Death of a Swagman Read online

  It was an instruction to him from the chief of his division to render all assistance to Detective Inspector 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. His eyes 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 a D.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 a paintpot 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?”

  “Eh?” barked the sergeant.

  “When will you prosecute me for (a) giving fictitious answers to lawful questions, et cetera, including (b), (c), and (d) in brackets?”

  “You are not being serious, sir?”

  “I am. You will press all those charges. I will plead guilty. You will whisper a word or two beforehand into the ear of the beak, asking him to give me fourteen days without the option of paying a fine. I will lodge here, eat of your wife’s excellent cooking—your own physical condition indicates that she is an excellent cook—and every evening at five-thirty you will pay me two shillings to spend over at the hotel. And then instead of everyone holding their horses in the presence of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, they will talk quite freely with poor old Bony, the latest victim of the ber-lasted per-leece. It is all so simple.”

  “But what if the heads hear about it?”

  “Who’s running this show, you or me?”

  “I’m supposed to be running the district,” said the sergeant, a little doubtfully.

  “You are. And I am running the investigation into the death of George Kendall. We are going to run in harness, and run well. The killing of Kendall wasn’t just a plain, ordinary booze and bash murder. Had it been, I would not have been here talking to you. There are aspects of this Kendall case which not only interest me but which escaped Detective Sergeant Redman, and, I venture to say, you too. For instance, you and Detective Sergeant Redman, and others, all believe that Kendall was murdered in his hut at Sandy Flat on Wattle Creek Station. I have not been there, ever, and I know that he was not murdered in his stockman’s hut.”

  “But the blood on the floor ... all about the body!” objected the sergeant.

  “Oh, of course, the blood!” Bony agreed calmly. “Was anything done to establish if it was human blood or animal blood? Of course not. The man lay in blood, and therefore it must be his own blood. So say Detective Sergeant Redman, and you, and others. Well, well, you may all be forgiven for believing that Kendall lay in his own blood. But first things first. Allow me to introduce myself.

  “I never arrive on the scene of a crime, the investigation of which has baffled others, in my official uniform and accompanied by experts. Most often no one outside police circles knows what I am and cares less who I am. Publicity is not my forte. As my own chief commissioner says so very often that repetition of the obvious wearies me, I am not a policeman’s bootlace. But, Marshall, I am an investigator of violent crime in Australia’s outback, and so here I am about to investigate the murder of Stockman Kendall. Now tell me about yourself. How long have you been stationed at this district?”

  “Eleven years, sir. A long time.”

  “You didn’t get along too well with Redman, did you?”

  “Well, no, sir, I didn’t,” Marshall admitted, his mind instantly imagining an adverse report on him by Detective Sergeant Redman. “You see—”

  Bony cut in, nodding his head to emphasize his words:

  “Yes, I know. Redman is a city man. He has no bush background like you and me, and Gleeson, your constable. Redman is used to bullying loose women and thieves for information. We have had to use our grey matter and obtain our information from such things as sand and birds and tracks. Wouldn’t you like a change to a big town or city?”

  The sergeant nodded. Bony’s clear blue eyes and dark face seemed to blaze into a flashing smile and the other man’s mind began simultaneously to work along two lines of thought: one that this famous detective could do him an extra good turn, and the other that only now was this half-caste revealing to him his personality. It was as though the smile was a lamp showing a man seen previously only in half-light. When Bony continued speaking, even his voice changed from the soft tones of his mother’s people to the fuller cadences of the white man used to authority. Already Sergeant Marshall was becoming aware of his own mental inferiority. Bony was saying:

  “Men like you who have gained valuable administrative ability are often the forgotten men of our state’s police force. You see, I have so often worked pleasurably with men of your type. You rule over an area of thousands of square miles, efficiently and without fuss, and the chiefs are unconcerned because you do not give them concern. I have given my chief a great deal of concern—and I am an inspector. I will show you how to earn promotion and a move to a large town or city where Rose Marie will receive a better chance in life. You and I will co-operate. We understand each other and the bushlands. Redman was a child—here in our element.”

  “That’s so.” he agreed.

  “Well, then, if you can spare the time from your labours of collating statistics about sheep and fences and bores and income taxes and stinkweed and other stupid things not connected with the maintenance of law and order, I would like you to relate to me in chronological sequence the facts concerning this murder. Redman’s report is full enough, but I want to hear the story from a bushman.”

  Marshall nodded. Bony was an entirely new experience, one that he was liking more and more.

  “On the night of October eleventh last,” he began, “there was held in the local hall a social and dance. In point of attendance it was most successful, nearly all the townsfolk being present as well as most of the people from the surrounding stations. Mrs James, the wife of the parson, organized it in aid of the aborigines’ missions, and what she organizes is always successful.

  “There was also present George Kendall, a stockman employed on Wattle Creek Station, riding from a hut at a place called Sandy Flat, which is three miles due east of Merino and
close against the Walls of China.

  “Nothing much of Kendall’s history is known. He came east from the Darling River stations about a year ago, and got the job on Wattle Creek Station. He was unmarried and apparently had no relatives. His age was thought to be about thirty-eight. He was a good stockman. He never drank to excess, and he never gave us any trouble. He was a gambler but a poor sportsman, and his movements that night of October eleventh were as follows:

  “He arrived in town about six o’clock and checked in at the hotel for the night. He stabled his horse at the rear of the hotel, had a few drinks at the bar, then had dinner, and later was seen by Gleeson, my constable, playing poker for matches with three travellers. He left the hotel with the licensee and his wife to go to the function at the hall, which was timed to begin at eight, the social part lasting till ten o’clock and the dancing continuing from then until midnight.”

  “There was a full moon that night?” Bony interposed.

  “Yes, there was a moon ... a full moon, I think.”

  “What were the weather conditions?”

  “Clear sky and a wind.”

  “About what was the velocity of the wind?”

  “I couldn’t say. It was not a very strong wind that night.”

  “No matter. I can find that out later. Proceed.”

  “I didn’t go the chivoo,” Marshall continued. “I had a lot of those damn-fool statistics to make up, but Gleeson was on duty outside the hall and he had my permission to have a dance or two. He’s fairly popular, although you wouldn’t think so to look at him. Stickler for duty and regulations is Mounted Constable Gleeson.

  “My wife went with Florence, our daughter. According to Gleeson, the chivoo was in full swing by eight o’clock. There was a whist drive going on in one portion of the hall, and children’s games were being conducted in another part. Now and then someone would be asked to go to the stage and give a song or a recitation.

  “When Kendall entered the hall there was a children’s game called musical chairs going on. Our girl was in this game. Mrs James was playing the music on a piano and every time she stopped all the children rushed to the chairs, one of which was always short. Kendall went over to watch the game when Mrs James was playing and the children were dancing round the chairs in a circle. It turns out that when Mrs James stopped playing Florence hesitated in choosing a chair to run to, and Kendall pushed her with unnecessary violence so that she tripped and fell.

  “The child wasn’t hurt, but the push ruined her chance of getting a chair. The parson, Mr Llewellyn James, admonished Kendall for interfering, and Kendall said: ‘I was only showing the silly brat what chair to go to.’ With that, young Jason, the son of the garage proprietor, walked up to Kendall, put a hammer lock on him, and marched him from the hall. There might have been a fight outside had not Gleeson been there, and to Gleeson, Kendall explained that what had happened was an accident. Young Jason went back inside, and after Gleeson had a few words with him. Kendall went in.

  “At half past nine they served supper, and after supper all the children left and the dancing began. It was when Gleeson was having a dance that Kendall said something to young Jason and they went quietly out and fought in an adjacent allotment. Result: Kendall won and Jason wasn’t seen again that night.

  “The following morning when the hotel yardman went to the stables he found that Kendall’s horse had been taken away, and the maid found that Kendall’s room had not been occupied by him. Late in the morning of October twelfth the owner of Wattle Creek Station and one of his hands called at the hut at Sandy Flat to leave rations for Kendall. They found his horse standing saddled and bridled outside the horse paddock gate, and they found Kendall lying dead on the floor of his hut. The table was upturned and a chair broken. The door was closed. Kendall lay in a pool of blood, and the doctor who examined the body said that he had been killed with a blunt instrument, his skull badly smashed.”

  “What time did you arrive on the scene?” Bony asked.

  “Four minutes to two o’clock.”

  “What were the weather conditions?”

  “Fine with a wind blowing from the west.”

  “How strong was the wind?”

  “Medium strength, I suppose. Not strong, but strong enough to blow dust.”

  “Are there any aborigines in the district?”

  “Yes, but they come and go. When here they usually camp at Wattle Creek.”

  “Where were they when Kendall was murdered?” asked Bony.

  “They were camped on Wattle Creek ... below the homestead.”

  “None of them was outside the hall that night?”

  “No. Two were brought across to Sandy Flat the next day to see if they could pick up any tracks, but by that time the wind had erased any tracks made by Kendall. As I told you, you will have to see the place to know why they failed. By the way, would you mind telling me why you are so sure that Kendall wasn’t killed inside the hut?”

  “I will tell you something, but not everything,” Bony said, smiling. “I discovered the fact from one of the photographs taken by the police photographer who accompanied Redman, the picture of the front of the hut.”

  “I saw that one. I saw no evidence.”

  “Neither did Redman. But I did. It is why I am here.”

  “But what...?”

  “One day I’ll show you the evidence in that picture, without which I would not have consented to undertake this investigation. You see. Sergeant. I have never permitted myself to stultify my brain with common murders. I pick and choose my cases, not for their simplicity but for unusual circumstances governing them. My superiors often argue about my attitude, and speak of discipline and matters which fail to interest me. Sometimes they threaten to sack me, and that interests me even less. Look at me. You see—what? Come, tell me.”

  Marshall hesitated, and Bony continued:

  “You see a half-caste, a detective inspector in a state police department. I was given the chance of a good education by a saint, the matron of a mission station to which I was taken when abandoned as a baby. I passed from a state school to a high school, thence to the Brisbane University, where I won my Master of Arts degree, and so proved once again, if proof is necessary, that the Australian half-caste is not a kind of kangaroo. But I had to conquer greater obstacles than social prejudice. I had to conquer, and still have to conquer, the almost irresistible power of the Australian bush over those who belong to it.

  “You have been in the bush long enough to have felt that power yourself, and you are a white man. A similar power is exercised over seafaring men by the sea, but it is not so strong as this power of the bush. The only counter-power preventing me from surrendering to it is pride, with a capital P, and faith in myself. Without pride in my scholastic attainments and pride in my success as a crime investigator, the bush would have had its way with me. My record is unblemished by failure, and that is behind the faith in myself. Once I fail to solve a crime mystery, such as this Kendall case, I lose that faith in myself which holds me up with head high, and the great Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Bony the half-caste nomad.

  “I will not consent to investigate cheap and tawdry crimes of violence, or lesser crimes, because my pride would be shamed, and also I have to avoid the fear of failure which might grow in me did I accept any and every assignment given to me by my department. Once I forget that I am a police inspector and a Master of Arts, I become Bony the half-caste, and the banshee of the bush would lure me back and down into its secret cave, to stand naked before it and to recognize it as my lord and master.”

  There followed a period of silence which Marshall did not find to his liking. His long career as a policeman in the interior of Australia had made him au fait with the growing problem of the half-caste and the half-caste’s problems. He knew that they were invariably intelligent, and that it was their white fathers who were degraded and not their black mothers, members of what was originally one of the most moral rac
es that ever walked this earth. He was aware, too, that these people were mentally capable of competing successfully with the white man—were they but given the chance.

  “Kendall was killed and the bush concealed the tracks of his murderer from you and Redman and any other white man and black man who might try to wrest the secret from the bush. But it will not baffle me, because I am neither wholly black nor white. I have the white man’s reasoning powers and the black man’s eyesight and knowledge of the bush. The bush will give up its secrets to me.—I believe that someone is calling for you.”

  The sergeant stood up. Both men heard the rapid footsteps approaching the lockup. Then Constable Gleeson appeared at the door.

  “Mrs Fanning is over at the office, Sergeant,” he said. “She states that she went over to her father’s hut to take him a roasted joint and that he is lying on the floor. She says that there is blood on the floor under his head, and she thinks he is dead.”

  “We’ll go along, Gleeson,” Marshall said, astonishingly unruffled. He turned to Bony, to see him with his two hands together and the finger tips touching his chin. He looked quite happy.

  Chapter Three

  The Book of the Bush

  WHEN Edward Bennett was found dead in his hut on the outskirts of Merino he was in his eighty-second year. In life he had looked but sixty, in death, according to the Merino undertaker, he looked—well, not peaceful.

  He had retired from hard work at the age of seventy. His wife was dead. His only daughter, married to the Merino butcher, had said to her willing husband: “Father must come and live with us.” Old Bennett had snorted: “Be hanged if I will. I’m living in me own house.”

  Old Bennett had built himself a two-roomed hut on the eastern edge of Merino, some few hundred yards north of the hall, which stood on the lower left-hand corner of the street. It faced over the vast area of country falling gently away toward the Walls of China, which appeared to be much higher than actually they were; and it was, therefore, less than a quarter of a mile from the post office, where the ancient battler had drawn his old-age pension.