Death of a Swagman b-9 Read online

  Death of a Swagman

  ( Bony - 9 )

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Arthur W. Upfield

  Death of a Swagman

  Merino and Rose Marie

  NO GANGS of yellow men carrying earth and rubble in baskets, no human chains of men and women, and even children, carrying stones in their lacerated arms, built these Walls of China. No Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti directed over a million men to raise this extraordinary barrier lying athwart the bushlands in the south-west corner of the state of New South Wales. The colour of the country is reddish-brown, and upon this reddish-brown land the soft fingers of the wind built a wall of snow-white sand some twelve miles long, three-quarters of a mile wide, and several hundred feet high. No one knows when the wind laboured so mightily to build the barrier, and no one knows who named it the Walls of China.

  On the morning of October twelfth, in an isolated hut lying within the sunrise shadow of the Walls of China, the body of a stockman named George Kendall was found in circumstances plainly indicating the act of homicide. Following the discovery, Detective Sergeant Redman arrived at Merino, a township three miles westward of the hut and the Walls of China. With him in the car were an official photographer and a fingerprint expert. They were driven to the police station in the view of the excited inhabitants, and in the course of the investigations questioned and cross-questioned all and sundry, took pictures of the scene of the crime, and reproduced fingerprints left on objects within the hut.

  The arrival of Detective Inspector Bonaparte, alias Bony to his friends, was in marked contrast. His interest had been captured by the statements and documents compiled by Detective Sergeant Redman, and he drifted into Merino six weeks later in the guise of a stockman seeking a job. At the only hotel he drank a couple of deep-noserswith the licensee, then parked himself on the bench on the hotel veranda and proceeded to smoke his atrociously made cigarettes.

  Merino is not markedly dissimilar to any of a dozen townships in the western half of New South Wales. Its houses, its shops and government buildings are all constructed with wood, iron, and tin, the only effort to beautify the place having been the planting of pepper-trees along the borders of the one formed street. Some eighty people only, including children, were living in Merino when Bony visited the place to look into the death of George Kendall.

  What had induced the early settlers to found this township puzzled even Bony, who was interested in such matters. Its site was on the eastern slope of a vast land swell. The track from Mildura came over the broad summit and down the gentle slope for more than a mile, to pass the two large dams which supplied the township with water and the windmill which provided water for travelling stock. Then it continued for another mile until it reached the western and upper end of the main street. Passing through the township, it flowed gently down the slope for two miles, where it turned sharply to the north as though aware that it could never flow up and over the great rampart of snow-white sand known as the Walls of China.

  The hotel was the first abode to welcome the traveller from Mildura. From its veranda Bony was able to gaze down the street, between the twin lines of pepper-trees, and to view the huge range of sand humped and peaked in snowy whiteness in this land of red-brown earth.

  Opposite the hotel stood the corrugated iron garage owned, as announced by red lettering on a white board above the open front, by an Alfred Jason who also was a wheelwright and a funeral director. His house stood next to the garage and farther back from the street, and then came the compound in which was the police station, the stables and the small lockup, and a small building which had done service as the morgue. Still lower down the street could be seen the fronts of shops and, on Bony’s side, the school and the church.

  The afternoon was warm, and he had walked far this day, so he composed his body full length along the bench, his swag for a headrest, and fell asleep before deciding whether to make himself known to the senior police officer or to work incognito on what he was sure was going to be an interesting investigation.

  He was awakened by a hard voice asking:

  “What’s your name?”

  Like that of his maternal progenitors, Bony’s mind became fully active the instant he awoke, but he opened only one eye to observe a uniformed policeman looking down at him with disapproval writ plainly on his large, weather-tinted face.

  “Hey! You! What’s your name?”

  “Robert Burns,” replied Bony languidly, before yawning. “Go away.”

  The request to depart was less irritating than the yawn to the policeman, who ranked as sergeant. The irritation was excusable, because Sergeant Marshall had never become accustomed to being yawned at by stockmen who slept during daylight hours on benches outside licensed premises.

  The front of Bony’s shirt was gathered into a huge fist and he was lifted bodily to his feet. The sergeant’s bulk dwarfed him.

  With the upper part of his left arm held in a humanvise, Bony was urged across the street to the police station. In the office a mounted constable, minus his tunic, was pounding on a typewriter.

  “Keep your eye on this bird of passage, Gleeson,” ordered the sergeant. The constable rose to stand beside the prisoner. His superior sat down at his own desk and wrote rapidly on an official form. Then he said:

  “You are charged with (a) giving fictitious answers to lawful questions put to you by a police officer, (b) being insolent to a police officer in the execution of his duty, (c) having no visible means of support, and (d) loitering outside a licensed premises. Lock him up, Gleeson.”

  “There is an (e) within brackets but I had better not mention it,” Bony could not resist pointing out, and then another humanvise became clamped about his upper arm and he was conducted to one of two whitewashed cells in a building at the rear of the station. The constable heard him laughing as he walked back to his typewriter.

  Bony sat down on the broad bench which was to serve him as a bed. His clear blue eyes were bright and twinkling with mirth whilst his long slim fingers made a cigarette with the usual hump in the middle. Often had he been threatened with arrest by policemen who knew him only as a station hand, but this was the first time he had been jailed. His cell was clean but too warm for comfort beneath its iron roof, the air being admitted only through a barred opening in the roof and a small iron grille in the door. Philosophically he placed his swag of blankets and personal gear as a pillow for his head and laid himself along the bench and smoked whilst pondering on the advisability or otherwise of presenting his credentials to Sergeant Marshall. Eventually he would have to do so, but there were certain advantages to be gained by remaining incognito for a week or so.

  He had been there for probably an hour when he heard movement outside the door as though a box or case was being placed against it. A moment later he saw a pair of large dark grey eyes gazing steadily at him through the grille. He swung his feet off the bench and sat up.

  “Good afternoon,” he said politely.

  The steady appraisal continued, inquiring, assessing. Bony stood, whereupon a sweetly childish voice ordered:

  “Stay where you are or I’ll go away.”

  “Very well,” he said, and sat down. “Now that you have looked me over carefully enough, what do you think of me?”

  “What’s your name?”came the faint echo of the sergeant’s voice.

  “Bony.”

  “Bony! Bony what?”

  “Just Bony. Everyone calls me Bony. What’s yours?”

  “I am Rose Marie. I’m eight. My father’s a policeman.”

  “Rose Marie,” Bony repeated slowly. “What a beautiful name.”

  “It is not my real name, you know,” said the person outside the door. “My real
name’s Florence. Young Mr. Jason gave me the Rose Marie name. I’m glad you like it. I do too. So does Miss Leylan. What are you in there for?”

  “For having been rude to a sergeant of police.”

  “Oh! That’ll be my father. He doesn’t like people being rude to him. Why were you rude?”

  Bony related the incident of his arrest. Then he chuckled, and unexpectedly, the person outside laughed with him.

  “You didn’t mean to be rude, did you?” she asked, swiftly serious.

  “No, of course not. I was only trying to be funny. Can I come to the door now? It’s rather difficult talking to you from here.”

  “You may.”

  The large grey eyes examined him with even greater interest when his face was brought to the level of the door grille, and, noticing the trickles of perspiration on his dark brown face, Rose Marie said with anxiety in her voice:

  “Is it hot in there?”

  “Somewhat,” replied Bony ruefully. “How is it out there?”

  “Goodo here in the shade. Would you like a drink of tea?”

  Henodded, his eyes wide with anticipation and containing a little admiration, too, for Rose Marie’s hair was light brown and appeared to reflect the sunlight beyond the shadow of the jail. Her face was perfectly oval and fresh and winsome.

  “I’ll make you a drink of tea,” she told him solemnly. “You must be thirsty in that hot old place. You wait! The kettle’s boiling. I promised Mother I’d have it boiling by the time she got back from the parsonage. I won’t be long.”

  He watched her cross to the rear of the station, noted her firm carriage and steady, deliberate walk, a mannerism of movement evidently copied from her father. There in the sunlight her hair gleamed, the twin plaits hanging down her back seemingly ropes of new gold. Ten minutes later he watched her return, carrying a tray covered with a cloth. She set it down upon the ground before the door, and then looked up at him and said firmly:

  “You promise not to run away when I open the door?”

  “I do, of course.”

  “Cross your fingers properly and promise out loud. Hold them upso’s I can see.”

  Bony obeyed and loudly promised not to run away, with the mental reservation that he would not run away for a hundred pounds.

  There was no further hesitation. Rose Marie moved the box from the door, slipped the heavy bolt, opened the door wide, and came in with her tray.

  “My!” she exclaimed, putting the tray down on the bench. “It is hot in here.”

  “Better leave the door open,” he suggested. “All the hot air will then go outside. Oh! I see that you have brought two cups and saucers. And cake! You know, Rose Marie, you are being very kind. Are you going to have tea with me?”

  They sat one at each end of the bench with the tea tray between them. With the precision of an experienced hostess the little girl set out her service of cups and saucers and plates. They had two blue stripes round their edges and the tea cosy of white wool also had its two blue stripes. It was evidently not the first occasion that Rose Marie had served afternoon tea.

  “Do you take milk and sugar?” she asked.

  “Thank you… and one spoonful of sugar, please,” replied the delighted Bony, the romantic heart of him charmed. “You have a very nice tea set.”

  “Yes, it is pretty. I knitted the cosy all by myself to match the cups and things. Miss Leylan says I made four mistakes in knitting the cosy. Can you see them?”

  “No. I can’t. I don’t see any mistakes. Miss Leylan must have been mistaken. Who is she?”

  “She comes in from Wattle Creek Station three times a week to our school. She’s the sewing mistress. I like her. Her brother owns Wattle Creek Station, you know. Will you say grace, please? Mr and Mrs James always do when they take tea with Mother.”

  “I expect you could say it better than I could,” he said hastily, adding when the grace had been offered: “Who are Mr and Mrs James?”

  “The minister and his wife. Mr James is a lazy good-for-nothing dreamer, and Mrs James is a slave to him. That’s what Mother says. Someday I am going to ask Mr James what he dreams about. Have you any brothers and sisters? I haven’t. I heard Mrs James tell Mrs Lacey one day it was a shame that I didn’t have a brother or a sister.”

  Bony shook his head. He was conscious that his table manners were being studied, and hoped they were being approved.

  “No, I have no brothers and sisters,” he told her, and related how he had been found, when a small baby, in the shade of a sandalwood-tree in the far north of Queensland, and how he had found a mother in the matron of the mission station to which he had been taken. That produced many questions which had to be answered, for was she not his hostess and he her guest? His reward was the information that Constable Gleeson was her father’s only assistant, that the elder Mr Jason was considered “queer” by her mother, and by her father the essence of a broken-down actor, and that young Mr Jason had given her the name of Rose Marie because he loved her and was going to marry her some day, and that Detective Sergeant Redman who had come from Sydney was “just a horrid man.”

  “Why was he horrid?” Bony asked, his own impression of Redman not having been good.

  “ ’Coshe was.” Grey eyes flashed and the twin hair plaits were jerked into a half swing. “He was ever so rude to young Mr Jason. I hate the big police bully. That’s what Mr Gleeson calls him. I told Sergeant Redman that I hated him too, and he only laughed at me. When I told young Mr Jason about that he said he would punch Sergeant Redman on the nose if he came here again and laughed at me.”

  “But why was Sergeant Redman rude to your young Mr Jason?” Bony pressed.

  “ ’Cosyoung Mr Jason wouldn’t answer all his silly old questions.”

  “Oh! What were the questions about, do you know?”

  “About poor Mr Kendall who was killed out in his hut.”

  “But young Mr Jason wouldn’t know anything about that, would he?”

  “Of course he didn’t,” Rose Marie replied indignantly. “No one liked that beastly Sergeant Redman.”

  Footsteps fell on the ground beyond the open door, and Rose Marie murmured: “Oh my!”

  Into the doorframe loomed the figure of Sergeant Marshall. He stepped inside the cell. Rose Marie’s little body stiffened into rigidity. Her hands were clasped and nursed in herlap, and over her face spread an expression of resignation, such as she had probably seen on her mother’s face when she waited for a storm to break.

  Bony stood up. From regarding his daughter, Sergeant Marshall surveyed the evidence of the afternoon tea. The silence was tense. Then the policeman exploded.

  “Well I’m damned!” he said, giving a pause between each word.

  Chapter Two

  Bony Gets Down to Business

  “FLORENCE, take those things back to the house and then wait for me at the office.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Sergeant Marshall stood stiffly erect, his red neck swelling over the collar of his tunic, reminding Bony ofan goanna when annoyed. The sergeant’s eyes were like small brown pebbles in his brick-red face. With delightful dignity Rose Marie stood up and, with wilfulunhaste, collected the afternoon tea service, picked up her tray, and sedately marched out, her back like a gun barrel, the plaits of her hair giving never a swing. Then, to Bony, the sergeant said:

  “Good job you never made a break for it.”

  “You know, it never occurred to me,” Bony told him gravely. “By the way, I have a letter for you.”

  The sergeant’s eyesnarrowed, and his big body appeared to rise slightly on springs in his feet. Other than that he made no move. Neither did he speak whilst watching Bonyunstrap his swag, although he was prepared to jump should the prisoner produce a weapon. His eyes narrowed still more when he was presented with a plain foolscap envelope inscribed with his rank, name, and station.

  It was an instruction to him from the chief of his division to render all assistance to Detective Inspecto
r Napoleon Bonaparte, who was reopening the investigation into the death of one George Kendall.

  Still stiffly erect, the sergeant returned the instruction to its envelope and the envelope to a tunic pocket. Hiseyes were no longer small, nor was his face brick-red-it had become distinctly purple. Redman had told him one evening in the office something about this Napoleon Bonaparte and had said he was the best detective Queensland, or any other state, had ever produced. And he, Richard Marshall, first class sergeant, and the senior officer of Merino Police District, had locked him up, because… He fought for composure.

  “I regret having charged you, sir. I didn’t know,” he said.

  “Of course you didn’t know me, Sergeant,” Bony agreed soothingly. “Sit down here beside me and let us talk of cabbages and murders and things.”

  “But… but… oh, my aunt!”

  “What is the matter with your aunt?” mildly inquired Bony, and then smiled.

  “Bit of a shock, sir, finding that I’ve locked up aD. I. Took you for an ordinary half… ordinary station hand. Saw you were a stranger in my district, and we want the station compound fence painted and the cells whitewashed.”

  “Labour scarce?”

  “No, but money is.”

  “And so you arrest a stranger in this town, get him seven or fourteen days’ detention from a tame justice, and then provide him with apaintpot and brush, three meals and a bed, and two bob a day to take over to the hotel half an hour before closing time. I know. Good idea. The swagman gets a nice rest and the taxpayer has a drop of his money saved out of the ocean he provides. But you want always to be sure not to lock up police inspectors or union bosses. Supposing I had been a boss of the painters’ union?”

  “That would have been too bad-for the union boss.”

  “How so?”

  “He would have had to do a spot of work or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Sweat it out in this cell.”

  “He would have worked,” Bony predicted confidently. “Better work than sweat. I’ve had some. And don’t you go and scold Rose Marie. She saved my life with her tea and cake. Yes, I thought that your compound fence needed paint, and the work will provide me with a reason for being closely connected with the police. When do you intend to arraign me before the local magistrate?”