Bony Buys a Woman Read online

  Bony heard Wootton shouting. He surveyed this room, and was saddened by its emptiness of personality. The cut-down table and chair, the books, the old trunk, and small dresser with the bright chintz curtain only hinted at a life which once had warmed this place. Oddly enough, he felt himself to be an intruder.

  They came crowding in, Wootton and his men, silently taking in this well-remembered place.

  “Ole Fren Yorky and Meena gone off on walkabout all right,” exploded Harry Lawton.

  “And the handkerchiefs, and the comb, the blue one,” drawled Eric with fierce breathlessness. “Left the chocolates. They was no good anyhow. Heat melted ’em.”

  Harte quietly went forward and gazed along the surface of the shelf bench. His voice was cold.

  “Who was in here last? I was looking in Sunday, week back, and them dolls was all there where we put ’em in a row. I remember how Meena was sort of turned to look at the boss. It wasn’t yestiddy, nor the day before, they were took. There’s plenty of dust fell on the places where they were sitting.”

  They talked. They pondered. Finally they agreed that the last man to look into the playhouse had been Bill Harte and that had been nine days ago. All remembered that the dolls were then on the bench, and that the presents Linda was to have received that day her mother was shot were also set out on the bench.

  “Them ruddy blacks have raided the place,” Harry Lawton accused.

  “We’ll find out right now,” decided Eric. “Come on, let’s argue it out with old Canute. He’ll make the thief part up ... or else.”

  Anger charged the quiet air, and then Bony spoke:

  “I would like you to leave the matter to me, and to say nothing of it in the hearing of Sarah and Meena,” he said with easy authority. “Now just see what else has been taken ... books, from that dresser, anything?”

  Arnold examined the books, shook his head. He lifted the curtain in front of the dresser, disclosing a dainty tea service, a box containing coloured wools, and material. Again he shook his massive head and dropped the curtain. Eric cried:

  “Wait on, Arnold! Them cups and things.”

  He sprang forward and lifted the curtain. Then he straightened, paused to be supported on his discovery, finally shouted quite unnecessarily:

  “There was six cups and saucers. Now there’s only five. Look! A cup and saucer has been pinched, too.”

  Men swore. Bony said:

  “Keep on looking. Be sure if anything else is missing.”

  Dolls to comfort a little girl. A china cup for her to drink from instead of a tin mug, perhaps a jam tin. Handkerchiefs and blue comb taken, but not a box of chocolates spoiled by the heat.

  Aboriginal children would not have ignored the chocolates, although ruined by heat.

  “Her Kurdaitcha shoes,” drawled Bill Harte. “They don’t seem to be here, either.”

  The Kurdaitcha Man of legend, the fabulous being who walks by night, his feet covered with emu feathers glued with blood so that he leaves no tracks for aborigines to follow when it is light. Harry Lawton withdrew from the search to tell Bony that Charlie had fashioned imitation shoes for Linda.

  “Yes, those pretty pieces have gone, too,” Arnold declared. “All decorated with feathers and pictures drawn on ’em with hot wire. Old Murtee could have taken them for his collection of magic things.”

  Eventually it was agreed that nothing else had been removed. Eric again suggested ‘arguing it out’ with Canute, and it was Arnold who told him, ‘That’s out,’ because Inspector Bonaparte said so. It was noticeable that their first reaction of cautious familiarity towards Bony was replaced by firming respect, for, as it had been with so many others in the past, his eyes, his voice and speech caused them to forget his mixed race. He was saying:

  “It is often wise to set aside the act in favour of the motive. Just now when we found Sarah listening to us, the act might be of smaller importance than the reason prompting her. So it is with these missing articles belonging to Linda Bell. Who took them is of lesser interest to me than why they were taken. Assuming, of course, that they were not removed by the aboriginal children, or by someone intending to give them to the children.”

  “I think I see your point, Inspector,” observed Wootton. “Someone could have taken them to Linda, wherever she is with Ole Fren Yorky.”

  “Proving that Linda is still alive,” added Arnold with satisfaction.

  “That Linda wanted them things to play with,” hopefully supplemented Eric. “Could of been that Yorky came here himself to get ’em.”

  “We’d have seen his tracks,” Arnold said.

  “Not if he came last Sat’day, or yesterday week,” objected Bill Harte. “Them two days it blew like hell, and blew all night too, remember.”

  “It could be more likely that one of the aborigines stole them to take them to Yorky for Linda,” contributed Wootton.

  “So we come back to the abos,” crowed young Lawton.

  “Yair, the abos, Harry,” agreed Eric. “We’ll get it out of them. Who pinched the dolls and things, and what was done with ’em. Now what-in-’ell you smiling about, Inspector?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder who is the detective,” Bony replied. “Inductive reasoning must keep to specified rules, and often to indulge in such reasoning is unwise until all the available facts and probable assumptions are marshalled. There is an assumption which has not yet occurred to you, an assumption which we have authority to examine. We may assume that the presents and the dolls were removed by someone with the intention of putting into our minds the idea that Linda is still alive. The motive for that is obscure, but still reasonable to accept.”

  From Bony they looked at each other, bewilderment plainly evident. To make confusion stick, he went on:

  “Recall what I said about the tracks you believed were left by Yorky. Until proved, we may only assume he made them, and we may assume someone else falsified them, knowing that most people see what they want to see. So there is one assumption we may add to another, and those two to yet a third, and then we have a faint glimmer of a theory.

  “Crime investigators are trained minds. I have been trained to think along lines of deduction and induction. These are two separate processes of thinking, as doubtless you know. Or perhaps you don’t know. Which is why I require you not to question the aborigines, or to mention this matter to the domestics over the way. Is that understood?”

  Eric coughed and nodded. Young Harry nodded and looked vacant. Arnold was thoughtful, and Bill Harte’s bright dark eyes were curious. Mr Wootton blinked and spoke for all.

  “I think we follow you, Inspector Bonaparte. You may depend on us not to interfere.”

  “I was sure I could depend on you,” suavely returned Bony.

  Chapter Seven

  Savages and Byron

  THE FIRE was like the red and flickering eye of Ganba, the Great Snake. Tall white pillars encircled the fiery eye, and between these pillars the sweet notes of Ganba’s snoring floated on to warn the aborigines in all Australia that he was out from his chambers under the earth.

  The fire burned redly amid the white gums surrounding the waterhole. Ganba’s snoring was coming from a length of hollow tree branch called a dijeridoo and played by an aborigine whose hair and beard were white, whose naked chest and back was cicatriced in fantastic designs and marks.

  The audience of men stared into Ganba’s red eye. Behind them sat their women, the young girls and the children. All the babies were either asleep or watching with large and rounded eyes. Only occasionally did one move, and then slightly, so engrossed were they by the voice of the dijeridoo.

  The dijeridoo was as thick as a man’s leg, and so long that the end rested on a sheet of bark beyond Canute’s outstretched feet. The mouth end was but little smaller than the far opening, and from it issued sounds, which, to ears accustomed to white man’s music, would be meaningless.

  Canute was telling a story which was first told when Lake Eyre was part of
a great sea.

  There was a woman who lived in a cave on a hill, a wise woman who could see far and who heard the birds talking. With her was her son, a stripling, a beautiful youth. Now the day came when a party of the woman’s people were to leave for a distant country to trade magic churinga stones for spear shafts. These men came to the woman and asked that her son might go with them, and so begin to become a man.

  The woman consented, and the youth departed with the traders, and they were away for a long time, until the woman, anxiously watching from her cave, saw them come over a ridge far away. Slowly and often she counted them, and the number was short by one.

  The traders said that a great man-bird had swooped down upon them and taken the youth into the sky and given him to its fledglings in a nest on a pile of stones. They hid themselves in hollow trees and dared not come out till night came.

  So, as custom dictated, all the men cut into themselves the mourning marks, and all the women cut their breasts and lamented for five days. On the sixth day the woman called the traders to sit before her cave. She spoke soft words to them, and gave them honey ants on palm leaves to eat, and sweet water in little gourds to drink. And one by one they fell over, and told her they had killed the beautiful youth because all the maidens rejoiced over him and would not look upon them.

  They died, and the woman made a big fire and burned them, and she raised her arms to lift the sky high and permit a tall willi-willi to sweep over the world and kick the bones to dust.

  Was it Canute telling this story? How can a story be told unless with words? You may say that music can tell a story for those with ears to hear, but you would be the last to say that Canute was producing music. Shall we compromise, agree that Canute was passing on the old old stories for those with ears to hear and minds to interpret them? For from that dijeridoo issued no tune, no rhythm, no note to be even imagined as musical.

  Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte listened raptly to the story of the woman and the beautiful youth. None was aware that he stood behind one of the white pillars.

  A lean old man sat beside Canute. His arms rested on his knees, his face resting on the crossed arms. Bony saw Sarah, who was nursing a naked baby. Her face was lifted as though pictures were strung between two of the white gums. Meena was there, wearing a blue skirt, her body naked above the waist, the soft firelight shimmering like golden dew on her untapped breasts. Like many of the others, she was gazing into the heart of the fire. The young man Bony knew as Charlie was there too, watching Meena.

  Bony had listened to more than the outline of the story. He had heard the tramp of the willi-willi coming across the world, the clash and crash of pounded bones kicked to dust. He had seen the cave, the very stones of its entrance, the woman tall and graceful, and the stripling son as he walked down the hill to pass into the keeping of his murderers. Bony had felt the wind, heard it in the trees and in the grass. He had watched the lie swoop down from the sky, the lie which was a giant bird with a man’s head. He had shrunk away from the evil of the bird’s face, and he had thrilled as he watched the agony of the poisoned liars.

  He was but half way from the white man toward these descendants of the ancient inhabitants. He heard, and saw the pictures, because he knew the story. Thus he could follow and interpret the sounds issuing from the dijeridoo. But when Canute told another story of which he was ignorant, the sounds were of no help, told him no story, but did create pictures of flat water, waving tobacco bush, wind stirring sand grains. The story was told and another begun, and he received pictures sometimes blurred, sometimes sharply clear, in rapid alternation.

  He fancied, for it could have been nothing more than fancy, that he saw a white man heavily burdened. The load he carried was larger than himself. Later, he saw a white man crawling on hands and knees. The noises from the hollow instrument filed past his ears, each one isolated. It was as though one laughed as it passed, another cried, another whispered something he couldn’t hear. He saw a man, a slim man. His hair was black and straight. His face was pale. He was groping to identify this man and did identify him when he was struggling to look, as through fog, upon a child whose skin was white, and then was black, and in whose arms snuggled a spirit baby created by mirage water.

  Another picture commanded his mind, stayed there for a fraction of a second, fled into the darkness behind his closed eyes. The flash picture was of a ghost, a woman running from him, and on her back a question mark.

  And then he was following another remembered story, this time of two young aborigines who robbed the nest of an eagle and were captured by a dingo with an eagle’s head, and who made them carry him because he had a burr in his foot.

  The last note of a musical instrument is emphasized by the vacuum of silence, like the bottom of a well receiving a stone. When the sounds of the dijeridoo ceased, there was no silence, the minds of those listening continuing to hear what the ears no longer registered.

  Bony could not be sure when the dijeridoo stopped, nor when he realized that it had done. On opening his eyes, he saw that Canute was rolling a cigarette, the dijeridoo was lying on the ground at his side, and the audience was still captive. He noted, too, that Meena was the first to be conscious of her surroundings, and immediately after her, a woman and a young man. Meena rose and soundlessly departed to the deeper shadow of a humpy before the others broke from the spell, and those closest in blood to the pure aborigine were the last to be released by Canute’s ‘art’.

  Stepping round the trunk of the tree, Bony leaned against it and brought fingers to work making a cigarette. Someone tossed wood into Ganba’s red eye, and the initiated men moved nearer to Canute and his chief henchman, Murtee. Then Bony struck a match and applied the flame to his cigarette.

  Those about the fire turned at the sound, save the Medicine Man and the Chief. Bony went forward, ebony images now frozen, waiting inscrutably. He passed round a right flank of them, and seated himself cross-legged when the Elders were directly to his front. Dark eyes reflected the firelight, not unlike black opals.

  Bony smoked his cigarette, and not a word was said, nor a gesture made. It was as though they occupied one side of a gulf and could be reached only by him who had wings to fly. Slowly, Bony made another cigarette, and casually smoked that to the last half-inch, and still no word was spoken.

  All of them, and there were seventeen, were in excellent physical condition, several being positively fat. Canute wore good cloth trousers and no shirt. Murtee wore a blue silk shirt, trousers and tennis shoes. Two were smoking good-quality pipes. Knowing he would have to attempt the flight, Bony spoke.

  “You are Orrabunna men. I am Worcair man.”

  He knew his assessment of the degree of their nearness to the whites was accurate when Canute said:

  “My mother was emu totem and my father was jerboa. I am emu man.”

  “My mother! I don’t know her totem. My father was a white man. My other father is my brother and my son, my uncle and my grandfather. His name was Illawallie. He was head man of the Worcair. The marks of the Worcair are on me.”

  Canute stood, saying:

  “Let me know with my hands.”

  Bony stood, removed his shirt, and the old man’s fingers traced the cicatrices on his back and chest. Then his fingers traced his features, and finally his hands to each fingertip. That being done, Bony resumed his shirt and they sat.

  “Long time ago you sealed to Worcair people. Now you white-feller policeman,” pronounced Canute. After a long silence he asked: “What you want from Orrabunna men?”

  “Two spirit people made by Charlie and given to Linda Bell.”

  Canute again fell silent, and before Murtee spoke Bony knew that to the Medicine Man the buck had been passed.

  Murtee stroked the thin grey beard falling from his lean face.

  “Ole Fren Yorky and Meena have gone up to the sky. Mr Wootton and Missus Bell no good for sky. They make sky fall down.”

  “Who took them from the playhou
se along at homestead?”

  “Kurdaitcha Man. I look into little fire and Kurdaitcha Man tell me. Kurdaitcha Man and spirit Meena and Ole Fren Yorky, all go up into sky?”

  “Kurdaitcha Man, liar, eh!” charged Bony. “Ole Fren Yorky go up into sky maybe, but Meena still here. What for Kurdaitcha Man not take Meena up into sky, but take Spirit Meena up into sky?”

  That was as far as he progressed. First Murtee and then Canute pushed him back over the gulf separating the two races, and began to treat him as a white visitor.

  Murtee laughed as though amused. Canute chuckled mechanically. The other men smiled and joked among themselves. They wiggled their toes, bunched shoulders, scratched their arms. They occupied their side of the gulf, and Bony the side where stand the white men who actually believe the aborigines are ludicrous savages.

  “What say you hand those dolls back to Mr Wootton to look after for Linda?” Bony suggested, and old Canute chuckled again and cheerfully denied any one of his people had taken them. Murtee shrugged, stroked his beard.

  “Charlie’s ole dolls not in this camp. The ole dolls belong to Linda. Perhaps some day Linda come back, then she want them,” observed Murtee, laughing, without the slightest cause to laugh. Canute almost rolled over, such was his spurious front, and the others copied his lead. Bony laughed with them, making them uneasy because unsure if his merriment was real or mockery. Their faces grew swiftly serious when he leaned forward to the fire and withdrew several burning sticks, which he placed with flaming ends together, to form a separate fire.

  Before this small fire he squatted, and across his bunched knees he rested a forearm, and with a metal tobacco box he rubbed his forehead, as though it were a magic churinga stone, before sinking his face to the forearm. They became distinctly uneasy, for Bony’s spirit might well be about to leave his body and talk with the Kurdaitcha Man up in the sky. Murtee whispered, and Canute thus followed the act. Referring to the Medicine Man living near Boulia where he had but recently been on investigation, Bony lifted his head, saying: