Batchelors of Broken Hill b-14 Page 9

  Mrs Wallace was fifty, amazingly blondish, and her hastily applied ‘Morning-Glory’ make-up was somewhat misty.

  “Blimey! You don’t say,” she said. “Come in.” Bony was taken to the front parlour, a place of signed photographs, bric-a-brac, cushions, and a velvet lounge suite. “Right about Gromberg, then?”

  “You have heard?”

  “That old Gromberg died in the Western Mail, sudden-like? What did he die of-Mr-Sergeant-Inspector?”

  “Inspector. Mr Gromberg died of cyanide.”

  “You don’t say!” Mrs Wallace settled herself comfortably. This was going to be good-not to be hurried. She lifted up her voice and screamed: “El-sie!”

  “Yes, Mum!” shouted the girl from somewhere at the rear.

  “You made that coffee yet, luv?”

  “Yes. You want it now?”

  “What’d you think? Bring an extra cup for the gentleman.” To Bony she said placidly: “Getting serious, isn’t it?”

  “The poisonings, yes. Sloan told me that you left the lounge at the Western Mail Hotel only a few minutes before Gromberg took up his glass of beer, drank it, and immediately died. The glass had last been filled about twenty minutes past five and he emptied it at twenty minutes to six. You left, as far as Sloan remembers, at five and twenty to six.”

  “Yes it was about half past five. Mrs Wallace raised a hand to warn him of the approach of the girl. Self-consciously she carried a silver-plated tray covered with a lace cloth and bearing cups and saucers, sugar, hot milk, and a coffee pot. The mother swept knick-knacks off a small table to make room for the tray, and the girl departed. Mrs Wallace then produced a bottle of brandy, smiled at Bony, poured a liberal portion into one cup, and presented him with the bottle.

  “All yours,” she told him. “Went to a ‘do’ last night. Got an awful itchy throat.”

  Bony voiced appreciation of the coffee but declined the brandy.

  “Where you sat in the lounge you could see everyone and watch everyone entering and leaving, couldn’t you?”

  “You bet,” agreed Mrs Wallace. “I likelookin ’ at people.”

  “Do you often spend a few minutes there?”

  Mrs. Wallace chuckled, and the bosom reminded Bony of the groundwork of Mrs Robinov’s pearls.

  “More like a couple of hours, Inspector. I go there mostSatdee afternoons. Only little pleasure I get these days. Used to work in a bar one time, y’know. I like the atmosphere.”

  “It’s because you are used to bars and lounges that I am hoping you can give me one or two pointers.” Bony sipped his coffee. “The little girl can certainly brew coffee.”

  “Too right, I’m teaching her to be refined. Sing out when you want another cuppa. You wassayin ’?”

  “On leaving your table for the front door, you had to pass behind Mr Gromberg, didn’t you?”

  “I had to, yes.”

  “Did you notice how much beer was then in his glass?”

  “I fancy I did. Being a barmaid, I can tell beer at a glance, and you’vesorta brought it to my mind. Gromberg’s glass, I’d say, was a bit over half full. I remember thinking as I walked out that the beer served to Gromberg was a bit off, and I couldn’t get it because my beers had been OK. The beer in Gromberg’s glass was cloudy, and I said tomeself in the street that it was the first time I’d seen cloudy beer at the Western Mail.”

  The woman’s eyes grew small, and her large mouth pursed in an expression of genuine horror.

  “That cloudiness! You don’t think-”

  “And don’t you, Mrs Wallace,” Bony urged. “Let’s have these times straight. Wally Sloan last filled Mr Gromberg’s glass at about twenty past five, and you left the lounge at twenty-five to six. Can you remember who left after twenty past five and before you did?”

  Mrs Wallace frowned as though Bony had made an indelicate remark. She continued to frown as she filled Bony’s cup and added brandy to her own.

  “Several people went out-mostly women from my end of the lounge. The party next to me left just before I did.”

  “Did you happen to see these people pass Mr Gromberg? They would all have to pass at his back, wouldn’t they?”

  “They’d all have to do that, the way he was sitting. I’d seen some of ’emthere beforeyesterdee. That’s funny! The party sitting next to me was a queer one. I spoke to her twice, and she never said nothing, so I didn’t bother. Drank ginger ale, too. First of all I thought she was there waiting for a man to turn up. Then I reckoned that couldn’t be as she wasn’t the sort to be waiting anywhere for a man.”

  “Can you recall if she passed particularly close to Mr Gromberg?”

  “No closer than need be,” replied Mrs Wallace. “I thought she knew the woman sitting my side of Gromberg and with her back to the passageway. Just as she got to this woman she put out her hand as if she was going to touch her, thensorta altered her mind and went on past Gromberg. She never put her hand near Gromberg’s glass. I’d swear to that.”

  “Just now you said this woman was a queer one. What was queer about her?”

  “Well, she drank ginger ale in a pub lounge, for one thing. There was another thing. She didn’t want to talk to me-not that I pressed her. Them that’s independent can be, far as I’m concerned. Looked to me like she’d never been in a pub before and wasexpectin ’ to meet the devil any time.

  “Old-maidish. You know, you can tell ’em. She didn’t wear aweddin ’ ring, but that’s neither here nor there these days. This one was about fifty and got up to be thirty. Some of ’emare pretty good at it, but they don’t pull no wool over May’s eyes.

  “Then there was her handbag. Kept it on her lap all the time and fumbled to get at her purse, and Wally waiting for his money and people yelling for more drinks. Once she nearly knocked her ginger ale all over her dress, what shemustar kept in lavender. It was blue and white, and I haven’t seen thatsorta silk for years. And do you know what I got a peep of in her handbag? I’ll tell you. It was a baby’s dummy.”

  “A baby’s dummy!” echoed Bony.

  “A baby’s dummy. I seen the thing, I tell you. Pale brown rubber teat like beer. I hate ’em. Never give my kids them filthy things. Poor little mites. They trail all over the floor, with the cat playing with ’emand the dog licking ’em. And then the fond mother picking it up and stuffing it back into the little rosebud of a mouth-flies, dirt, spit, and all. The only thing a baby should have to suck is a good big clean mutton bone. No meat on it, of course-not at the start.”

  “What kind of handbag was it?” came the inevitable question.

  “Handbag! Blue, I think. The old drawstring sort. Red drawstrings they was. Now what would a baby’s dummy be doing in a virgin’s handbag? You tell me that, Inspector.”

  As Mrs Wallace expected an answer, Bony murmured:

  “It’s beyond me. Would you know the woman again?”

  “I certainly would.”

  “Excuse me for a moment. I’ll show you some pictures I have out in the taxi.” He was back under the minute, and Mrs Wallace looked at Artist Mills’s work and slowly shook her head.

  “No, she wasn’t anything like them women,” she said in a manner precluding any doubt. “The handbag looks like the one, though.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Hidden Woman

  ON THIS Sunday afternoon Bony walked with Wally Sloan to the man-made crater top of the broken hill and looked down upon the city courting the fabulous line of lode fashioned by chance to the shape of a giant boomerang. The sun was yellow in a cadmium sky, and beyond the jumble of the tree-denuded Barrier Range the celestial dome imprisoned ghostly clouds.

  They sat on a pile of hardwood, and Sloan, having regained his wind was inclined to talk, and because he wanted to rest his mind from its many problems Bony was satisfied to let him talk about Broken Hill. At their feet, beyond the narrow flat, ran the centre of the city-Argent Street-and away to the southward the populous suburb of South Broken Hill sprawled like a gre
at mass of conglomerate upon the vast plain stretching away to the Murray River.

  Sloan related the story of how the original syndicate raised new money by creating fourteen equal shares, and how a game of euchre decided the sale of one of these shares for? 120. Had this share remained intact, within six years it would have been worth? 1,250,000.

  “That’s money,” Sloan said. “You didn’t want faith, and you didn’t want vision. All you had to have was luck-just to hold on to something you thought worthless. Now look at her. She isn’t big, but she’s got the doings, that little city of ours. The state and federal governments draw twelve million quid a year out of her, and still she has to have everything of the best from beer to refrigerators.

  “She’s a healthy city, too, a long way different to the times when the smelters were here. Men used to be walking home, or going to work, and drop in their tracks in a kind of fit, and when it rained good and heavy and made the street gutters run, the poisons from the mines killed cats and dogs by the dozens.”

  “It’s evident that you like Broken Hill,” commented Bony.

  “No place better. I’ve done well.”

  Wally Sloan was free, in the company of a man he liked, and the ‘sir’ was therefore absent. A funny little man, Bony thought, and yet in his way a great man.

  “You never married?” Bony asked, and the question brought a dry chuckle.

  “No. Think Ioughta be?”

  “You’re not old and beefy like those others, Sloan. You’re safe enough, I think.”

  “You getting any warmer?” asked Sloan.

  “I’m not saying. Your Mrs Wallace said that the woman sitting next to her was got up to look half her age, and she walked upright. She was not the woman thought to have been the customer in Goldspink’s shop when he was poisoned, but she carried the same handbag. It is Mrs Wallace’s opinion, and I am strongly inclined to rely on the opinion of a woman like Mrs Wallace, that the woman who sat next to her was a spinster, and yet in her handbag was a baby’s dummy, or comforter. What do you think about that?”

  Sloan refrained from answering so long that eventually Bony looked directly at him.

  “I don’t know,” Sloan said. “I don’t understand women, and I’ve never met a man who did. When the Lord banished Adam and Eve from Eden, He put a gulf between men and women that’s never been bridged and never will be. I know this, though, that liquor makes men and women more human, makes ’emdrop their guard. And I know this, too, that there are men and women who never drink because they’re afraid of other people seeing just what they are in heart and mind. That party sitting next to Mrs Wallace drank ginger ale that afternoon because she wanted all her wits about her to poison old Gromberg, not because she never drank anything stronger. The baby’s dummy stumps me.”

  Sloan stared down at Argent Street, and then he said:

  “If Mrs Wallace said the party was a spinster, then she was. I’ve known Mrs Wallace-let me think-perhaps eleven or twelve years. She worked in the bar with me, in other pubs, too, and when you work in bars for that long you get to know men and women from the feet up. I’ve nothing against a man, or a woman, who doesn’t drink, but I never trust anyone who doesn’t drink, or smoke, or swear, or lose the old temper. Perhaps the woman with the dummy in her handbag keeps it to pretend she has a baby, and the thought of what she missed is driving her to murder.”

  “Perhaps that’s how it is,” Bony said, standing up. “We’ll go down to Argent Street for a cup of tea, and then I’ll see what’s turned up at the office.”

  They found a cafe open for business, and eventually parted in the street, Bony walking to Headquarters and finding it wearing its Sunday aspect. The public offices were closed, and he entered by a side door. The interior was quiet, but men were working-tough, pan-faced men with hard eyes.

  Crome reported that Abbot had located a lounge habitue who remembered the woman with the blue handbag. The description given by this woman tallied with that detailed by Mrs Wallace to Bony.

  Inspector Hobson reported that he had carpeted the uniformed policeman who had been on duty near the Western Mail Hotel the previous afternoon and had been called by the head barman. This man had not seen the woman carrying the handbag which had been imprinted on his mind by Bony’s pictures.

  There was a conference in Bony’s office that night, Hobson and Pavier, Crome and Abbot being present. There was no formality. The night was hot and Crome and Hobson discarded their coats, and everyone smoked. Suggestions were offered, thrashed out, discarded.

  Pavier voiced what Crome and Abbot were thinking:

  “We might get somewhere if we knew all that’s in Bonaparte’s mind.”

  “You would find only confusion,” Bony told them. “I can see nothing clearly. We can be confident that a woman is responsible for thesecyanidings. The progress made regarding the woman in Goldspink’s shop has been nullified by the description of the woman suspected of having poisoned Gromberg’s beer. The handbag is the only common link. The woman who poisoned Goldspink’s tea isn’t the same as she who poisoned Gromberg-unless she is a master of disguise.

  “There is another point. I cannot say with any degree of confidence that the poisoner selects her victims after a study of them based on acquaintance, or that she merely carries the poison wherever she goes and drops a pinch in a drink to be taken by a victim met by chance. I am not going to put forward a theory which isn’t founded on reasonable assumption. I have in mind several theories, one of which may produce an important lead, but as yet they are too nebulous to call for united action.

  “As you know, in another office Artist Mills is working to give us pictures of the woman in the hotel lounge, Mrs Wallace and that woman interviewed by Abbot being with him to direct his efforts. In the morning we’ll have every man look at those new pictures before going on duty, and we’ll compare the two sets for something in common to give a distinctive feature.

  “I suggest that Abbot be placed in charge of what we’ll call the Gallery. We’ll have the two sets of pictures displayed and all those people who came in contact with the originals taken to the Gallery, and so cross-check. Something may come from that, and meanwhile every man must be doubly alerted to look for any woman bearing any resemblance to the woman in either set of pictures.”

  It was after ten o’clock when word came that Mills had completed his pictures, and they trooped along to the general Detective Office to see them. Mrs Wallace enthusiastically claimed that they were ‘pretty good’, and the second woman said that the dress and the hat and handbag were almost exact.

  The women and Mills were thanked by Superintendent Pavier, urged to remain silent, and sent home in a police car. Pavier and Hobson and Crome then went home, leaving Abbot, who was the officer on duty that night, and Bony, who wandered back to his office. He had been there less than half an hour when a constable appeared, to say that Luke Pavier wanted to see him.

  Bony assented. He was feeling tired and balked, and yet tensed because the greater the difficulties, the more did an investigation captivate him. Although he had pictured Time as a Thing compressing death between forefinger and thumb, Time had other guises much less horrific, and one was theRevealer of Secrets.

  Luke came in, youthful and cheerful, a tonic. Without invitation he drew a chair to the desk and sat down.

  “Evening, Mr Friend. How’s the mighty brain?”

  “Ageing, Luke.”

  “Needing a squirt of optimism, eh? Thought so. The old man’s not too cheerful these days, and he’s a good barometer. Nothing come out of that conference of top-graders?”

  “Conference, Luke?”

  “That’s what I said. When the top-graders emerge all together to go home, they’ve been talking. When they bid each other good night as though they’re suffering from indigestion, the conference was abortive. Deductive reasoning, my dear Mr Friend.”

  “You should have been a detective,” Bony said pleasantly.

  “Not as interesting as m
y game. By the way, remember my Mr Makepiece, the butcher? Surprised that Gromberg copped it and not he. Weren’t you?”

  “No. Your friend lacks one essential for amurderee.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s too fastidious in eating and drinking. What are you putting into your paper tomorrow?”

  “ ‘We regret to announce the death by cyanide poisoning of Mr Hans Gromberg, the noted metallurgist. The late gent was born in Kiel, Germany, and came to Australia at the age of twenty-one. He was well known for his work among sick children during the twenty-three years he resided in Broken Hill. A bachelor, Mr Gromberg was fifty-nine years old and liked his mushrooms and his beer. We understand that the police are making inquiries.’ Now when are you going to let me see those drawings done by friend Mills?”

  “Drawings, Luke? ‘Oh, Grandmamma, what long ears you have!’ ”

  “ ‘Oh, Grandmamma, what sharp teeth you have,’ the little lady in red also exclaimed. What about those pictures? When are you going to decide that I may be able to help you along?”

  “When I’ve decided that I can trust you.”

  “You can begin now, Mr Friend. Thesecyanidings have passed beyond a joke between the old man and Crome on the one side and me on the other. Deep under, I’ve got a lot of time for the old man. He’s nearing the retiring age, and it might be that he’ll retire with his reputation all smeared over by Stillman and other rats. I can’t afford to be the son of a man with a ruined reputation.”

  The sophistication was so obviously spurious that Bony wanted to smile.

  “Let us make a pact,” he said. “You to print only what I agree to. I to accept your co-operation and avail myself of your experience and knowledge of local conditions. And you to be present at the arrest and then be free to publish what you wish.”

  “I’ll sign.”

  “Come with me.”

  Luke followed Bony to the detectives’ common-room, a place of desks and records and pictures of criminals. On one wall were the five water-colours done by David Mills. Bony sat on a desk, and Luke went forward to study the pictures. He was there for what appeared to be a long time, and on rejoining Bony he said: