Mrs Cosgrove insisted on taking Jill to her own homestead. When the two women and Doctor Leveska had gone, Bony helped Lucas to service Lush’s utility for the trip to Bourke, and together they placed the body on the vehicle.
“I’ll remain until you return,” Bony told Lucas. “I’ll look around meanwhile. If Lush turns up I’ll hold him.”
“I can’t see that plain door hung to an inside frame,” Lucas said, and Bony said he would look for it.
After the constable had gone he wandered through the house and made sure the door was neither in use nor stored. Then he rekindled the stove fire and brewed a pot of tea, which he sipped while sitting at the table. He was beginning to think there could be a perfectly simple solution to the mystery of the missing door.
The door and the axe on the ground outside the back entrance, plus the continued absence of Lush, had decided him to cut his scheduled departure from Bourke. He was like a beagle testing the air, and like the beagle he had to follow the scent to its source. He had spent the morning in Macey’s office writing his report on the investigation of a crime far out from White Bend. The results of the investigation had pleased the Superintendent, who because of an outbreak of influenza, was short-staffed and raised no serious objection to Bony’s cancelling the afternoon air trip to Sydney. Mrs Macey was serving their lunch when the clerk came to say that Mrs Cosgrove was ringing from Madden’s Selection. Bony had accompanied the Superintendent to the office, there to learn that Lush had not returned home.
“Very well, Bonaparte,” Macey had said. “If Leveska will take you it would help. But you’ll be doing your own washing if the Commissioner bursts the collar off his neck.”
“I find commissioners easier to deal with than constables,” Bony had said blandly. “That girl said nothing to Lucas about her mother having fallen and so injured herself that this morning she is in a coma and Mrs Cosgrove is much alarmed. The change of doors could have a simple answer, but you’ll agree that changing a good one for an old one isn’t normal procedure.”
The girl was so upset that it had been difficult to obtain a statement from her covering the assault by her stepfather, and neither Lucas nor Bony had bothered her about the doors. Now, sitting at the table, Bony found himself in a commanding position to undertake a new investigation which might or might not become interesting enough to hold him to Madden’s Selection.
Having smoked one of his badly-made cigarettes, he examined the rear door. The hinges were as old as the door, and the insets into the frame were longer by an inch, proving that a succession of doors had been hinged to it. He swung the present door. It squeaked. The paint was blistered by sun and wind. Dust clung heavily to the panel surrounds, as thick on the inside as the outside. There was no dust on the inside window-sills, no dust on the dresser shelves or the mantel, and no dust on the top of the skirting-boards, proving that Mrs Madden and her daughter were meticulous housekeepers and that the old and dusty door had recently been rehung.
He recalled seeing a Winchester repeating rifle leaning in a corner at one end of the dresser, and he drew it forward with one fingertip to the muzzle of the barrel. The barrel gleamed with oil, as did the stock. Fingerprints! Likely, but not important at the moment. Nor, at the moment, was there anything odd about it having been cleaned.
There was, however, possible significance in the circular hole in the ceiling. Bony brought a step-ladder from the outside wash-house. He estimated the size of the hole as being close to the size of a ·32 bullet. He moved the ladder and, mounting it again, lifted the manhole, covering himself with sand and dust. Above the hole in the ceiling he could see a corresponding hole in the iron roof. The rifle he had cursorily examined was a ·32.
He was putting the ladder away in the wash-house when he saw a horseman coming from the mail-boxes, and he sat on the outside bench and waited, his fingers busy with the usual cigarette. Presently the rider dismounted and, with the reins looped in an arm, came to the bench. He was young and fair.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Inspector Bonaparte.”
“Oh! How’s the old lady?”
“Dead. Who are you?”
“I’m Cosgrove. Did you say dead?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know?”
“No. I’ve been out all morning with the men, trying to locate Lush. I knew on leaving that Mrs Madden had hurt herself in a fall. What goes? Isn’t Jill about?”
Bony said that Jill had gone with Mrs Cosgrove, who had invited her to stay at Mira. When young Cosgrove remarked on the presence of Lucas’s jeep and was told the reason for it he fastened the horse’s reins to a veranda post and sat on the bench.
“What are you an inspector of—rabbits?”
“No. Police.”
“Crikey! Then you’ll be wanting to put the old hand on Lush?”
“Of course.”
“Add the boot to the hand, good and hard.” Ray Cosgrove was rolling a cigarette with hands between his parted knees, and the rim of his stetson appeared to be aimed at the ground. “You know, to call Lush a swine is to insult the pigs. He’s a polite, mealy-mouthed, unadulterated, vicious bastard. What the old girl and Jill put up with nobody knows. I hope it’s me who finds him, because if it’s you he’ll end up in a nice comfortable jail for a year or two.”
“Should it be you who finds him?”
“That’s a little secret, Inspector.” Cosgrove sat up and leaned back against the house wall.
“You have a personal interest?”
“Naturally, the Maddens being our neighbours since the year one. Jill’s father was a sound feller. He and my dad were friends. When he died this place was flourishing. Now look at it: litter and rubbish all over, the sheds coming adrift, the fences propped up instead of repaired. Why did Lush hit his wife this time, d’you know?”
“She refused to give him a cheque for three hundred pounds.”
“Three hundred!” said Cosgrove. “Quite a wad. Must have been in deep at White Bend. There’s a poker school down there. Run by two brothers named Roberts. You don’t pay up, you get it rough. They must have given Lush a lot of rope.”
“He drinks, doesn’t he?” said Bony.
“Too right, but not more than most of us when we go to town. And I did hear that the hotel stopped his credit. Besides, again like most of us, he would have brought a carton or two of beer back with him, but when I took the mail to the box day before yesterday, which was the morning after the night he left town, there wasn’t a bottle in his ute, let alone a reasonably good supply.”
“Then you believe he must have been desperately in need of three hundred pounds to settle a gambling debt?”
“He’d have been just as desperate if he wanted only fifty,” answered Cosgrove. “The Roberts have a reputation, as I said. Mind you, if that slit-eyed skunk was refused five bob he’d have bashed his wife just the same. According to Jill it had got to be a pleasant hobby with him.”
“Have you a theory of what happened when he left his utility?” Bony asked, and Cosgrove slowly shook his head.
“Not much of an idea, but, knowing the swine, when he didn’t come home he could have walked over the cliff into the hole and drowned, or he could have holed up somewhere about here with a case of something to keep him company. Have you been through the place?”
“Not as yet,” replied Bony.
“I decided to do so. It’s why I came. Shall we give it a go now?”
Bony agreed, and, having put the horse in the yard, they began a tour of inspection. In the open-fronted motor-shed was a worn sulky, the gear hanging on a wall peg. Cosgrove said that Lush went in for a trotter but had never won a race with it, dropping more money down the drain. They entered a two-man hut furnished with only a table and two iron bedsteads. The door sagged, and the window was massed with cobweb. The compact shearing-shed offered no clue, and after leaving it they parted, young Cosgrove circling away from the river, and Bony keeping to the bank on the return to the house.
There was a natural hole below the shed, and water was raised from it by a pump to tanks serving both the shed and the house.
Eventually Bony came to a small yard and gallows where ration sheep were yarded and killed. Draped over a rail were several sheepskins long since dry enough to be removed into the skin-shed. Bony looked into the shed and found no evidence of its having been occupied. A short distance from the gallows was a fireplace roughly constructed with large stones in a semicircle to provide a windbreak. Here rubbish such as dog bones and kitchen refuse had been burnt, and from here to the house ran a distinct path.
The condition of the top layer of ash showed that the latest burning had been quite recent, and the spread of it indicated that much material had been consumed. The two door hinges, blackened by heat, were spaced as they had been when screwed to a door; the door lock and handles were there too.
Bony looked for Cosgrove, saw him nearing the house, and proceeded along the path to join him.
“I couldn’t cut his tracks,” Cosgrove said. “Well, you can see what a loafing bastard he was. Did nothing about the place. Bad enough to make poor old Madden turn over six times in a run. What’s your plans? What about the dogs and the chooks?”
“It was finally arranged that I should stay here to welcome Mr Lush, and inhabit the place until such time as something else is decided,” Bony replied. “There’s chook feed in the motor-shed and a quarter of mutton in the meat-house. I could see only two dogs, so we should not perish of starvation. Mrs Cosgrove is having my case sent from your homestead.”
Cosgrove smiled for the first time since he had appeared.
“All right, Inspector. Let the chap know if you want anything when he brings your duds. You’ll know Lush when you see him. Has a face like a crumpet. I’ll keep in touch, too, about the river. I can hear old Leveska getting off the ground.” Freeing the reins from the posts, he flicked the offside one over the horse’s head, bunched them, and then appeared to be lifted by jet air-stream into the saddle. His final words were: “Bet you find the radio in order. Lush would be sure to have that right to listen to the race results.”
He rode away to cross the river bed above the shearingshed. Bony unchained the two dogs, which began to race about and pretend to chase the fowls. The roosters screeched, and the excitement brought several kookaburras to perch on a roughly made stand and there set up a chorus of laughter. The place had come alive, and Bony took possession.
With the woodheap axe he chopped and split enough wood to keep the stove going. Then he filled the oil lamps, and inspected Mrs Lush’s linen cupboard. He made up a bed in the third bedroom, brewed a pot of tea, and took a spell with several cigarettes. Once more energetic, he cut up the fore-quarter of mutton, providing a shoulder for roasting, chops for grilling, and a meal for the dogs.
The kookaburras watched him conveying meat to the house, their wonderful eyes beady and seemingly expectant. As he entered the living-room one muttered and another began a cackling laugh. He returned to look more closely at the perch-stand, and then, seeing stains along the wood, knew what it was for and why the birds made no attempt to fly at his approach. They, too, demanded dinner, and there were eight of them.
The fowl-house was inside a high-netted yard to protect the birds from foxes. When Bony appeared again with a dish of wheat and proceeded to the yard, clucking for the birds to follow, they ignored him. Hang it, the fellow was a stranger! Inside the yard he clucked louder than ever, and now the two dogs went into action. They mustered the fowls in through the gateway as they would muster sheep into a yard.
Bony had rewarded the dogs with their meal and decided not to chain them for the night when his attention was again drawn to the waiting kookaburras by soft hooting and low, broken chuckling. Happily he cut meat into small pieces and took it to the platform-perch affair. The kookaburras barely bothered to make room for the meat to be put on it, and they evinced no ill manners by gobbling or squabbling.
“One can learn much of people from their animals and birds,” he told them. “The girl would have tamed you, my wild friends. The man probably trained the dogs, and the wife doubtless raised the fowls and dusted the house every day of her life—save for the inside of the old back door.”
Bony was at dinner when a man suddenly appeared in the frame supporting the old door. He was not William Lush because his face was long and unlike a crumpet. The two dogs, now wagging tails of welcome, had not barked a warning of his coming. Bony invited him in, and he entered carrying the suitcase and a letter.
“Brought your case, Inspector,” he said. “A letter from Mrs Cosgrove, too. Said for me to wait for any answer.”
“Thanks. Have a cup of tea?”
“Just had dinner.”
Bony read: “Jill Madden says you are to make free of the house. Bed linen and blankets in the linen cupboard and meat in the meat-house. Please give the dogs a bone, and lock up the chooks, and please feed the kookaburras. They will be waiting on the dinner perch. My son will call early in the morning.” It was signed “Betsy Cosgrove.”
Bony looked up at the waiting man.
“There is no answer. What’s your name?”
“Vickory. Vic Vickory. I’m the Mira overseer.”
“Tell me, Mr Vickory, why did Mrs Cosgrove trouble to write this note when there is the telephone?”
“Oh! She said she couldn’t raise you, and thought you must be out looking for Lush.”
Bony rose and manipulated the wall telephone. There was no connection.
Shrugging, he said, “The line is broken somewhere. Now there is a message for Mrs Cosgrove. Ask her, please, to have the line repaired first thing in the morning.”
“I will, Inspector. Good night.”
Chapter Five
One Frosty Night and Morning
BONY SAT on the bench outside the back door and watched the sun go down in a clear, dustless sky, its rays coldly lemon. The kelpie dog lay under the bench beneath him, and the other, a border collie, lay on the ground a yard or so from him. The kookaburras departed to perch in the same gum tree and join in an evening chorus of gargantuan mirth on the high notes and sinister cackling on the low. And, when the fowls had ceased their quarrelling about who should roost with whom, the peaceful silence of the evening was itself a kind of lullaby.
It was quite dark when Bony heard a car coming down the river track. He wondered who it could be. He could not expect Constable Lucas, and traffic hereabouts was remarkable for its scarcity: not a vehicle had passed since the policeman had left. The dogs sat and listened, and the kelpie growled. Then to the right appeared a white glow, which grew like a searchlight and continued along the road, passing the house almost a mile to the west.
When the second car announced its coming to the dogs it was after nine o’clock. It turned off at the junction and aimed its headlights at the house. Both dogs stood, the smaller leaning stiffly against Bony’s leg. Bony patted him and ordered them to be quiet. The car stopped, the headlights were switched off, and Constable Lucas said, cheerfully, “I hope the kettle’s boiling. Why the blackout?”
“We were communing with the stars,” replied Bony, and led the way inside to light the lamps and then add fuel to the stove. The dogs stayed outside, as is customary at homesteads.
“Hard trip?” Bony asked.
“Fairish,” replied Lucas. “Had a blow-out that kept me, and the Super demanded details of this and that. How did you do?”
“Loafed, made pals with the dogs, was visited by the Mira overseer who brought my case, and fed the stock, which includes eight kookaburras. I have half a dozen nice chops I’ll grill for you. You’ll stay?”
“For the chops, yes. Then it’s on my way. I mentioned the door changes to the Super, and he seemed impressed. Did you come across the new one?”
“What did the Super say about them?” Bony asked. The table was covered by a cloth, and, having made tea, he laid a place for the constable. Lucas grinned, but his eyes remained serious.
“Said you are a known bloody bloodhound, Inspector. Said you could scent crime before it was committed, and that when you didn’t return with the doctor you had certainly sniffed it. And then what? Orders me to go back to my station and to accept any instructions you give. Oh, there’s something else. I am to tell you that he telegraphed for permission to hand the job to you, said permission being received at six-thirty pm.”
“Kind of him, but unnecessary. I gave myself permission.” Bony smiled, and his brilliant blue eyes beamed. Looking away from their magnetism, Lucas once again noted the dark face, the Nordic features, and for a moment fell beneath the spell this man of two races could exert. The aroma of grilling lamb chops sharpened his hunger, and over the teacup he asked again about the missing door. The slight incongruity of an inspector grilling chops for a constable, first-class, did not occur to him, but then the inspector was not in full uniform.
“The new door was burnt yesterday,” Bony said, and withdrew a wood sliver from the stove to light a cigarette.
“Ah! It was, eh? Where?”
“The site doesn’t matter. The fact is interesting. The old one was rehung after Mrs Lush was knocked about.”
“Then something happened to the new one.”
“Something happened to it, something which could not be repaired and the door repainted.”
“Funny. You make anything of it?” asked the policeman.
“Not much. The women could have locked Lush out before he went to town, or after he came back on foot from the mail-boxes. I can see him, angry at being refused money, going to the shed for his utility, bringing it back to the house and making another effort to extract a cheque from his wife. When he found the door locked against him he went to the woodheap for the old axe and smashed it in. And, such was his fury, attacked his wife.”
“It could have been that way. Being locked out boiled him over.”
“Then Mrs Lush persuaded the girl on her return home to remove the damaged door and destroy it to prevent talk should anyone call.”
Madman’s Bend Page 3
