Murder down under b-4 Read online

  A second letter he addressed to his wife, an educated half-caste like himself, who ruled their bush-girt home at Banyo, near Brisbane. Among other matters he wrote:

  This case has many points in common with that which attracted me to the sands of Windee. Whilst remembering that in your goodness of heart and with your broadness of mind you could find nothing wrong with my final actions in that case, where I permitted sentimentality to cloud my sense of duty, resulting in an official confession of failure which has marred my unblemished record, I remember, too, your admonishment that the first and last duty of a crime investigator is to reveal the guilty criminal.

  I shall not slip down that incline again. At Windee a lovely face and an understanding mind beat down my judgment and spoilt my greatest triumph. There is in this case, too, a pair of eyes lit by an understanding mind, but I shall watch and guard against my heart weaknesses. She is only fourteen years old and her name is Sunflower. I wish we had a fairy daughter.

  Yes; there is in this affair much resemblance to that of Windee. There is no horribly violated body lying on the library floor, or anywhere else so far as I can ascertain. I am sure that murder has been committed; therefore, you will understand that, as in the Windee case, first I must prove the fact of murder and secondly reveal the murderer.

  You know about that sixth sense which unerringly tells me that blood has been spilled. That undefined sense prompts me now. I believe that George Loftus was killed when I have no slightest evidence of it. There are in this case elements of peculiar interest. Quite possibly it may turn out to be one of those macabre murders such as those acclaimed by the lecturer in Thomas deQuincey’s immortal essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” The lecturer states:

  “People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed-a knife-a purse-and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature.”

  How true, dear Marie, how very true! Modern killers often are real artists compared to the savage and crude practitioners of the early days. And as artistic beauty has evolved through the centuries from coarse crudity, so from the condition of low intelligence ruling the old English force known as the Bow Street Runners has become evolved the superlative genius of

  Your ever affectionate husband,

  BONY

  These letters he posted when he had harnessed a horse to a dray and before calling on Mrs Poole for his lunch. He discovered his landlady flushed with anger.

  “If you got up earlier,” she snapped to the elder of her small sons, “that Mrs Black wouldn’t have had the chance to milk her. You know what she is. If you don’t get up tomorrow morning, I’ll throw cold water over you.”

  “To beat that old cow I’d have to get up before daylight,” was the stout defence of a lad about twelve years of age.

  “Well, get up in the dark, then.” To the detective Mrs Poole added:

  “That’s twice this week Tom has gone to milk the cow and found her stripped dry.”

  “Where is the cow… during the night?”

  “In bed. I suppose with that blackguard of a husband of hers.”

  Bony was puzzled. He said:

  “I was not aware that cows had permanent husbands.”

  Obviously Mrs Poole tried hard to regain composure.

  “I was talking about Mrs Black,” she said stiffly.

  “Oh! I thought you were talking about the cow.”

  “So I was.”

  Bony’s expression continued to indicate perplexity.

  Young Tom laughed. “Mrs Blackain’t a real cow,” he explained, and was severely cuffed. It became Mrs Poole’s turn to explain.

  “We haven’t any place to keep a cow at night. We keep her tied up with a bit of chaff till we go to bed and then let her loose to pick up grass and stuff about the town roads. Some mornings she’s close by, and sometimes she’s a mile away. Goldie is always going over the railway to Mrs Black’s place. She feeds Goldie with sugar and things. And milks her beforehuntin ’ her away. I know it.”

  “Have you seen her actually milking the cow?”

  “No. But isn’t it obvious?”

  “Where does the lady live?”

  “Behind the hall.”

  “But there are other women living near the hall. Perhaps it is one of them whosteals the milk.”

  “Oh! It’s Mrs Black all right. She’d cut off her grandfather’s whiskers to sell as horsehair.”

  Laughing silently, Bony went out to his horse and drove at a slow pace along the winding road flanking the railway and the pipe trench. At the rabbit fence gate he unharnessed the horse and put it in the farm stables for the day. Then, carrying a piece of paper and a pencil, he started off to examine every fence post between the railway and the gate across the old York Road.

  Observant and curious eyes, had there been any, would have been satisfied that he was examining each post to ascertain if it wanted renewing, and that on the paper he was noting the number of the posts required over the stated distance.

  Yet really Bony was less interested by the condition of the fence posts than he was by the surface of the little-used road adjacent to the fence on the western side. Assuming that George Loftus walked home during the early morning of 2 November, it was possible for evidence of his passing to lie on that track or beside it, despite the fact that it was raining and that the present date, 17th November, marked the passage of fifteen days.

  The bush detective was aware of and appreciated one significant fact regarding the mentality of the Australian black tracker. Being an inherent fatalist, the aboriginal too soon gives up. Convince him that there are tracks to be found, and very pride in his wonderful sight will spur him to find and follow them more surely than a bloodhound. But the tracker who was brought from Merredin, twenty-odd miles westward, on 4th November, when it was definitely realized that Loftus was missing, knew that it had rained during the night of 2nd November right through to the dawn of 3rd November. And, observing by the condition of the ground search that even his eyes would not see tracks washed out by the rain. Once the idea that no tracks would be visible became firmly fixed in his mind, extraneous subjects of greater importance and interest would occupy his thoughts and blur his vision. Knowing there were no tracks, he would not think to look for objects which to the white man would become important clues.

  Where the full blood would accept defeat without endeavour the white man would accept nothing for fact until it was proved. From his white father Bony had inherited the precious gift of reason, and from his mother the equally precious gift of patience. Reason and patience, developed by undying passion for knowledge, produced in this half-caste a force of good seldom found among the white races and almost never among the black.

  While he walked slowly along the track he lived in another world vastly different from that known to the unscientific white man. He descended, or, perhaps, it should be stated, he ascended to the insect world. He saw innumerable ants belonging to a dozen species. The ferocious inch-and-a-half-long bulldog, whose sight was extraordinary, whosepugnaciousness at his approach was superbly courageous, and whose bite was venomous; the hurrying red ant half an inch long, which made beaten roads through the grass from nest to larder as represented by the carcass of some small animal; the tiny black ants but little larger than a grain of sugar, which swarmed along defined highways and up the trunks of many trees and into the branches, there feverishly to gather the honey from the blooms not much larger than themselves; the bigger black ants, long-legged, slow in action, which utilized sun-warmed stones with which to incubate their eggs; and the minute brown fellow of the size of a cheese mite living unconcernedly among this vast population of relative giants.

  He saw the grey-and-black honey ants taking down into inconspicuous holes their loads of honey, which they crammed into the mouths of the store ants in their caves deep in the earth,
crammed them so that their bodies were distended to the size of peas, the transparent skins making them appear like honey drops, living drops of honey unable to move, too huge to pass along the ant corridors had they been able, living only to regurgitate their stores during the winter.

  Everywhere he saw evidence of the stupendous labour of the dweller in a world beyond even the insect world, the termite which lives in eternal darkness, without sight, without hope, the vast majority sexless, without individual purpose, dedicated solely to unending labour, governed by an inexplicable force originating from some inexplicable centre, creatures living the communistic ideal as never a race of super-Marxianscould hope to do.

  What has a detective to do with ants? What have ants to do with crime? They punish crime only in one way-death. The termite does not even violently kill. The order goes forth from the centre that the criminal must die, and not one unit of the vast population permits the sentenced to eat, and very quickly the doomed itself is eaten when death claims it. More than once had the ants presented valuable ideas to Bony; on more than one occasion they had given him a clue of great value.

  Here and there, the rain not having soaked away, had formed overflowing pools, and, the ground slope falling eastward, the water flows had gathered twigs and dead grass into smallbeaverlike dams against the netting of the Fence. The accumulation of this rubbish was not overlooked by the termite, which works up from beneath the ground, and, working from within, plasters the object it attacks witha cement composed of sand and the juices of its body. Bony, also, did not overlook this rubbish, most of it now looking like thick ropes of rusted wire. He destroyed the careful work of the termites to maintain their loved darkness by kicking all this rubbish asunder, providing the voracious ants with a meal of delectable putty-coloured flesh.

  It was in this way that he discovered a small notebook, the covers and the outer leaves of which the termites had eaten, a notebook which had been surrounded by debris, hidden from the eyes of the black tracker, when the rain had washed it against the fence. The few remaining leaves bore entries made without doubt by George Loftus when he was last in Perth.

  It was irrefutable evidence that George Loftus had not been killed-at the spot where was found his wrecked and abandoned car.

  Human dissatisfaction has been called divine, doubtless in those far-off days when the word was applicable to love and woman. Akin to worry, dissatisfaction has the same effect on the human being, in that men and women forever dissatisfied with their conditions of life are generally poor in physique.

  Now Sergeant Westbury, the senior police officer stationed at Merredin, was wholly satisfied with his wife, his family of three boys, his official position, and the state of his bank account; and, in consequence, he was red of face, burly of frame, and generously endowed with flesh.

  He came to Burracoppin on the 10 A.M. goods train, sought for and found inspector Gray, and induced the fence man to take him in his truck to interview Bony. The two men were more than acquaintances, for their wives were cousins.

  “This half-caste bird. Is he a joke?” asked Inspector Gray.

  “I thought so; I thought so,” the sergeant replied in a harsh voice that absurdly contradicted the facial aspect of benevolence. The small twinkling eyes appeared as mere pinpoints of steel-blue light, so close drawn were the puckered lids. He talked as a man to whom talking is a necessary evil.

  “Got a letter the other day. Commissioner himself wrote. Says give D. I. Bonaparteevery assistance. Gives it him. Think Commissioner cracked. Two days ago along comes Mason. You know, D. S. Mason. I said: ‘What’s the idea?’ He said: ‘What idea?’ I said: ‘Who’s this black on the job?’ He said: ‘Hush! I’ll write it down.’… Fred-no, heain’t a joke.”

  “Seems educated,” Gray asserted.

  “Would be. Got to be. Mason says university. No social or colour bar in ourunies, you know. Weain’t that far behind the times.”

  “He told me he has failed only in one case.”

  Sergeant Westbury heaved himself round to face the other.

  “Pulling your leg; pulling your leg,” he snorted. “D. S. Mason-good man, Mason-says Bonaparte’s never failed. Over east the heads think the sun shines out of his boots. Mason is thick with Muir, and Muir says the black is one hundred times cleverer than he is. And Muir’s no mug, bee-lieveme.”

  “But if he is that smart, why haven’t we heard of him in the papers?”

  “It’s a wonder weain’t heard of this damn road in the papers. He’s a sight too clever to get his name in the papers. Theunderworld don’t know him. Never heard of him. Never seen him as a detective. Don’t dream that the real man who’s bagged ’emis not the D. who invites ’emto take a little walk. A joke! No, he’s not a joke.”

  They found Bony working on the fence midway between the railway and the old York Road, and after Sergeant Westbury had inelegantly backed down from the truck he faced Bony and with difficulty refrained from saluting.

  “Headquarters’ instructions to report, sir,” he jerked out.“Ordered not to salute.”

  “Good! That saves me the trouble of asking you not to. The greatest tragedy of life is its shortness, and busy men have no time to waste.” Bony was smiling. He shook hands with the sergeant. “Many people mistake me for a superior policeman, the most persistent being my own State chief. I regret troubling you to come all this way from Merredin, but there is work I wish to have done.”

  “All right; all right. No trouble. Pleasure, sir.”

  “Ah! I’m glad you remembered to call me Bony.”

  “Sorry, si – Bony,” the sergeant said with purple face.

  “Quite all right sergeant. I once knew a millionaire who objected with much violence to being called sir or even mister. I liked him much. He was so refreshingly democratic. Have you any news of George Loftus?”

  “No.”

  “Did your chief forward any particulars of the missing man’s financial position?”

  The sergeant struggled with a pocket. He was breathing heavily.

  “The particulars are all set out on this document,” he said.

  For fully a minute Bony studied the memorandum. There was a note stating that the Agricultural Bank paid only on approved cheques as the credit was created by loan money. But a most important statement was that made by the manager of the Bank of New South Wales. Loftus’s credit at this account, 30th October, was one hundred and seventy-three pounds, and on 1st November Loftus had drawn one hundred pounds in treasury notes of one-pound denomination.

  “So it is probable that Loftus had on him a large sum of money when he arrived at Burracoppin,” Bony said reflectively.

  “Looks like it; looks like it,” agreed the sergeant.

  “Did you know Loftus?”

  “No. Never remember seeing him.”

  “Were you with the black tracker when he was brought here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he work?”

  “Good! Good man. Intelligent.”

  “Did he track right along this road?”

  “Yes, and all about the York Road yonder.”

  “He must have been half blind.”

  “Not him,” objected the sergeant. “If you found anything you were lucky. I had a look along here too.”

  “Excellent,” Bony said suavely, amusement in his eyes. “Observe that part of the roadway. You can, of course, see that within the last hour a centipede of medium size crossed it.”

  “Be hanged if I can; be hanged if I can.”

  Sergeant Westbury was stooping down, hands on knees. His face still was purple. His honesty delighted the detective.

  “Look more closely,” urged Bony. “See! There along this fallen twig.”

  “I can’t see no tracks; no tracks.”

  “Nor I, because there are none.”

  Like a jack-in-the-box the sergeant stood up.

  “But you said-”

  “I made no definite statement, but requested you to observ
e a set of tracks which do not exist. You admitted you could see no tracks when another man, knowing my training, would have said they could. I like you for that. I shall assist you in your career if possible. I feel now that I can rely absolutely on your silence regarding my identity and official position. Now, please tell me what you think of this case.”

  The Merredin mangrinned his pleasure.

  “On the face of it,” he said, “Loftus disappeared on purpose. Why did he draw one hundred pounds in small notes just before heleft Perth? I draw money from the bankbefore I go to Perth, and if another man had an account in Perth he’d draw money as soon as he got there and not just before he was leaving.”

  “Do you believe in intuition?” Bony inquired.

  “Me? No, but my wife does. She gets an intuition fit every time Igoes into a pub.”

  “Evidently your wife is a knowing woman. There are times when I permit myself to be influenced by a sixth sense commonly known as intuition. I feel sure, although I have no smallesttittle of evidence, that George Loftus was killed. Somewhere within a radius of five miles lies the body of the missing farmer, and in my mind there is no doubt that I shall find it. Never yet was the perfect crime, because never yet was evolved the perfect criminal, although each and every one of them think they are the brilliant exception.

  “You can almost see Loftus’s wrecked car down there by the railway. I know that he left his car in an angry mood, that he flung from him the remains of a nearly consumed cigar. I know that he walked from the car along this fence and that he remembered he had a fresh cigar when he reached the tall gimlet-tree just there. By that tree he lit it. I also lit a cigar there and smoked it quickly whilst I walked across the old York Road gate, and within thirty-seven yards of the spot where I threw away my cigar end I found the cigar end discarded by Loftus. I know, therefore, that Loftus reached the old York Road. Do you not now think it unlikely that George Loftus planned to wreck his car on the pipeline and walk then a full mile to pick up another on the York Road in which to decamp?”