The Bachelors of Broken Hill

by Arthur Upfield

  “Hire a car,” Bony ordered crisply. “Go with it to Goldspink’s shop and fetch Mary Isaacs and June Way, the cashier. Be extremely tactful. I have a great liking for both those girls, and I won’t have them being made nervous.”

  “What d’you think I am?” grumbled Crome.

  “A policeman. You look like a policeman and you speak like one. Wholesome young women are not accustomed to being dragged by a policeman to a police station. I’ve already contacted Mrs Robinov, who will give you her blessing. Now, Abbot, you go and get another car and call at Favalora’s Café for Miss Lena Martelli. Favalora will not oppose. Behave nicely. Rely on your personality. Bring those three young women to this office, and ask Miss Lodding to have them given morning tea. I’ll see them individually. You, Crome, can be with me. Abbot can entertain them. Clear?”

  Crome blinked, grinned. Abbot, a fair-haired man in his early thirties, chuckled. He was liking it. It was time someone stirred up this ‘jug’. Who was to pay for the hired cars didn’t matter just now.

  In his own office, Bony rang Metter’s Grocery Store and asked for Mr Mills.

  “Morning, Mills! Inspector Bonaparte speaking. Thank you so much for your sketches. They’re splendid. Just what I wanted. You’d do more? ... Good! By the way, d’you think you could obtain leave of absence for a couple of hours this morning?”

  Mills said he thought he could, the manager being ‘pretty decent’.

  “Then come along as soon as you can. Bring a newspaper with you and wait patiently in the public office till I call for you.”

  Having instructed the duty constable to see that Mr Mills was made comfortable, Bony fell again to studying the sketches. With clipping scissors he cut each sketch from the several sheets. There was a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth and a glistening of the deep blue eyes. Trying to find one woman in a city of twenty-eight thousand people, a woman no one could remember clearly, no one could positively describe ... He couldn’t even be certain that it was a woman who had dropped cyanide into two cups of tea. It could have been a man disguised as a woman.

  An aboriginal tracker was told whom to track. A bloodhound was given a piece of the hunted one’s clothes to smell. To him they had given nothing of the poisoner save a few miserably vague details of age and dress. And then had the effrontery to expect results in five minutes. Hurry up, Bony, and catch this poisoner before he cyanides another elderly bachelor. We’ll catch hell if you don’t. And if he failed? Only scorn, only contempt for his mid-race. No longer any recognition of his achievements. For him one failure wiped out all successes: for the full-white, one success wiped out all failures.

  “The girls are here, sir,” announced Sergeant Crome.

  “I’ll see Mary Isaacs. Have Miss Ball bring her a cup of tea in here.”

  Crome vanished. Bony could hear feminine voices next door. There was the clop-clop of high-heeled shoes outside his door, and then he was smiling at Mary Isaacs and welcoming her. He was pleased that she smiled at him and then at Crome, who brought in a chair for himself.

  “Your boy friend has done a great job for me, Miss Isaacs, and I have to thank you for persuading him to do it. All this is his work.”

  “He was a bit difficult at first, Inspector,” Mary said, and flushed.

  “But you managed him, eh? You women!” chuckled Crome, and Bony’s estimation of the sergeant rose two pegs.

  “Oh yes. You see, we hope to be married some day. And David’s tremendously keen to get on.”

  “Well, he’s gone quite a distance already,” Bony told her. “Now I want you to look at all these pictures and just see if any one of them reminds you of someone, and that customer in particular. Please don’t hurry. I can understand why you are doubtful that if the customer should enter the shop again you wouldn’t recognise her, so don’t force your memory. Look at this coloured picture. It’s a credit to your David.”

  The girl accepted the proffered water-colour and instantly exclaimed:

  “This looks like Mrs Jonas! Doesn’t it, Mr Crome?”

  “Yes, something like her,” Crome admitted, adding to Bony: “Mrs Jonas is one of my neighbours.”

  “But it wasn’t Mrs Jonas who was the customer. I should have known if it was,” declared Mary.

  “Well, this one?”

  The girl studied the second picture and then put it down, saying it didn’t remind her of anyone. The sketches which followed were also discarded, and then one of a woman’s face in profile puzzled her.

  “Something like my aunt Lily,” she said. “Not much, though.”

  Another sketch was thought to resemble Mrs Robinov before she dressed for the shop. Crome sat beside her, keenly interested and yet saying nothing, giving her mind every chance to function.

  Miss Ball came in with the morning tea, and Bony hastily cut off the work. They chatted over their cups, Mary telling them more of David’s plans, of her hopes, and her work at the shop. Then the empty cups were pushed aside, and she was brought back to the task.

  Again she looked over all the sketches, and finally she placed the three full-length water colours side by side and gazed at them beneath a puzzled frown. Crome was silent. Bony barely moved. Memory! Was it being stirred to activity?

  Mary Isaacs laughed, and, although disappointed, Bony delighted in the music of it.

  “Of course! Now I see. Just what a man would do, isn’t it? Draw pictures of a woman in outdoor clothes and not give her a handbag. You wait till I see him.”

  Bony almost spoke. He watched the vivid face drained of merriment, saw the dark eyes lose expression, and gain it. Her voice was so low that he barely caught the words.

  “The handbag! I remember that woman’s handbag. I remember noticing it when Mr Goldspink was talking to her. Something red about it, and I hate red.”

  Bony waited. The girl stared at him, and then at Crome. Crome waited. After what appeared a long interval Bony asked:

  “Can you now remember the customer’s face, her clothes?”

  Mary shook her head and then exclaimed:

  “But I remember the handbag. I can see it now. It was a faded navy-blue suede bag with red leather drawstrings. It was squarish in shape. I’ve never seen one since that time Mother gave me a bag like it to play with when I was very little.”

  “What are drawstrings?” asked Bony.

  “You pull them out to open the mouth of the bag, and you pull them close to shut it, and the strings become loops to carry the bag with. Oh, I remember that bag. I’d know it again. I’m sure I would.”

  “Well done, Miss Isaacs,” Bony said warmly. “You couldn’t tell me anything about the customer’s hands, I suppose.”

  “No. You see, she was wearing gloves.”

  “What type of gloves—colour?”

  “They were like her bag, old-fashioned, navy-blue cotton,” replied Mary, and Bony added to his notes. Without looking up he said:

  “Crome, fetch Mr Mills. He’s waiting in the public office.”

  They sat, Bony and Mary, and each face bore a tiny smile of triumph. Youth looked at the man who seemed ageless, on whose dark countenance was not one line and in whose dark eyes gleamed dauntless courage that began before him and would live after him. And matured man looked upon youth with warm approval of human beauty and the spirit which bore it aloft like a banner.

  Crome and Mills came, and Bony made the younger man sit at his place at the desk.

  “I’ve been extremely careless, Mr Mills,” he said. “When giving you the particulars of the woman I omitted to tell you she had a handbag.”

  “Course she’d have a handbag, David,” interposed Mary. “You should know. You’ve often enough asked why I carry one.”

  “I ought to have known,” Mills was contrite. “I could paint one in easily enough.”

  “So I thought. The point is, when. Mary says the bag must be navy-blue, faded, with red drawstrings.”

  “Do it in a few minutes when I get home to my brushes and c
olours, Inspector,” asserted the young man.

  “You haven’t dismissed that taxi, Crome?”

  “No, sir. You told me to keep it.”

  “You go with Miss Isaacs and Mr Mills in that taxi, and Mr Mills at his home will paint in the handbag.” Bony profusely thanked the artist, saying:

  “Miss Mary will give you instructions about the bag. She’ll tell you about the gloves I want you to put on the hands. I’d like both of you to promise not to say anything of this to anyone.”

  They were eager in their assurance, and Mills said they should be back before noon. Crome asked:

  “Will you see the other girls, sir?”

  “No, not till this afternoon. Have Abbot escort them back. Bring them again at three o’clock. And don’t look at me as though you think me clever. I forgot about that handbag. And the gloves.”

  Bony sat again at his desk. He might have progressed farther than he was thinking. He might be given time enough to find that woman and discover cyanide in the blue handbag. The menace was real. It hung over Pavier like a ton weight suspended by a fine wire from the ceiling of his office. It kept Crome awake at night and ringed the man’s eyes with red. It haunted Abbot despite his youth and small degree of responsibility. Café proprietors were worried by lack of custom, for men and women hadn’t forgotten.

  He slipped the residue of Mills’s sketches into a drawer and drew to himself a writing-block. For a moment his pen hovered above the paper, then he wrote:

  “To Sergeant Crome. Instruct all men in all branches to look for an elderly woman. Tall. Walks with slight stoop. Carries navy-blue handbag with red drawstrings. Might be wearing grey suit, grey hat, and shabby navy cotton gloves.” The pen stopped, and Bony scowled. Now he was up against police procedure, that hateful thing which often balked him and which often he had spurned and triumphed over. If the bag was spotted, there might not be cyanide in it—then the arrest of the owner would create an uproar. He wrote, therefore: “Woman must be permitted to return to her place of abode that she be identified—unless identification obtained earlier. Important: woman’s suspicions must not be aroused!”

  Signing his name, he left the memo on Crome’s desk and went out to walk up and down Argent Street. He could think clearer when in motion. How often had Time been his cherished ally? Time wasn’t his ally now. Time was a Thing disguised as a human being who carried between thumb and forefinger a pinch of cyanide.

  Chapter Eight

  Three Gave Something

  AT ONE o’clock Bony returned to his office to find on his desk the latest edition of David Mills’s work and a report from Sergeant Crome to the effect that the instruction concerning the woman and the handbag had been put into operation. Every policeman henceforth would be watching for the woman carrying that old-fashioned but distinctive receptacle.

  Bony removed the string from the rolled drawings, backrolled them to make them flat, and sighed his satisfaction. There were the three coloured pictures of the woman, and in each she carried the navy-blue handbag with the red drawstrings. In one she held it under her arm; in the remaining two pictures she held it before her, open, her gloved hand inserted. In one of these pictures the woman gazed directly at the beholder, and in the other she held her head bent and peered as though above spectacles.

  The handbag stood clear in perspective; the face, unknown even to Mary Isaacs, was less marked than the attitude of the figure. If the woman appeared on the streets with that bag and in that suit, no policeman could fail to recognise her, but if she appeared differently, dressed and carrying a different handbag? Decided progress, but it was not decisive.

  Abbot came in.

  “You still want those girls on the mat, sir?” he asked.

  Bony glanced at his watch and remembered that he had not eaten. He invited the detective to look at the pictures.

  “I’ll see those girls at three sharp, Abbot. Have these pictures pasted on to stiff cardboard and nailed to the wall of the general Detective Office. See to it that every man in the department is taken to study them. You’ve seen a copy of my instructions?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s already been duplicated and is being issued.”

  “Crome at lunch?”

  “Yes, sir. Should be back at one-thirty.”

  “Inspector Hobson is, I think in charge of the uniformed men?”

  “That’s so, sir.”

  “All right, Abbot. Have someone fetch me some sandwiches and a pot of tea, please.”

  Ten minutes later Bony heard Crome in the next office and he summoned him by thumping on the division wall. Informing the sergeant what he had ordered Abbot to do about the pictures, he asked:

  “Your department on anything special?”

  “No. Few routine jobs, that’s all. Those pictures are good, eh?”

  “Excellent. Think you could get Hobson?”

  “Expect so.”

  Inspector Hobson was tall, lanky, stiff.

  “I’ve already issued orders to all men coming on duty to look at those drawings, Bonaparte, as well as to obey your instructions,” he said in tones like breaking glass. “Happy to assist.”

  “Thanks. You can do more. How many of your men could you put temporarily into plain clothes without starving essential services?”

  “A dozen,” was the reply, with the proviso: “If for special duty.”

  “This is the situation.” Bony took both men into the subject. “We’re looking for a woman dressed something like the woman in the pictures and carrying a handbag faithfully portrayed in those pictures. The pictures represent the customer we think poisoned Goldspink. Of far greater value than the artist’s colouring of the woman’s clothes and the handbag is the woman’s posture. People can change clothes and appendages but seldom are able to change walking mannerisms or posture. We fear that this woman will strike again, and for the third time in a public place, and therefore we must take every possible precaution to prevent a third poisoning.

  “The danger is very real, for nothing begets murder like murder. I’d like to have a man stationed in every café and restaurant to watch for that woman, with especial emphasis on any woman who occupies a table at which is seated an unaccompanied elderly man of the type of Goldspink and Parsons. With the co-operation of the management of such places, your men could occupy an unobtrusive position.

  “The woman, obviously, is exceptionally cunning. My instruction was that, should the woman be seen on the streets, she must be trailed to her home for identification, but if she is located in a café or restaurant, and seen to drop something into a man’s cup or glass, she is to be instantly arrested and her handbag at all costs to be taken care of. The importance of these precautions outweighs any and all the results of a mistaken arrest.”

  Hobson stood without speaking when Bony finished. Crome waited on the Inspector. He knew that if the uniformed man objected he would get his way through Pavier, but he wanted to force nothing.

  “All right, Bonaparte, we’ll do that,” Hobson agreed, having considered all the implications and all the possible effects. “With the help of Detective Office, I can have all those places policed by three o’clock this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, Hobson,” Bony said warmly. “That lifts a little of the weight.”

  “All in a day’s work, Bonaparte. We’re all in the same ship.” A constable knocked, entered, and put a lunch tray on the desk. “You not lunched yet?”

  “No,” Bony replied. “Matter of fact, I had forgotten to.”

  “Well, we’ll get going.” Came a humourless grin. “Bet you an even fiver, Crome, that one of my men will nail that suspect.”

  “Do me,” accepted Crome. “I’ll back my boys till the cows come home.”

  They left Bony to his sandwiches, which he ate whilst pacing the width of his office. At three precisely, Abbot brought in the cashier at Goldspink’s shop.

  “Ah! Good afternoon, Miss Way. Take a seat,” Bony invited the girl, or rather a woman, for she was near
ing thirty, neatly dressed, and alert. Bony already had interviewed her and gained particulars of the customer’s hat. “I want to take you along to see a picture of a woman which you may, in part, identify as the woman we want to question in regard to the death of Mr Goldspink, and I would like to have your assurance that you will keep the matter entirely to yourself.”

  “You can rely on me, Inspector.”

  “I felt sure I could. Please come with me.”

  June Way was thoroughly enjoying this new experience. She was conducted almost ceremoniously along the corridors to the Detective Office. She met uniformed policemen who stood to attention to permit her and Bony to pass, and on entering the general Detective Office the group of men standing before one wall opened to allow her to view the three pictures. The men were silent, and she knew every one of them waited on her voice.

  “The hat is just right,” she said. “The woman stood like that as Mary served her and Mr Goldspink talked to her.”

  “What of the handbag?” pressed Bony.

  “I don’t remember the handbag. I don’t remember seeing it. I noticed the woman only when she was standing with her back to me. I didn’t see her leave the shop. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need for you to be, Miss Way,” Bony said brightly. “You have confirmed the hat, you know. Thank you very much. The pictures do not bring to memory any other points? Take another look at them.”

  June Way tried, and gave it up. She had given to Bony the hat and woman’s posture or carriage. Miss Isaacs had given the woman’s posture and her handbag. Now for Lena Martelli, the waitress of Favalora’s Café and the light o’ love of Jimmy the Screwsman. Jimmy had done his best to provide the groundwork and had failed to turn the first sod.

  Lena was fat and twenty. She was attired in a vivid blue skirt, a blood-red blouse, and a turbaned scarf confined her only beautiful gift from the gods—hair vividly dark gold. As Bony had not previously interviewed her, Abbot presented Miss Martelli.

  “How do, Inspector. Pleased to meet ya. Wouldn’t-a been lookin’ forward to it only me boy fren’ sorta put me wise—said you was a bit of a pin-up guy. I don’t know nothing about that old bloke being bumped off, or remember the dames at his table. Help you if I could, sort of.”