Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box Page 9

  The rugged character of those two people was infused into this room. They dominated it and, through it, those who entered. The long horsehair sofa with the curling arms, the remaining chairs, the huge dining-table, belonged to them and to their era, and the setting made incongruous the sleek black radio panel and the shelf above it supporting a dozen or more expensive volumes.

  Irwin was nonchalantly rolling a cigarette when Bony stood up and crossed to look more closely at the transceiver.

  “Wonderful invention, Irwin,” he said. “No more isolation. No longer the feeling of being banished from the world. An accident, and you contact the base doctor, who tells you what to do, or will fly to attend the patient and, if necessary, fly the patient to hospital.”

  Among the books about the transceiver was Chemotherapy by R. M. Mallory: two volumes of Across Australia by Spencer and Gillen: and Harrison’s Chemical Methods in Clinical Medicine. Bony was astonished by such books in a house like this, occupied by people two of whom had had no education, one a State School education and the fourth member a State Educational Correspondence Course. He took down the volume of chemotherapy. Opening it to see how much it had been read, he found that a ragged hole had been gouged in the centre of the four hundred odd pages. When the covers were closed the hole was large enough to take a pound of rice.

  Bony glanced at Irwin, who had picked up a magazine which had lost its covers. He took down another volume, Vol. 1 by Spencer and Gillen, and found, too, a great hole gouged in its pages. The companion volume, and four others, had been similarly desecrated. Bony doubted that the books he opened had ever been studied. They were comparatively new.

  Hearing voices beyond the room he replaced the books and resumed his seat. Then, the books forgotten, he was on his feet again making his inimitable bow to Kimberley Breen. Im­pressions flowed over him like waves of colour; the loveliness of her hair; the sun-ruined complexion; the limpid grey eyes; the roughness of the hand he accepted. He heard her say she seldom received visitors and was glad to receive him and Con­stable Irwin.

  A lubra came in carrying a large tin tray supporting a chipped enamel teapot, an enamel milk jug, and a beaten silver sugar bowl. Placing the tray on the table she withdrew. Kim­berley fell upon her knees and dragged two elaborate pigskin hat boxes from beneath the sofa. Saying nothing, she carried one box to the table, raised the lid and took from it the loveliest tea-set Bony had ever beheld. Eggshell-blue and lined with gold, each piece was wrapped in a square of silk, and, like a very proud little girl, Kimberley Breen set cups to saucers and arranged the plates on the table before her guests.

  Bony was fascinated by his hostess. It was mid-afternoon, and Kimberley Breen was wearing a bronze velvet ballerina dress, and high-heeled satin shoes encrusted with rhinestones. About her throat was a fine gold chain from which was sus­pended a huge black opal, a great red flame flickering within a black shadow.

  “Two of your brothers, I understand, are taking cattle to Wyndham,” Bony remarked, and all she said was:

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  She almost ran, such was her nervousness, to a vase on the mantelpiece, from which she took a key. Holding the key be­tween her teeth she carried to the table the second hat box and unlocked it. From the box she lifted a fruit cake still within its baking papers, and snatched up a carving knife having a broken bone handle. From the exquisite china, Bony passed his gaze to the carving knife and the old enamel teapot, and shuddered.

  “Have to keep my best cake safe from the girls,” Kimberley said, and laughed so bewitchingly that Bony forgot about the teapot. She cut the cake, great slabs of it, and loaded the fragile plates, and, returning the cake to the box, she closed the lid and locked it.

  Fantasy! Expensive medical and anthropological books with their innards gouged out! A superb tea-set and a chipped enamel teapot! Velvet and jewels and slabs of cake! A sleek black transceiver and a vast dining-table built with teakwood.

  She smiled at them, and was so obviously trying to do the correct thing in entertaining guests. Served by aboriginal women and controlled by men, Kimberley loved beautiful things, bought beautiful things, and knew but little how to use them.

  “Who took your place?” gently persisted Bony.

  “Jasper. Silas said I was to come home because he had to muster cattle from the Swamp.” She smiled again. “That’s not a swamp really. It’s a long lagoon in a river which overflows into the sea, and the crocodiles there are big and they take the calves and often big cows and steers, too. The black sent word about it, and Silas took some of our boys out to shoot the crocs.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Kimberley. I rather wanted to meet Mr Silas Breen. Will he be away long?”

  “I don’t know. He left home before I got back.”

  “When d’you expect your brothers Jasper and Ezra back?”

  “In about ten days. Must be back in time to get ready for The Annual.”

  “The Annual,” explained Irwin, “is the yearly picnic races. They’re held on a little plain right at the foot of McDonald’s Stand. Everyone comes for miles. The Annual lasts a full week. Sam Laidlaw brings ten tons of beer from Wyndham, and then lays the odds on the races … horses, donkeys, abos, goannas, dogs and flies.”

  “And we have a baby show, and the ugliest man competition and fights and target-shooting and everything, Inspector,” Kim­berley added. “You must come. Will you be there, Mr Irwin? Ezra says we have a steer that’ll knock anything.”

  “H’m! Quite a busy time. I suppose your neighbours help you with the mustering and you help them with theirs?”

  “Not often, Inspector. We’re able to manage.”

  “Neighbours! Who are your nearest neighbours?”

  “Oh! The Wallaces are our nearest. They live on the east side of Black Range. Poor Mr Wallace is an invalid, you know.”

  “Yes. We called there yesterday, Miss Breen, and met them all. Jack Wallace, does he often visit you and your brothers?”

  “No. Oh, no. We haven’t seen Jack Wallace for weeks,” replied the girl, her eyes directed to the task of rolling a cigarette.

  “I suppose you Breens own a large number of cattle?” ques­tioned Bony, and was informed that they really didn’t know how many they owned, as hundreds roamed on the ranges and were very difficult to muster. They generally managed to send four hundred fats to Wyndham Meat Works every year.

  “Have you many boys working for you?” pressed Bony.

  “About forty, I suppose.”

  “I’d like to talk with some of the men. Would you mind?”

  Kimberley frowned, saying that nearly all the men were away, what with the cattle on the hoof, and the trip to the Swamp. The subject was disturbing her, and Bony wondered. Her cake was something to be remembered, and he drank three cups of tea, the last really for the caress of the delicate china against his lips. Kimberley clapped her hands and there entered the room a young lubra carrying a tin dish of hot water and a drying cloth. She took away the tea ‘equipage’ and Kimberley removed her platinum wrist-watch and proceeded to wash her blue-gold tea-set.

  Bony offered to dry for her but she declined his assistance. Having washed the tea-set, she replaced it in the hat box, and both boxes she pushed beneath the sofa. Finally she swabbed the table and clapped her hands for a lubra to remove the dish.

  Then Kimberley sat down and rolled a cigarette, lit it and posed like a little girl consenting to be bored for the sake of convention. So far she had asked only one question, and that, if Irwin would be at The Annual.

  “Did you hear on the air that the tracker with Mr Stenhouse is missing?” Bony asked, and again the frown darkened the grey eyes.

  She nodded, and when Bony asked if Jacky Musgrave had been seen by the station blacks, vigorously shook her head. Bony was beginning to feel baffled, for he could not decide if this girl was purposely evasive or was mentally dulled by the advent of her unexpected visitors. He asked several innocuous questions and receive
d ready answers, and then rose and thanked his hostess for her hospitality.

  “Well, we must get along, Miss Breen. By the way, is that your father and mother?”

  “Oh yes, Mr Bonaparte. They’re dead now. I never knew my father, and I can only just remember my mother.”

  “You have, I see, a transceiver, and your mother must have had little compared with what you have. Ah! New books. You read a lot?” Crossing to the shelf he reached out a hand to take one, then Kimberley was at his side, her hand upon his arm, her voice soft and almost pleading.

  “Please don’t touch, Inspector,” she said. “They belong to Ezra, and he wouldn’t like anyone to touch his books.”

  “That being so, Miss Kimberley, I won’t,” Bony told her, smilingly.” I can quite understand your brother’s love for books. I’ve many of my own and I do hate anyone interfering with them. Well, we really must go. Thank you very much.”

  She shook hands with them, and accompanied them to the utility, and all about them gathered the station aborigines: men, women and children. Bony counted the men and the youths old enough for stock work. He totalled thirty-eight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  What the Eagles Knew

  ON LEAVING THE Breen homestead, Irwin was told to drive north, it being Bony’s intention to pass round the northern extremity of Black Range and return by the Wyndham road. Neither was inclined to talk, although Irwin was curious as to why Bony had not interrogated the Breens’ stockmen.

  This track was much easier, and when two miles had been measured they proceeded to cross a series of low ridges separated by wide flats bearing tall sugar grass. The ridges gave place to open country and, when nine miles from the homestead, they came to a large set of stockyards which had been in recent use.

  Irwin was invited to sit with Bony on the top rail and admire the Range, which wore with distinction its crown of table-tops and pinnacles of dark-red rock, bared to the clear winter sky and the lightning strokes of summer storms.

  “On the far side of the Range would be the place where Stenhouse was found, don’t you think?” surmised Bony, and Irwin agreed.

  “This, obviously, is the place where the Breens brought their muster to cut out the fats for market. Any name for it?”

  “The Nine Mile Yards.”

  “That operation was delayed a week by something or other, Irwin. They notified Stenhouse they would be leaving on the 7th, and it must have been the 14th or 15th.”

  “A large bunch of cattle could have broken away from the riders,” Irwin pointed out.

  “Yes. Anything like that could have happened. Extraordinary girl.”

  Irwin chuckled. Bony slewed his body to take in all this world of space bounded by the remains of a once high plateau.

  “No smokes,” he observed. “It’s like the hush before the storm. Those blacks at the homestead remind me of chickens clustered about the mother hen when a hawk is approaching. It was why I didn’t question them. Yes, an extraordinarily lovely girl in an extraordinary setting.”

  Irwin offered no comment. This slim, keen-featured, blue-eyed man was foreign to his long experience of those who stem from the aboriginal, and now, after several days of close asso­ciation with Napoleon Bonaparte, Irwin was beginning to feel conscious of inferiority.

  “About forty stockmen are employed by the Breens,” Bony said. “That number was given us by Kimberley Breen. She said there were very few about the homestead, four we know being with the cattle, and most of the others being with Silas on a crocodile-shooting expedition. And yet, Irwin, I counted thirty-eight aboriginal men capable of doing stock work. When Kimberley said there were forty working for her brothers, I think she spoke the truth. When she said most of them were away, she lied. You noticed, I’m sure, that wonderful black opal she was wearing?”

  “If I had ten like it, I’d retire from the Department and buy a schooner and sail round the world,” Irwin declared.

  “I’d go after the swordfish,” Bony said emphatically. “That opal would seem to have belonged to her mother, for she was wearing an opal when the picture was taken; but on looking closely I discovered that it was a moonstone and someone had darkened it with black crayon and added a smear of crimson. The photograph of Mrs Breen was taken in 1902. It bears that date as well as the photographer’s signature. In 1902, Irwin, black opals hadn’t been found in Australia and, so far as I know, nowhere else in the world.”

  Association of ideas produced a suggestion from Irwin.

  “Perhaps Kimberley crayoned the moonstone into an opal,” he said. “I didn’t notice it.”

  “Perhaps she did,” Bony agreed … and added, “But why, unless she wanted to share something with the mother she but faintly remembers? The other picture … the picture of Kim­berley herself is all wrong. That dress she wore. To me it looked like an evening dress. And that very expensive tea-set kept in an expensive hat box. That wrist-watch, the opal, the dress, the jewelled shoes, those things cost money, Irwin, a lot of money. And the Breens manage to send away only four hundred marketable cattle every year.”

  “Inherited money from an uncle down in Melbourne, I was told,” Irwin said. “As for wearing the wrong dress and the wrong shoes … you know more about that than I do … well, Kimberley could send down to Perth for the clothes. Probably saw the pictures in catalogues and wanted to be a beautiful lady. She could buy them from her share of the profits on the sale of four hundred fats every year.”

  Bony nodded. “Well, perhaps she could. I see a faint track running towards the Range. Know where it goes?”

  “Yes, to a well hard against the Range itself. They call it Black Well, after the Range. About three miles from here.”

  Bony regarded the Range With eyes contracted behind nar­rowed lids. He could see eagles wheeling at a height lower than the summits. There were five of them, and when five are work­ing together they must be prospecting a feast. Having lit a cigarette, Bony dropped from the yard rail and sauntered past the truck to explore the branch track to Black Well. Irwin entered the utility, thoughtful concerning Bony’s remarks about Kimberley Breen, her opal, her dress and tea-set. These Breens were certainly not short of money, hadn’t been since they had inherited it from the uncle. But had they? Damn it! A police­man oughtn’t to accept anything without proof.

  Bony returned and took his seat beside Irwin.

  “As it’s growing late, and there isn’t much wood about here, we’ll take that track to Black Well and camp there for the night,” he said, and Irwin drove the vehicle across the cattle-churned ground to reach the track, saying nothing until they had covered a mile.

  “D’you reckon the Musgrave blacks will give trouble up this way?”

  “Plenty … to the man who killed Jacky Musgrave,” Bony replied. “An aborigine must have witnessed the murder of Jacky Musgrave, and passed on the information. If that black hadn’t been killed there would have been no signs indicating that his tribal fellows are coming to investigate. Had Jacky killed Stenhouse, not a black fellow in the country would have raised a smoke about it. The fact that the Musgrave blacks are stirred up by the signals relayed to them is to my mind proof that the man who murdered Stenhouse also murdered the tracker. You don’t know what the blacks are saying. They are saying that Jacky Musgrave turned into a horse. What d’you make of that?”

  “Search me. I do know that the blacks believe when a man dies his spirit enters a tree or a stone near where he dies. You could say that Jacky Musgrave was turned into a stone, or into a tree. But into a horse! Horses don’t come into their folklore and beliefs. There weren’t any horses until the white man brought them to Australia.”

  “The logical corollary is that when Jacky Musgrave was killed his spirit entered a horse. The horse, Irwin, probably died long before Jacky Musgrave was killed.”

  “Probably a thousand dead horses lying around these Kim­berleys.”

  “We should be interested only in dead horses within a day’s travel of Stenhouse’
s abandoned jeep.”

  Irwin chuckled, and his laughter did not deceive Bony.

  “Must be a bit dense,” he said. “Suppose we find a dead horse, how are we going to tell the dead horse was once upon a time a black fellow known as Jacky Musgrave?”

  “I’ll inform you when the time comes … if it should.”

  Black Range rose higher and higher. The track was so faint­ly marked that Irwin was obliged to drive with care not to lose it. Had it not been recently traversed by a motor vehicle, his difficulties would have been vastly increased when crossing belts of sugar grass rising level with the cabin top. They passed over a miniature range of rocky splinters protruding above golden sand, and saw ahead the windmill over the well. It was not in action.

  Beyond the well, the Range rose sheer from a base of rock rubble for a thousand feet, presenting a massive light-red wall. On the left extremity a great rocky splash of purple streaked with black betrayed the entrance to a gorge or gully. Irwin stopped the truck beside the mill-stand over the low coping of the well, and now the evidence was plain that the mill had not been operated for some considerable time. The drinking troughs extending outward from the squat reservoir tank were dry. There were four vanes missing from the mill itself. And, to clinch all this evidence of disuse, the ground about was clean of cattle tracks.

  There was a windlass and chain and bucket over the well and, standing within the legs of the mill, they lowered the bucket, bringing up water, clear and cold.

  “We could camp over in that belt of scrub,” Irwin said, and, Bony assenting, he brought the water tins from the truck and filled them. They moved the truck to the trees, where lay a plentiful supply of dead wood, and made a fire, the wood being so dry that but little smoke rose after the kindling of leaves and twigs had burned out.

  It was then half past six, and whilst Irwin attended to the billy to make the inevitable tea, Bony strolled back to the well, circled it, and continued onwards to a roughly-built shelter roofed with grass laid upon light poles. The site of a fire was near by, and the mound of ash told of many fires having burned there.