-dive. Our kitchen did not have much decor to speak of, but alongside the other rooms it was a Louis Quinze salon. The young constable solved this brightly by suggesting that he took over this room and we all waited in the passage, or somewhere, but this was as far as he got.
‘What and freeze!’ said Ma, although it was such a balmy night we had let the stove go out. ‘Freeze us up to a state where we’d say the first thing that popped into our head I s’pose. Oh no, yuh don’t, and have yuh putting words into muh children’s mouth to swear away their innocence. I’ve heard all about those tricks, thank yuh very much, and it doesn’t suit me at all to letcher get away with it under muh very nose. The truth will
prevail, by Jesus, and it’s my avowed intention and Mr Poindexter’s too, to see that the innocent are not going to suffer while we freeze to a state where we say the first thing that pops into our head.’
‘I feel shuah,’ began Pop, who was only just feeling his way, having spent the afternoon in the sack.
‘Mr Poindexter feels sure and so does Mr Cudby,’ Ma went on, ’that the interests of justice will be best served by us all remaining in here together in this room, having a council of war, and everyone saying his piece until the whole shameful business is brought to a satisfactory collusion. My husband and me feel badly mortified to have the arm of the law under our very roof on account of the drunken foolishness of muh brother. In spite of all his drunken foolishness and the trouble it has brought into our dwelling on a Monday I feel it is only Christian to remember that Athol has never been the same since he lost his eye and been rupchud.’
‘Natalie,’ said Uncle Athol, feebly, ‘I feel sure—’
‘You go to hell!’ said Ma. ‘Yuv brought enough trouble and disaster to our very doorstep. Now, officer, let’s get on with this here intergration and third degree.’
So that was that. The only victory to the law was that Herbert, who tried to sidle nonchalantly into the night, was brought back and allotted a chair next to Uncle Athol. Even then it was not long (the instant his statement had been taken) before Herbert managed to dematerialise.
‘Moi noime,’ Constable Ramsbottom recited, reading my own statement back to me that night, ‘is Edward Clifton Poindexter and Oi reside with moi pah-harents at their residence Number one ’undred and foive, Winchester Street. Moi age is
fourteen and Oi am a pupil attending Klynham Primary School.’
Under the unshaded electric light bulb a bottle or so of haircream glistened on the cop’s wavy, dark hair.
‘On the noight uv the ther-rud ’aving completed moi ’omework…’ He paused craftily. ‘ ’Istory did you say?’
‘Jography,’ I said promptly. No flies on me.