The Bachelors of Broken Hill Read online

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir, if I’ve made mistakes.”

  “I have underlined them.” He saw the mortification in her eyes. “You are doing quite well in Miss Lodding’s place, and I don’t expect to have from you Miss Lodding’s efficiency. You will only gain that by experience—and perseverance. You are still attending night school?”

  “Oh yes, sir.”

  “Stick to it. All right, Miss Ball.”

  “Excuse me, sir. The duty constable says there’s a man waiting to see you. The name is Knapp. He won’t state his business.”

  Superintendent Pavier glanced at his wrist watch, frowned, again looked up at his temporary secretary.

  “Knapp!” he echoed, and then added: “Bring him in.”

  Coincidence. Must be coincidence. Plenty of people called Knapp. An entire nation once called a foreigner that name. A face he had seen at a police conference a few years back danced among the leaves of memory, and then the living face was beaming at him in his own office.

  “Why, Inspector Bonaparte! How are you?”

  “Well, Super. And you?”

  “Quite a surprise. Sit down. Glad you called in on me.”

  The man dressed in an expertly pressed light grey suit sat on the indicated chair and crossed his legs. The amazingly blue eyes in the light brown face were friendly and happy, and from the inside pocket of the double-breasted coat came a long official envelope.

  “In Sydney yesterday I lunched with your Chief,” Bony said, toying with the envelope. “Among other matters we discussed was that of two poisoning cases which friend Stillman failed to finalise. I took it on myself to apply to my department for leave of absence to see what I can do about them, and I’ve been granted a fortnight. I have here a letter from your Chief. The matter is left entirely to you, as I made it plain that I had no wish to intrude into your domain save with your sanction.”

  Pavier accepted the proffered envelope, slit it open with a nail file, and extracted two letters. The topmost informed him that Inspector Bonaparte had been seconded to the New South Wales Police Department for fourteen days, and the other letter was a private epistle in which the writer explained that Queensland having loaned their ‘precious’ Bonaparte for fourteen days, would he, Pavier, see to it that Bonaparte was back with his own department at the expiration of that period, said Bonaparte being a notorious rebel. Dropping the communications to his desk, Superintendent Pavier said:

  “Accept my assurance, Bonaparte, that we’ll be very, very glad to have you with us. In view of the time that has passed since the last of the poisonings, two weeks will not enable you to accomplish a great deal, but we shall be very grateful to you for what you will, I am sure, do for us.”

  Bony completed the making of what looked something like a cigarette. The eyes were beaming, the teeth a white flash in a dark background.

  “Actually, Super, I am expected to finalise the most stubborn homicide case in five minutes,” Bony explained. “To have granted me fourteen days is excessively generous of my Chief Commissioner. He and I have been associated for many years, and I haven’t noticed any mellowing going on in him. You’ve met him, of course. Forthright in his views—and his language. Tells me I’m not a policeman’s bootlace, but I happen to be the only true detective he has. You see, Super, the cross I have to bear.”

  “Two weeks only,” Pavier said firmly.

  “Be not perturbed,” Bony urged, lighting the awful cigarette. “I am a tortoise, and for twenty years my superiors have tried their hardest to turn me into a hare. Stupid, of course, because so many hares never finish the race. I always finish a race, always finalise the case I consent to take up.”

  “Consent to take up!”

  “Precisely. Consent is the word. The number of sackings I have received no longer interest me. I have always been reinstated. Now don’t you worry over me. My Chief knows my methods, my dear Watson. I have your co-operation?”

  Pavier unknotted his eyebrows and slicked back his overlong white hair from the high and narrow forehead. The window light glistened in his dark eyes. They only indicated mood.

  “Had I been unaware of your reputation, Bonaparte, I might have been angered by your—er—independence.”

  The smile on Bony’s face evinced neither conceit nor arrogance, but assurance based on knowledge which is power.

  “I am naturally impatient of red tape and regulations which are apt to bring on gastric trouble,” he said. “So let us devote our attention to these cyanide cases which Stillman, as the living worshipper of the Civil Machine, so signally failed to finalise. I have never failed, due, I believe, to an iron determination not to be sidetracked by the whims of a superior, and to an inherent gift of perseverance. I am not a Stillman who can ignore defeat. I dare not fail, for failure would mean the murder of the one thing which keeps me from the camps of the aborigines. To explain further would occupy too much time. I hope to finalise these poisonings within the fortnight. If not, then, with or without official sanction, I shall continue my investigation until I do discover the poisoner.”

  “But you must obey orders,” expostulated Pavier, whose whole career had been governed by obedience to orders and the issuing of orders. “One cannot be a useful member of any organisation and not obey the orders of the organisation.”

  “I obey an order when it suits me,” Bony said, and Pavier marvelled that he could feel no ire. “I am unique because I stand midway between the white and black races, having all the virtues of the white race and very few vices of the black race. I have mastered the art of taking pains, and I was born with the gift of observation. I never hurry in my hunt for a murderer, but I never delay my approach. You can find me a corner? There will be much research work to do.”

  “Yes, we can give you an office.”

  “Thank you. H’m! One o’clock. Perhaps you would like to ask me to lunch.”

  “Your suggestion is acceptable,” Pavier said dryly. “A moment.”

  He ordered Switch to put him through to the Sunset Club and spoke to the head steward, and when he rose from his desk he was undecided whether to laugh at himself or this extraordinary Bonaparte.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and went for his hat.

  He walked erect, the constable’s training still evident. Taller than Bony, he moved like an imponderable sea wave. A man at whom other men looked more than once and to be with was to lose something of oneself. Having crossed the road, a young man bailed them up with the greeting:

  “Hallo, there! Trailin’ already?”

  He was blue-eyed and fair-haired, and his nose and mouth made denial of him impossible. Pavier regarded him calmly enough, but there was resignation in his voice.

  “My son Luke. Friend of mine, Luke.”

  “Cheers!” Luke Pavier nodded coolly to Bony. “Saw you leave the Sydney plane this morning, Mr Friend. Name on passenger list Bona Knapp. Same name in the register at the Western Mail Hotel. Glad to know you, Mr Friend.”

  “And I you, Mr Pavier.”

  “I trust that Mrs Napoleon Bonaparte is quite well?” asked the young man, and Pavier muttered:

  “Damn! Now please don’t publish Inspector Bonaparte’s arrival.”

  “All right—for a price,” argued the young man, who laughed at his father and winked at Bony.

  “The price?” Bony murmured.

  “A promise to let me in at the showdown. It’s easy guessing why you’re here.”

  “You might not be worth it. What d’you know of the people of Broken Hill?”

  “Everything,” Luke Pavier claimed. “I know everyone. I know all the two-up schools, all the baccarat joints, all the molls. I know the inside of every mine and the contents of every mining manager’s report to his directors before they get it.”

  “But you don’t know who poisoned two men with cyanide,” interposed Bony. “Be patient, and some day I’ll tell you. You will co-operate?”

  “I always co-operate with the police.”

 
; “Rubbish,” inserted his father.

  The young man smiled, waved a hand, departed, and his father conducted Bony to the Sunset Club, where they were given a table in an alcove.

  “I think you’ll get along well with Crome,” Pavier said when they were engaged with cheese and celery. “Crome is a good man, but we don’t have the opportunities of unravelling subtle crime. He’s the chief of the Detective Office. You’ll come to understand all our limitations, and our difficulties in a place like Broken Hill. People here are prosperous, healthy, and clean mentally as well as physically. Contented, too, because of the amity between the workers and the companies—not without former years of strife. Before these cyaniding cases, crime hasn’t been serious for several decades, and often the visiting magistrate was presented with the white gloves of a clean register.”

  “Your son Luke—is he a journalist?”

  “He is, and, I’m told, a good one. With him his paper comes first, as with me the department does. At home we never talk shop. He’ll use you up if you’re not wary, but he can be helpful. He flayed Stillman in his paper.”

  “I have always found Stillman a most unpleasant person,” Bony said. “His observations are coloured by a singularly distorted outlook. It was hinted to me that a change in the commissionership might be to his detriment.”

  “I’ve always impressed on the minds of young constables that there isn’t the slightest excuse for a policeman not being a gentleman,” Pavier observed. “You obtained a copy of Stillman’s official summary, of course?”

  “Yes. Disappointing in real value. Throws much of the onus on Sergeant Crome for having permitted the customers to leave Favalora’s Café before questioning. In fact, Stillman wriggled out by blaming all and sundry, excluding himself.”

  “No one blames Crome for that affair at the café more than Sergeant Crome,” Pavier said. “The circumstances, however, relieve him of some of the blame. It was a hot and sultry day, unusual for Broken Hill, where the summers are very hot with little if any humidity. The temperature today, for instance, is somewhere about ninety-eight degrees but isn’t trying. Old Parsons was just the type to collapse from the heat. And Crome knew him, too.”

  “Crome didn’t get along with Stillman?”

  The Superintendent gave one of his rare smiles, and this one was minus laughter. Bony side-stepped the subject.

  “If Crome will work with me,” he said, “we’ll put Stillman hard and fast into his box. Well, thanks for the lunch.”

  Pavier went first down the stairs to the street, satisfied that Bonaparte and Crome, and Crome’s staff, would team well, and pleased that first impressions had not endured. Arrived on the pavement, he heard Bony exclaim:

  “Jimmy! How are you, Jimmy?”

  Pavier did not hear the ensuing conversation, crossing the street to Headquarters, and Bony kept an eye on the Superintendent, smiling at Jimmy the Screwsman, who was emphatically uncertain of the situation.

  “On holidays, Inspector,” asserted Jimmy, inwardly cursing his luck. He watched the smile fade from the blue eyes. “Honest, Inspector. Haven’t taken a trick now for years—true.”

  “Of course you haven’t, Jimmy. Been long in Broken Hill?”

  “Since October. Decided to go straight, and found the only chance of doing that was to get right away from the cities.”

  “So you were here when Goldspink was murdered, and a man named Parsons, eh?”

  “Now look here, Inspector,” pleaded Jimmy. “You know I wouldn’t go in for murder. You know very well I’ve never carried a gun or ever done any bashing.”

  “Working?”

  “N-no. Holidaying, as I told you.”

  “I marvel that you were not picked up by the boys from Sydney—Inspector Stillman, too.”

  “Never showed out,” declared Jimmy, wishing the pavement would become mud soft enough to bury him. The terrifying blue eyes went on prodding his ego with blue-hot needles.

  “Where living?” came the barked question.

  “Twenty-two King Street, South Broken Hill.”

  “Much left of the cash you took from the bookmaker’s flat in King’s Gross?”

  Jimmy fought a losing fight. The blue eyes were terrific.

  “Most of it,” he confessed. “I’ll do a deal, Inspector. I’ll return the lot if you——”

  “Don’t bargain with me, Jimmy. I’ll issue orders. You will stay put. If you clear away from Broken Hill without my permission, I’ll track you ten times round the world if necessary to get you put away for a nice seven years of the best.” The blue eyes softened, and Jimmy was truly grateful. “Be around, and don’t get yourself arrested. By the way, your tie is a monstrosity. Run along and buy yourself others at the shop owned by the late Sam Goldspink. Take afternoon tea at Favalora’s Café and make love to the waitress who served old Parsons with his last cup of tea. Clear, Jimmy?”

  “You want me to work with you, Inspector?”

  “I didn’t actually say so, Jimmy. Some distance along the street I see a young man who is a reporter. You don’t know me at all well. We met, you will remember, at a reception at Government House in Brisbane.”

  Thoroughly shocked, Jimmy the Screwsman sauntered down Argent Street.

  Chapter Three

  Problems for Bony

  BONY WAS delighted with his office, a small room situated at the end of a corridor and plainly furnished. He had only to turn in his chair and thump the wall to summon Sergeant Crome.

  He liked Crome at their first meeting. Big, inclined to stoutness, not much hair, and grey at that, Crome was both dynamic and kindly, impatient with himself and tolerant unto others, and very early Bony sensed that he was perturbed by the discovery that he had not been equal to events. What Crome needed was a renewal of confidence.

  “Sit down, Crome, and smoke if you want to,” Bony told him when Pavier had left after the introduction. “Before we’re through we’ll do a lot of hard smoking. Tell me about yourself. Married?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant, producing pipe and tobacco. “Have two girls in their early teens. I was a senior constable stationed at Bathurst when the Superintendent was an inspector. That was eight years ago. The Super’s been a good friend to me.”

  “He gave me the impression that he could be. During the period you’ve been stationed here how many homicide cases have you been engaged upon?”

  “Not including these two cyanide cases, nine. Of those nine, only one was difficult to break open. You see, sir, here in Broken Hill we don’t have gangster feuds, very few bashings, and rarely a sex crime.” Crome lit his pipe and tossed the spent match into the empty w.p.b. “Superintendent Pavier is the best senior officer we’ve ever had at Broken Hill. He’s trained most of us, and he invented a system to identify characters reported from other centres. Every train and aircraft is met. Social evils which experience has proved everywhere cannot be stamped out are here quietly controlled, and, despite the surplus of males, our women are safer than in any city in Australia.”

  “What about petty offences—robberies?”

  “Not much of that—until these last few months.”

  “Convictions?”

  Crome’s small grey eyes hardened. He hunted a purpose behind the bland eyes lazily looking at him.

  “There’s been four robberies this summer, sir. We wound up only one. The other three were done by an expert. Someone who’s slipped into the Hill without our knowing him.”

  Bony made a note.

  “What is your criminal investigation strength?”

  “I’m the senior officer. Under me is Senior Detective Abbot and seven plain-clothes men. One of them is fingerprint expert and photographer and records clerk combined. Good man. Our laboratory work don’t exist, but we depend on Dr Hoadly, and without him we’d be sunk.”

  “Patrol cars?”

  “Two. No two-way radio.”

  “H’m! Well, now, relax and tell me about these two poisoning cases.”

>   “You know nothing about them?” Crome asked, plainly astonished.

  “I’ve read the official summaries prepared by Inspector Stillman,” Bony said, almost languidly. “Nothing of any value in them. You tell me.”

  Crome tried to keep the satisfaction from his eyes.

  “Old Sam Goldspink was the first victim, and we didn’t know he died of cyanide poisoning till eight hours after. Consequently the scene was all mussed up in the minds of the witnesses. It was on a Friday afternoon, our busiest afternoon of the week down Argent Street. One of the assistants took the old chap a cup of tea, and, as he was talking to a customer, he told her to put the cup on the counter. When the customer had gone old Sam took up his cup of tea, drank it, turned round, and threw a seven on the floor of his shop.

  “The fact was that Goldspink was under his doctor for heart trouble, and Mrs Robinov, the housekeeper, naturally thought that was the cause of death. When she was called, she emptied the shop, phoned the doctor, Dr Whyte, and had the delivery man help her carry the body to a fitting-room at the rear. Dr Whyte was up at the hospital with a midwifery case, and, knowing he couldn’t do anything about old Sam Goldspink, he didn’t hurry particularly.

  “Meanwhile all the cups and things used for the tea and biscuits were washed up and put away. When the doctor did see the body he wasn’t satisfied, and we didn’t know anything was wrong till after the post-mortem that night. Didn’t suspect murder. The old man had no enemies; in fact, he was a bit of a character and well liked.

  “When we knew it was cyanide, we got busy. The drill about the tea was this. Every afternoon at three Mrs Robinov took a large pot of tea, milk, sugar, and biscuits to the fitting-room, and when the assistants had a chance to slip away they went there and helped themselves. Generally, the first one who managed to get away from serving took a cup of tea to the boss.”

  “Which one took him his tea that afternoon?”

  “Girl named Shirley Andrews. Age seventeen. Been working for Goldspink for five months. Good character.”

  “What type of employer was he?”