Batchelors of Broken Hill b-14 Read online

  “What a large number of cats you have, dear Henrietta. Cats everywhere. So decorative, too. Mad! There is no doubt of it. I should have had you certified when you burned all my waistcoats. What a thing to do!”

  The woman’s mouth writhed. Her voice was low, vibrant, passionate.

  “Still the sloppy, slobbering, drooling beast. I would have burned your revolting body with the clothes had I known then what you did to Muriel-making her kiss the filthy tainted things when she taxed you with it. You broke her, didn’t you, Henry? Made yourself the great fear in her heart and mind, so that even my affection couldn’t help her. A hero to the rest of the company, you were a beastly, bloated swine to Muriel.”

  The chuckle Tuttaway gave tautened Bony and sent ice up and down Jimmy’s back.

  “You should have known I would catch up with her and you. I merely had to meet her one evening when she was walking home. By that time I knew her habits, where she lived, all about you. So we went walking in the gloaming, and I told her how sorry I was, how misunderstood. She forgave me, Henrietta. When I told her how you had always been queer, she-well, she believed it. I have not lost the art of being charming despite the infliction of man’s injustice. Those lies you told her, Henrietta. She remembered them. Then she said we were going the wrong way. She was strong. She always was.”

  “And then you killed her?”

  “Put her gently to sleep, my Henrietta. She felt nothing.”

  Not for a second did his gaze leave her. She was breathing fast, and appeared gripped by terror of approaching death to be seen in his eyes and about his mouth. Drawing the tumbler to him, he took up the bottle and worked the opener with the hand steadying the bottle on the table. The beer frothed from the uncapped bottle, sprayed the cigarettes in the box, drenched Eros with white foam. He managed to fill the glass; the left hand gripped the haft of the green dagger.

  He drank, and beer splashed over the clerical vest.

  “You loathsome pig, Henry. Stop it! For heaven’s sake stop it!” Mrs Dalton’s voice rose to a shriek. “All my life-all my life I’ve had to look at that beastly habit.”

  Came a mere flash of what was due.

  “Your pardon, Henrietta. Careless of me…”

  Tuttaway set down the half-empty glass, reached into a coat-tail pocket for a handkerchief, looked down at his vest to wipe away the liquid, and tucked a corner of the handkerchief behind the clerical collar. As he poured more beer into the glass, he leered at her.

  “Well, my dear sister, I shall have to leave you,” Jade-green glass whirled about his hand like green mist. “I cannot face the thought that you will surely be put away if I do not negative the danger. In those places, you know, they do things to you. I shall be swift and gentle, for you are my sister and we did have fun.”

  “You mustn’t be a fool, Henry.”

  “Oh no! Indeed, no!”

  “Surely you realise you are dead?”

  “Am I, dear Henrietta?”

  “Of course. You are only a ghost.”

  The ghost smiled broadly. The chuckle came from deep within the ghostly belly. The ghost rose to its feet. The woman rose, too, as though her eyes impelled. Tuttaway laughed, snatched up the glass of beer, bowed to his sister. The dagger lay flat along the palm of his right hand.

  Mrs Dalton’s face was ashen.

  Bony motioned Jimmy to enter the room after him. The pair facing each other over the table might easily have seen them had not each been concentrating on keeping captive the eyes of the other.

  “My aim shall be true. This ghostly hand will not fail.” The man’s voice deepened, became sonorous. “We are about to part, and I give you fond farewell. Here’s to the lass who was always loony. Here’s to the saint who murdered her cats between playing the role of this queen and that. Here’s to the idiot, her long life done, the years behind her and all their fun. Here’s-”

  “Dear Henry! Have done and drink your toast. And please-please, dear Henry-don’t drool on to your waistcoat or Ishall go mad!”

  Tuttaway roared with mirth. Bony watched the hand holding the dagger. Jimmy Nimmo stood just behind him. Mrs Dalton saw neither. She saw only George Henry Tuttaway, and Tuttaway saw only her.

  “Madam, your very good health,” he shouted and drank. The hand bore the dagger aloft and back over the shoulder for the throw. Bony jumped, landing upon the table, then crashing full into the Great Scarsby. Mrs Dalton screamed:

  “Leave him be! Look at him! He won’t believe he’s dead!”

  Tuttaway gasped horribly. He gained his feet. The dagger slid from his hand to the floor. His teeth were bared in a dreadful grin as his body arched backward and his legs gave way. Mrs Dalton began to laugh-softly, gleefully, like a child.

  When? How? The bottle had not previously been opened, for the contents had cascaded when inelegantly uncapped. Never once had the woman received the chance to pass her hand over bottle or glass. Tuttaway had watched her every movement, save that one second he had looked down upon his soiled vest. Bony had missed nothing, and yet…

  Mrs Dalton’s laughter softened to a throaty purring.

  “Get up, Henry, and be killed again. Don’t lie there like a numbskull. You must rise that I may kill you again. It’s the only joy you have given me. So clever, Henry, were you not? Clever! The Great Scarsby! The Great Mass of Rubbish! The great Simpleton! See, Henry? My little syringe fitted with the bulb from a baby’s dummy to give it greater force. Look, Henry! Get up and look. I’ll show you.”

  She dashed beer into the glass and filled the syringe, oblivious of Bony and Jimmy, who stood at her side.

  “The syringe is filled with liquid cyanide, dear Henry, and held crosswise in the palm of the hand. Can you see it? No. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye: you taught me that. You won’t arise? Well, then, take it lying on your dirty back.”

  Both men were watching the woman’s right hand, and both thought they imagined the amber bullet which sped into the open mouth of the dead man.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Bony Reports

  SUPERINTENDENT PAVIER entered his office at a quarter to nine, and before he could seat himself at his desk his secretary came in to say that Inspector Stillman wished to see him on a matter of urgency.

  Pavier sat down and fingered the unopened morning’s correspondence. His apparent rudeness was but to gain time.

  “Er-oh! Yes, Miss Ball. Tell Inspector Stillman to come in.”

  “Yes, Stillman, what is it?” he asked distantly when Stillman stood before him.

  “I took over from Bonaparte at approximately five-twenty yesterday afternoon,” Stillman said woodenly, as though giving evidence. “I have been unable to locate either Sergeant Crome or Senior Detective Abbot. The staff is also missing. I have searched for the official file on George Henry Tuttaway without success. It is now almost nine o’clock, and the Detective Office is still utterly deserted. It seems an extraordinary state of affairs, sir.”

  “H’m!” Pavier dropped the letter he had opened whilst Stillman was speaking. “Am I to understand that you took over from Bonaparte yesterday afternoon?”

  “That is so, sir,” Stillman replied, made wary by the glint in the eyes watching him.

  “I assume I am the officer in charge of this division, Stillman. I hope to hear that Bonaparte told you to go to the devil. It is for him to be informed by me of the contents of Sydney’s instruction.”

  “I thought it was understood-”

  Bony walked in.

  “Morning, Super!”

  “Morning, Bonaparte!” Pavier returned, and Stillman gracefully stepped back, to savour in full the ‘sacking’ of this upstart. “I understand that Stillman has already spoken to you of an instruction he conveyed from Sydney. Er -here it is.”

  “Don’t bother, Super.” Bony drew a chair to the desk and sat down with his back to the standing Stillman. “I’m leaving for Brisbane on the 11.20 am plane, and I have to call on Mrs Robinov to pave the w
ay for a romantic friend of mine. Here is the report on work accomplished for your division, and I would like to make a verbal report in the presence of two of your officers who have been splendidly co-operative and have revealed marked initiative. Would you kindly call for Sergeant Crome and Detective Abbot?”

  Superintendent Pavier used the telephone, and whilst speaking glanced at the superscription on the foolscap envelope. It was addressed to him and marked: ‘ Shorthand Notes and Transcriptions.’ The handwriting was that of his son. Crome and Abbot came in. Pavier lookedquizzingly at Bony, who invited them to be seated. Stillman remained standing. No one saw him.

  “Well, Super, we have tied up those homicide cases,” Bony began briskly. “In the morgue we have the murderer of Muriel Lodding, and in the lock-up we have the murderer of Goldspink, Parsons, and Gromberg. My report covers the investigation conducted by us since my arrival, and you will, I believe, find it clear and journalistically concise. As I said a moment ago, I am happy to commend Sergeant Crome, who has been most cooperative and keenly helpful, and Senior Detective Abbot, who has shown equal zeal and marked intelligence.

  “I will run over the essential points. You will find in the report several additional items concerning the Tuttaway family history. Tuttaway himself was doubtless insane all his life, but because he had an outlet in creative work of a sort he was regarded as merely eccentric. He became, as we know, world-famous as a magician.

  “In those early years of mounting success Tuttaway was accompanied by his sister Henrietta. She was as great as Tuttaway, and both were undoubted artists in their chosenmetier.” The word was split in pronunciation for Stillman’s benefit. “Henrietta Tuttaway’s finest work on the stage was to present half a dozen famous queens in history, making the changes so swiftly as to give the audience the impression of a procession of queens. She was also an expert sleight-of-hand performer.

  “Henrietta admits her brother made her stage success possible. As a young girl she revealed incipient insanity, but her brother seems to have steered her clear of serious trouble. Eventually they bought a house in Ealing, London, and to the household Tuttaway introduced the girl we know as Muriel Lodding. It was his intention to train her to take her place in one of his shows. However, Muriel Lodding was not enthusiastic, and Tuttaway, naturally cruel, tormented her. The case in Victoria was a repetition of history.

  “Muriel Lodding received deep affection from Henrietta. It became Henrietta’s mission to protect her as much as possible from her brother, but as the years went by her mental health deteriorated and gave Muriel Lodding much concern. On tour in America, therefore, when Henrietta was left in the house in Ealing, Muriel ran away from the company and returned to England, and within a few days both women were on a ship coming to Australia. After arrival they changed their names and gave out they were sisters.

  “Eventually they heard that the Great Scarsby had returned to London, and subsequently that he had arrived in Sydney. They found sanctuary in Broken Hill, and here Henrietta, who claims she is the widow of a man named Dalton, appeared to recover in health.

  “Muriel Lodding’s great fear was George Henry Tuttaway, who had exercised sadistic dominance over her. When he escaped, she wanted Mrs Dalton to move on with her, even return to England, and the fact that she merely had to apply to you, sir, for police protection to ensure safety from the man seems to have been countered by Mrs Dalton’s determination to remain in Broken Hill and herself deal with her brother. We found placed ready in a kitchen drawer a butcher’s meat saw, butcher’s knives, and several hessian bags, and we now know that these articles were purchased by Mrs Dalton ten days after the escape.

  “It cannot be proved whether Muriel Lodding suspected Mrs Dalton of poisoning those three men. Mrs Dalton states that Lodding was not implicated, but I think, in view of the fact that three men were poisoned within two days following each of three mental illnesses suffered by Mrs Dalton, and which occasioned Lodding to ask for sick leave, that Lodding must have suspected. We do know that Lodding once met Mrs Dalton returning home in the guise of a much older woman, and her failure to report her suspicions was probably due to a sense of deep obligation to Mrs Dalton.

  “The effect of the escape on Mrs Dalton was, in Dr Hoadly’s opinion, the subsequent mental upsets. During these upsets she had to be controlled. Following the crisis, when Lodding felt she could return to work, Mrs Dalton’s mind entered a secondary phase when she was not so completely mad as to appear in public dressed as Queen Victoria, and sufficiently sane to avoid through disguise the consequences of her phobia.

  “This phobia, or hatred of her brother, was the product of several characteristics in the man, the major one being a long habit of feeding like an untrained child. To the sane, a mere pebble, but to Mrs Dalton a volcano which erupted when he escaped. His escape drove her to seek men like him, and by poisoning them she received temporary satisfaction in having destroyed that which she loathed.

  “She used a small syringe and, following practice, was able to conceal the instrument in her hand and squirt the poison accurately for a distance of two or three feet. The first two victims were selected. Gromberg she met in the street and followed to the hotel lounge, and O’Hara she saw beside the fountain. Both Miss Isaacs and Goldspink knew Mrs Dalton, but so perfectly did she disguise herself that neither Goldspink nor any of his assistants recognised her that afternoon she poisoned him. Parsons habitually visited the cafe. She went there often as Mrs Dalton, and most likely was not as Mrs Dalton when she poisoned Parsons. The afternoon she poisoned Gromberg she was looking for a victim, and because she sometimes shopped at Mrs Goddard’s grocery store, she had rubber pads inside her cheeks and her nostrils to make her something like that woman.”

  Bony related the story of the glass daggers; of the meeting of Tuttaway with his sister in Mrs Dalton’s house; of what had transpired.

  “It’s all in my report, Super. Dr Hoadly’s preliminary report is attached. His opinion is that Mrs Dalton is decidedly certifiable. Goddard and his store of poisons and other questionable possessions I leave to be investigated. And where Tuttaway has been living must also be left with you.

  “To conclude. Tuttaway, the poseur, the actor, had to purchase gloves in Broken Hill, where the wearing of gloves is as rare as a top hat. Abbot produced George Henry Tuttaway from the Records, working only on a description given by a man who had seen him buying the gloves. The haft of the dagger used to kill Lodding was discovered by Crome to have been found inside Mrs Dalton’s garden gate. And I recalled seeing Muriel Lodding seated at her desk and abstractedly toying with a pencil. The pencil appeared to slide in and out of her fingers of its own volition, and so quickly as to make it appear to flow like brown water. That gave me the first link between her and the Great Scarsby.

  “These have been cases requiring not only intelligence but patience. It demanded, too, the approach to witnesses as collaborators and not criminals. We met with manyillogicalities, due to the mental state of both murderers, and they are so obvious as to be ignored in this, my verbal report. That, sir, finalises my investigation. My report has been ably drawn up by Mr Luke Pavier, who, I am sure, will render through his newspaper honour to whom such is due.”

  Bony stood smiling at Superintendent Pavier. Pavier left his chair. Perhaps he guessed how the report was worded, for he said with unwonted warmth:

  “Gentlemen, my congratulations. To you, Bonaparte, our thanks.”

  Bony shook hands with Crome and Abbot. With Pavier, they accompanied him to the door, and when shaking hands with the Superintendent, Bony said:

  “Aurevoir! I shall be returning in the near future. You see, I expect to be best man at a burglar’s wedding.”

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