The Widows of Broome Read online

  “Not as bad, though, as Mr. Dickenson, is he?” said the boy, and his father snapped out:

  “Worse. Old Dickenson only drinks the acid out of car batteries.”

  Chapter Two

  The Wood Pile

  BROOME has no Main Street. It has no shopping centre, no shops fronted with plate-glass display windows. There are no trams, and no railway. Several airlines use the airport, but no one knows when a plane is due, or when one is about to depart. Sometimes a ship arrives to be moored to the long jetty at high tide. When the tide goes out the ship rests like a tired hog on the sand beside the jetty and the loading is languidly carried on while the tide comes in and re-floats the vessel.

  The town is situated behind coast sand-dunes, sprawled on the flats north of the Dampier Creek. The streets are very wide, and all the houses sit down like old ladies wearing hoop skirts and being far too lady-like to take the slightest notice of their neighbours. Every house occupied by the white population is of the bungalow type, and every house is protected with storm shutters, some even wire-cabled to the ground, for when the summer willies blow they are apt to lift more than dust.

  The police station was a large house squatting in about four acres of straggly trees, dying grass and bare earth. The floor rested on piles three feet above ground, and the rooms were many and airy.

  At dinner on the day Bony arrived at Broome, there sat at table the inspector and his wife, their son Keith, aged fourteen, their daughter Nanette, aged thirteen, and Inspector Bonaparte, alias Mr. Knapp. Inspector Walters carved the roast. His back was straight, his hands dexterously employed the bone-handled carving knife and fork with the bright steel shield. His expression was severe. He said nothing, and, sensing the slight strain, Bony opened the conversation.

  “You mentioned a gentleman named Dickenson who drinks the acid from car batteries,” he remarked. “What happens?”

  Young Keith opened his mouth to reply but remained silent at a warning glance from his mother.

  “Hospital,” replied Inspector Walters. “Old Dickenson is a queer character, but quite a decent old pot when sober. Receives a little money every quarter day, and that gives him about two weeks on the whisky. As he hasn’t any credit at the pubs, after his benders he will, if given the opportunity, milk a car battery and drink the fluid. Naturally, when found he has to be taken to hospital. Battery acid is bad for the stomach, so they say.”

  “Wonder he doesn’t die,” observed Bony.

  “Too tough to pass out for keeps. He doesn’t take it straight, mind you. Ten drops in a tumbler of water is the correct strength, I understand.”

  “Poor old thing,” murmured Mrs. Walters. “They paint him blacker than he really is. Has been quite a gentleman. He was very rich at one time in his life. He owned an estate in Hampshire, England, and an ocean-going yacht.”

  “Been living in Broome long?”

  “Fifty years. What finally broke him was the willie of March, 1935. Twenty-one luggers and a hundred and forty lives were lost, and old Dickenson’s remaining fortune went down with three of those luggers.” Walters snorted. “I’ve been asked to move him out of town, but I won’t do it. The only harm he does is to himself. You can’t tell a man to move out of town when the nearest town is 130 miles to the north, and the next nearest 300 miles to the south.”

  “All the kids like him,” edged in young Keith. “Tells us yarns about foreign places, and his adventures among the Indians in South America.”

  “Oh!” murmured Bony. “That’s interesting.”

  “Yes, and I don’t see why Old Bilge should lecture us about him and tell us not to speak to him. Old Dick...”

  “How many times have I told you not to call your headmaster Old Bilge?” irascibly demanded Walters. “I’ve a good mind to write and tell him what you call him. Here’s your mother and I scraping and saving to give you a good education, and you go around saying ‘jist’ for ‘just’ and ‘gunner’ for ‘going to’. Anyway, you’ll have much for which to answer tomorrow.”

  “I’ve heard something about this Cave Hill College,” Bony remarked soothingly, and Mrs. Walters was not quite sure about his right eyelid when he glanced at her. “Very good school, isn’t it?”

  Walters explained that Cave Hill College was considered among the best in Australia, drawing boys from as far distant as Perth as well as from the vast hinterland.

  “Must be about five hundred boys there now,” he went on. “And only a few day boys too. We couldn’t afford the boarding fees.”

  “There is, of course, a State school?” pressed Bony.

  “Yes. Quite a large school. Nan goes there. Doing very well, too.”

  “Good!” Bony smiled at the girl, who flushed and fidgeted. “Why, Keith, do you boys call your head-master Old Bilge?”

  The boy hesitated, and this time Bony’s eyelid did flicker.

  “His name’s Rose.”

  “Ah! I see now the allusion. Rose ... perfume ... Bilge ... evil smell. What form are you in?”

  The subject of Cave Hill College and the rising education fees provided the subject for the remainder of the meal, and Bony was given word pictures of the seven or eight masters under Mr. Rose. It would seem that, in the opinion of his hosts, the only reason for Broome’s continued existence was its college.

  An hour later, Bony was seated at ease with Walters and Sergeant Sawtell in the closed office, and Walters was voicing his assumption that Bony had read the official summary of the two murders and the more detailed statements gathered by the C.I.B. detectives.

  “Yes, I did go through the summary,” Bony admitted. “I didn’t go into the statements and reports because I like to keep my mind as free as possible from cluttering data. So, you see, I know next to nothing beyond that the medical report indicates that both victims were strangled by the same man. I would like you to tell me about it.”

  The two policemen looked at each other.

  “You relate the facts, Sawtell,” urged Walters. He turned to Bony. “Sawtell specialises with the Asians and the locals. Pedersen, who’s away, is the bush expert. We’re all a bit sore, you know, that this bird got away with two murders. It bashes our pride. I’d like to ask a question.”

  “Certainly. Go ahead.”

  “Is it true that you have never failed to finalise a case?”

  “Quite true,” replied Bony, and neither man could detect vanity in him. “It’s true because so far I’ve never been pitted against a clever murderer. It is my great good fortune that there is no such person as a clever murderer.”

  Walters smiled frostily.

  “This one is too clever for us, and for the Perth men, too,” he confessed. “The fellow we’re up against is as clever as the Devil.”

  Bony was engaged in rolling one of his dreadful cigarettes.

  “If your murderer is as clever as the Devil, who according to the authorities is high above par...”

  “This fellow’s well above par, sir,” interrupted Sawtell, whose light blue eyes held fire. “He’s so far above par that he doesn’t leave finger-prints, he doesn’t murder for gain, he never makes the mistake of being seen immediately before and after his crimes, and he doesn’t leave foot tracks for our boys to fasten on to.”

  “It promises more and more,” Bony almost whispered. “Your boys in the top grade?”

  “Yes. Pedersen swears by two of ’em. He should know, for they accompany him on his routine patrols as well as on special jobs.”

  “Those two he swears by, are they away with him now?”

  “No. One is having a spell up the creek and the other is that fellow we found smoking himself with petrol.”

  Sawtell decided that never previously had he seen a cigarette rolled so badly. The middle was oversize and the ends were pointed like pencil tips. The black hair, the dark complexion and the sharp features of the cigarette-murderer seated easily in the swivel chair comprised the pieces of a picture puzzle always presented to strangers, and the serge
ant was yet to watch the pieces fall into position to portray this unusual product of two distinctly opposite races. Certainly unconscious of inferiority to anyone, Sawtell was now conscious of the power behind the broad forehead and the blue eyes again directed to him.

  “Until men grow wings they must walk on their two feet,” Bony said, and lit the alleged cigarette. “I see a problem I’ve often come across ... the gulf existent between the mind of the white man and the mind of the Australian black man. As the mind of the Occidental differs widely from that of the Oriental, so differs as widely the minds of the Australian black tracker and the Australian white policeman. My birth and training fashion me into a bridge spanning the gulf between them. Your murderer left his tracks without doubt.”

  “Then why...” began Walters.

  “Your trackers did not understand exactly what they had to look for. You did not tell them what kind of man committed the murders?”

  “Of course not. We don’t know what kind of man he is.”

  “Well, then, you couldn’t expect your trackers to find his tracks. Had they been sufficiently instructed they might have seen tracks about the scene of the second murder which they remembered having seen about the scene of the first, but, even had you done that, the trackers would have had to be abnormally intelligent.” Bony waved the remainder of his cigarette in a short arc. “It’s like this. You receive a report that a lubra away out in the desert has been murdered. Off goes Pedersen and his tracker. The tracker knows all about the killing, and all about the victim. He even knows who killed the woman, although no one could possibly have told him in any spoken language. We know this is so, but we keep to ourselves our beliefs how such intelligence is broadcast because of fear of ridicule by educated fools. Your tracker, then, is familiar with the killer. He is taken to the scene of the crime, and then he is no more nor less than a super-bloodhound who has been allowed to smell something to which clings the scent of the hunted. In the case of a white killer you have to describe him to the tracker: the way he walks, his approximate age and weight, and his probable height.”

  “But, sir, we didn’t know what this white killer is like,” protested Sawtell.

  “Conceded. It will be my job to create a facsimile of the murderer from tiny bits and pieces. I have to obtain a picture of him from the very dust of Broome, so that I’ll see his mind, and I’ll know his probable age, and his trade or profession. And then I’ll look for his tracks, being myself independent of your black trackers. In me is enthroned the white man’s power of reasoning and the black man’s gifts of observation and patience. The only cause of failure in this case would be if your murderer has left the town. Would you both be kind enough to grant me a favour concerning a matter I’ve already mentioned?”

  “Most certainly,” Inspector Walters hastened to say. The personality of this man, in addition to his words, made him feel a junior in his own office.

  “Please omit the ‘sir’. My immediate chief, even my Chief Commissioner, invariably calls me Bony. My wife and my three sons name me Bony to my face. I’ll wager you don’t know what your children call you behind your back.”

  The stiffness fled from the inspector. He chuckled, and Bony warmed towards him.

  “They call me ... out of my hearing ... Ramrod. I got that appellation years ago when I was a recruit instructor.”

  Bony’s slim fingers again became employed making one of his amazing cigarettes.

  “Well, now, let’s get down to your two murders. If I interrupt, don’t mind, and don’t be thrown off the mental scent. Go right ahead.”

  Inspector Walters nodded to Sawtell, and the sergeant cleared his throat.

  “Five miles out of town there’s a permanent water-hole on the Cuvier Creek, and on the bank of this water-hole stands Dampier’s Hotel. The place is a favourite picnic ground for people from Broome.”

  “Reputation?” asked Bony.

  “Good. A man named George Cotton was licensee for fifteen years. He was a great footballer down south and did a bit of ring work in his time. There was never any trouble so far as we were concerned. He married after he gained the licence, and when he was killed his wife was a young woman, and their only child, a boy, was eight years old.

  “Cotton was accidentally shot one afternoon when duck-shooting up the creek. There was nothing whatever suspicious about that. After he died, his wife took over the licence. That was three years ago. She boarded the boy at Cave Hill College and engaged a man, known all over the North-West at Black Mark, as her barman and under-manager.

  “Last April, on the night of the 12th, the hotel had been very busy all afternoon as there were several picnic parties out from the town. The evening was busy, too, but Mrs. Cotton had early told Black Mark that she had a bad headache and would go to bed. The bedrooms for single men are built along one side of the yard, and a man making his way from the back door of the pub to his room fell over a body in the yard. It was a dark night, and he was partially drunk. He thought the person he fell over was also drunk.

  “That would be about half-past eleven. The drunk managed to strike a match to see who had tripped him, and what he saw sobered him enough to make him rush back to the hotel bar and announce that Mrs. Cotton lay naked in the middle of the hotel yard.

  “Naturally, neither Black Mark nor anyone else there believed it, but they trooped out to the yard with lamps and there was Mrs. Cotton, her body nude and her nightgown lying beside her. Pedersen and I, with Abie the tracker, got out there at ten minutes to one. The body hadn’t been moved and was then covered with the nightgown. All about the body the ground had been tramped on by the boots of thirty-odd people.

  “That Mrs. Cotton had been strangled was obvious. The doctor arrived a few minutes after we did. The woman was so man-handled that her neck was broken. We checked up on the man who found her body. The time he left the bar and the time he rushed in to tell what he had stumbled over, as well as other facts we gained from those thirty-odd people, let him out.”

  “Is the time known when she went to bed?” asked Bony.

  “Yes. It was nine-twenty. The drunk found her in the yard at approximately eleven-thirty. Her injuries, according to the doctor...”

  “The medical report later. What was the condition of Mrs. Cotton’s bedroom?”

  “Quite in order. She had gone to bed. A bottle of aspirin and a tumbler partially filled with water lay undisturbed on the bedside table. There was no evidence of a struggle in the bedroom.”

  “The weather that night?”

  “Calm and dark. There was a slight haze masking the stars.”

  “Warm?”

  “Not so warm that a woman would wander around in the yard in her nightgown only.”

  “Her moral reputation?”

  “Excellent.”

  “The examination of the twenty men in the bar produced nothing of interest?”

  “Nothing. And nothing was obtained from the staff and the guests who were not in the bar at the time.”

  “The nightgown ... was it damaged in any way?”

  “Yes,” replied Sawtell. “It was ripped at the back from top to bottom. That was done deliberately, because the neck seam was extremely hard to rip apart. I tried it.”

  “I was out at the hotel at daybreak,” said Walters. “We think that Mrs. Cotton walked in her sleep as she had sometimes done, and that the murderer found her in the yard and killed her. We examined and cross-examined every man jack on the place, and every one had an alibi from one or more of the others.”

  “And we couldn’t nail down any motive,” supplemented the sergeant. “I’ve known Mrs. Cotton even longer than the inspector, and I’m sure she wasn’t up to any hanky-panky with a man in one of the bedrooms off the yard. Besides, if she were, she wouldn’t leave her room on an adventure of that kind wearing only a thin silk nightgown. Motive is what baffled us.”

  “H’m! And now it’s June 25th ... more than nine weeks since the night of the murder,” murmured Bony. “W
ell, I have great distaste for easy cases. Tell me about the next murder.”

  Chapter Three

  Backgrounds

  “A MRS. ELTHAM was the second victim,” Sawtell proceeded. “She came here to work at one of the hotels. That was in 1945 when there wasn’t much doing in the pearl-shelling business. There’s only twenty-two luggers operating even now, and there used to be more than three hundred before the war. Anyway, this woman arrived at Broome on an Air Force tender from Nooncanbah, and no one seems to know where she joined the tender. She came here to work, and she worked. Pretty girl about twenty-five. Could have married better than she did, and could have married worse, too. She married a lugger owner, and then there was plenty of money. During the fishing season from April to December when her husband was at sea. Mrs. Eltham worked as a barmaid, and we became a little uneasy about her behaviour with her husband absent.”

  “Moral?” interrupted Bony.

  “Not flagrant. Well, one morning at sea during the ’47 season, Eltham himself went below. He had been down several times before but he wasn’t an experienced diver. Something got him, and no one knows what because neither of the regular divers were down with him. All they brought up of Eltham was what was left behind inside his helmet.

  “That was brought in and there was the usual inquest and funeral. After the funeral Mrs. Eltham left her work at the hotel and stayed at home, setting up as a discreet entertainer of gentlemen. The local parson and the head of the college both asked us to move her on, but...”

  “She didn’t keep a disorderly house,” interrupted the inspector. “She did permit me to glance at her bank book, which showed a balance of well over four thousand pounds, and so she could not be charged with having no means of support. Besides, she wasn’t a bad little woman. In fact, she had more culture than the majority of the women here. If we booted out all the victims of gossip and spite, there would be no one left here at all. Go on, Sawtell.”