FROST IN INLAND DISTRICTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 8

FROST IN INLAND DISTRICTS

by

AUGUSTUS

by profession, Dave Dawber had family claims above the malice of the Hunt Club to threaten or subdue. That is to say, his folk were sheep farmers. Even in the days before a sheep could carry on its back the price of a refrigerator or a radio-cocktail-gram the Dawbers had had two trucks and sent their children wailing away to a school in the South.Island where the fees were flatteringly ruinous. Somewhere off Kaikoura» at the beginning of every term. their lamentations would mingle at sea with those of the children of South Island farmers going north. So it was that Dave often found himself invited to week-end parties deep in the tussocky hinterland that raves into ridges and ravines beyond the reach of Rural Delivery. The unbridged creeks would be stirred to mud by a succession of custom-built Beutleys which automatically elected to stay in low gear for hundreds of miles after the tar-sealing gave out. Overhead squadrons of topdressing planes made the air gay with their caracolling. Sheep sighed and coughed away over the landscape, bowed down with the weight of more refrigerators, more Bentleys and more South Island culture, On the occasion of which I am to tell, Dave Dawber’s humble Hawk was exhausting its gasoline in the direction of Mangapatama, as it had been called at one time. Now it was called Lipton Lodge, and Dave was struck with the way life imitated art. For none of the Liptons (unlike the other farmers whose wives’ departure and arrivals by air regularly filled the local newspapers) had ever been in a Lodge, or a Court, or a Manor, or a Grange. They did, however, bring home a car-load uf de: tective novels every time they went to town in the summer so that they might A bx he was a dentist

read through the period of swollen creeks and impassable roads. A Maori cowboy, hearing Dave’s horn above the harmonies of Tex Morton, hurried out to swing wide the wrought iron gates. He pulled his forelock and murmured, "Welcome, Missa Dawber, suh." Dazedly, Dave flipped him a fiver. reflecting that the imitation of art came expensive, A winding gravel drive bordered by box hedges brought Dave in view of the ivy-coloured house. Aged menials appeared, to take away his car and his luggage. When a bat floated out of the ivy and back again Dave knew there

was going to be a murder. Art is not mocked. HERE were eight guests and a butler, Count Bachwartz had a sinooth swarthy skin and a reputation as a duellist. His wife wore a black evening frock with a chromium dagger as ornament. Dr. Ellen Davis was stained to the armpits with the chemicals she carried everywhere in her valise. And Mrs. Pfeifer was, as everyone knew, a secret dipsomaniac. Carmonetta Bromley had studied necromancy and herbs itn the

Congo after leaving boarding school. None of these could conceivably have become the murderer. There was Slade Spear, whose long stee] fingers, grey stone eyes and faultless evening dress, marked him at once as a sleuth. That left only Mr, Wilkinson, a clergyman, whose meek manners and slight stammer betrayed the murderer, had there ever been any doubt about it. For the butler was an ex-con-vict, as Dave noted by the shaven head. No, the only problem was, who was going to be murdered. It was at dinner that the frightful truth came home to Dave. They were all sitting there silently while Mrs. Lipton shrieked and crowed about income tax and the Cocteau Party and tapped ash into her soup from a platinum holder. Dave looked up to see the pale blue eyes of Mr. Wilkinson fixed sadly upon him. The blood rushed to his head. He looked in terror’ down the table to where Slade Spear was alternately flicking cigarettes into his mouth from a silver case and stubbing them out on his plate. Slade Spear, it may be added, was impassive. That night Dave had a nightmare from which he woke up screaming, Mr. Wilkinson had been pushing him into ‘a bale of wool and clamping him down in the press, In a lather of relief Dave remembered that he was preserved from that particular fate by the laws of copyright. ee Saturday wore to a close with the count and his wife coming sideways downstairs with their hands pressed -to the wall behind them. When Dr. Ellen Davis stood up after lunch an empty phial fell from her lap and splintered on the parquet floor. Mrs. Pfeifer. and Carmonetta Bromley reeked of. absinthe and voodoo. Slade Spear sat impassively flicking cigarettes into his miouth and stubbing them out. But Mr. Wilkinson spent the day in his bedroom playing Handel on the Wurlitzer organ. Dave was petrified. The thing that preyed on his mind now was Mr. Wilkinson’s method. Not the motive, but the motif .as it were. He would gaze morbidly around the house searching for its central feature. A great bed of Housemaid’s Knee (poliflora) dominated the South Terrace’ but even to his excited fancy these: seemed hardly lethal, The vast marble reproduction of the Venus B. de Mille which lurched on one hip at the turn of the stairs gripped his imagination for some time. He saw the title page: Dead Flat, and spent the night pondering how the statue. was to be launched upon him. An air of foreboding lapped the sleeping house. It seemed to be coming from the stables. But the next morning Dave discovered that the statue was plaster-of-paris and hollow. UNDAY wore towards a close. A lot of Sundays are worn in the country. On the surface it was just another country Sabbath. A speckled adder slid in and out under Carmonetta’s door; Slade Spear flicked his lighted cigarette with deadly accuracy into a bow! of dahlias which blew up; towards four o’clock Mr. Wilkinson sinisterly changed to Bach. Dave was washing his hands and reflecting that if something didn’t happen soon Mr. Wilkinson would be seriously violating the Unity of Time. At that moment his eye fell with a thud on to the refrigerator for toothbrushes, and the motif was in his mind in a flash. Also the title: Stone Cold Dead, He shuddered. seis He ran in a panic down to the library, looking for Slade Spear or at least a (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) handbook on defrosting. Only the butler was there, drying martinis on his apron. This gave Dave, as they say, pause. Another flash took place in his mind: Why not a twist in the plot? Periectly legitimate. Even laudable. He withdrew to another part of the house fingering his lip. E was early down to breakfast on Monday morning. The only other guest present was Slade Spear, who had as usual spent the night on the phone. In silence they consumed their Bran Flaxe, until Slade Spear, unable to find the singular, crossed the room to the master refrigerator, which occupied the whole west wall of the dining room. He opened the door. Mrs. Lipton fell out on the floor with a chink. "Were you ever in Dunedin, Mr. Dawber?" Slade Spear flicked a cigarette into his mouth, "Why, er, no, I never was... "Come, Mr. Dawber, I’ve been checking. You were once in Dunedin, and so you’d know what temperatures like this can do. Or rather, what can be done by temperatures like this," he added, passive for the first time. He stubbed his cigarette out with a hiss on Mrs. Lipton. "All right boys." The room filled with mounted country police. "