“Give me your private opinion,” Bony requested, and Bolt said, “I won’t bet any way-natural causes, suicide, murder-I’ve just got a funny little feeling that Blake was laid out. We can’t discover any likely motive for suicide, or any motive for murder. I don’t believe he died from natural causes just because the pathologists and the toxicologists can’t find any unnatural causes sufficiently severe to have killed him. My crowd are all flat out on a series of gang murders, and I thought of you and decided that this Blake business might be right up your alley. As I just said, I’m pleased you consented to come and take hold of it because I don’t want it to grow cold.”

It was cold enough in all conscience. Blake had died on 10th November and now it was 3rd January. The Coroner’s verdict was an open one, and the dramatis personae had scattered: one to England, another to Adelaide, the third to Sydney, the others being domiciled in Victoria. Cold and dead as the author-critic, the case was all Bony’s.

His decision to “look into it” had been taken entirely on Bolt’s recommendation. From the summary of the investigation he had formed no opinion, and study of the huge official file he intended leaving until after he retired to that most attractive bedroom.

So here he was a thousand miles or so from his own stamping grounds, seated at ease a few yards from a main highway instead of a winding camel pad, living in a country of flowing water and green verdure instead of flowing sand and brick-red, sun-baked earth. Oh yes, a detective’s life did have an occasional bright patch in it. And in this case the particular bright patch was Miss Priscilla Pinkney. She came and sat with him.

“I do hope, Mr Bonaparte, that you won’t be disturbed by the timber trucks,” she said. “My brother used at first to complain bitterly about the-the damn noise beginning too early in the morning. Just listen to that one coming up the hill.”