Bony - 19 - Cake in a Hat Box

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Again Irwin chuckled, and his light-blue eyes were hard. He moved to keep this young fellow full front, and for a long moment gazed at the revolver. Then stepping swiftly forward he glared into the uneasy black eyes, while his left hand abstracted the weapon.

  “Who bin told you wear-um revolver feller like white stock­man?” Irwin shouted, and then laughed again. Three men moved away, and Irwin ordered them back. They were watch­ing his eyes and didn’t laugh. Then they watched his hands break open the weapon and remove the cartridges. “Now then, you feller, what’s your name?”

  “Patrick O’Grady,” came the reply, and Bony found diffi­culty in suppressing a smile.

  “Go on, Patrick O’Grady. What d’you mean by wearing a gun to your belt? Come on … give, Mr Patrick O’Grady.”

  “Found it at the cattle yards,” came the reply spoken in excellent English. “Ezra must have left it behind when they started with the cattle.”

  “What cattle?” barked Irwin.

  “Fat cattle for the Meat Works.”

  “What yards?”

  Patrick O’Grady was becoming jittery. He tried to avoid the light-blue eyes. He shuffled and the spurs tinkled.

  “The Nine Mile Yards,” he said.

  “That the yards at the turn-off to Black Well?”

  The stockman nodded. Then, as though hoping his status might assist him, he said:

  “I’m boss stockman round here.”

  Bony stepped in, “How long you been working for the Breens?”

  “Been here all along. Born here.”

  “Were you working on the final muster?”

  Patrick O’Grady brightened. He was getting away from the revolver.

  “That’s right. Me and the men were holding the main mob near the yards. Ezra and some of the other boys, and Jasper and Silas, were bringing in the last of the strays.”

  “What day was that?” pressed Bony, and Patrick readily answered saying it was the preceding Monday week. “Who went with the cattle?”

  “Ezra and Kimberley and four of the boys. Jasper and Silas and me went with them to the first camp on. Next morning we left to come home, me and Jasper and Silas.”

  “What have you been doing since you came home?”

  “Spelling.”

  “Where is Jasper now?”

  “With the cattle,” Patrick replied. “He left to relieve Kim­berley, who wasn’t to go farther than Number Four Camp.”

  “And Silas? He with the cattle too?” pressed Bony, and the answer came back without hesitation:

  “No. Silas went out to the Swamp shooting crocodiles.”

  “Oh. Crocodiles been catching cattle, eh?”

  The boss stockman grinned. Now on still safer ground he was easy.

  “Too right!”

  “How many black fellows did he take with him?”

  The black eyes flickered, but the reply came fast enough.

  “Three. Old Ned and two young fellers.”

  “Well, Constable Irwin, we must get on. By the way, Patrick, where is Miss Kimberley today?”

  Again the flicker of the eyes, and this time the laugh which conceals so much. Patrick did not know where Kimberley was, but he was quick enough to take the line of least trouble.

  “Out riding, I suppose.” Turning to the others, he bawled with unnerving abruptness, “Where Miss Kimberley go?”

  Arms waved to various compass points. General laughter, questions interchanged, no direct answers. One of them must have gone out that morning for the saddle-horses, brought them to the yard, and someone must have saddled a horse for Kimberley Breen … if she had gone out riding. Bony recalled that Kimberley had said Silas had gone off shooting crocodiles and accompanied by most of the boys. The boss stockman had said he had left with three boys, and actually named one. He said, softly, his eyes suddenly blazing at Mr Patrick O’Grady:

  “Why were you armed with that revolver?”

  The boss stockman was wounded by the reversion to a sub­ject which had been adequately settled, and because he hesi­tated to reply, Bony shot another question at him:

  “When did you see Jacky Musgrave?”

  The group became tense. Bony, who was seeking to pene­trate the depth of the black eyes he was holding with his own, did not observe the swift immobility, but felt the instant change. This time, he waited for the answer, and, waiting, watched the shutter fall.

  “Don’t know,” replied the boss stockman. “Long time ago.”

  “Not last week?”

  A vigorous shake of the head. Interest maintained in the homestead, the trees, in anything but the blazing blue eyes. A grey-whiskered man rescued the boss stockman.

  “Jacky Musgrave him tracker for Mr Stenhouse. Jacky no belong Breen country.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Patrick. “Haven’t seen Jacky for years. Two years back, anyway. Miss Kimberley says Mr Sten­house has been shot and Jacky shot him and cleared out to his own country. Jacky’s wild black. We’re station blacks.”

  “Well, you had better stay in camp … all of you,” Bony said, sternly. “You tell Miss Kimberley that Constable Irwin and I called to see her.”

  “And if I find you wearing a gun again, I’ll take you to the Wyndham gaol,” added Irwin.

  Silent men watched them as they drove away, passing the homestead and proceeding southward. Half a mile from the homestead, the track took the vehicle into concealment behind a long and low ridge of bare rock, and here Bony ordered a stop, and climbed to the summit of the ridge to watch.

  The boss stockman was striding to the house, walking with the mincing tread of the man who has lived longer in a saddle than out of it, and he proceeded to the door of the detached kitchen. The lubra who had been sweeping the veranda had disappeared. Minutes passed, when Bony saw her traverse the covered way between kitchen and house. She was in the house for a full minute before leaving it again for the kitchen, and then the boss stockman passed from kitchen to house and stood at the side door talking with someone within.

  Jasper was away with the cattle. Silas was away on a croco­dile hunt. Ezra was with Jasper. There was no one left with the right to be in the house but Kimberley.

  “Kimberley Breen was home, after all,” Bony said, when they were on the move. “I didn’t see her, but the boss stock­man reported at the kitchen and was told to cross to the house.”

  “Don’t understand why she wouldn’t see us,” Irwin growled. “Don’t think much of the entire set-up. That abo was a liar all through. They stiffened into a lot of trees killed by a bush fire when you brought up Jacky Musgrave.”

  “They know that Jacky Musgrave was shot, and that he was subsequently turned into a horse, and they know that Jacky’s tribe is coming to investigate his death. That stockman was armed because they’re all afraid of Pluto’s Mob. I don’t think they will attack the Breens’ blacks … unless, of course, they find out one or more of them were mixed up in Jacky’s murder.”

  After a long silence, Irwin said:

  “The boss stockman being armed, and the rest being uneasy, would seem to point to guilty knowledge, wouldn’t it?”

  “By no means. They would be frightened by the very presence of those desert blacks, fearing that, given the oppor­tunity, the strangers would capture some of their women. Patrick O’Grady and others are well aware that the wild blacks are better bushmen than they: that, to express a col­loquialism, the wild blacks can run rings round them.”

  “Then what’s wrong with the set-up? On the same argu­ment, the blacks over at Wallace’s station will also be nervous.”

  “They are. What is wrong with the place we’ve just left is Kimberley Breen. She didn’t want to see us, and when they heard us coming, she instructed the lubra to tell us she was out. There was no time to give the same instructions to the boss stockman, even had Kimberley calculated we would interview him and his fellows. Even in that there need be no guilty know­ledge of Stenhouse and his tracker. D’you know if young Wallace is i
nterested in Kimberley?”

  “Couldn’t say,” replied the frowning Irwin.

  “Well, then, do you think we can get back to Agar’s to­night?”

  “Yes, we could,” Irwin said, and Bony noted the reluctance to accept the idea. “Make it a bit late getting there. Have to tackle the other side of the Range after dark.”

  Bony surrendered.

  “I don’t fancy slithering and sliding over those rock-bars in the dark,” he said. “It was bad enough coming up. We’ll camp in that natural bowl on the summit; you know, the place where the baobab trees grow.”

  They passed cattle in fair condition, and a bull with them was certainly no runt. A small herd of donkeys looked sleek and fat, and in this red land were no luscious green pastures, no lazy water dreaming in the shadows of downcast willows. Irwin suggested lunch, and they halted beside smooth-faced purple rock teeth rising from a sandy floor for a hundred feet, forming a line for a mile and providing another oddity in a world where uniformity had been banished a million years ago.

  “You going to report the finding of the body of Jacky Mus­grave?” asked Irwin, who was waiting beside the flame-sur­rounded tea billy.

  “No. I am going to prospect a few leads in Agar’s and then we’ll hunt for the scene of these two crimes. There must be a figurative road back from an effect to its cause. So far, we have observed effects, meaning two bodies. Neither crime was committed at the place where either body was found, which clearly infers that the scene of the murders is of importance to the murderers. At the scene is the motive. The signpost to the motive is at Agar’s Lagoon.”

  Irwin dropped a handful of tea into the billy and lifted it from the fire. “It’s a hell of a large country,” he drawled. “A hell of a large country to locate a murder scene when abos obliterate all tracks, and other abos are reluctant to work for us. Supposing we did find where Stenhouse and his tracker were killed, supposing we do find bloodstains on the ground and other evidence, what can we deduce from that? We already have the bodies.”

  On his knees, Bony was slicing bread on the strip of canvas they used for a table-cloth, and when he had done, he sat on the ground beside the meal.

  “Let us assume that these murders were due to opportunity. Visualize the action. Stenhouse in his jeep, with Jacky sitting on the load behind him. They meet someone who accepts the opportunity of paying a score. The score settled, the stage is set to tell the story that Jacky Musgrave killed the policeman, and all ground evidence of the murders is obliterated to give the story support. There is something lacking in that picture. What is lacking is the imprints of the jeep’s tyres on the great northern highway to support the story that Jacky killed the policeman, those tracks should have been visible, because Stenhouse was supposed to be going somewhere when Jacky was supposed to have shot him.”

  “All right, then,” argued Irwin. “The jeep must have been taken to the place where it was found … on a truck.”

  “No, to that theory, in view of the absence of tracks about the dead horse.”

  When the noon camp had been left behind, they continued to talk about the case, Irwin arguing less for the purpose of putting forward an opinion or a theory than for reaching an objective through mental battle. He was handicapped because Bony had said nothing of the book-gouged receptacles, and nothing of several other matters.

  The sun was westering when they began to mount the slopes of Black Range, and it was dancing on the summit of the distant ridge when they topped the lip of the bowl in which they had previously camped. Irwin parked the truck at the same place, and Bony made a fire on the white ash of their earlier fire, and took the billies to the little grass-edged stream. On returning, he said to Irwin:

  “The wild aborigines are lappers, not drinkers … from their cupped hands. At the edges of the stream are faint im­prints of several pairs of hands. The imprint of one hand reveals that it was gripping a spear. I think Jacky Musgrave’s people have passed on their way to the dead horse.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Polite Conversation

  HAVING SHAVED and trimmed his moustache and added a little grease to its upturned points, ’Un was seated in the hotel veranda chair waiting for the first invitation to a drink before dinner.

  The job suited his temperament, and he was now satisfied with a small but regular wage, following the fiery years he had chased Dame Fortune, starved in the chase, accepted her generous gifts, and drunk himself to the grave’s very edge … to begin the cycle all over again. He took pride in his contri­bution to the bottle ring round Agar’s Lagoon, and, having carted to the ring the empties of the previous day, and having swept the back and front of the premises, cut wood for the kitchen fire, peeled the potatoes and mopped out the bar, he was entitled to his leisure.

  The hens were with their lord and master; the town goats were unconcerned; and beyond the post office at the far end of the township an unusual number of aborigines were camped along the bed of a water-gutter.

  Several people had come to town that day, and ’Un antici­pated a very busy evening behind the bar counter, as Ted Ramsay was already approaching that condition when insensibility overtook him with remarkable acceleration. Then there was Constable Irwin with the half-caste Inspector who had been looking into the Stenhouse shooting, and from the plane which had arrived that morning had come a P.M.G. Inspector, and a Mrs Gray with her two children from Perth.

  Yes, life wasn’t so bad for ’Un. A little work, a little money, plenty of free beer, and an almost endless procession of guests who seldom stayed more than one night furnished all he needed to ask.

  When Bony appeared from the private entrance, ’Un immediately vacated the chair, smiled at this guest, and said:

  “How’s things, Inspector?”

  “Well, but dry,” replied Bony, seating himself. “I’m tired of being jerked about on your splendid highways. Ah! This is good! Think you could bring a couple of beers?”

  “Yes, I’ll get ’em.”

  ’Un brought the drinks, and sat on the floor with his back to a veranda post. He gave all the local news he considered worthy of telling, and omitted an item which had interested Bony, who observed:

  “The blacks appear to be quite numerous.”

  “Yes, ain’t they? Must be going to have a corroboree or something. Poor critters … bloody Orstralia ain’t done much for ’em. Still, if I don’t eat you you eat me, and that’s the way of the world all over.”

  “Yes, there’s jungle warfare among the best of us,” agreed Bony, producing money and handing his empty glass to the obliging yardman. War! War between the criminal and the policeman, between the boss and the bossed, between men and women who poison with kindness since it is no longer fashion­able to slay with weapons or hire assassins. How the little yardman had survived in this land of iron was quite a little mystery in itself, for he was a gentle soul. Returning with the drinks, he resumed his position with his back to the veranda post and winked.

  “Place getting quite important. A Police Inspector and a Post Office Inspector staying here at the same time. Dave Bundred’ll have to stick his nose into his records for a day or two. Always behind to hell. Be worse, too, if his wife didn’t do most of the work.” ’Un laughed from somewhere down in his boots. “The monthly rain sheet blew out of the winder once and a goat et it. Terrific to-do. Near the end of the month and it had rained every day. So we played darts and put down the highest score as the daily points. Record month for rain that was.”

  “I wonder that Dave Bundred hasn’t sought a post office down south,” murmured Bony. “The Department doesn’t insist on its officers remaining here for years.”

  “No, it didn’t insist, but Dave won’t go down south. Noth­ing to go with. What he don’t pour down his neck he sends away to the bookies. The horses have had him in for years. Now me, I never gambled on racing, and not much on cards. But I gambled more’n a bit on meself. Another? Right away.”

  Having again been attended t
o by the yardman, Bony tried another question which might lead somewhere:

  “Much mail go through Agar’s Lagoon?”

  “Fair amount,” replied ’Un.

  “Most of it air-mail, I suppose?”

  “All of it. Good deal of freight, as well. Then there’s more telegraph work than you’d think. I’ve often given Mrs Bundred a hand with the mail when Dave’s been non compos, so I’d know.”

  “Yes, there must be a great deal of mail orders in a district like this, although the population per square mile would be about decimal nought one. No shops but the general store, no frills for the ladies, serviceable working clothes for the men. Don’t think I’d like it much, what with week-old newspapers and no books.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” opposed ’Un. “People up here get plenty of books. Libraries send ’em up. Fair amount come from libraries. I uster pay two quid a quarter for three books a fortnight. Westerns I like best. Zane Grey’s always good. He oughta have come out here. He was pretty good at describing deserts and sunsets and things.”

  “Suppose most of the books sent up are Westerns or mysteries,” prompted Bony.

  “No. Some people go in for travel books, like the Langs, especially Bob Lang, and one of his sisters is studying hand­crafts. The Breens, they don’t get many books, but what they do get is pretty solid. Ezra told me he was studying stock breeding, aiming to improve their cattle.”

  “Oh! Buy them or obtain them from a library?”

  “Library. Great reader, Ezra. Always was ever since he came home from his schoolin’ in Broome. The others can’t hardly read a paper, ’ceptin’ Kimberley.”

  Bony lit another cigarette, emptied his glass, added another question to his list:

  “Where does Ezra get his books, d’you know?”

  “Yes, I can tell you that,” replied ’Un. “Handled ’em enough, what with entering the parties in the receipt book and the registered dispatch list. Bloke named Solly, stationer, Pepper­mint Grove, near Perth, sends ’em up for Ezra Breen. Sends up a parcel a month, and Ezra sends down a parcel a month. Did hear … can’t remember who told me … that Solly is a sort of relation to the Breens. Now me, I ain’t got no relations, but I had me will made.”