Sinister Stones b-19 Read online

  “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 thatStenhouse 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 foundStenhouse. 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 attache-case with him. The last entry is dated August 14th and reads: ‘Left Red Creek at 7am and proceeded to Leroy Downs where obtained statement from Mary Jo concerning alleged assault by James Mooney. Proceeded to Richard’sWell where arrived at 5.45 pm and invited to stay the night.’ According to the diary, therefore, on the morning of August 14th ConstableStenhouse 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 thatStenhouse 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 forStenhouse’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 thatStenhouse 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 ofStenhouse 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 placeStenhouse 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 theBreens 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 theBreens 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 howStenhouse 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 shotStenhouse.”

  “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 ofStenhouse, 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 whereStenhouse was murdered. I don’t know… yet. We brought in the steering-wheel ofStenhouse’s jeep for finger-printing. Your SergeantSawtell could do the testing. The diary and personal possessions will give himStenhouse’s prints. I’m confident that no prints other than those left byStenhouse 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 forStenhouse’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 was arranged that the local mechanic would accompany him, taking another steering-wheel, and returning with the licensee’s car.

  “You were doing something toStenhouse’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 theKimberleys 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 theBreens ’ 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 menleft, and Bony asked Walters forStenhouse’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 likeSten
house 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 ConstableStenhouse

  TWOO’CLOCKin 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 withspinifex grass… light-green cushions crowded with tall straw-coloured pins.

  “It’sbetter 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 themlie huge deposits of radio-active ore.” Bony laughed. “Look at that mountain slope. Red rock and soil covered with pale-greenspinifex. 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 withStenhouse. 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 asenna -coloured range to enter comparatively flat country supporting robust gums, wattles and edible shrub and grass.

  “It would appear thatStenhouse either unearthed unlawfulactivities, 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 toStenhouse’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 beingbraked 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 path 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 ConstableStenhouse 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 sinceStenhouse 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 ofStenhouse arriving there?”

  Cummins shook his head. His wife said:

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

  “Thank you. DidStenhouse have his tracker with him?”

  “Oh, yes. Jacky Musgrave was with him.”

  “And Jacky’s missing?” Cummins interpolated.

  “That’s so,” replied Irwin. “Any of Jacky’s mob working for you?”

  “Yes. One. He’s away on walkabout.”

  “I didn’t see any aborigines when we arrived,” Bony remarked.“None here?”

  Cummins nodded and laughed. “Plenty,” he replied. “But they all went down the creekaways day before yesterday.” What he fancied was in Bony’s mind made him ask: “Think that’s anything to do with Jacky Musgrave?”

  “Possibly. Have you noticed an unusual number of smokes recently?”

  “No, haven’t seen any.”

  “There was something that stirred up the blacks, though,” said Mrs Cummins.

  Irwin glanced at the old pendulum clock on the mantel, and Bony rose to thank their host and hostess and express the hope th
at he would meet them again. Both escorted them to the utility, and they departed to the accompaniment of hearty farewells, the barking of dogs and the excited crowing of roosters.

  “Most of these stations have a transceiver, I suppose?” Bony asked when his fingers were engaged making a cigarette.

  “All of ’em,” Irwin answered. “The wireless and the aeroplane and the refrigerator have changed life considerably. People can now gossip to their heart’s content to their neighbours over forty, sixty, a hundred miles of space.”

  “They have to keep off the air at certain periods, I understand.”

  “Yes, for periods which are kept clear for telegrams and the Flying DoctorService. ”

  “And do you find that the station people do refrain from talking of police movements?”

  “Oh yes. They’re strongly cooperative there. Same with everything else. Notice Cummins’s reaction to the news aboutStenhouse?”

  “Yes. He was wondering howStenhouse came to be north of Agar’s Lagoon. I received the impression that he didn’t likeStenhouse.”

  “Me, too.”

  The track ran southward, following an ever-widening valley prodded by the long red fingers of the ranges pointing towards Jacky Musgrave’s country. They passed a well from which radiated lines oftroughing. Red cattle were drinking, and other cattle were standing in thespinifex and looking exactly like the termite hills. Far to the south-west a low, flat-topped range, isolated and singular on that quarter of flat country, gleamed opalescent gold under the opalescent blue sky.

  “Looks like a range, doesn’t it?” remarked Irwin. “That’s the wall of the meteor crater. Full mile round, as I said. Steeper than a house roof, and the interior at least three hundred feet below the top of the wall.”