Murder Must Wait Page 12

  “A drop of battery acid, my old man used to say,” replied Alice.

  “H’m! I remember hearing that one before,” Bony said, faintly disapproving. “I have a less drastic formula. Well, here is the invitation. Reads: ‘Sherry at five. Marlo-Jones. Do come. Inspector Bonaparte and Cousin.’ The last written in green ink in a style rarely seen these days. Cousin! Knowledge from gossip, Alice. You cannot escape.”

  “I’m not going,” Alice declared. “I won’t drink plonk.”

  “You will accompany me, Alice,” Bony ordered, the smile leavening the flat evenness of authority. “You will drink plonk with me. I will have at hand an efficient antidote so that neither will suffer ... much ... in performance of duty.”

  “There’s nothing in the Oath of Allegiance about having to drink plonk,” argued Alice, tossing her head and having to retighten the roll of hair.

  “You won’t drink plonk for a reason other than to please me,” soothed Bony. “I must accept the invitation. I must be supported by someone, decidedly you for preference, and if eventually we swing down Main Street arm in arm and minus decorum, well...”

  “I don’t like it,” Alice continued to protest. “Could I take a bottle of gin or something?”

  “I fear not,” Bony gravely told her. “Our hosts would feel insulted. So, sherry it must be.”

  “I hate the filthy stuff.”

  “They say you get to acquire a taste for it,” Essen observed. “Don’t mind it myself.”

  “You’re not going; I am,” announced Alice ... all objection banished by the thought that Bony might substitute Essen for her.

  A few minutes later Bony dismissed them for the day and, having gathered his papers and locked them in his case, he strolled into the warm and balmy night to call on the Reverend Mr Baxter, who received him with smiling friendliness and kept him talking for an hour.

  Nothing came of that interview additional to the sparse information already obtained from the Methodist Minister, and for a further hour and a half Bony walked the streets of Mitford, feeling within his mind a growing restlessness, which sprang from intuitive promptings that forces were gathering against him rather than from impatience with the progress and speed of his investigations.

  He could think of nothing left undone, no avenue left unexplored. There was no Pearl Rockcliff on any Electoral Roll in the States of New South Wales and Victoria, and the Income Tax authorities knew of no tax payer of that name. Teams of patient men were delving into the background of all persons whose name began with Q on the chance of finding a woman absent from her usual abode ... a gigantic task seemingly without end and without prospect of success.

  People were leaving the cinema when he passed down Main Street to reach the Police Station. The police residence was in darkness, but there was a light in the office across the way, and there Bony found a constable on duty. He had nothing to report.

  With thought of a shower before bed, Bony entered his room physically and mentally tired. Switching on the light, he sat on the bedside chair to remove his shoes for slippers, when bodily movement abruptly ceased.

  Something was wrong with the room.

  Standing, his eyes registered this pleasant interior, accepting every item with suspicion and finding no fault. The suitcase against the wall was as he had left it when brushing his hair before dinner. The chest of drawers was normal, and things upon it unmoved. The desk was neat and almost bare, the ashtray littered with cigarette-ends. But numerically less than when he had gone out. The ends were of cigarettes smoked by Alice McGorr. All the ends of his own self-made cigarettes had vanished.

  Oh yes, something was wrong. He sniffed, without sound and without cease, like a hound silently hunting a scent. He lowered the blinds and prowled like a cat suspicious of danger, often bringing his nose close to the furniture, and sometimes to the linoleum covering the floor. The linoleum was old and the light was of little use to show tracks.

  The bed was as when expertly made by Mrs Yoti, the upper sheet folded down over the blankets, his pyjamas neatly folded and lying upon the pillow. He sniffed at the pyjamas, the pillows. He studied the bed again, and again sniffed at the pillows, and the pyjamas. The coarse cream linen bedspread was without a rumple anywhere.

  He looked under the bed. Nothing. He opened the wardrobe and burrowed among the clothes there. He opened the suitcase and carefully examined every item. Still nothing. But the prickling at the nape of his neck, the reaction to danger which had never yet fooled him, continued to warn, warn insistently.

  Back again at the bed, he sniffed it all over and now with loud vigour. He fancied he detected a strange odour, could not be positive, and the doubt put springs to his shoeless feet and magnified sensitivity at his fingertips. Gingerly he took up the pyjamas and dropped them on the chair. The top pillow he lifted as carefully, and then the second pillow. Deliberately cautious, he rolled down the bedclothes, over and over to the foot of the bed.

  And then he leapt to the dressing-table for his hairbrush to smash five red-back spiders which had been lying in wait to inject their poison into his feet.

  Lurking under cover, often in colonies, this insect’s attack is to be countered by swift medical attention, or surely culminates in long illness if not death.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Doomed Race

  IT WAS not a pleasing day, and Alice decided that if people liked living in the bush in preference to the salubrious cities, they could stay in their damned bush. Once away from the vineyards and the orchards nurtured by the network of water channels webbed about Mitford, the Murray Valley in summer presents a picture of flat barrenness, a suntrap masked by dark grey dust raised by the wind.

  Constable Robins drove his own car, with Bony and Alice as passengers, and a mile out of town the macadamised road gave place to the natural earth track of the outback ... the road to Albury. This was followed for two miles, over the barren flats, under the occasional gum or box tree, until, when the track was about to cross a creek, a branch track took them to the Aboriginal Settlement.

  Compared with the river flats, the site of the Settlement was a surprisingly pleasant change. Several acres occupied an elbow of the tree-lined creek, and guarding the elbow stood the Superintendent’s house, with the store on one side and the church on the other. Behind this first rampart were the trade shops, the school and the hospital, and beyond these buildings, in the elbow itself, were streets of one-room shacks capable of housing a family.

  It was shortly before eleven, and the ‘streets’ were empty of children, who were now packed into the school and singing their lessons. Those aborigines to be seen were dressed in white fashion, the women in gaily coloured clothes.

  The Superintendent, the Reverend Mr Beamer, received the visitors in his office, occupying a part of the store. He was young, obviously enthusiastic and not averse to cigarettes. Further, he was brisk, frank, dressed in white duck, and reminded Bony of a successful peanut farmer.

  “As Sergeant Yoti explained on the telephone,” Bony opened, “I’ve come to interview Bertrand Marcus Clark. I brought my cousin, Miss McGorr, with me because she wishes to see your work with the aborigines.”

  “Then, Inspector, Miss McGorr is more welcome than you,” Mr Beamer said decisively. “We are always delighted to meet those who are interested in our efforts and, perhaps excusably, less delighted to receive anyone representing the law. Clark appears to have been more sinned against than sinning ... by the look of him.” Mr Beamer chuckled. “Quite a sound thrashing for being in town during prohibited hours.”

  “That’s the view taken by Sergeant Yoti, I believe,” returned Bony. “However, my interest in him lies in the reason for his being in town. There is no restriction on these people by you?”

  “Regarding their freedom, none at all. They may come and go off on walkabout at will, but we do persuade the children to stay during school terms. Everyone knows, of course, that they must not be in town between sunset and sunrise unless w
ith official permission. And they have to keep the rules governing their conduct when in the Settlement.”

  “And white people are not permitted to enter the Settlement without your sanction?”

  “Correct. Actually they want for nothing, being provided with rations, from flour to tobacco. They are also provided with straw-filled mattresses and blankets. Reverting to Marcus Clark, his real reason for being in town late that night was to visit Ellen Smith. He wants her to marry him, but, I understand, the courtship isn’t running smoothly.”

  “And Ellen Smith is...?”

  “The domestic employed by Mrs Marlo-Jones. Ellen is a full-blood lubra. Mrs Marlo-Jones told me that Ellen won’t make up her mind about Clark, and that as he was pestering Ellen, she ordered Clark away from the house and told him not to go there again.”

  “Ellen Smith is probably being wise,” Bony said, smilingly. “I cannot sense the romantic in Clark’s makeup. How long have you been in charge here, Mr Beamer?”

  “A little over three years,” replied the Superintendent, who, Alice guessed, was wondering what really lay behind these questions.

  “During your service here, have there been upsets among them?”

  “At the beginning of my term, yes, quite a number. Then I knew very little about these people ... from personal contact, but...” The minister smiled and Alice liked that ... “but I was very willing to learn and I readily admit that Professor and Mrs Marlo-Jones were towers of strength.

  “I found that these people had come a very long journey from the tribal discipline enjoyed by their ancestors. They had become too closely associated with white civilisation, and because our civilisation will not or cannot assimilate them, for I refuse to believe the Australian aborigine cannot himself be assimilated, they were fallen into a condition of racial chaos.

  “We came to this country and conquered with guns and poison. What a basis for national pride today! From the aborigine we took his land and the food the land provided. Worse, we took his spirit and trod it into the dust, leaving him with nothing excepting the pitiful voice crying: ‘Gibbit tucker.’ When plain murder was no longer tolerated, we tossed the starving aborigine a hunk of meat and a pound of flour and told him to get to hell out of it. A wonderful Christian nation, are we not?

  “Forgive me for becoming heated,” pleaded Mr Beamer. “I had never placed the aborigine on a pedestal, but I have sought ways and means of helping him to help himself back to his former independence of mind and spirit. I roused the head men from their indifference to exert again their old influence and power ... of course, under my general supervision. Thus the people were brought under the kind of discipline they can understand, and they became keenly interested in the least obnoxious of the corroborees and the folk-dancing. This in turn has enhanced the tribal and community spirit, and that pride in themselves without which no people can exist, let alone flourish.”

  “Good work, Padre,” warmly complimented Bony, and Alice wanted to add ‘Hear! Hear!’ “Thereafter you have had less and less upsets?”

  “Yes. But the credit must go largely to the Marlo-Joneses. They are both knowledgeable and understanding.”

  “You must have the vision and the energy to translate it to reality,” softly insisted Bony. “You have been able to gather the head men into conference?”

  “Yes, they meet in council. Often I am invited to attend, and still more often I ask them to attend on me. One great advantage is that delinquents like Marcus Clark are tried by the head men and, if they persist in misbehaving, are banished from the Settlement. Very seldom do I participate.

  “We insist that the adults attend church service twice on Sunday and find we need to use no coercion. The children ... you shall see them at work ... give pleasure to their teachers, not worry. The point to be determined with the children, and here Professor Marlo-Jones has been of enormous assistance, is how to give them the best education to occupy the tragically limited spheres in which white civilisation will permit them to live. You know how it is. Other than stockmen and domestics, they are not wanted.”

  “Yes, I know how it is,” admitted Bony, and Alice caught the note of bitterness. “What staff have you?”

  “My wife runs the school with aboriginal women of Intermediate standard. We have an aborigine who is an excellent store-keeper and he helps me with the books. I received my medical degree shortly before coming here and so, with the assistance of Dr Delph, manage the hospital. We have an aboriginal butcher, and aboriginal carpenter, another a blacksmith, and an old fellow who actually repairs watches for a Mitford jeweller.”

  “Excellent, Mr Beamer.” Bony stood. “Well, we won’t keep you longer than can be avoided. Thank you for being so patient.”

  “Thanks are due to you, Inspector, and to you, Miss McGorr. Would you like to look round now?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  At the school they were presented to Mrs Beamer and her assistants, where they examined the children’s work and listened to their singing. They were shown over the church, and greatly admired the tapestry done by the senior girls. They looked into the neat and well stocked store, and found the watch-mender at his bench in the blacksmith’s shop, an ancient man with a scraggy white beard, scraggy white hair and scraggy white eyebrows. He amused Bony, talking and joking while displaying his fine tools, and Bony wondered if the metal filings on the bench were likely to be blown into the mechanism of the watches. Alice was completely absorbed when in the hospital she found two new babies not yet old enough to have lost their red skins.

  Bertrand Marcus Clark had a ward to himself and failed to appreciate the honour. He was surly and replied evasively only to the Superintendent. When again in the hot sunlight, the minister said:

  “One of the few I neither like nor trust, Inspector.”

  “I can understand your failure to like him,” agreed Bony.

  “Why do you distrust him?”

  “I have no proof, but I think he is at the bottom of many little upsets. For some time I’ve felt undercurrents antagonistic to my work and hopes, and have suspected they emanated from Clark. I try not to be uncharitable, but...”

  The Superintendent and his wife walked with them to the car, and invited them to come again.

  “Friendly people, weren’t they?” Alice said when on the road back to town. “And those cuddly little babies. Is it true they will turn black in a few days?”

  “Yes. I think it will be an improvement.”

  “I don’t. I just love them as they are.”

  He glanced at her profile, saw by the set of her mouth that she was in her rebellious mood, and again glancing at her he felt pity for this woman to whom a career was merely an opiate, and he was momentarily concerned by what inhibited instincts might do with her.

  “They reminded me of newly hatched birds in a nest,” he said, and swiftly and sharply she exclaimed:

  “Shut up.”

  They came to the green belt of fruit trees and vines, of lucerne plots and lawns about the brightly painted houses, and presently to the lower end of Main Street. Here Alice spoke softly, and gently touched his hand.

  “I’m sorry I was snappy. It was your fault, as usual. You will make me forget you’re an inspector and I’m a nobody.”

  “I shall continue to make you forget, Alice. As my wife sometimes admits, I’m the most understanding man in the world.”

  For the third time he glanced at her, and now she was looking at him, and her eyes were misty.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Plonk Party

  AMID THE lower Australian peck order where Alice McGorr had been born and reared, wines are imbibed from the bottle or thick china cups or tumblers. Of course, in the particular section of Australian society to which she was now to be presented, wines are sipped or swilled from fragile crystal. There is no difference in the quality or potency of the liquor.

  For people like Bony this sherry-quaffing was unfortunate when, as in this instance, he was forced
to drink it in the course of duty. Any other type of wine would have been less obnoxious, because Australia can produce wines the equal of overseas products ... all wines excepting sherry, which has a digestive reaction similar to the oil in sardine cans.

  As Alice told him when they were being driven to the home of Professor and Mrs Marlo-Jones, she wasn’t a wowser, and was not averse to a drink provided she could choose her drink and say when. Far more than Bony had she seen the ill effects of alcohol from good honest Scotch down the ladder to methylated spirits and, still lower, battery acid. Alcohol had ruined her father, had blurred his brain and thickened his fingers. He had been extremely successful on rum; the beginning of the end was plonk.

  She was still mutinous at having to accompany Bony to this social engagement, and not for the world would she confess that her hostility was due less to having to drink sherry than to lack of social confidence.

  Bony, too, possessed a secret which for nothing the world might render would he tell Alice McGorr. Her dress was wrong. The colour scheme was all colour. The hat was obviously a hat. And there was too much powder on her nose.

  Not that his ‘cousin’s’ appearance really disturbed him. Actually he was delighted with her, for no one, not even the most perspicacious, could possibly imagine Alice McGorr in the trim uniform of a policewoman. And further, his own sartorial elegance was emphasised.

  “Have you thought up the antidote to plonk?” she asked, her voice edged.

  “Oh yes. Robins will call for us at six, and will rush us first to your lodgings. You will at once take two teaspoons of carbonate of soda in a glass of hot water. When your tummy has disgorged the plonk, you must drink a cup of warm water in which six cloves have been boiled. Then lie and rest for half an hour. If you should find the bed behaving like the prow of a ship in a storm, you must take a nobbler of brandy.”