Death of a Lake b-18 Read online

  Death of a Lake

  ( Bony - 18 )

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Death of a Lake

  Chapter One

  Lake Otway

  LAKEOTWAYWASdying. Where it had existed to dance before the sun and be courted by the ravishing moon there would be nothing but drab flats of iron-hard clay. And then the dead might rise to shout accusations echoed by the encircling sand dunes.

  The out-station crowned a low bluff on the southern shore, and from it a single telephone line spanned fifty miles of virgin country to base on the great homestead where lived the Boss ofPorchester Station, which comprised eight hundred thousand acres and was populated by sixty thousand sheep in the care of some twenty wage plugs, including Overseer Richard Martyr.

  There wasn’t much of Richard Martyr. He was short, dapper, wiry, every movement a hint of leashed strength. His face and arms were the colour of oldcedarwood, making startlingly conspicuous his light-grey eyes. Always the dandy, this morning he wore well-washed jodhpurs, a white silk shirt and kangaroo-hide riding-boots with silver spurs. Why not? He was Number Two onPorchester Station, and this out-station at Lake Otway was his headquarters.

  Martyr stood on the wide veranda overlooking the Lake, the Lake born three years before on the bed of a dustbowl, the Lake which had lived and danced and sung for three years and now was about to die. The real heat of summer was just round the corner, and the sun would inevitably murder Lake Otway.

  Short fingers beating a tattoo on the veranda railing, Martyr gazed moodily over the great expanse of water shimmering like a cloth of diamonds. It was a full three miles across to the distant shore-line of box timber and, beyond it, the salmon-tinted dunes footing the far-flung uplands. To the left of the bluff, the shore-line curved within a mile; to the right it limned miniature headlands and tiny bays for four miles before curving at the outlet creek, where could be seen the motionless fans of a windmill and the iron roof of a hut named Johnson’s Well. When Lake Otway was dead, that windmill would be pumping water for stock, and perhaps a man or two would be living at the hut six hundred rolling miles from the sea.

  The cook’s triangle called all hands to breakfast. Martyr again puckered his eyes to read the figures on the marker post set up far off shore. He had seen the figure 19 resting on the water; now he could see the figure 3. Only three feet of water left in Lake Otway. No! Less! Only two feet and ten inches. Were there a prolonged heat-wave in February, then Lake Otway wouldn’t live another five weeks.

  The men were leaving their quarters to eat in the annexe off the kitchen. The rouseabout was bringing the working horses to the yard. The hens were busy before the shade claimed them during the hot hours. The chained dogs were excited by the running horses. The crows were cawing over at the killing pens, and a flock of galah parrots gave soft greetings when passing overhead. A city man could never understand how men can be captivated by such a place… six hundred miles from a city.

  Martyr turned and entered the dining-room, large, lofty, well lighted, and sat at the white-clothed table to eat alone. He could hear the men in the annexe, and Mrs Fowler, the cook, as she served them breakfast. Then he looked up at Mrs Fowler’s daughter.

  “Morning, Mr Martyr! What will it be after the cereal? Grilled cutlets or lamb’s fry and bacon?”

  She was softly-bodied and strong and twenty. Her hair was the colour of Australian gold, and her eyes were sometimes blue and sometimes green. Her mouth was small and deliciously curved when she was pleased. But her voice was hard and often shrill.

  “Cutlets, please, Joan. No cereal. Plenty of coffee.” Noting the set of her mouth, he asked: “A war on, this morning?”

  “Ma’s in one of her moods.”

  Tossing the fine-spun hair from her broad forehead, she departed as though trained to walk by a ballet master, and he remembered she had walked like that one morning when the Lake was being born, and she was just seventeen, and the Boss had come close to dismissing her and her mother because she could be dangerous… among men without women.

  “What upset your mother?” he asked when she was placing the covered dish before him.

  “Oh, one thing and another.”

  “You haven’t been nagging, have you?”

  She moved round the table and stood regarding him with eyes he was sure were green. She lifted her full breasts and lightly placed her hands against her hips, and he knew that to be a wanton a woman needed no training.

  “A girl never nags, Mr Martyr, until she’s married.”

  “I believe you, Joan. Go away, and don’t annoy your mother.”

  “Well, she started it.”

  “Started what?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, and walked from the room rippling her bottom like a Kanaka woman.

  Martyr proceeded with his breakfast, which had to be completed at a quarter after seven. Mother and daughter were constantly warring about nothing which came to the surface for men to see. As cook and housemaid they formed a team the like of which Lake Otway had never known. The food was excellently prepared and the house managed expertly. The main cause of contention between these women, Martyr shrewdly guessed, was their closeness in age, for the mother was still young, still vitally attractive, retaining that something of wantonness she had bequeathed to the girl. The husband? No one knew anything of the husband.

  Martyr recalled Lake Otway on his accepting the appointment. The Lake was dry then, and the domestic staff comprised a man cook and the lubra wife of one of the hands. The house was merely a place to sleep in; these two quarrelling women gave it life.

  When he was entering the office the telephone rang twice. The call would be for George Barby, who cooked for stockmen at Sandy Well, midway between the main homestead and the out-station. Martyr seated himself at the desk and filled a pipe, and had applied a match when the telephone rang thrice… the Lake call. He counted ten before taking up the instrument.

  “Morning, Dick!” spoke a deep, tuneful voice.

  “Morning, Mr Wallace.”

  “How’s the Lake this morning?”

  “Two feet ten. Gone down an inch since yesterday afternoon.”

  “H’m! No sign ofrain, andInigo Jones says we needn’t expect any till March 18th. Feed still going off?”

  “Within a couple of miles of the Lake, yes. Rabbits in millions. More ’roos, too, this last week than I’ve ever seen. Moving in from the dry areas. White Dam is down to four feet.”

  “Better shift those hoggets, then,” advised the Boss. “In fact, Dick, we’d better think of shifting a lot of sheep from your end to the Sandy Well paddocks. When the Lake goes, it’ll go quick. The last foot of water could dry out in a day. It did last time, I remember. We lost two thousand ewes in the Channel that time. Whatd’you intend doing today?”

  “I’ll send Carney out to ride White Dam paddock. AndMacLennon to Johnson’sWell to make a report on the mill and pump and tank.”

  “Better get Lester to go along with Mac, and remind ’emto lower a light down the well before they go down. The air will be foul after all this time.”

  “All right, Mr Wallace. What about the horses? Any sight of a breaker?”

  “Yes, I was coming to that,” replied the Boss. “Feller here now, wantingbreaking work. Good references. I’ll send him out tomorrow on the truck. Let me know tonight what you want out there.”

  “The breaker, is he to have a free hand?”

  “As he’ll be working on contract, yes. Feed with the men, of course. The name’s Bony.”

  “Bony what?”

  “Just Bony. Talks like a uni’ professor. Queenslander, I think. When you’ve drafted off the youngsters for him, better send all the spa
res in here. We’ll put ’emin the Bend. Well, I’ll ring again tonight.”

  The line went dead, and Martyr replaced the instrument and reached for his wide-brimmed felt. On leaving the office at the side of the house he faced across a two-acre space to the men’s quarters. Backed by a line of pepper trees to his right stood the store, the machinery and motor sheds, the harness room, the stable for the nighthorse, and beyond this line of buildings were the stock and drafting yards, the well and windmill, and the pumping house. The hands were waiting at the motor shed for orders.

  There were seven men… five white and two black. The aborigines were flashily dressed, the white men content with cotton shirts and skin-tight trousers which had been boiled and boiled untilall the original colour had gone with the suds.

  The overseer called a name, and one of the aborigines came to him and was told to ride a paddock fence fifteen miles in length. The other aborigine he sent to see that sheep had not huddled into a paddock corner. A Swede, who had been unable to conquer his accent despite forty years in Australia, he sent to oil and grease a windmill, and a short, grey-eyed, tough little man namedWitlow he despatched to see if cattle were watering regularly at a creek water-hole. Carney, young, alert, blond, smiling, was sent to White Dam to note the depth of water again. There was leftMacLennon, dour, black-moustached, dark-eyed and with aprognathous jaw. A good man with machinery.

  “Want you to look-see over Johnson’s Well, Mac. You’ll have to take the portable pump to lower the water in the shaft. Get the well pump out and inspect. Have a go at the mill, too. Make a note of everything that needs replacement. The truck will be coming out tomorrow.”

  “Just as well. The ruddy Lake won’t last much longer by the look of her, Mr Martyr.”

  “And send a light down the well before you go down.”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right.”

  “That’s what the feller said up onBelar,” Martyr coldly remindedMacLennon. “That well is still all right, Mac, but the feller who went down without testing five years ago has been dead five years. You’d better take Lester to give a hand. Use the ton truck. I’ll tell Lester to draw your lunches.”

  Lester was coming from breakfast and Martyr met him. He was middle-aged, shrivelled like a mummy by the embalming sun and wind. He affected a straggling moustache to hide his long nose. His pale-blue eyes were always red-rimmed and watery, and he was cursed by a sniffle which deputized as a chuckle. A good stockman, a reliable worker, for the time being Bob Lester was acting homestead rouseabout, doing all the chores from bringing in the working hacks early to milking cows and slaughtering ration sheep at evening.

  “Morning, Bob!”

  “Mornin’, Mr Martyr!” The watery eyes peered from under bushy grey brows.

  “Not up your street. Bob, but would you go with Mac to Johnson’s?” Without waiting for assent, Martyr concluded: “Draw your lunches, and give Mac a hand with the portable pump. By the way, the breaker will be coming out tomorrow.”

  Lester sniffed.

  “Tomorrow, eh! Do we know him?”

  “I don’t. Goes by the name of Bony. A caste, from what the Boss implied. Ever hear of him?”

  “No… not by that name. Them sort’s terrible good with horses when they’re good, and terrible bad when they’re crook.” Lester claimed the truism. “You givinghim an offsider?”

  “Haven’t decided,” replied the overseer, abruptly distant, and Lester sniffled and departed to ask Mrs Fowler to provide lunches.

  Martyr strolled to the shed housing the power plant and started the dynamo. From there he crossed to the stock-yards, where the men were saddling horses. The night horse used by Lester to bring in the workers was waiting, and Martyr mounted the horse to take the unwanted hacks back to their paddock, a chore normally falling to the rouseabout. On his return, he assistedMacLennon and Lester to load the portable pump and saw they had the right tools for the work at Johnson’s Well, and after they had driven away he went into the house and stood for the second time this morning on the front veranda overlooking Lake Otway.

  Although Richard Martyr was acknowledged to be a stock expert and a top-grade wool man, it had been said that he didn’t seem to fit into this background of distance and space bared to the blazing sky, but, in fact, he fitted perhaps a little too well. Moody, Mrs Fowler said of him; deep, was the daughter’s verdict. A psychiatrist would have been assisted had he known of Martyr’s secret vice of writing poetry, and could he have read some of it, the psychiatrist might have warned the patient to resist indulgence in morbid imaginings.

  Even the coming dissolution of Lake Otway was beginning to weigh upon his mind, and his mind was seeking rhyming words to tell of it. Actually, of course, he was too much alone: the captain of a ship, the solitary officer of a company of soldiers, the single executive whose authority must be maintained by aloofness.

  Because he had watched the birth of Lake Otway, he knew precisely what the death of Lake Otway would mean. He had watched the flood waters spread over this great depression comprising ten thousand acres, a depression which had known no water for eighteen years. Properly it was a rebirth, because Lake Otway had previously been born and had died periodically for centuries.

  Where the ‘whirlies’ had danced all day, where the mirage had lain like burning water, the colours of the changing sky lived upon dancing waves, and the waves sang to the shores and called the birds from far-away places… even the gulls from the ocean. Giant fleets of pelicans came to nest and multiply. The cormorants arrived with the waders, and when the duck-shooting season began in the settled parts of Australia the ducks came in their thousands to this sanctuary.

  All that was only three years ago. Nineteen feet of water covered the depression three miles wide and five miles long. Then, as a man begins to die the moment he is born, so did Lake Otway suffer attrition from the sun and the wind. The first year evaporation reduced the depth to fourteen feet, and the second year these enemies reduced it to eight feet.

  It was the second year that Ray Gillen came over the back tracks from Ivanhoe way on his motor-bike and asked for a job. He was a wizard on that bike on all kinds of tracks and where no tracks were, and he was a superb horseman, too. Even now the sound of his laughter spanned the ridges of time since that moonlit night he had gone swimming and had not returned.

  He ought to have come ashore. It was strange that the eagles and the crows never led the waiting men to the body, for there were exceptionally few snags in LakeOtway, and no outlet down theTallyawalker Creek that year.

  If only a man could strip that girl’s mind and forget her body. She used to catch her breath when Ray Gillen laughed, and when he teased her, her eyes were blue… like… like blue lakes.

  The Golden Bitch!

  Chapter Two

  Bony comes toPorchester

  ITWASNOTan event to be forgotten by those closely associated with it. The details were recorded by the police and studied by Detective-Inspector Bonaparte many months later.

  Ray Gillen arrived at Lake Otway on September 3rd, and the next morning was taken on the books by Richard Martyr. As is the rule, no questions were asked of Gillen concerning previous employment or personal history, the only interest in him by his employer being his degree of efficiency in the work he was expected to do. And as a stockman he was certainly efficient.

  Nine weeks later, on the night of November 7th, Gillen was drowned in Lake Otway, and late the following day the senior police officer at Menindee arrived with Mr Wallace, the owner. To SergeantMansell Martyr passed all Gillen’s effects, he having in the presence of witnesses listed the contents of Gillen’s suitcase and the items of his swag.

  At that time the men’s quarters were occupied by Lester, MacLennon , Carney and George Barby. The quarters consisted of a bungalow having three bedrooms either side of the living-room. Lester occupied one room andMacLennon another. Carney occupied the same room with Gillen, and Barby had a room to himself.

  November came in
very hot and the men often descended the steps cut into the face of the bluff and bathed in the lake, which at this date was twelve feet five inches deep. Neither Lester norMacLennon could swim. Barby could, but never ventured far from the shore. Of about the same age… twenty-five… both Gillen and Carney were strong swimmers, especially the former, who boasted that, with a little training, he would swim across the lake and back.

  On the night of November 7th the moon was almost at full. The day had been very hot, and the night warm and still. The men played poker, using matches, until a quarter to eleven, when they went to bed. Carney stated that shortly after he and Gillen got to bed, Gillen announced his intention of going for a swim. Carney, on the verge of sleeping, declined Gillen’s invitation to accompany him. He stated that it wasn’t until he awoke the following morning that he discovered Gillen hadn’t returned.

  The last Carney saw of Gillen was when he put out the light on leaving the room. Gillen then was wearing only his pyjama trousers. A quick check of Gillen’s clothes proved that he could not have returned from the lake, slept, awakened early and dressed and gone out. It was after breakfast, when Martyr appeared to give his orders for theday, that Gillen was reported missing.

  For SergeantMansell a routine job. He examined Gillen’s clothes, his swag of blankets, and the contents of his suitcase, the suitcase being of good quality. There was no clue to Gillen’s people. He examined the man’s motor-bike, a powerful machine in good condition, noted its registration and engine numbers, and went back to his office.

  Wallace and his overseer organized the hands. Aborigines were brought from the River, and meanwhile Lester and Carney andMacLennon scoured the country about the Lake in the extremely unlikely event that Gillen had wandered away and become lost.

  On the third day, and subsequently, all hands patrolled the shores to await the coming in of the body. The wind direction and the currents set up by the wind were carefully calculated. But the body did not come ashore, and it was ultimately assumed that it had been trapped by a wire fence crossing the lake which was, of course, submerged when the depression filled with water.