Madman’s Bend Read online

  Constable Lucas stopped his car a few yards from the closed door. He was about to knock when a girl, accompanied by two dogs, came out of the shearing-shed. She was wearing jeans and riding-boots, and Bony noted how she placed her feet like a man accustomed to horses. Lucas returned to stand by his car and wait for her.

  She said, a little breathlessly, “Good afternoon, Mr Lucas. I didn’t want you to knock because Mother is poorly and lying down.” From the mail-bag he carried she glanced at Bony, still seated in the car, and then ordered the dogs to be gone.

  “Oh! Sorry to hear about Mrs Lush, Jill,” Lucas said, proffering the bag. “I brought this along in case your stepfather was busy. We’re running up to Bourke, and I’ll be back tonight. Anything I can get for Mrs Lush?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so, thank you. Bill Lush isn’t here. I was going for the mail later. Thanks for bringing it.”

  “That’s all right, Jill.” Constable Lucas smiled. “Bill still suffering, I suppose.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the girl said stiffly. “Haven’t seen him since he went to town, and don’t want to.”

  “Well, he got home as far as the mail-box. Ran out of petrol.”

  Bony could see the frown narrowing the girl’s fine dark eyebrows. The sunlight glinted on her dark brown hair, and on the silver marcasite brooch fastened to her rough drill tunic.

  “Probably cleared away into a cubby-hole somewhere with a supply of booze he brought out,” she said bitterly. “Wouldn’t be the first time, Mr Lucas. You know him. Gets so he can’t bear himself, let alone us. Why don’t you lock him up when he’s drunk? He wouldn’t be leaving town sober.”

  “Never known him to,” admitted the policeman, adding ruefully, “still, I can’t lock him up if he doesn’t misbehave, and, as everybody knows, the drunker he is the steadier he drives. Well, we must get along. Remember me to your mother, Jill.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  Looking back, Bony saw the girl watching the car on its way back to the main track.

  “Fine-looking lass,” he said when the Madden homestead had retreated into the river trees.

  “Yes. The mother made a mistake.”

  “Oh! A bad one?”

  “The husband died a bit over two years ago. The widow hired a feller off the track. Seemed all right, just a hand looking for a job. After a year she married him. He sort of took over the place, or seemed to. Personally, I don’t like him. Officially, I’ve nothing against him. Oily type. The booze makes him very polite, but you can see in his eyes he’s not so polite in his mind.”

  “The place seems a trifle run down,” Bony said. “Many sheep?”

  “About three thousand. Not a big selection when the poor country is taken out. Madden seemed to do well, though. He kept the homestead tidy and the house in good order. Now, as I said, the widow made a mistake.”

  Conversation became desultory until they passed the famous Dunlop homestead. The history of that place engaged Constable Lucas for a mile or two; then he again became quiet until Bony asked whether there was anything on his mind.

  “Yes, there’s something nagging, Inspector. Did you notice anything wrong with that Madden homestead?”

  “Yes,” replied Bony. “House wanted paint. The surroundings needed tidying. The shearing-shed roof is going to blow off for need of re-nailing.”

  “I don’t mean all that. Fact is, I don’t know what I mean.”

  “Something in the girl’s demeanour?”

  “No. She was normal. Never did have any time for the stepfather, and don’t wonder at that. It was something wrong with the house.”

  “Ah, the house! Never having seen it before, I’m afraid I cannot help you. Could it be the axe lying on the ground near the front door? The condition of the axe indicated it had been relegated to the woodheap.

  “No, it wasn’t the axe. Something else. It’ll come.”

  The western fringe of Bourke was in sight when Constable Lucas vented a sharp exclamation.

  “I have it! Funny how the mind stops and starts like a traffic signal,” he said. “It was the old door back again. Now why?”

  “The door returned home,” Bony prompted. “So!”

  “The house fronts the river, and the back is to the west and the road. It gets the westerlies and the dust. Like the rest of the place the back door became cracked for the need of putty and paint. I called there about three months ago to see Mrs Madden about a stock return, and found Lush putting on a new door; the old one was leaning against the wall. That old door was a heavy affair with inset panels. The new one was of plain wall-board clamped to a frame. Now today the old door is back on again. Why put on an old door in place of a new one?”

  “Could it not be that the plain door, more suited to the inside, was fitted to an inside door frame, and the old door rehung until a new back door could be purchased?” asked Bony.

  “Yes, that’s the answer. Must be the answer. Let’s see, now. The axe! What would the axe be doing so far from the woodheap?”

  Bony chuckled, saying, “You are a suspicious policeman.”

  “Me, suspicious?” Lucas laughed without restraint. Then: “It was you who brought the axe into it.”

  Chapter Three

  Where is William Lush?

  CIRCUMSTANCES rather than inherent tendencies had made Mrs Cosgrove a hard business woman, and she could be generous. Now in her late forties, and a widow, she took a close interest in her pastoral property, Mira.

  It was Thursday when the mail car made its return run from White Bend to Bourke, leaving the township at eight and collecting the mail at the Mira–Madden boxes at nine in the morning. Immediately after breakfast, taken punctually at seven, Mrs Cosgrove and her manager proceeded to complete the outward mail to be sealed into a blue bag and taken to the roadside box.

  Today, her son Raymond carried the outward bag to the box, and naturally he was interested to find Lush’s utility still there. He had walked this morning, following the right bank of the dry river to the sharp angle above Mira where he could see the vehicle on the cliff above the great hole filled with water.

  Skirting the edge of the waterhole, he climbed the far bank and circled the abandoned machine in search of tracks that would show whether Lush had recently returned to it. The wind had played havoc with the tracks left by Lucas and Bony, and there were none more distinct.

  The previous day, when he had taken the down bag from the red-headed driver, they had agreed that Lush must be suffering a hangover; today they agreed that he must have cleared out with a supply of grog and be holed up in bliss.

  Raymond Cosgrove was an easy-going young man not addicted to hating people. He had, however, a strong aversion to William Lush for particularly private reasons. Where Lush was this scintillating morning didn’t bother him, and he returned to the homestead unperturbed by the thought that the man might have fallen over the cliff-like bank above the waterhole and drowned. He reported the still abandoned utility to his mother.

  “I know,” Mrs Cosgrove said. “Lucas has just rung asking about that utility. He found it there yesterday on his way to Bourke and saw it again last night on his way down. He wants to know if it’s still there. Ring him.”

  Watching her son standing at the wall telephone, she again experienced a little pride in his lean, hard body and handsome, boyish profile—a pride which always overcame her disappointment at his refusal to take up any career but that of a sheepman.

  “Sounds like the old demon,” Ray was saying. “How’s things? The ute? Yes, still there by the boxes. Signs of him? No. No, no booze or anything. Must have gone bush to tank up on his own. Be in trouble! The bastard’s always in trouble.” The crude word caused Mrs Cosgrove to frown. “All right, Sherlock. Yes, I’ll do that and contact you again later.”

  Turning to his mother after replacing the instrument, he said Lucas wanted them to raise Mrs Lush and check on her husband.

  “I’ll speak to her, Ray.”

  T
o save Madden expense, Mrs Cosgrove’s husband had consented to the telephone line being brought over the river direct to his office, where the switchboard was installed to permit outlet to the White Bend exchange. Now the son made the connection, and Mrs Cosgrove heard Jill Madden’s voice.

  “Hullo, Jill. Is your stepfather home? Ray has just come from the box and found his utility still abandoned.”

  “We haven’t seen him since he left for town,” Jill said, betraying slight agitation. “Yesterday Mr Lucas called about seeing the ute. It seems that Lush went off to drink alone and is still at it. He’ll come home when he’s ready. I’d have gone for the ute, but mother’s ill. She wasn’t well yesterday and got up and fell, and she’s hurt herself.”

  “How badly, Jill?” Mrs Cosgrove asked sharply.

  “Well, she hurt her face when she fell on a low stool, and her ribs are hurt, too. I’ve done what I can, Mrs Cosgrove; liniment and bandages—all that. She’s sleeping just now.”

  “Now that is bad,” agreed the elder woman. “You must ring if your mother isn’t rested after sleeping. I’ll leave the line open. Meanwhile I’ll send all the hands out to locate your stepfather—that is, the men available.” Hanging up, she spoke to her son. “Lush isn’t home, and Mrs Lush has had a fall and hurt herself badly. Take the men on hand and look for the drunken sot. You go too, Mac. Do you good to get on a horse. You’re putting on too much weight.”

  Ian MacCurdle, sandy of hair and moustache, tall and rugged, inwardly groaned and followed young Cosgrove from the office. He had come to Mira when Cosgrove was alive, and now was like a piece of the furniture.

  Mrs Cosgrove heard her son shouting men’s names, and from the narrow veranda of the office-store building she watched him and four others riding down-river to the easier crossing below the shearing-shed; she knew their objective was to beat through Madman’s Bend, a huge wasteland of billabongs and arid flats, and so out to the mail-box and the utility.

  They had not returned when the house cook gonged for lunch, and before leaving Mrs Cosgrove rang through to Madden’s Selection.

  “Mother is still asleep, Mrs Cosgrove,” was Jill’s report. “I’m getting worried. I think ... I don’t know what to think.”

  Never hesitant in making a decision, Mrs Cosgrove said she would leave immediately and, calling for the housemaid, told her to delay lunch and then station herself at the office telephone till she returned or Mr Mac came back. Following the faint path along the river bank, made by her son and others who had gone for the mail, she could hear men shouting on the far side in Madman’s Bend, and eventually saw two of them at the utility. She crossed the dry bed of the river opposite the Madden house and so came to the front door. Jill Madden let her in.

  “Oh, thank you for coming, Mrs Cosgrove,” Jill said. “Mother seems to be worse.”

  Bill Lush’s victim was unconscious. Her face, from which some of the bandages had been removed, shocked Mrs Cosgrove, and, having examined the woman’s right side and abdomen, she blamed herself for not having come much earlier.

  “I’ll call the doctor,” she said crisply, fearing the girl would lose self-control. “It would be silly to take your mother to Bourke. I’ll get through to Superintendent Macey. He’ll fix the doctor.”

  She had to direct her maid in her office to work the board, and then had to wait while someone in the Superintendent’s office went and found him. She felt relief when she heard his deep voice.

  “We’re in trouble, Jim,” she said. “My neighbour, Mrs Lush, has had a very bad fall and needs the doctor. She’s unconscious, and her breathing is irregular. Now you know what Dr Leveska is, but he must come down as quickly as possible. Will you get him into the air at once?”

  “Yes, of course, Betsy. That is, if he isn’t away. Just a minute.” She heard another voice say, “I could hear the name Lush. Ask if Lush is still absent.” Then: “All right, Betsy, we’ll get the doctor on his way. Is Lush not there?”

  “My men are out searching for him.” Her voice was raised when she added, “You should have him put on the Blackfellers’ Act.”

  “We might try at that, after what I’ve heard from Constable Lucas. Can I tell the doctor you’ll have the wind indicator out on your strip? Save time, you know.”

  Mrs Cosgrove said she would have it done, and then asked Jill for a cup of tea and whatever there was in the larder. Alone with the unconscious woman, she did what she thought prudent for her, thinking that it must have been an involved accident to have brought Jill’s mother to this.

  “When did it happen?” she asked Jill later at lunch.

  “The night before last, Mrs Cosgrove.” The girl’s dark eyes met steadily the grey eyes of her guest. “In spite of what mother has said so often about not saying anything because of scandal, I’ll have to let it out now. She mightn’t recover. She might die, mightn’t she?”

  “It’s a chance. How did it happen?”

  Jill told of what she had found on her return after Lush’s departure for town, and what her mother had told her about the assault. Mrs Cosgrove listened with growing anger. She wanted to upbraid the girl, but refrained, knowing how independent bush folk are, and how reluctant they are to admit scandal affecting them. The two women were still seated at the table when the telephone rang.

  They’ve just left,” said the Superintendent. “That is, Doc Leveska and Inspector Bonaparte. The Inspector would like to have a look around, perhaps do a little fishing and shooting. You won’t mind?”

  “I’ll let you know later if it’s a pleasure or not. When are you and your wife visiting us? I’m finding the need to gossip.”

  “Not before the flood. We could be caught there a long time. Did you have the wind indicator put in place?”

  “Heavens, no! I forgot about it. I’ll see to it at once.” To the girl she said, “The doctor has left, and I promised to put out the indicator.” Manipulating the instrument she contacted the maid. “The men home yet, Ethel?”

  “Not yet, Mrs Cosgrove. Steve was here a moment ago wanting to know if he had to keep their lunch.”

  “Of course he has to. Run along and tell him to come to the phone.”

  Mrs Cosgrove waited impatiently to hear the groom’s voice. She told him to take the wind indicator out to the strip, to use the grey truck, and to wait there for Doctor Leveska. She was annoyed with herself, for it was only ninety-eight miles from Bourke, and the doctor might arrive before the indicator was in place.

  He was a good physician, but often offensive. Although he was a good airman, he often refused to fly when in one of his moods, which people thought were associated with a bottle. This was why Mrs Cosgrove sought his aid through her friend, the Superintendent in Charge of the Western Division.

  Seated again at the table, she regarded Jill Madden. The girl was rolling a cigarette, and after she had lit it she said, “If Mother dies, will they hang Lush?”

  “No, they mollycoddle murderers in this state. But they’ll put him away for a few years. You should find that a relief. Did he ever strike her before this last time?”

  Jill nodded.

  “If Mother doesn’t die, if she gets well again, what will they do to Lush?”

  “I believe nothing, unless your mother complains to the police.”

  “She’ll never do that. If he does attack her again I shall shoot him.”

  Mrs Cosgrove slowly shook her head, saying, “It would make bad worse. It would be justifiable homicide if you shot him while he was actually attacking your mother, or about to attack you, but I was thinking of the after-effects: court hearings, publicity, and the rest. Your mother must be persuaded to complain to the police, and he might be sent to jail for six months. Might, because it’s more likely he would be put on a bond of good behaviour.”

  Mrs Cosgrove was to recall this conversation, and she pondered on the wretched lives of these two women while, despite the girl’s protests, she helped with the washing of the lunch utensils and the general tidyi
ng. She was again looking down at the unconscious woman when a car was heard approaching.

  It was Constable Lucas. His hazel eyes were stern, but he was gentle with Jill and, after looking at the woman on the bed, announced that he had been ordered to come by his Superintendent.

  “Lush still absent, I suppose?”

  “Yes, Mr Lucas, still absent,” Mrs Cosgrove told him. “You may have to track him for murder. My son and the men are searching for him, as we told you.”

  “Jill, has this sort of thing happened before?”

  The girl admitted that it had.

  “Then why the devil didn’t you say what happened this time when I was here yesterday? What stopped you?”

  “Mother. She always dreaded scandal. And she wasn’t like she is when you called yesterday.”

  They were in the living-room-kitchen, off which were three rooms. Lucas casually looked about and noted the three doors. They were all of the heavy, old-fashioned type. He found the axe outside where he had previously seen it, and was about to stroll around when he heard voices from the river and went to tell the women the doctor was here.

  Doctor Leveska was slight, sharp of feature, bright of eye, and acidulous of tongue when he said, “What’s been going on here? How did she fall? Couldn’t be hurt that bad she couldn’t have been brought up to the hospital. Now, where is she?”

  Jill and Mrs Cosgrove went with him into the bedroom. Lucas and Bonaparte remained in the living-room. In the bedroom it was very quiet until Jill Madden broke into sobs, and Doctor Leveska came out. He said softly, “She just died, Lucas. And it was no fall.”

  Chapter Four

  Bony Takes Command

  AFTER RECEIVING Constable Lucas’s report by telephone and being told that Doctor Leveska insisted on an autopsy, Superintendent Macey instructed Lucas to obtain statements from Jill Madden and Mrs Cosgrove and convey the body to Bourke. Action was prompted by the flood now rolling past Bourke; it would certainly cut off both Madden’s Selection and Mira, perhaps for weeks.