Madman’s Bend Read online

  Lucas agreed that that accounted for the change, but he might not have done so had he been told about the hole in the ceiling now in the shadow cast by the lampshade.

  “What do you know about two men named Roberts?” asked Bony.

  “The town butchers. They live a mile out of town on a smallholding property. I’ve never had trouble from them, although I’ve suspected they gamble. At home, of course. Cards, not two-up. As they own the property I can do nothing when they invite friends there for a game. Why? They interest you?”

  “The girl said, remember, that Lush wanted three hundred pounds, that he was desperate for the money. Young Cosgrove told me that Lush’s credit at the hotel was restricted. He told me also that the Roberts men played it rough when a gambling debt was owed them. I am interested to learn why Lush needed all that money. You might make discreet inquiries. Is there a lawyer at White Bend?”

  Lucas said there was not. Asked whether he happened to know who looked after Mrs Lush’s affairs, he said he didn’t know. While he ate, Bony questioned him about the Cosgroves and their men, and afterwards asked him to describe how Lush walked, going so far as to request a demonstration.

  “I’ll have to try to pick up his tracks, which will be difficult, not having seen them,” he went on. “I am beginning to think that the theory of Lush going bush with a store of booze is no longer well founded. He was short of money, and his credit at the hotel was short, too. You might go into this credit angle. Again, he wasn’t in town long enough to indulge in a long bender and so leave on the verge of delirium tremens. I’ll tell you something to add spice to your inquiries. In the ceiling above us is a bullet hole, and in the corner there is the rifle from which the bullet was probably fired.”

  The policeman’s fair eyebrows shot upward, and the operation of loading his pipe was halted.

  “The hole in the ceiling was made recently, Lucas. The ceiling is of plaster and is stained with smoke, but the edges of the hole are plaster-white. Above it is a corresponding hole in the iron roof. Further, the rifle has been cleaned and oiled. And I haven’t found another of the same calibre. There’s a shotgun and a Winchester single-shot forty-four, and neither has received such care. Better take them with you. They may be needed.”

  Lucas continued filling his pipe, and said nothing until he had applied a match and was smoking. Then he said, “It draws pictures, doesn’t it?”

  “Dimly. However, it does shadow the girl’s story with doubt. As I may not be able to telephone the Super without being heard by someone at Mira, I’d like you to tell him that I am finding this business of great interest. Just that: no details. D’you know if young Cosgrove is in love with Jill Madden?”

  “No, I don’t, Inspector. We haven’t been long enough at White Bend to hear much gossip.”

  “We! Who is included? Your wife?”

  “She knows everyone, and, as blotting-paper absorbs water, she absorbs the affairs of other people without giving up anything about us. Been useful more than once. I’ll get her to find out that one.”

  “Do. Now for this flood. When d’you think it will reach this point?”

  “It could be in a couple of days,” replied Lucas. “I’m told that following the head the body of water flows fast. I’ve never seen a real flood along this river, but they say it has widened out from its banks for twenty miles, and they told me only this evening that what’s coming is an old-man flood. You’ll have to watch it.”

  “I shall retreat to Mira, or get away to White Bend ahead of it in the utility.”

  “You could take the track out to the back of this property. There’s a well and hut bordering the outside road to Bourke and down to the Bend. But don’t delay after the flood head passes, because between here and that outside road there’s two creeks that will flood back quick and cut you off. This house will beat the flood rise, but I don’t suppose it has enough grub to keep you going for a month.”

  “Well, you should be going now. If there is anything else I’ll contact you somehow.”

  Having watched Lucas depart in his jeep, Bony called the dogs inside, and was amused when neither would obey. Being a little mystified by the broken line to Mira, he needed the dogs to give warning of anything that might eventuate, even the return of Lush; so he pulled them by their collars into the living-room and closed and locked the door.

  Having been fussed over, they quickly forgot the taboo, and followed him about the house while he tested the front door and the windows. He drew an old rocking-chair to the stove and settled there to meditate and plan his future activities.

  It was daybreak when he woke coldly stiff. He opened the door and the dogs ran out. Going to the woodheap for chips with which to fire the stove he saw two milking cows standing beside the milking-shed. Frost whitened the upper surfaces of the woodpile.

  After two cups of tea and three cigarettes he milked the cows, took a cold shower of three seconds, and then cooked breakfast, at which he did not linger. He brought the stepladder. He had found cartridges for the thirty-two, and with one of them he proved that the bullet fitted the hole in the ceiling. When he had returned the ladder and cleaned up, the old American clock registered the time as seven-twenty.

  By half past seven he had run the utility into the shed and pocketed the ignition key; now he was relieved of responsibility for it as well as for the dogs. He had found a pair of Lush’s boots, and with these he made impressions on soft ground. In size they were a small seven. The impressions gave him very little; they only proved what the sole of each indicated—that Lush walked with the toes angled slightly inward, as many men do who have earned a living for long years in the saddle. Without the man in them the boots gave no significant leads to character.

  After locking the house Bony walked between the twin wheel-marks of vehicles leading to the road and the mailboxes. The sun, just risen, failed to penetrate the avenue of river gums, and this side was cold and still darkly green. The kookaburras continued to greet the new day with their mocking, and Bony wondered if they would call for dinner. A magpie, gleaming black and white, whirred after a slower-flying crow that cawed with annoyance, and a flock of red and grey galah parrots rose above the avenue to speak a language all their own.

  All seemed right with this world. All was right with Inspector Bonaparte. How William Lush was faring was a subject for speculation.

  If Lush had walked from his useless utility to the house that night he would have followed this track and not the river bank, which in several places was broken by water gutters deep enough to injure a man who fell into one. Lush would have kept on or close to his own motor track. Quite soon Bony realized that the ground so far did not favour a tracker, being composed of hard clay rubble extending to the junction with the main track. From this point, however, the surface, although harder, could be broken to whitest dust by motor wheels and the hooves of a horse.

  There was no difficulty in finding the exact place in which the utility had been abandoned; dust-covered oil marks gave it. Extending outwards for several yards, and about the mailboxes some ten feet from the edge of the cliff above the waterhole, the ground registered numerous prints of men and horses, now blurred and useless.

  Recalling that during the night when Lush abandoned the utility the wind had been almost at gale force, and that the following day it had blown almost half a gale, Bony stood by one of the boxes and smoked a cigarette while he took in this scene which had not been imprinted on his mind when he saw it from Lucas’s jeep.

  The river, after passing Madden’s homestead, came southwestward to this sharp major bend at which it was turned due east. One mile farther down could be seen the reservoir tanks and the roofs of the Mira homestead atop a similar cliff-like bank above a similar water-gouged, water-filled hole. In either direction the massive red-gums formed an avenue above the empty river course. Here only, and at Mira bend, was the avenue broken, permitting the easterly wind full freedom for a mile to attack the mail-boxes, and the westerly wind
the same distance to strike at the Mira homestead.

  Chapter Six

  Part Two of Jill’s Story

  BONY HAD to leave the angle to reach the normal bank of the river, and there he descended the steep, grey slope to the bed. The red-gums seemed to tower above him. The bed was littered by windfalls of twigs and small branches, leaves, and long streamers of shredded bark.

  At the outer edge of the great hole he paused to glance upward to the cliff top, sixty to seventy feet above, and could just see the top of one of the mail-boxes. It was clear that anyone falling over the cliff near those boxes would plunge into water, and should the fall take place a few yards to left or right he would crash on a narrow rock ledge between the water and the cliff base.

  There was nothing to hand for testing the depth of the hole. It appeared to be very deep, for the water was clear and the bottom could not be seen. Doubtless it would contain much water-logged tree debris of trunk and branch, and had Lush fallen into it his body might well be trapped, never to rise.

  A man shouted from the east bank and Bony saw young Cosgrove standing beside a horse. As Bony joined him the fair-haired man grinned his good morning and said that Jill Madden was at the house and did Bony have the keys?

  “I thought it wise to lock up,” Bony said.

  “I’m taking her to Bourke for the funeral, and she wants clothes and things,” Cosgrove said. “And the telephone’s all right now. A tree branch fell on the line.”

  They proceeded along the east bank, Cosgrove leading his mount.

  “Is the search for Lush continuing today?” asked Bony.

  “Yes. The men will be going through Madman’s Bend again, and then mustering the up-river bend. I don’t think Lush is holed up anywhere, except down in that hole you were looking at. Still, we have to give it a go.”

  “I’ve been trying to cut his tracks and have failed,” Bony admitted. “Any information from Bourke this morning?”

  “Superintendent Macey telephoned saying the autopsy on Mrs Madden would be done today, and that she could be buried this afternoon. Funeral timed for five o’clock.”

  “Who else will be going?”

  “Mother’s going with us. We’ll be back late because we’ll have to make two wide detours. The flood’s already filling billabongs and creeks for twenty miles south of Bourke. Should be here tomorrow night or the next morning. There’s a hell of a lot of water above Bourke. I wouldn’t delay leaving Madden’s place after tomorrow evening. You could be cut off for weeks. Jill wants to pack things to take to Mira. She’ll have to live there.”

  Cosgrove tethered his horse opposite the small homestead and they crossed to it. They found Jill Madden sitting on the bench outside the back door. Her dark eyes widened when Bony bowed slightly and offered condolences.

  She said, “I can’t take it all in, Inspector. Mother and I were very close. Mrs Cosgrove’s been very kind, and I must thank you for looking after the place. You even milked the cows, I see.”

  “Yes, I attended to everything bar the cats.” Bony regarded the two on the bench. “They must have cleared out, being frightened of strangers. What’s going to happen to everything?”

  “Mrs Cosgrove is having the cows and fowls and dogs and cats all moved over the river, and what I’ll pack up for myself. Can I ask you something?”

  She was standing, the keys in hand, infinitely more feminine than when Bony had first seen her. He thought she would be still more so if she arranged her hair differently. It gleamed blackly and promised to look luxuriant if permitted.

  She said, “Have you found any sign of my stepfather?”

  “As I’ve told Mr Cosgrove, I have been trying to cut his tracks. It is hardly time for questions, but there are several I’ll have to ask you. Inside, perhaps?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  “You start your packing and we’ll fire the stove and brew tea. Tell us what to do to help,” Bony said. “We can talk later.”

  “All right. And you have actually washed up everything and tidied.”

  “I have been thoroughly domesticated, Miss Madden,” Bony boasted as he lit paper beneath the chips he had pushed into the range.

  The small bedroom door was open, and the girl said, “And you’ve even made your bed.”

  “More than I’ve ever done,” Cosgrove boasted, cheerfully trying to lighten the gloom. “Sing out if you want a hand, Jill.”

  The girl went to her room and proceeded to pack clothes into a suitcase. Like every woman, she had, of course, nothing to wear, but Bony noticed her filling a second large case, and then she was asking Cosgrove to fetch two wood cases from the laundry. Assisted by Cosgrove, she packed into these the office books and records, and several books, among which was a large family Bible. At last she was done, and Bony poured tea into the cups he had placed on the table together with a cake he had found in a tin.

  “Think you have all you’ll want?” asked Cosgrove. “What about the kitchen sink?”

  “I think we’ll leave it, Ray,” she said, essaying a wan smile. “The small case I’ll take over now to go to Bourke with. What will you be doing, Inspector?”

  “With your permission I’d like to stay until tomorrow. Your stepfather could turn up, you know.”

  “And you’d arrest him for what he did to Mother?”

  “I would do that.”

  “Stay as long as you like, or as long as the flood will let you.” Her mouth became grim, probably from long practice, and her eyes became hard, giving her face a hint of wild anger.

  “He’s a simpering, foul beast,” she said softly. “I hope he will resist arrest and that you’ll have to shoot him.” Involuntarily she glanced at the corner where the oiled rifle had been, and from it looked directly at Bony. “Someone’s taken his gun.”

  “I removed it with the others, Miss Madden,” he said, and she saw his eyes widen and felt herself irresistibly held by them. “I thought you would not want another shot fired through the ceiling.”

  Cosgrove looked upward, and so did the girl, pretending astonishment and failing to deceive. The young man said nothing, and the girl fell to staring beyond the open panel door. Bony said, “The old door is of interest, Miss Madden, because recently it was put on there in place of a new one. The new one was burnt to ash at the killing-yard. Can you tell me why?”

  Jill Madden continued to stare through the doorway at the sun-lit country. Cosgrove pursed his lips, looking from her to Bony and back to her.

  “Yes, I’ll tell you,” she said, again softly. “It doesn’t matter now, not now that Mother’s dead and can’t any more be afraid of gossip and shame and hurt. That night I sat up with the rifle and waited for Lush to come home. When he did he found the doors and windows locked. When I wouldn’t let him in he went for the woodheap axe and began smashing the door in. I fired a shot into the ceiling to warn him. When I saw the axe coming in through the door I fired at it to give him a fright.”

  Her voice ceased, and Bony added, “And killed him.”

  “No. I sat with my back to the wall there all night. After I fired through the door there wasn’t a sound. I thought I might have killed him, I thought he might be foxing and would try to break in through one of the windows, and I had my mind made up that if he did I’d shoot him dead.

  “It was a terrible night, just listening for him, expecting to hear him breaking in at any moment, and Mother in her room moaning with the pain he’d given her. Towards morning I felt sure he was lying dead outside the door, and when it was light and I opened it he wasn’t there.

  “I didn’t know what to do then. Mother called, and I went to her, and she wanted to know if she’d heard a shot in the night, and I told her what had happened. I wasn’t sure she understood till she said to take the door off and put on the old one in case anyone called and saw it and would guess what had happened. I got her to take a little tea, and gave her aspirin tablets, and then I went looking for Lush.

  “I took the rif
le with me. I went to the men’s hut, and then into the sheds. I couldn’t see him, although I kept shouting for him. When I came in again Mother was asleep, or I thought then she was, and so I took the damaged door off and put on the old one, and then burnt the damaged one, as you found out. That’s all, except that I sat a while and then couldn’t rouse Mother, and rang Mrs Cosgrove.”

  While the girl was speaking Bony rolled a cigarette; noticing her looking at it he offered it to her, and almost blindly she took it.

  “Why didn’t you admit all that to Constable Lucas when he took down your statement?”

  “Same thing, Inspector. Prevent scandal,” interposed Cosgrove.

  “Please,” Bony admonished him.

  “It was as Ray says,” Jill Madden agreed. “Lush wasn’t outside anywhere. He must have run away, perhaps for good and all. So why say anything about it?”

  “You may yet regret having kept silent, Miss Madden. For the time being, however, neither of you will mention it to anyone. Should Lush turn up, it will not be important.”

  “If he doesn’t turn up, it will be, eh?” asked Cosgrove.

  “Certain deductions will follow such an eventuality, for if he isn’t found alive or dead there can be no proof that he walked or ran from the door alive. That is why I chose to ask you both not to speak of it to anyone.”

  “But can’t you believe what Jill says?”

  “I fear not, although I permit myself to hope she speaks the truth. I shall continue to add my efforts to those of the Mira men to find Lush. Now, don’t you think you had better leave for Mira and Bourke? Don’t worry about your things, Miss Madden, or about the animals. You may be assured of my sympathy. I’d like to ask you two a question you might think impertinent. May I?”

  Jill Madden looked at Cosgrove, and he nodded.

  “Are you two in love?”

  To this both nodded, and the girl began to sob. Cosgrove took her hand, saying, “We found out about it a couple of months ago, Inspector. We had to keep it dark because my mother detests Lush, and anyway, she’s difficult about what I ... Blast it, you know what I mean without saying it!”