Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box Read online

  “You have there … ?” he asked politely, arranging tobacco and papers on the table.

  “The post-mortem report on Constable Stenhouse, signed by Doctors Mitchell and Morley. Want it read?”

  “Please.”

  Inspector Walters cleared his throat like a sergeant-major, took up the papers to avoid having to stoop, and read:

  “We found on the left side of the chest, three inches from the mid-sternal line between the fourth and fifth ribs, a wound penetrating into the chest wall and passing through right and left ventricles and left atrium of the heart. Behind the arterial wall a greater destruction of tissues occurred involving the left lung, aorta, the oesophagus, spinal muscles and skin. The bony structures were not damaged. On the back of the body was an irregular exit wound about two inches in diameter. Death was instantaneous. The injuries as enumerated are con­sistent with those caused by a ·32 bullet fired from a high-power rifle at a distance of approximately thirty feet.”

  “In layman’s phraseology, the bullet entered the chest, tore the heart to shreds and emerged from the back much enlarged in circumference and much shorter in length,” murmured Bony. “Where the body rested against the seat back there is a hole in the leather made by this forty-four lead bullet. This bullet then penetrated a tin of oil. No other bullet was found among the dead man’s dunnage.”

  “A rigged job?” sharply asked Walters.

  “To make it appear that Stenhouse was murdered by his tracker, who cleared out with his own swag, the constable’s rifle, and all the cooked food. Morley states that the blood on the seat, the floor of the vehicle and the stones beneath is animal blood.”

  “Damned crude,” Walters snapped.

  “Very.” Bony applied a match to what might be called a cigarette. “And yet … revealing. The men who murdered Stenhouse are devoid of imagination, but shrewd. They were foolish only when having to deal with a problem which sud­denly confronted them. None but men faced by an exceptional situation demanding urgent action would have made so many mistakes when setting that stage for murder.”

  “Men! Not one man?” asked Irwin, and Walters nodded approval.

  “There were several men. There must have been. It’s obvious that Stenhouse and the jeep were moved to the place where Laidlaw found the body. Charlie and Larry failed to back-track the jeep. They failed to find Jacky Musgrave’s tracks. The jeep’s tracks were obliterated, and the killers knew that the absence of the tracker’s prints at the supposed scene of the murder would be in keeping with the set-up, for had he actually killed Stenhouse and cleared out, he wouldn’t have left tracks.”

  “The scene of the crime could be miles away,” commented Walters.

  “It is, but we’ll find it.” Bony completed the making of another alleged cigarette. “Medical opinion is that Stenhouse was killed either on the 15th or the 16th, with preference for the first date. Of significance, however, is that on the 15th two parties of travellers passed over that section of the Wyndham Road where Laidlaw found Stenhouse. We know that the party of photographers passed the place last, and that it was about two in the afternoon of the 15th. The stage was set after that time and date, but, in view of the opinion of the two doctors, Stenhouse could have been shot before that time and date.

  “I have here the dead man’s official diary found in the attaché-case with him. The last entry is dated August 14th and reads: ‘Left Red Creek at 7 am and proceeded to Leroy Downs where obtained statement from Mary Jo concerning alleged assault by James Mooney. Proceeded to Richard’s Well where arrived at 5.45 pm and invited to stay the night.’ According to the diary, therefore, on the morning of August 14th Constable Stenhouse was at Richard’s Well, a station homestead approximately sixty miles south of Agar’s Lagoon and eighty-odd by road.”

  “It’s on record that he was down there,” Walters said. “In accordance with routine, he sent me a telegram on the 12th saying he was going on patrol to Richard’s Well and beyond. On the file here is a letter written by the owner of Leroy Downs reporting a complaint made to him by one of his aborigine domestics of an assault on her by an aborigine stock­man named Mooney.”

  “Then it would seem that Stenhouse was killed eighty-odd miles south of Agar’s, and his body and jeep taken to a point ninety miles north of Agar’s,” contributed Clifford.

  “Did I not always mistrust the obvious, I would incline to accept that view,” Bony said, dryly and without malice. “Since we know that the persons responsible for Stenhouse’s death did set the murder stage we must not confine our view of the stage by the properties of the two bullets, the hole in the seat back, the animal blood, and the absence of the vehicle’s tracks, supported by the items indicating that the murder was com­mitted by the tracker. The entry in that diary might be fictitious.”

  Walters snorted. Irwin grinned and would have chuckled if his superior hadn’t been looking at him.

  “Show me the diary,” commanded the Inspector.

  Bony pushed the book across the table, and Walters almost snatched it to read at the page opened for him.

  “Same handwriting,” Bony pointed out, “as the previous entries.” Reluctantly Walters agreed. “Assuming that Stenhouse wrote that information and yet did not travel to the place named on the business stated, would you ultimately learn that the entry was made to cover other activities?”

  “No,” admitted Walters. “Anyhow, we can easily find out if he did or did not go to Richard’s Well. We can contact the people at Richard’s Well or those at Leroy Downs by radio.”

  “And can be sure that the killers of Stenhouse will be sitting at their transceiver,” Bony said. “That wouldn’t do. I’ll go south and see these people. Perhaps you will permit Irwin to accompany me. We must begin by testing the genuineness of that diary entry.”

  “That seems to be the start.”

  “And I suggest that Clifford takes Irwin’s trackers to the place Stenhouse was found, and gives them more time to prospect for tracks. The jeep would have been driven there from a point across-country.”

  “Clifford can leave within an hour,” assented Walters.

  “I suggest, further, that Clifford contacts the Breens who are droving cattle to Wyndham and question them regarding who they saw on the road, other than Laidlaw, and from their aborigines find out what the smoke signals to the west meant on that day they met Laidlaw.”

  “What’s the smoke-signal angle?”

  “On the morning Laidlaw met the Breens he saw smoke signals sent up by the blacks far to the west of Black Range. Irwin’s trackers, who at that time did not know how Stenhouse had been murdered, told me that the signals might mean that a policeman had been shot. The point is, if that be so, the blacks are likely to know who shot Stenhouse.”

  “Those far-west blacks are rather illusive,” remarked Irwin. “They’re not station blacks.”

  “Aboriginal interest in this murder is almost proved,” Bony said. “There is the possibility that the aborigines are not con­cerned with the death of Stenhouse, the white policeman, but with the death of Jacky Musgrave, the black policeman. To them a policeman’s tracker is a policeman.

  “I’m not stating where Stenhouse was murdered. I don’t know … yet. We brought in the steering-wheel of Stenhouse’s jeep for finger-printing. Your Sergeant Sawtell could do the testing. The diary and personal possessions will give him Sten­house’s prints. I’m confident that no prints other than those left by Stenhouse and his tracker would be found on the jeep, because adhering to the controls were two long hairs from a goat, indicating that the man who last drove it wore gloves of goat-skin, possibly the skin of the animal killed for its blood.

  “As I have said, the people responsible for Stenhouse’s death are exceedingly shrewd, and they were exceedingly stupid in the small, the relatively unimportant, points. A killer invariably stamps on his crime his own mental attributes, as you will know.”

  Clifford, young and keen, asked what was to be done about the jeep, and it w
as arranged that the local mechanic would accompany him, taking another steering-wheel, and returning with the licensee’s car.

  “You were doing something to Stenhouse’s boots,” remarked Irwin.

  “I did examine them,” Bony returned, and produced an envelope. “I found on the heels what appears to be whitish clay. The surface of the Kimberleys is reddish. A spectroscope analysis would assist us.”

  Inspector Walters glanced into the envelope. He inserted the top of a finger, which then withdrawn was smeared by a chalky substance.

  “Looks like the mullock dug from a well,” he observed.

  “It might be,” agreed Bony, and added with emphasis: “The same kind of soil is embedded under the dead man’s finger­nails. He could have stood on the mullock from a well when drawing water for his canteen, but why would he want to burrow among mullock with his hands? Have that analysis done as quickly as possible.”

  It wasn’t so strange that even Walters stood when Bony stood and crossed to the wall map. Irwin pointed out the position of the three homesteads mentioned in the last diary entry, and below them the Musgrave Range down deep in the desert.

  “Jacky Musgrave’s tribe has often given trouble,” he said. “Led by a Chief called Pluto by the whites … a cunning fellow. Stenhouse told me he contacted Pluto when he con­scripted Jacky for two plugs of tobacco, but no other white man ever saw Pluto, that I know.”

  “The stations don’t extend that far south?”

  “No, not by many miles.”

  The map showed the road to Wyndham running north and skirting Black Range for a third of the distance. At Bony’s request, Irwin marked the Wallace homestead situated fifteen miles eastward of the road, and the Breens’ station to west­ward of the northern section of Black Range. These two home­steads were equidistant from the place where the dead police­man was found.

  “Thank you,” Bony murmured, and then decisively: “Please prepare for the track. You, Clifford, for the north, and you, Irwin, for the south. Days, even hours, will blur those pages of the Book of the Bush we have to read. I’ll be ready when you are.”

  The two men left, and Bony asked Walters for Stenhouse’s record.

  “He was a good policeman and an exceptional bushman,” Walters said. “Privately, I didn’t like the man, and I don’t think anyone else did. His wife died under circumstances which nearly ended his career, and after that I thought of having him transferred to the city. Would have, but good bushmen are damned rare.”

  “You are giving Clifford this district?”

  “Yes. He’ll get along better with the people, but he’ll never understand the aborigines like Stenhouse did. Thanks a lot for taking over this job. Think I should ask Perth to contact your department, in Brisbane, and make formal request for your services? Trouble enough in the world without adding to it.”

  Bony’s face broke into a captivating smile.

  “It was, I think, Kitchener who said no man is indispensable, and I’m not vain enough to believe I’m indispensable to my department. Half a dozen times I’ve been sacked for ignoring orders, but they have taken me back. Because I am intelligent? Because I have never failed to finalize an investigation? Oh no! Merely because they know the department is not indis­pensable to me.”

  Chapter Six

  Tracking Constable Stenhouse

  TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon of this late winter’s day, and the sun powerful enough to blister skin not custom­arily exposed, and the exhilarating air so clear as to give the illusion that the ranges were painted on canvas.

  Six miles westward of Agar’s Lagoon, the utility emerged through the Kimberley Gates to a large expanse of compara­tively level country where the aerodrome had been established. Past the aerodrome Irwin had to reduce speed and be wary of sharp if shallow water gutters. Now the ranges crept forward on both sides like the two paws of a bored cat playing with a blouse.

  Twenty miles from Agar’s Lagoon, Irwin turned off to a track running southward across flats covered with spinifex grass … light-green cushions crowded with tall straw-coloured pins.

  “It’s better going than the track to Wyndham,” remarked Bony. “You haven’t had to change down for half a mile.”

  “Won’t last long,” predicted Irwin. “We’ve to cross several mountain spurs, but beyond that the country is almost flat and continues so down to the desert.”

  “Nowhere else have I seen the sky so filled with shooting stars, if I may use the phrase,” Bony remarked.

  “Big one fell not far off the track we’ll be taking.”

  “I wonder if the meteors are attracted by these Kimberley Ranges. There might be something in the idea that somewhere in them lie huge deposits of radio-active ore.” Bony laughed. “Look at that mountain slope. Red rock and soil covered with pale-green spinifex. Reminds me … now what does it look like?”

  “A woman’s over-rouged face partially toned down by a green-spotted veil?”

  “Good!” exclaimed Bony. “That’s just what it does re­semble. And this dry creek we have to cross looks like the Grand Canyon.”

  Having with exceeding caution manoeuvred the utility down and across the creek bed, and given the engine every ounce of power to climb its far side, Irwin broached a subject which had been in his mind for some time.

  “You mentioned this morning that you had felt under­currents at Agar’s. I thought that peculiar because I’ve felt those submerged influences, too.”

  Bony was mildly astonished that this large, raw-boned man, who laughed when there was no reason to do so and yet was intelligent, could be sensitive to subversive influences.

  “Were you stationed at Agar’s at one time?” he asked.

  “Yes. Five years ago I worked down here with Stenhouse. Was with him a couple of months, or rather I was stationed at Agar’s while he was down in the desert rounding up a gang of sheep killers. I can get along with people as a rule, but I could never get anywhere with the people at Agar’s. They seem to be entirely different, cliquish and reserved.”

  “They’re not entirely cut off from civilization, either,” ob­served Bony.

  “Oh, no. Since the war there’s been quite an increase of road traffic through Agar’s from Derby and Broome to Darwin and the Alice.”

  “More than along the track from Agar’s to Wyndham?”

  “Much. That track’s too tough at the best of times.”

  They passed out from the claws of a senna-coloured range to enter comparatively flat country supporting robust gums, wattles and edible shrub and grass.

  “It would appear that Stenhouse either unearthed unlawful activities, or that he was murdered as the result of a personal feud. Which of these theories do you support?”

  “Neither, particularly.”

  “Well, what unlawful activities could be operating? Is there much cattle thieving?”

  “No, very little.”

  “Mining, then, gold? If gold was being transported over the ranges to a coast inlet and from there to an Asian port, the price would be very much higher. Remember the soil adhering to Stenhouse’s boots. I think that soil is from a mine dump. Hallo! A homestead!”

  “Red Creek, the first of the homesteads mentioned in the diary.”

  Dogs raced forward to meet them. Goats grazing along the bank of a wide creek containing a chain of water-holes paused to look at the approaching vehicle. And then the truck was being braked to a halt at a wicket-gate in a brushwood fence surrounding a small and well-conditioned weather-board house. From a near-by outhouse emerged a twin to Irwin.

  “Good day-ee. Why, Constable Irwin! Haven’t seen you in years.”

  Inspector Bonaparte was presented to Mr Cummins, the manager of Red Creek Cattle Station, and Mr Cummins, successfully concealing his curiosity, ‘ordered’ the travellers to:

  “Come along in for a cup of tea. Missus will be glad to see you.”

  Irwin produced a bundle of mail, and Cummins led the way through the gate and along the pat
h composed of the rubble of termite hills, and stalked into the house calling for his wife. After a little delay, Mrs Cummins appeared, tidy and excited.

  “Mr Irwin! Whatever are you doing down this way? Sit down, do, and I’ll make a pot of tea. Glad to meet you, Inspector Bonaparte. Heard your name on the wireless the other day.”

  Questions and answers criss-crossed like the nightly display of shooting stars. The welcome was warm and, to Bony, Irwin’s standing with these people amply assured. By magic the living-room table was ‘set’ for afternoon tea of buttered scones and cake, and it did seem incongruous to interrupt the gaiety with the announcement that Constable Stenhouse had been found shot to death.

  Mrs Cummins was obviously shocked. Cummins accepted the news with an abrupt withdrawal. It was as though an opaque curtain fell before his keen grey eyes.

  “Well, that’s just too dreadful,” said Mrs Cummins. “He was here only the other day. Stayed the night.”

  The cattleman’s brows drew close in a frown, and Bony could ‘see’ his mind at work. He was mentally adding miles, and placing them against the total of days since Stenhouse had left his house for Leroy Station up to the afternoon when his body was found ninety miles north of Agar’s Lagoon.

  “Did he say where he intended going on leaving here?” Bony asked.

  “Yes. Said he thought of running across to Leroy Downs,” replied Cummins.

  “I see you have a transceiver. Did you mention over the air to Leroy Downs the probability of Stenhouse arriving there?”

  Cummins shook his head. His wife said:

  “No. Unless you policemen ask us to we never say anything of your movements. That’s the rule up here.”

  “Thank you. Did Stenhouse have his tracker with him?”