The Widows of broome b-13 Page 6

  No footprints left in the yard by the murderer, and no finger-prints of a man in her bedroom. Sawtell had been able to prove that. A half-caste girl was taking washing from the line beyond the division fence, and she was laughingly beseeching a small aboriginal boy not to turn the tap from which water would flow through a hose to the sprinkler. An aborigine trundled a barrow loaded with wood from the stack across the yard to the kitchen door, and he shouted to the girl to hurry with the clothes, and laughed at Bony as though it were a fine joke for the imp to play.

  There were only five men lounging in the main bar. Two oil-lamps suspended from the ceiling had recently been lit, their wicks not yet turned up. Behind the bar stood a giant screen composed of large pearl shells from which all the dross had been removed and the screen itself fashioned into the likeness of an oyster shell. Spaced between the bottles on the shelves were polished tortoise-shells, and framed pictures of luggers. In the angle stood a potted palm growing from the terrible teeth of a tiger shark resting on a small occasional table. The entire front of the bar could be raised on hinges, but tonight was bolted down to the main struts.

  “What’s it to be?” asked Mr. Dickenson, his poise sure in the possession of Bony’s “loan”. They breasted the bar. A young man came from the five men at the far end, and he appeared uncertain until he caught sight of the pound note the old man put down on the counter.

  “How’s things, Pop?” he enquired cheerfully after scrutinising Bony.

  “My name is Dickenson, young man,” returned Mr. Dickenson in the tone of one accustomed to authority. “Had I begotten sons, they would have been respectful to their elders.”

  “Suits me, if that’s how you feel about it,” countered the barman with no change of countenance.“Thought you didn’t get your quarterly interest until the thirtieth.”

  Mr. Dickenson flushed, and Bony softly interposed.

  “Wonder where I’ve seen you before. Could have been in Sydney.”

  The barman shook his head.

  “Never been in Sydney. Don’t recall having met you. What’s your name?”

  “Knapp. What’s yours?”

  “Blake.”

  The barman left them to attend to the other customers, and as Bony made some remark to his companion in vice, his mind was busy with its card index system.

  “He’saswifty,” said Mr. Dickenson.

  “Face is familiar. Been here long?”

  “First time I’ve seen him behind the bar. He came in from the cattle country up north. Thanks, I will have another.”

  Bony nodded to the barman, who drifted back to them, pouring the drinks better than a novice. He said:

  “Might have seen me out in the Territory sometime.”

  “Likely enough,” agreed Bony. “I’ve been around.”

  “In for a spell?”

  Interest in the question was not evident in the light-grey eyes, and Bony almost succeeded in turning up the card in his mental index. He said casually “Just travelling,” and escaped explanation by the entry of two men into the bar.

  “Not very busy tonight,” he observed to Mr. Dickenson.

  “Not so far. Early yet. I’ve seen two hundred men drinking here, and ten people serving ’emas fast as they could. Great pub. Wish I had it.”

  “Who does own it?”

  Over the rim of his glass, Mr. Dickenson regarded Bony with a singular expression.

  “The late Mrs. Cotton’s estate owns the property,” he said. “You’ve heard of Black Mark, I’ll warrant. He’s the present licensee. Black Mark’s an out-and-out sinner, and out-and-out sinners don’t strangle people. They knock heads off when they’re in a rage, but they never close wind-pipes on a dark night. The feller who strangled Mrs. Cotton was no out-and-out sinner… in the day-time.”

  “H’m. Seems sound psychology,” agreed Bony.

  “It is. Mrs. Cotton was a fine woman, and her husband was a fine man. Pity the police didn’t catch her murderer. The other one didn’t matter so much, but she was entitled to her life.”

  “What’s your personal opinion of the murderer’s race?” asked Bony.“White or black?”

  “White, for sure. I know nothing of the inside of these matters.” The old man regarded Bony steadily. “The Asiatic does run amok with akris. He does slip a knife into you for some reason or other. He’ll even strangle… but with a cord… and for a reason. The police know more about these Broome murders than I do.”

  Mr. Dickenson drank his whisky, dabbed his lips with a tattered but clean silk handkerchief and called the barman. His nose appeared now somewhat less frost-bitten, and his eyes were decidedly brighter. Time passed pleasantly. The bar remained almost empty, and the barman was having an easy evening. His card would come up eventually. Mr. Dickenson said, conversationally:

  “I believe I saw the man who murdered Mrs. Eltham.”

  “Indeed!” Bony’s reaction was not unlike that of a cat on sighting a bird. The barman served the drinks, talking the while to a man about a herd of cattle on the move to the Wyndham Meatworks. When he had again left them Bony waited before being impelled to say: “You actually saw him?”

  “Yes. Not that night he strangled Mrs. Eltham. Another night. I mention it because through you I might assist the inspector.” Mr. Dickenson solemnly studied the magnificent shell screen. “I’m careful to avoid connection with trouble. You would not mention my name?”

  “No, certainly not.”Bony made a swift decision. “I’ll return your confidence. My business in Broome is to reveal the murderer of these two women.”

  “The thought did occur to me. I like paying my debts. I owe a debt to InspectorWalters, and another to you, sir. What I am going to tell you, you understand, is from one friend to another. I am a peaceful man.”

  “The children, when they greet you, support that claim.”

  “I thank you. The night I believe I saw the man who killed Mrs. Eltham was last Tuesday week. I was then suffering from lack of funds, and also my heart was behaving badly. Angina pectoris, my doctor says. I find relief in whisky, but at this time I was out of funds. I’m afraid I am not like the squirrels who gather in summer the food to sustain them through the winter.”

  Bony nodded politely, and Mr. Dickenson lit a cigar and with the other end smoothed into place the beard about his mouth. Humour was faintly betrayed by his eyes when he continued:

  “Throughout my winters, when I am bereft of the wherewithal to ease a painful heart, I am compelled to have recourse to a practice which is really abhorrent to me. I have found that ten drops of battery acid in a small tumbler of water is efficacious, but this method of relief is restricted by suspicious people, with whom Broome is overcrowded. Anyway, I recalled that Mrs. Eltham possessed a car, and that the car was still within the garage at the rear of her house.

  “Having been on the premises but not, of course, inside the house, at the time of the murder… with many other rubbernecks… I had noted that the padlock securing the garage door was a common one, and I gambled on possessing a key which fitted. Accordingly, when the Perth detectives left Broome, I sneaked into the yard from the rear at about three in the morning. It was very dark, as a sea mist was thick over the town. I had filled a small bottle with the battery acid, and was congratulating myself on having obtained sufficient to last me a whole week, when I fancied I heard movement inside the house. You see, I had re-locked the garage door, and was passing along the path at the side of the house on my way to the front street. I was wearing rubber-soled canvas shoes for the occasion. And so, I sat me down with my back to the veranda base and waited to see who would come out, either by the back or the front door.”

  Mr. Dickenson ceased speaking while the barman refilled the glasses. The hair at the back of Bony’s head was stiff. Here, possibly, was the flaw in the picture for which he so patiently sought.

  “All I could make out of the man who left by the kitchen door and passed me by within a yard was the blurred outline of his figure against th
e sky. If my old eyes weren’t sharp, I wouldn’t have seen even that. Although I was squatting down, and the fellow passed so close, I’m sure he was a big man. He was wearing a felt hat, like a stockman’s. I saw one arm, and it seemed abnormally long. And that was all I did see.”

  “How did he walk?” asked Bony.

  “That I couldn’t see. As I said, I was sitting down like Brer Rabbit, and the night was dark.”

  “D’youthinkhe was carrying anything… large?”

  “I didn’t get that impression. He wasn’t aComic Cuts burglar getting away with the swag, leastways, I don’t think so. He locked the kitchen door after him, because I went to find out. D’youknow what I think?”

  “Tell me.”

  “If he wasn’t the murderer who returned for something he had forgotten, then he was one of the woman’s friends who went in to take some small thing which might prove his visits to the house.”

  “That was the night following the departure of the detectives?”

  “That was the night.”

  Despite examination of Mr. Dickenson, nothing further was brought out. Having given his information, the old man determinedly evaded adding to it. He drank like the gentleman he surely was, but his capacity astonished Bony. The evening mellowed, and Bony’s guest was in the mood to discuss the people of Broome in general, with additional biographical details of certain personalities. Time passed so swiftly that Bony was astonished when Johnno appeared.

  “I arrive, eh!” he exclaimed. “Yes, one drink for me. Then we depart. Yes, plis. Brandy, Dick.”

  Mr. Dickenson was tired, and Johnno assisted him down the veranda steps to the door. The night was black and white with no mezzotint. One could have read a newspaper in the moonlight, and be completely concealed in the shadows. Bony slid in beside the old man, and Johnno, loudly braying with thehooter, departed at top speed.

  The homeward journey was fast. Mr. Dickenson was not nervous. He sang a little. He quoted poetry. Abruptly, he drew Bony’s head to his mouth and whispered:

  “I might know that feller again. As he passed me, I could hear his teeth clicking as though he were in mortal fright.”

  Bony was about to press a question when Johnno turned back to shout something of the evening, and the car went into a bad sand skid. It almost collided with a tree and almost turned over. Mr. Dickenson chuckled, and Johnno laughed but thereafter gave his attention to his driving. Eventually, he was instructed to put the old man down at the post office, where Bony also alighted and dismissed Johnno with a handsome tip.

  Mr. Dickenson insisted on shaking hands before parting from Bony, and Bony sauntered to the police station, where he found Inspector Walters in the kitchen, in his dressing-gown and reading a novel.

  “Well, you drunkard,” he greeted Bony.

  “I found your derelict quite good company,” Bony said, so happily that Walters was suspicious.“Brought home a little memento of the evening.”

  “A glass! We’ve plenty,” objected Walters.

  “But a special glass. Before my last drink, I wiped off all the finger-prints. When the filled glass was handed to me by the barman, I picked it up by the base to empty it, and I’ve held the glass by the base all the way back, despite an ugly skid.”

  “That barman important… Black Mark?”

  “It wasn’t Black Mark. Black Mark didn’t appear. The fellow’s name is Richard Blake. I’ll send his prints to my department. Sawtell can take them.” From his hip pocket Bony extracted a bottle of beer, and without comment the inspector left his chair for glasses and bread and cheese.

  Chapter Eight

  A Puzzle in Silk

  THE house occupied by the late Mrs. Eltham was a typical Broome bungalow, set well back from the road and partially concealed by ornamental trees. The cement drive ran directly past the house to the garage at the rear, and from it a cement path paralleled the house front, skirted its far side and joined the cemented yard between house and garage. Off the yard was a small grass plot on which was erected a rotary clothes hoist.

  The storm shutters enclosing the encircling veranda being bolted down, the house presented a windowless aspect and was without individuality. It was owned by someone in Perth, and was still under police control. According to Inspector Walters, no one had entered it after the homicide men had returned to Headquarters.

  Arriving at the rear door, Bony opened the case he had brought and tested the handle for finger-prints. The door handle was clean of any prints. With the key obtained from Walters he opened the door and tested the inside handle. It, too, was clean. Had substantiation been necessary of Mr. Dickenson’s statement concerning the man he had seen leaving the house, it was provided by the clean door handles, which should have produced fingerprints of the last investigator who locked the door.

  Elated by the probability that it had been the murderer who had returned to the scene of his crime, Bony stepped into the house and sought the light switch, the storm shutters making the interior almost dark. Closing the door, he sat on a kitchen chair and rolled a cigarette whilst noting everything within visual limits.

  Like many of these tropical bungalows, the house proper was devoted to bedrooms, the encircling veranda space being used for general living purposes. The storm shutters having been down for many days, the air smelled slightly musty, and yet within the mustiness was the fragrance of perfume.

  This part of the veranda was obviously used as a kitchen and dining-room. It was clean and tidy. There was not much furniture, but it retained evidence of having been well kept. On the wash-bench were the utensils used by Mrs. Eltham at supper that last night of her life. The floor was covered with apple-green linoleum neither new nor yet worn.

  Before moving on, Bony knelt on the linoleum and brought his eyes close to its surface. He could see his own shoe tracks, but none other, and with a finger-point he established the film of dust which had settled after the visit of the unknown man. The same degree of dust was on the wash-bench and the furniture.

  Passing on round the corner of the house to the next veranda section, Bony located the light switch and foundhimself in the lounge. Small, soft rugs graced the floor. Glass-fronted cases were filled with expensive books. Two sea-scapes in oils rested on easels and seemed to be reasonably well executed. Both pictures bore the initials of the dead woman. The magazines on a small occasional table, the conch shells used as ash-trays, pieces of costly china and crystal, and the curtains and lamp-shades bespoke the tastes of a cultured woman having money to indulge them.

  Confident that none had seen him enter the house, and that the lights could not be noted from either the front street or the rear laneway, Bony again sat down and made another cigarette. He was prepared to conduct a long and unhurried investigation of this dwelling, for the man who had spent some time here after the police had finally gone must have left something of himself or some evidence explaining the reason for his visit. Discovery of the motive for that nocturnal visit might well lead to the motive for the murder of Mrs. Eltham. It might lead even to the identity of the murderer.

  With all their training and their scientific aids the homicide experts had failed to prove the identity of the murderer or even put forward a likely motive for the crime. On what rested that double failure? The astuteness of the murderer in small degree, and the type of community in which he lived in large degree. The mental lethargy of people all familiar with each other prevented them from noticing the unusual, and thus provided the cloak of secrecy for a killer who planned all his moves.

  The problem was to discover the motive having a common denominator covering the murder of two women dissimilar in morality, circumstance and background. The victims were alike only in being widows. Several motives could be assumed for the murder of one, or that of the other, but there was no motive to be applied to both crimes.

  Old Dickenson had provided a splendid lead and, if handled rightly, might give others. This lead might break the wall confronting the man who now sat and smok
ed a cigarette in Mrs. Eltham’s lounge, the man whose maternal forebears had bequeathed him patience which has no limitations.

  Had one of Mrs. Eltham’s men friends killed her? There were nine listed by the police, but the list could not be accepted as complete. No one of these nine men had visited Mrs. Eltham immediately prior to the night of her death. That was proved by the finger-print expert. He found no male finger-prints, and according to the domestic, she had, with Mrs. Eltham’s assistance, cleaned and polished the entire house the day before Mrs. Eltham’s death. Each of the nine men knew nothing whatever of the interest in Mrs. Eltham of the other eight. That proved she had been an excellent diplomat. There was nothing whatever among the dead woman’s papers pointing to any other man in Broome. The homicide people were satisfied with the statements and integrity of those nine men, and the Broome police who knew them personally were equally satisfied.

  The homicide men had gone through this house like soldier ants through a native village. They had removed all letters and other documents, and they had taken the nightgown found beside the bed to be tested at the headquarters laboratory for finger-prints. Other than the prints of the dead woman and the domestic who had washed and ironed the garment, there were none. That the murderer wore fine rubber gloves was considered certain.

  This house contained four rooms. There were no connecting doors, each room opening to the veranda. One was unfurnished. Two were furnished with a single bed. Mrs. Eltham’s room was large and well furnished, and contained a double bed. Each room had the usual glazed window, in addition to which was the universal fly-screen on the inside fastened with a snap lock.

  The door of Mrs. Eltham’s room was closed, and Bony tested the handle for prints and found it clean. Within was sufficient light enabling him to locate the electric switch, and he operated that with the point of a match. It, too, was clean of prints. Bony re-closed the door and stood with his back to it.