Death of a Swagman Read online

  “Fill them again, Landlord,” requested Mr Jason as he resumed his position with his back resting against the counter. Following the slurred drawl of men who lived in the open, the full tones of Mr Jason’s voice came strangely to Bony’s ears.

  Mr Jason puffed out his cheeks and again sighed, this time with evidence of satisfaction. He pulled down the front of his black waistcoat and shot his cuffs. Then he glared at his son, who rolled a cigarette with one hand, lit it, and glared back at his father. His greasy cap was still back to front. His dark eyes never rested, and he recalled to Bony’s mind the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mr Jason spoke, following a long, ear-shattering roll of thunder.

  “That was the most indecent planting I have ever conducted.”

  From behind him rose the faint ghostly spiral of smoke from his pipe.

  “The service was an insult to the departed,” he continued sternly. “The speed of the cortege on the way to the cemetery was disrespectful to the late lamented, and the speed of the cortege returning from the place of burial, as well as its reception on arrival in the township, was thoroughly disgraceful.”

  Once again he turned round to take up a mug of beer and drink without apparently swallowing. With the fourth mug of beer in his left hand, he turned again to rest his back against the counter. The company drank, it seemed hastily, for all present excepting young Jason continued to regard Mr Jason with unwonted interest. Young Jason said, a snarl in his thin voice:

  “Well, we didn’t want to get bogged, did we? I didn’t fancy getting halfway there and having to carry the coffin for the remainder of the distance.”

  Now Mr Jason began to exhale smoke. It issued from his lips in a faint stream, and it continued when he said:

  “The service, I repeat, was an insult to the departed.”

  “Well, we can’t argue the point about that, seeing that the parson ain’t here to take it up,” young Jason objected.

  “There would have been time to have half filled in the grave, at least,” persisted his father, tobacco smoke continuing to issue from him. He emptied the fourth mug of beer and set it down on the counter with a sweep of his arm. “It is my opinion that the whole affair was indecently hurried. I do not agree with Dr Scott giving the certificate he did. If ever a man was frightened to death, it was poor old Edward Bennett. The look on his face was terrible. A man does not die of heart disease with a look like he had.”

  No one spoke at that. The daylight was growing brighter, and the rain was ceasing. Smoke continued to issue from Mr Jason’s mouth, astounding Bony by the amount he must have inhaled and by the period of time which had elapsed since he had inhaled. There appeared to be no limit, and the entire company were far more interested in Mr Jason’s remarkable feat than in what he was saying.

  “You’ve got murder on the brain,” young Jason sneered. “Just because that Kendall bloke was bumped off you’re gonna believe that everyone who dies in Merino during the coming three years was murdered, too. What’s worrying you? We can complete filling in the hole tomorrow. Come on, gents. It’s my call, Joe. Fill ’em up.”

  “Wait,” Mr Watson urged Bony. “The old boy hasn’t finished yet. One minute fifty seconds that smoke’s been coming out of him. Another twenty seconds and he’s broken his own record.”

  “The record is?” Bony inquired.

  “Two minutes and five seconds ... made the day that George Kendall was murdered.”

  Bony now observed that Mr Watson held a stop watch in his left hand. He was seen to shake his head when a dozen pairs of eyes stared at that watch. Mr Jason opened his mouth, wide, and someone said hastily and loudly, as though to stop Mr Jason yawning:

  “Mr Jason!”

  Mr Jason closed his mouth and the strain among the company relaxed.

  “Well?” asked the funeral director.

  “What do you think frightened old Bennett to death?”

  “How do I know? It might have been brought out had there been an inquest.”

  Mr Watson was smiling. His bristling moustache appeared to stand straight out from his face. Once more Mr Jason opened wide his mouth, and from the door leading to the hall of the building a woman cried:

  “The man died naturally of heart failure. Let the dead lie in peace.”

  But this time Mr Jason did not instantly close his mouth. From it belched a huge volume of smoke which rose to the stained whitewashed ceiling, where it seemed to spread outward like smoke from a railway engine entering a tunnel. That was the grand finale, and Mr Watson shouted triumphantly:

  “Done it. He’s broken the record, gents. Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Congratulations, Mr Jason.”

  “Enough!” Mr Jason cried. “Too many unseemly records have been broken today.” He took two steps forward and lifted his hat to the woman standing in the doorframe. She wore a Merry Widow hat and a grey costume. Her face was so sunburned and weather-tanned that she might easily have been mistaken for a half-caste. Her age Bony found difficult to assess, but she stood upright, her figure slim and hard:

  “Mrs Sutherland,” began Mr Jason, “I accept your rebuke. The dead shall lie in peace. This, I fear, is a sorry wake and one which would not have had the approval of the departed. Will you not join us in drinking to the memory of a man who was a great Australian?”

  “I certainly will, Mr Jason, and with pleasure, but I’m not agreeing that old Ted Bennett was a great Australian,” responded Mrs Sutherland, and came two paces inside the barroom. “Old Bennett was a hard doer. He was tough. He knew his onions. But I’m not agreeing that he was great.”

  Mr Jason actually bowed, saying:

  “Madam, we will agree to disagree.”

  “Just as well,” she announced grimly. “Yes, a little glass of wine, please, Mr Morton.”

  Bony’s interest in young Jason was heightened when that young man took up from the counter the glass of wine and stepped across with it to Mrs Sutherland. She raised it on high, and her action was followed by the company. And in silence the toast was drunk.

  “Who is she?” asked Bony of the local press representative.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Mr Watson whispered loudly. “That’s Mrs Sutherland, who owns a selection a few miles to the south-east of the town. Husband died some four years back, since when she has run her own place; does everything from lamb marking to shearing. Tough girl, but very sound. Knows everyone.”

  “Thank you, Mr Watson,” said the woman in the Merry Widow hat. “But I don’t know your boy friend. Please...”

  Bony felt a hand grip his arm and he was urged across the bar-room to be presented.

  “This gent is Robert Burns,” announced Mr Watson. “Burns, this is Mrs Sutherland, the first lady in our district.”

  “How d’you do!” she said, offering him her hand. Bony took it and felt a grip like that of a strong man. He assessed her age at forty, and noted the clear and steady eyes that regarded him not coldly. It was one of his great moments. His bow outdid that of Mr Jason.

  “I am happy to make your acquaintance, madam,” he told her. “At the moment I am a jailbird, Mr Jason having but yesterday sentenced me to ten days. I would not like to withhold my present status from the knowledge of one so charming as yourself.”

  Mrs Sutherland almost giggled.

  “That won’t upset me,” she said. “I know all the boys about these parts, and there’s not one of them but oughtn’t to have done a turn in jail. When you are free, ride out one day and see me. I’ll kill something. Now I must be going. Goodbye, all. Be good and keep the grass down.”

  This time she did giggle, and then turned and walked from the bar with the unmistakable gait of a woman who has lived most of her life on a horse.

  Chapter Six

  The Prisoner’s Visitors

  TO SERGEANT MARSHALL, administrator as well as policeman, Detective Inspector Bonaparte was an entirely new proposition, the antithesis of Detective Sergeant Redman.

  Marshall knew no class of men better than p
olicemen and plain-clothes investigation men who once were uniformed policemen. He was aware, and took pride in the fact, that the modern policeman is the product of a machine-like organization built up by generations of men engaged in the perpetual war against law-breakers. There was no doubt in Marshall’s mind that Detective Sergeant Redman was a good investigator. His record was proof of that. But Redman’s training began as a constable on a city beat, where he had learned the rudiments of the warfare against criminals operating in cities, and he had continued in the same warfare, and against the same enemies, when promoted to the Criminal Investigation Branch. As an investigator here in the bush, however, Redman was a lesser quantity than Gleeson, who could recognize the tracks of any particular horse sufficiently well to follow them for miles, and who did know the difference between the tracks made by a dog and those made by a fox.

  Here, in the vast untrammelled and uncultivated interior of Australia, the science of crime detection was as different from its city counterpart as the tracks made by a fox are different from those made by a dog. Here in the bush the sciences of fingerprinting, blood grouping, hair sectioning, and general photography were of relatively small importance compared with the sciences of tracking and of the effects of varying wind pressures upon the face of the earth.

  Marshall had yet to experience personally Bonaparte’s methods of crime detection, but he had heard sufficient about this Queenslander to appreciate their extraordinary success. That Bonaparte chose to enter Merino as a stockman, that he had artfully got himself charged in a court of law, and now was painting government property for two shillings per diem and his meals, did not appear to Marshall as unorthodox as it would have done to a police officer having no experience of the bush.

  Certainly no one in Merino would ever imagine that the half-caste stockman painting the police station fence was a famous detective inspector investigating the murder of George Kendall. Bony had said after breakfast on the morning following the funeral of Edward Bennett:

  “You administer a district comprising roughly nine thousand square miles, a district occupied by about a hundred and fifty people, of whom nearly two thirds live here in Merino. Without being disrespectful, I may call myself a fisher of men. I cast my net and in due time I bring in for examination all these people. All of them are fish. All are harmless fish except one that is a sting-ray. It is not very exciting work. It is not comparable, for instance, to angling for swordfish. I don’t go about armed with loaded guns and things, save on very rare occasions. The uniformed policemen do all the necessary shooting. The only shooting I do is with my mind. The mental bullets I fire cause a man to die at the bottom end of a rope.”

  Well, well! Was Bony even then getting ready to fire one of those mental bullets?

  Seated at his desk, through the open window of his office the senior police officer of the Merino District could observe Detective Inspector Bonaparte industriously painting the police station fence fronting the street, and he could hear him cheerfully whistling “Clementine, My Clementine”. When a few moments later the whistling ceased, Marshall saw that his daughter Florence had joined the painter.

  ***

  Rose Marie said to the catcher of sting-rays:

  “Good morning, Bony!”

  “Good morning, Rose Marie! Are you off to school?”

  “Yes. But I’m early. I can talk to you if you like.”

  Bony slapped the last drop of paint from his brush to the wood.

  “How do you like the colour?” he inquired mildly.

  “I hate it.” The little girl’s dark eyes gazed steadily at the light yellow of the new paint work. “It makes me feel sick.”

  “It makes me feel tired, Rose Marie. Now why should the government permit only the most artistic shades of colouring to be applied to the inside of Parliament House down in Sydney and send this fearful stuff to Merino? But never mind.”

  Laying the brush across the top of the paintpot, he sat down on the bare ground with his back to that part of the fence still to be painted, and began to manufacture a cigarette. Gravely the girl unslung her school satchel, placed it beside him as a seat, and joined him at his ease.

  “Mother said that you’re the most lovely man she’s ever met,” she told him.

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes. I heard her tell Father so after you left the kitchen last night.”

  “Oh! Where were you?”

  “I was supposed to be asleep in my bedroom. It’s next to the kitchen. Would you like to know what father said about you?”

  “Do you think I ought to know?”

  “Yes, because it was nice. I wouldn’t tell you if it had been nasty.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t tell me. You see, it might make me vain. What’s your teacher’s name?”

  The question was asked through the faint haze of cigarette smoke. He observed the dark eyes regarding him with open trust. The small oval face was healthy and not yet burned by the summer suns.

  “Mr. Gatehead,” she told him. “He’s a nice man, but his wife isn’t. Mrs Moody says that Mrs Gatehead is a real useless trollop, and however he came to marry her is beyond reason. I like Miss Leylan. She’s our sewing mistress, you know. She’s in love with a minister who goes round Australia in a big truck. Miss Leylan thinks that I’m too young to be in love. Do you?”

  “No. We are never too young, Rose Marie, and never too old to be in love.”

  “Thank you, Bony,” she said solemnly. “You see, one day I am going to marry young Mr Jason. He’s saving up his money to buy a Buick, and then we will be married by Mr James, and young Mr Jason will drive me straight off to the kingdom of Rose Marie.”

  “Oh! And where is that?”

  The school bell began to clang and the child rose to her feet. Whilst she was adjusting her satchel she looked down at him with bright eyes.

  “You promise not to tell?”

  He nodded.

  “Cross your fingers and promise ... loud.”

  He obeyed. She said:

  “The kingdom of Rose Marie is where I’m going to be queen and young Mr Jason the king.” She then proceeded to recite what she had learnt by heart. “You follow the new moon to where it sinks into the sunset glow. There is a lake of liquid gold, and in the middle of the lake is an island all green with tall grasses and flowering trees. The island is the kingdom of Rose Marie, and when we get there all the stars will fall and hold tight to the tops of the trees and be like those electric globes in Mr Jason’s garage.”

  “True?” asked the entranced Bony.

  “Yes. Young Mr Jason told me. My, I must run! The bell’s stopped.”

  “You promise me something before you go?”

  She crossed her fingers and promised.

  “Promise that you will never again speak the word ‘trollop’. It isn’t a nice word.”

  “All right! I promise, Bony. Good-bye.”

  She left him, running, the bars of her golden hair floating behind her.

  He was wishing that he had been blessed with a daughter in addition to his three sons when a dog came to stare at him.

  “Good day!” he said to the dog.

  The dog wagged its tail. It was a large rangy animal of nondescript breed, brown head, brown back, and white chest.

  “What is your name?” Bony asked. “Come on, tell me your name.”

  The dog wrinkled his nose and suspicion left his eyes. He came nearer, willing to be friends.

  “Come on, shake hands,” invited Bony, and the animal dutifully lifted his right forepaw, his tail now a flail, the entire body of him expressing friendship.

  One nail was absent from the paw clasped by Bony’s hand.

  Someone whistled shrilly, and at once the dog raced away to vanish into the garage doorway. Bony rose to his feet and fell to work on his painting. Five minutes later he observed Mr Jason coming from the garage.

  “Good morning, Burns. How’s the work going?”

  “Goodo, M
r Jason. Rotten colour, though.”

  “I agree. It will be an eyesore in Merino,” predicted Mr Jason. “As the Bard of Avon said, so perhaps shall I: ‘O, I have pass’d a miserable night, So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams.’ I intend to write a strong protest about that paint to the police department.”

  Mr Jason was wearing blue engineer’s overalls, which seemed out of place when quoting Shakespeare. The expression in his dark eyes now was mild, almost paternal, when he went on:

  “One does one’s best to bring beauty into the outback, but so few appreciate one’s efforts to beautify a place or beautify the mind with passages from the works of the world’s literary giants. Take to reading, Burns. Read the works of Shakespeare and Milton and Wordsworth. Elevate your mind, Burns. Did you notice any peculiar circumstance relative to old Bennett’s demise?”

  “Er ... no,” replied Bony, a little set back by such a question following so closely upon the subject of literature and the elevation of the mind.

  “I saw you walking about the old man’s hut the other afternoon,” admitted Mr Jason. “You are probably aware, having heard what I said yesterday, that I am not easy in my mind about that death. You did not, by any chance, observe any unusual tracks? I think, you know, that someone frightened old Bennett to death.”

  “But why frighten the old man?” argued Bony. “He had no enemies, had he?”

  “I don’t know. I am only going on what I observed on the man’s face. You were, of course, asked to accompany the party by the sergeant?”

  “Yes, he did ask me to go with him. I looked about all round the hut but I could see nothing strange, or of any value. I am not very good at tracking. Not so good as the full blacks.”

  “Ah, no, I suppose not.”

  Mr Jason departed down the street and returned on the far side. Twice he stopped and chatted with people. Several times he was spoken to beyond the normal greeting. What had Rose Marie said that her father had said of him? A broken-down actor. Well, he might have been an actor, but hardly a broken-down one, whatever that term might mean. There was a drover in western Australia who, during two months’ association with Bony, had recited word-perfect every Shakespearean play.