Bony and the Mouse Page 4

  “Then the door was opened by someone between ten-thirty and five minutes to one, when I came in.”

  “But why? For what reason?” pressed Sister Jenks.

  “There are always countless ‘whys’ associated with an investigation. May I suggest that you retire to your room and sleep again? I’ll sit here and ponder on the probable answers to the ‘whys’.”

  “Sleep, Nat! May I call you Nat?”

  “It would be safer to confine yourself to Nat.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, not now. That tea is cold. I’ll brew another pot. Something to eat? Cold meat and bread and butter?”

  When he accepted, she turned once again to the bench, halted and said. “Supposing that man came in just before you did. He might be still inside the house.”

  “Be assured that he isn’t. I’ve sniffed into every room, including yours.”

  “Sniffed into every room!” she echoed, and he chuckled with delight.

  “Sniffed, it was. Merely stood just inside every room and sniffed. Like the witch-doctors of Africa, and some in Australia, I can sniff out an enemy. I found your antiseptics a little distracting to my nose, but I’m confident that my nose didn’t let me down.”

  “And you sniffed into my room, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, of all the nerve!”

  “I had to ... to be assured that no male prowler was in your room.”

  “Oh! Well, I give up, Nat.”

  “As well in the beginning as later. And you don’t want to sleep?”

  “No. I want to ask you some questions.”

  “How extraordinary,” he exclaimed, mockingly. “I want to ask you some questions. Permit me, selfishly, to be first. On arriving here with the girl, what followed? Who brought her in?”

  “Bert Ellis and Bob Merke. Bert works for the Town Council and Merke with his brother in the only garage we have.”

  “They carried her into the ward, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “And left immediately?”

  “Yes. Just before they did, the girl’s sister, Janet, appeared. She’s two years older than Joy. They both live with their father at Dryblowers Flat, and, like all of them down there, the sisters are, shall I say, a little difficult to understand. Anyway, Janet was perfectly cool about her sister. She helped me undress her and put her into bed, and she made no fuss over assisting me to attend to the foot, which, as you know, wasn’t pretty to look at. A Mrs Powell who comes in to housekeep for me prepared food, and we roused the girl to take nourishment.”

  “Just you three women and the patient. Anyone call?”

  “Harmon, the policeman, came. He wanted to question the patient, but I said he’d have to wait until the morning.”

  “No one else?”

  “No. Of course there was a good deal of talk about it outside. When Janet left she was questioned plenty by the townsfolk. Her father was there, but she pacified him.”

  “Was Janet wearing shoes, d’you remember?”

  “No. She must have come from Dryblowers without waiting to change into her town clothes.”

  “Your housekeeper ... she left before you locked the back door for the night?”

  “Oh yes. You are worried about that door, aren’t you?”

  Bony smiled, and rolled a cigarette, or what might be called one. He said:

  “Your aunt informed me that you have been wasting your fresh young life for three years by working among these awful bush people, and that she wished you were working in a city hospital where you would meet so many nice young doctors. Now, now! Her words, not mine. I defended you and the awful bush people. I refer to your work and the period you have spent at Daybreak only to register two facts. One, that you know every man, woman and child, and two, that you were here before the series of crimes began. Is it true that the first of these crimes occurred after Antony Carr came to Daybreak?”

  “Yes. He had been here about five months when the aboriginal was killed. But I cannot believe...”

  “Believe nothing of any person in this situation we have at Daybreak. It is pre-conceived ideas and unfounded opinions that have contributed to the creation of confusion. All born in the minds of people whose interests in life are extremely limited.”

  “And you think my interests in life are extremely limited?”

  Across the table the dark eyes gleamed, and the shapely mouth matched the determined chin. Slowly Bony smiled.

  “I think it likely. Your aunt is sure of it. Now if we could tell her that your base doctor is young and handsome and unmarried, you see how extended your interests in life could become.”

  “All Aunt thinks about is having me married, Nat.”

  The expression of pique vanished, and Sister Jenks smiled in a manner belying her youth. “Now what is all this leading to?”

  “The disclosure of the person responsible for three murderers at Daybreak, all within six months. You know that person. You knew the three victims. You are, I hope, the magnifying-glass I shall use to examine them and all others living in and about Daybreak. A little badinage and a little teasing are the cloths with which to polish the glass.”

  “Then I hope you won’t use the magnifying-glass to examine me,” she said, and he countered with:

  “I have already employed my own glass to do that, Sister Jenks.”

  Chapter Five

  Introduction to Daybreak

  MAIN STREET delighted Bony, for the roadway, divided by the thriving pepper trees, was unsurfaced, and the sidewalks were unpaved. As he crossed the street to the police compound, he noted with satisfaction the man recorded as council staff methodically sweeping into heaps tree debris and litter, and others were sweeping outside their shops and houses their section of sidewalk. Every morning, therefore, Main Street would be nicely prepared to receive the imprints of human feet.

  The police compound was spacious and, of course, orderly. There was the detached office and the policeman’s house on the right, the cell block of four lockups behind the house, the stables and sheds and horse yard on the opposite side. There was enough spare room to drill a troop of mounted men.

  Obeying a shout from Constable Harmon, Bony entered the office.

  “Sit down,” the constable ordered, pointing to the chair opposite his desk. “Been checking up on you. Found you OK with Hall’s Creek. That right, you’ve taken the job as yardman over at the pub?”

  Nat Bonnar, the bush horsebreaker, self-consciously shuffled his feet, and probed into pockets for the makings. After hesitation, he raised his gaze to meet that of the policeman, and Harmon decided that the clash of eyes the previous day must have been the result of excitement in this otherwise normal bush worker.

  “You can smoke if you want,” he said.

  “Thanks. Yes, I took the job on at the pub. Had to trick old Melody Sam up from his booze-hole. He’s pretty sick this morning.”

  “I saw him,” grunted the policeman. “What I been thinking, Nat, is that you might do a job for me. Private job. I got a horse, a gelding, three-year-old, bit of an outlaw, but has all it takes. Too good for me to tackle, and my tracker isn’t up to par, either. Would you take him on?”

  “Break him in to saddle?”

  “That’s it. I like horses, good horses. That gelding’s a bastard, but I like him, too.”

  “All right, I’ll look him over,” Bony drawled. “Could work him in my spare time, you arrange it with Miss Loader.”

  “I’ll do that. She’s not difficult. Besides, you do a good job on him and I won’t be mean. Anyway, I’ll have him brought to the yard this afternoon, and we can talk it over then. Melody Sam still locked inside the Lion’s Den?”

  “Was, half an hour ago. What is that place?”

  Harmon chuckled. “Old Melody Sam built the pub in the Year One, and he built that outside place as a lockup because there wasn’t one here, or a policeman, either. Now it’s used to lock him up. You looking after him? How are you treating him for the ding
-bats?”

  “He gets one teaspoon of whisky to one pint of soup. Has to drink half a gallon of soup to get the effect of the whisky, and that isn’t much of an effect, either. He’s like the grey gelding you been telling about ... pretty wild.” Bony stood, and Harmon waved him back to the chair.

  “Your horse, Mr Harmon. Wasn’t he broken properly in the first place?”

  Strange how a man can be dominated by a horse. The man ruled by a woman or gripped by the gambling fever, the drug-addict and the slave of John Barleycorn, all are comparatively free men. To Bony, Constable Harmon had been a nasty suspicious policeman; now a grey horse changed him to a hail-fellow-well-met type of character and, without doubt, while a horse occupied his mind he was bearable. So they talked horses, the one admitting that the wayward gelding was too good for him, and the other outlining the training necessary for this paragon of a horse.

  For the second time Bony rose, and again was waved back.

  “Seems to me, Nat, we could get along,” Harmon said, and Bony was aware that he was going to change the subject. “Fact is, my tracker isn’t up to scratch. Abos in this country are still pretty wild, and when a tracker is wanted most times they’re away out beyond, on walkabout or something. You heard about the murders, I suppose?”

  “Not much,” admitted Nat. “Seems a clever feller.”

  “Just plain cunning, Nat. You know, we could use you if another murder happens. Kennedy up at Hall’s Creek gives you a pretty good reputation. Being yardman and barman, you might pick up a lead. You never know. The feller who did those murders is still walking about Daybreak. I’m sure of it. I know him. We all know him.”

  “But not as the murderer,” amended Bony.

  “As you say, Nat. What we’re up against is lack of clues and no leads; at least nothing much to boast about. The first murder was done at the end of Main Street and right outside the Manse. Young abo girl. Supposed to be working at the Manse. Anyway, the parson’s wife was looking after her, teaching her to speak our language and to be useful in the house. Slept in a bed ... education got as far as that ... and was found next morning fully dressed and her head clubbed in.

  “Early the day before, the tribe had gone on walkabout, my tracker with ’em. There was a bit of trouble in the tribe over the girl, and I thought it was a tribal killing, one of the bucks being sent back to carry it through. Body on soft ground, but no abo tracks; you know how they can wipe their own tracks out.

  “When the second murder happened I changed my mind about the first being an abo one. Five miles out on the road to Laverton is a homestead owned by a man named Lorelli. He’s in town late one day, and on getting home he finds his wife in the kitchen, strangled. All about the place were tracks of a man wearing ordinary sandshoes size eight, weighing about a hundred and sixty, and having a slight limp in the right leg. And the abos away again on walkabout, and me with no tracker.

  “Some of us here ain’t new chums on tracking, Nat, but the bloke got away by hopping over surface rocks, and the Laverton policeman couldn’t locate a tracker for two days, and he got no further. Windy weather, too.”

  “No one working for Lorelli?” interjected Bony, assuming ignorance.

  “The hired man was down on a spell to Kalgoorlie. I made plaster casts of the tracks we found there. And that was all we got. Happened last August. And then, blow me down if a young lad who worked at the garage and lived at Dryblowers Flat, and rode to and from work on a bike, didn’t have his throat cut, right close to the mine. And the tracks of the feller wearing sandshoes all about the body. And, Nat, the abos away on walkabout again, my tracker and all.”

  “No doubt about it being the same man?”

  “Took plaster casts. They were compared by experts with the first set. No doubt, Nat.”

  “Doesn’t add up, Mr Harmon.”

  “As you say,” sombrely agreed the policeman. “No motive. No background of quarrels, fights, anything. You know, Nat, I been wondering. I took a spare of those plaster casts, and if I made prints with them, d’you think you’d remember if you happened to see that feller’s tracks when he was wearing boots? Could you tell us more about him than the Laverton tracker and the feller they brought up from Kalgoorlie? Think you could?”

  “Well, I could try,” conceded Bony. “Think he’ll murder someone else?”

  “Bound to,” asserted Harmon. “They never stop once they start. Yes, we’ll give it a go one day, Nat. Meanwhile you handle the grey and let us know what you think of him. I’ll fix it with Kat Loader, and Melody Sam, when he’s fit to be loosed.”

  “All right, Mr Harmon.”

  “And nothing about working with me on the murders, Nat. That’s between us. I’ll look after you, you play along with me, eh?”

  Bony agreed, and this time was permitted to stand. On how many occasions had he sought co-operation from a bush policeman and received it? This was the first time a bush policeman had sought his co-operation.

  On coming to the office he had distinctly seen a face behind the grille of one of the cells. Now the door of that cell was wide open. Turning back to the office, he said:

  “Thought you had a sardine in the tin, Mr Harmon. Seems like he slipped out.”

  Harmon’s face beetrooted. He strode from the office, stared at the cell block, and swore with artistry.

  “Damn! Drunk and disorderly last night. I put him in. The beak gave him three days this morning. Now he’s out, and I want them stables repaired. Blast!”

  Bony watched the large man striding from the yard to the street so prominently located by the great pepper trees spaced along the centre. Then he noted the woman sweeping the veranda of the station house, and when she saw him, she beckoned, and he went to the veranda edge and looked up at her, as the veranda itself was two feet above the ground.

  “Are you Nat Bonnar?” she asked. She was small and yet wiry, and when she moved she dragged her left leg. Suffering had added falseness to her age, and beauty to her dark eyes. Bony smiled up at her, and a lightness displaced the sadness on her face.

  “Yes, I’m Nat Bonnar,” he replied. “And who are you?”

  “I’m his sister. I’m Esther Harmon. I let the prisoner free.”

  A smile, the ghost of a tiny smile, crept about her mouth.

  “You let the prisoner out!” echoed Bony. “The policeman’s sister! Why?”

  “Oh, I suppose because George is too strict. You see, Ed McKay’s all right. He got drunk last night after the drought, and George collared him and locked him up. Then the magistrate gave him three days this morning, and I know George got him the three days because he wants repairs done to the stables. It’s hot inside those cells, and poor Ed McKay was worried about his cows, his wife being poorly and no one to milk them. So I let him out to milk the poor things.”

  Inspector Bonaparte was rarely nonplussed.

  “Now your brother has to find him, and bring him in again,” he said. “D’you often let the prisoners out?”

  “No. It depends. You see, everyone knows everyone else in Daybreak. It’s such a small place. A woman has to have her fun sometimes. People have to be stirred up. Besides, Ed McKay’s wife can’t have him in a lockup when their cows need to be milked.”

  “Perhaps not,” agreed Bony. “Anyway, McKay can’t have got far.”

  “Oh no, he’ll only be down at his cow-sheds.”

  Two figures appeared in the street beyond the yard’s open double gates, and Esther Harmon said:

  “Trust misplaced. Ed wasn’t milking his cows. He was over at the hotel drinking again.”

  The men entered the yard, the policeman huge beside the wisp of a man who was obliged to take two steps to each one taken by the Law. The little man was coat-less, and his feet were minus boots. The shock of grey hair was disturbed by the movement of his body, and he was complaining at being given the bum’s rush back to the sardine tin. A man passed along the sidewalk beyond the gates and evinced no interest in this incident, and, having thr
own the prisoner into the dungeon, Constable Harmon shot the bolts and returned to his office without speaking to his sister.

  “I’ll never trust that Ed McKay again,” sighed Miss Harmon. “Men! They’re all liars. They keeping old Melody Sam locked up over there?”

  “Until he’s fit,” Bony replied. “He’s comfortable enough.”

  “How that granddaughter of his puts up with him I don’t know. How we all put up with him I don’t know either,” remarked Miss Harmon, and went on with her sweeping unembarrassed by her crippled leg. “Just a nasty old bully, I think. Told him so more than once. You heard about our murders, I suppose?”

  “Yes, a little. Three, weren’t there?”

  “Three, with three or four more to come. Give us something to talk about. They don’t say, but they all think Tony Carr did it ... all three. Blind as bats, everyone here is. You found Tony Carr with that ragamuffin Elder girl, didn’t you? Think he could have strangled the lubra, and attacked the stockman’s wife and killed the boy? Think he could?”

  “He’s strong enough, Miss Harmon.”

  Her dark eyes gleamed like specks of new-won coal, and she leaned on the broom and glowered at him. She said:

  “Yes, he’s strong enough. Wish I could be sure about him. I wish ... Oh, go away and leave me to my chores.”

  The leg swung outward in an arc as she turned her back to him and went on with her sweeping, and he said:

  “I’d like to talk with you again some time, Miss Harmon.”

  She made no reply to that, and when he reached the street and glanced back she was still sweeping, although standing on the same place.

  Chapter Six

  Youth without Armour

  A FAMOUS doctor once declared that a man lived as long as his stomach, going so far as to add that a man is merely a stomach. He found that among the genuine bush workers a very high proportion lived to a great age, and he attributed this incidence of longevity to the bush-man’s imbalance of stomach intake: living for forty-eight weeks of the year on tea and alkali-loaded surface water, and for the remaining four weeks on whisky. Thus every year the heavy stomach lining of tannin was removed by alcohol, and the stomach was entirely renovated.