Murder Must Wait Read online

  “Ah, now what have you two been doing this evening?”

  “Enjoying our freedom,” replied the Sergeant’s wife. “We are about to make a pot of coffee and sandwiches for supper before Alice goes home. Would you call my husband and Mr Essen? I think he is in the office, too.”

  Bony did find Essen with the Sergeant, and on the desk between them a bottle of beer. When Bony clumped across the bare floor, Essen noted his shoes and stared blankly at his baggy trousers and limp black shirt.

  “You been to a ball?” he asked succinctly. Bony slipped into a chair.

  “I have been employing my artistic talents, Essen. Any news?”

  “Nothing,” replied Essen, placing a glass before Bony, who drank appreciatively, and from a trouser pocket produced a folded slip of paper.

  “Look at this metal dust, and give an opinion,” he said, and poured himself another drink.

  Whilst the two men crouched forward over the paper, and the white light beat upon the metal dust mixed with other metal scraps, Bony rolled and lit a cigarette. He slipped from his tired feet the shoes belonging to the Sergeant’s son, without need to untie the laces, and at last Essen said:

  “Too light for gold and it isn’t copper.”

  “Filings, seems to me,” said Yoti.

  “Filings, all right,” agreed Essen, and to Bony: “You know the answer?”

  “I have the thought that it’s filings from keys made for snap-locks.”

  “That’s it.” Essen brought a bunch of keys from a pocket, selected one and laid it upon the filings. “I’ll bet my job against a trey bit you’re right.”

  “Your decisiveness pleases me,” murmured Bony, and laid upon the desk what looked like ... just what it was. “Perhaps you could be as decisive with that.”

  Yoti said quickly: “Plaster of Paris. Look! Part of a key impression on this surface. Yale-type key, too.”

  “I could not find other pieces to complete the impression,” Bony said. “We might then have made a key and tried the lock of Mrs Rockcliff’s house, or that on the bank door.”

  Essen sat back. Yoti eyed Bony, either with suspicion or hopefulness.

  “Are you telling?” asked the Sergeant, and Bony presented him with a strip of celluloid. “You found that, same place as the plaster and the filings?”

  “In a blacksmith’s shop within a hundred miles of this office.”

  Bony smiled and was saved the bother of answering questions by Alice, who appeared to say that supper was ready, and would they please come, as people wanted to go to bed sometimes. Being domesticated men, they rose and followed her without protest.

  Bony first went to the laundry, where he left the number nines and put on his own shoes, before entering the house, where supper was being served in the kitchen. Alice refrained from looking directly at him. No remark was made about the old tweed trousers or the black shirt, because they were Bony’s props. Munching a sandwich, Alice was strongly reminded of her deceased father, who, when about to depart on a ‘can’ operation, invariably dressed as Bony now was ... in dark clothes and with not a spot of white visible.

  Later, when she was crossing the dark yard to enter Essen’s car, he to take her to his home before making the rounds of his guard posts, she found Bony beside her.

  “You went to the Library?” he asked softly.

  “Of course. The librarian said that the whole place was closed to the public on November 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30, while the interior decoration was being done.”

  “So! You know, Alice, that’s good team work.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wet Shoe-Prints

  EARLY THE following morning Bony returned the bicycle to the shop, and assured himself that no tracks of its tyres remained near the Police Station to be seen by Tracker Wilmot.

  It then being too early for breakfast, he sauntered down Main Street and took the side road to bring him to the river. Here the river bank was under cut grass maintained by the Parks Department, and the road fronting the residences of the elite ran straight and level and broad to meet the sun. It was going to be another hot day, but there were no signs of wind strong enough to make Mitford unpleasant. The wind came from the north and whispered to Bony the secrets of a million years, tales of tragedy and of love, and of those Beings who created a paradise for the black fellow to enjoy, and then forgot about it and him.

  The glorious colours of that paradise faded as the waters dried up and the winds came to scorch and wither and to braise the living with hot and faceted grains of sand. Men were compelled to use their minds to survive, which they did by the rigid application of two practices: the one, birth control, the other, elimination of the unfit.

  So there was sustenance for the chosen, and the chosen remained loyal to the Creators of the Paradise, handing down from generation to generation the telling of history by word, by the dance, and the pictures on the walls of caves. And until the coming of the white aliens there was laughter and law in the land.

  The first white man to set foot in Australia brought with him the Serpent from the Garden of Eden, when no longer was there in all the land law and laughter ... only the slow progress of segregation into compounds and Settlements of the ever dwindling remnants of a race.

  There was the Aboriginal Settlement supported by Christian Church and controlled by their representative, the purpose of the Churches to make amends, although but a fraction, for the evil done by the Serpent; the ambition of their representative to give back to the aborigine his traditions and his self-respect. Could that ambition be realised by encouraging the old practices only so far as approved by white law and when the white influence had brought the black fellow to a condition of spiritual chaos?

  Here and there on the broad and placid plane of the river the currents came to the surface to smile at Bony, slowly crinkling like the dimples on a baby’s face, and the simile made him smile although his heart was heavy with foreboding of what he might exhume. Turning, he strolled back the way he had come, arriving at the Police Station to sniff the aroma of frying bacon and good strong coffee.

  Yoti came in late, to receive a quiet rebuke from his wife.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Been trouble at the Settlement, and I’ve been kept by the phone. You know anything about it, Bony?”

  “I haven’t been near a telephone for days, Sergeant.”

  “Good at skipping round logs, aren’t you?”

  “Better than falling over them. What has happened?”

  “Padre Beamer rang up to report that a Kurdaitcha visited the Settlement last night. According to the blacks, this monster stands twenty feet high, has two huge eagle’s feet, takes a fifty-yard stride, and draws noughts and crosses all over the place. I suppose it was from the blacksmith’s shop out there you got those filings and plaster of Paris?”

  “It could be. What else did Mr Beamer complain about?”

  “Seems that the blacks reckon the Kurdaitcha lives here in Mitford. He rides a bike and cramps his feet into number nine shoes. He wants me to go out there and look at the evil signs drawn on the ground, and chalked on benches and wallboards and anvils and things, beside those terrible footprints.”

  “Pleasant day for the trip, Sergeant. I’m sure Mrs Yoti would like to accompany you. She told me only yesterday that she seldom goes anywhere with you.”

  Yoti snorted something about being too damned busy to go tracking a fool Kurdaitcha.

  “Might have to send Robins, and he’s been on duty all night with Essen.”

  “Not possible. I want to borrow Robins’s car for the afternoon. Anything on Mr Beamer’s mind?”

  “Yes, most of the blacks are packing to go on walkabout. Got the wind up. Even Marcus Clark is yelling to be off, roaring for someone to bring him crutches. What in hell did you do it for?”

  “Merely to watch what would happen,” Bony replied, chuckling. “And, of course, to create a diversion from my examination of the watch-mender’s bench.”

  “
Why that? You could have gone out there in daylight.”

  “One must be subtle when dealing with a subtle people.” Bony passed his cup to be filled by Mrs Yoti, who was not pleased by her husband’s attitude. “You see, Sergeant, when we investigate a murder we can go straight to the scene, trample all over the place, shout to all and sundry, bring all the inventions of science to bear on the clues. Nothing done or left undone can possibly affect the murdered. I came to Mitford to find what had happened to a number of infants and, until otherwise proved, I must hope to rescue those infants alive. Homicide methods applied to the abduction of those babies, I am confident, automatically destroy all reason to hope.”

  “And you think those blacks are in this baby-pinching racket?”

  Yoti was almost glaring at Bony, and Mrs Yoti, standing by the stove, paused in the act of filling the coffee-pot.

  “Yes. Possibly they are in this baby-pinching racket. It is also possible that you are in it, or Mrs Essen, or Dr Nott, or all of you. The vital objective is to find those babies.”

  “I must agree with you, Inspector Bonaparte,” interjected Mrs Yoti, and, stoically, her husband proceeded with his breakfast.

  “Mr Beamer can be placated, Sergeant,” Bony said a moment later. “Tell him that if a white man drew those figures, the abos would certainly know it and would not fly into a panic. It would seem that one of their medicine men has been up to mischief. Ask him to let us know if Clark goes with them, and later on find out how many abos remain in camp and who they are. And I would like to know if the blacks all went away in one party, or split up into several parties, and which track, or tracks, they took.”

  “All right! That’ll calm Beamer.”

  “Of course,” murmured Bony. “There is no situation so difficult that it cannot be countered with diplomacy.”

  “Chicanery!”

  “The meaning of both words is identical. I presume you are intimately acquainted with the surrounding country?”

  “Ought to be.”

  “D’you know if, say, within twenty miles of Mitford there is an outstanding unusual geological feature, such as rocks balanced on rocks and usually called Devil’s Marbles?”

  “There are Devil’s Marbles not far off the track to Ivanhoe, twelve miles out from the river. You can’t miss them in daylight,” replied Yoti thoughtfully. “There are several deep caves in the cliff face where the river once took a sharp bend. Take the track to Wentworth. People at Nooroo homestead will tell you where to go from there.”

  “H’m! Now let us switch from geology to arboriculture. Is there up- or down-river a particularly large or aged redgum?”

  “No gum outstanding in those respects.”

  “Is there a tree or trees which seems to be an oddity out in the red soil country?”

  “Yes, there is. About eleven miles from Mitford, the track to Wayering Station dips down into a shallow depression about two miles across. Almost in the middle of it is a solitary red-gum. It’s been burned by grass fire, struck by lightning, and still thrives.”

  “Sounds promising. Anything else come to mind?”

  “No-o. But I’d like to know what’s in your mind.”

  Bony pushed back his chair and rose. Taking both the Sergeant and Mrs Yoti into the range of his gaze, he said softly:

  “Dreams.”

  He went out and they looked at each other silently, and silently Sergeant Yoti rose from the table and, without speaking, left for his office.

  It was twenty minutes to ten o’clock when Bony entered the Library and studied the large-scale map of the district and surrounding country. Mentally he plotted the position of the Marbles, the solitary tree, the caves in the original bank of the river, and memorised routes and distances from Mitford. Thus engaged, he became conscious of the curator-librarian at his elbow.

  “Good morning, Inspector. I looked into the records about that rock drawing and found that it was presented to the library ... the original library it must have been ... by a Mr Silas Roddy in the year 1888.”

  “It was good of you take the trouble.”

  “Not at all. Only too happy to be of service. I could find nothing in the records interpreting the meaning of the drawing. It is stated, though, that Mr Roddy brought the drawing back with him when he returned from prospecting pastoral leases in the far north of South Australia. It seems that he brought other aboriginal relics back, too, for the rock drawing is only an item of a list. There are stone and wood churingas, ancient dilly-bags, rain stones and a set of pointing bones.”

  “Are the rain stones and pointing bones still here?”

  “Oh yes. Er ... Have you any reason to hope the rock drawing will be found and returned to us?”

  “Yes. I may hope to return it, or have it returned. Peculiar that no one seems to know what the drawing means. I was talking to Professor Marlo-Jones the other afternoon, and he said he had seen nothing like it elsewhere.”

  “Only that it might represent an ancestor dropping rain stones.”

  “Yes, he told me that was his opinion. He said, also, that the drawing would be of little value excepting perhaps to a rabid collector of aboriginal art. It wasn’t even a good drawing—nothing like the one in the Adelaide Museum.”

  “It is of value to Mitford.”

  “Of course,” Bony agreed. “I’m sure you may expect to see it again on the stand in the Reading Room. The books taken out by the late Mrs Rockcliff were returned?”

  “Yes, and thank you, Inspector.”

  Bony departed and thoughtfully strolled up Main Street. The Council men had only now finished flushing the gutters from kerbside hydrants, and the sun was silvering the gutter pools and splashings on the pavement. Two sparrows were taking a bath in one pool, showering themselves with silver and gold, and a woman walked across a wet area of pavement leaving the imprints of her shoes to evaporate on the dry cement. And beside her shoe-marks were the prints of a man’s shoes, size eight and worn along the outer edge under the toes.

  There were two prints, one perfect, the other almost evaporated. There were other prints, many of them, and passersby were adding to the number. There were the tracks of a dog. It was the one perfect human print and the one imperfect print which halted Bony.

  So the murderer of Mrs Rockcliff was still in Mitford, had been walking ahead of him by perhaps less than a hundred yards.

  Bony hurried, almost ran, seeking the next wet patch. The patch at the next hydrant extended merely a foot in from the kerbing, and gave nothing of the murderer’s footprints. He passed Martin & Martin’s Estate Offices, Madame Clare’s Frock Shop, the Olympic Bank, but the next two hydrants had done nothing to assist him, and when he returned down Main Street, the sun had dried the cement.

  Standing in black shadow, he looked at a display of books and saw only the jumbled colours of the jackets. He mopped his face with his handkerchief, seeing only the mental picture of that wet shoe-mark which tallied in every detail with those left on the linoleum at No 5 Elgin Street. A man taller than himself, who took a longer stride, who walked on his toes as though inebriated or just off a ship. Now it would be too early to be drunk, and the seafarer long since would have gained his land legs. A man who walked forward on the balls of his feet like one ever anxious to arrive.

  He entered the Estate Offices of Martin & Martin. The clerk at the counter of the outer office was listening to a woman complaining of the front fence of her home. It was about to collapse on to the sidewalk, and it appeared that the landlord had promised to have it seen to months previously. She was a woman determined to have her say and the supercilious clerk wilted.

  The door to the inner office was closed. From beyond it drifted the murmur of voices, proving that Mr Cyril Martin was there. He was taller than Bony, and he walked like a man ever anxious to arrive. He could have come in, five minutes back; he could have trodden on that wet patch of pavement.

  Then the door opened, and a man said:

  “Well, that’s how it is
and how it’s going to be.”

  He came out, brown eyes angry, wearing his hat. He closed the door with unnecessary vigour and kicked the floor mat as he crossed to the outer doorway. He was taller than Bony. Bony followed him to the street, watched him walk down the street. Mr Cyril Martin could not deny this man was his son. Save for the lines of age on the father’s face, they could have been twins.

  His reason for calling must wait upon events. Bony sauntered to the Olympic Bank, and without delay met Mr Bulford, who stood behind his desk to greet him nervously and invite him to be seated.

  “Phew! Hot morning,” Bony said, and again wiped his face with silk.

  “Must expect it at this time of year, Inspector.”

  The manager was alert, a trifle too alert. His voice betrayed tension, and his hands allied the voice. Bony replaced the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and from a side pocket brought out tobacco pouch and papers. With these in his hands, he looked at Mr Bulford, and then looked down at his fingers working at the cigarette. Mr Bulford was silent. He took a cigarette from the silver box and lit it.

  “Your child was abducted on November 29th, Mr Bulford, was it not?”

  “Yes, that was the date, Inspector.”

  “From November 26th to 30th the Municipal Library was closed to the public as renovations were being carried out.”

  In the parlour, silence. From without the faint clinking of money and the muted sound of voices. Bony drew at his cigarette, slowly exhaled, looked through the smoke at the man seated behind the desk. Mr Bulford stubbed his half-consumed cigarette, and dropped his hands below the edge of the desk.

  “I forgot that the Library was closed that day.”

  Bony waited. Mr Bulford waited. Neither spoke until Bony leaned forward and pressed the end of his cigarette into the ashtray.

  “One, Mr Bulford. You were working here when the child was stolen. Two, Mr Bulford. You left shortly after your wife and met Mrs Rockcliff in the Library. Three ... Could you let me have number three statement of what you did between four-thirty and five-thirty on the afternoon of November 29th?”