The Widows of Broome

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Bony jumped to a window and let up the spring blind. They were in an ordinary kitchen off which was the bathroom. A passage ran through the centre of the house, and beyond the far end could be seen the battens enclosing the front veranda. The kitchen was small and tidy. On the floor lay a small pomeranian dog, its flanks working, and from its mouth issuing the noise like water draining away from a bath. There was blood on the patterned linoleum beneath its jaw, and its eyes were partially closed.

  Sawtell looked into the bathroom and followed the inspector and Bony into the passage. Bony opened doors. The first two gave entry to small bedrooms. The left front-room door was open. It was the lounge. The door opposite was closed. Gripping the door-handle only with the tips of forefinger and thumb, Bony opened the door and pushed it inward.

  The interior was dark. Bony struck a match, and the tiny flame revealed a white bed. He edged round the door-post and found the light switch, and with the corner of the match-box pressed upon the small knob. There was no resultant light.

  “The master switch,” he directed, and heard one of the policemen run to the veranda. Waiting in the darkness, he flailed his mind for evidence of failure in himself, for having omitted something which should have been done, and which might have prevented what he thought he had seen in the flickering light of his match.

  The fight blazed on, and behind Bony the inspector cried thinly:

  “He got her! The swine!”

  The room was made to appear smaller than it was by the furniture, of which there was too much. There was a three-quarter-size bed. The bedspread was rose-pink, and it, with the blanket and top sheet, was folded back. Lying on the bed was a woman. Her body was naked. She was lying on her back, her legs straight, her arms close to her sides. The face and neck were in sharp contrast to the whiteness of the rest of the body, and the white pillow was equally as sharp in contrast with the woman’s rather long black hair. She must have been in her late twenties, and quite good-looking.

  That the woman was dead was obvious. Beside the bed was the woman’s nightgown. Bony stooped for it. It was ripped from neck to hem, and with it he covered the body.

  “In the wardrobe, Sawtell,” Bony said whilst gazing upon the outline of the pathetic figure masked by cream-coloured silk. “No disorder in the room. The arrangement of the bedclothes precisely the same. She must have been off the bed when he strangled her, or if he strangled her on the bed then he removed the body to tidy the bedclothes. He is controlled by habits which are powerfully dominant when he’s mentally normal ... if he is now ever normal, which I much doubt. I see him as a man unable to tolerate untidiness. Have you found the bundle, Sawtell?”

  “Yes,” replied the sergeant. “In a far corner of the wardrobe.”

  “We won’t examine it now. Bring a broom, please. This murderer could be anything except a sailor, a workman, or a bushman. He’s neither an Asian nor an aborigine.”

  “He could be a club steward,” cut in Inspector Walters.

  “Yes, he could be. He could be a ship’s steward, a gentleman’s valet, or a senior non-commissioned soldier whose duty for years was the maintenance of camp cleanliness. That dying dog gets on my nerves.”

  “Looks as though the killer bashed it. What am I supposed to be doing?”

  “There’s nothing much you can do, Walters,” Bony said decisively. “We can go through the place for fingerprints, but we won’t find the prints of the murderer. I do know that he wears your size in shoes. I do know that his stride is twenty-one inches ... the same as yours. I do know that he wears the heels of his shoes more rapidly on the inside than the outside ... like you do. Further, I know that his weight is approximately your weight, and I have observed that you keep your desk meticulously tidy.”

  “Damnation! You going to frame me?” demanded Walters.

  “I am going to frame this murderer if I have to track him ten times round the world. Ah, thanks, Sawtell. Both of you stand outside while I sweep the floor.”

  As they had done at Dampier’s Hotel, the two men watched Bony sweep the entire floor of this room, and saw the dust and debris gently swept on to a sheet of paper.

  “There’s no need for microscopic aid,” he said, holding the paper that they might see what he had collected. “The man with psoriasis was here. You establish how he entered the house. Sawtell can get on with the photography.”

  Walters and the sergeant departed, obviously glad to break into action. Bony took the broom to the kitchen and swept that, the debris being added to his collection of specimens. In it he found no large piece of sloughed skin, but did see specks of what might be similar particles. On the floor here, as well as on the passage and bedroom floors, were the tracks of a man he had seen first on the front drive. The round object adhering to the left sole had left its imprint on the linoleum more plainly than the outline of the sole.

  Nothing could be done for the unfortunate dog. It was unconscious, and every bone in its body seemed broken.

  The day was departing with its usual haste in this latitude, and Bony hurried outside to examine the path running away to the rear gate. On this path he found the tracks of the man who had been inside the house. At one place only did he see the print of the naked foot, and that proved that the shoeless man had passed this way after the other. There were no children’s footprints, and no prints of a woman’s shoes. Here and there were the tracks of the little dog.

  Bony came to the gate, a wicket gate in the wire fence. Beyond the fence was the usual laneway, and beyond that a wide paddock covered with patches of wire-grass. There still remained sufficient light to enable Bony to see that the man who had been in the house had passed through the gateway and then crossed the lane and entered the paddock. The barefooted man had done the same. It was clear he had followed the other.

  Bony returned to the house, where, in the kitchen, Sawtell said that the murderer had forced the scullery window to gain entry, and had left by the kitchen door, taking the key with him. Walters arrived from the front, and mentioned the doctor in a manner indicating recognition of Bony’s authority in this case.

  “Will you return to the office, Sawtell, and ring the doctor. Return at once with the printing gear. Leave by the front door and return that way. Leave Abie till the morning. The light’s gone now.”

  Sawtell left, and Inspector Walters bent over the dog.

  “Finished, I think,” he said, savagely.

  “I’m afraid so,” agreed Bony. “The doctor will put it to sleep, I expect. Must have been done last night sometime ... about eighteen or twenty hours ago. Probably the dog barked when the killer climbed in through the window, and he picked it up and smashed it on the floor. The animal can’t weigh more than five pounds.”

  They sat down, Bony to roll a cigarette and Walters to light a pipe.

  “This is hell,” remarked the inspector. “When is it going to end, I wonder. More work, more worry, more interference from Perth. The newspapers all over Australia will be screaming for results. The entire C.I.B. will be sent up here.”

  “In the morning, Walters, you have Richard Blake, otherwise Ronald Locke, arrested.”

  “Ah!” There was grim satisfaction behind that “ah!”

  “I know now that Locke did not murder Mrs. Overton,” Bony went on. “However, I don’t intend that the entire C.I.B. or any section of it shall be sent up here to Broome. This is not the place, and such is the psychology behind these murders that team work on a large scale would be a definite hindrance. We three, yourself and Sawtell and me, with Clifford to assist, form an efficient team.

  “Our immediate objective must be to lull the murderer into thinking he has again got away with it. We will arrest Locke on the charge of breach of his parole. There is no need to put him into court here. Clifford, or another of your constables from outside, can take him down to Perth by air, and he can be held there for several weeks before being sent back to his State. Meanwhile, I’ll advise the C.I.B. to hold Locke, and set out my reasons
.

  “We will not state to the local Press representative, or anyone else, the legal charge preferred against Locke, but we will say that Locke is the Ronald Locke who strangled a girl back in 1940. The people here in Broome and throughout Australia will jump to the same conclusion about Locke that you and Sawtell did. They will condemn Locke for the murder of these three women ... everyone save the murderer. Result: the Broome people will not panic, we shall not be overwhelmed with abuse, and Locke will receive no more than his just deserts. I shall have an extension of time in which to finalise this case, and our murderer will be so elated that he won’t be able to wait for another month and will strike again before the next moon rules the midnight sky. And when he does strike again, I shall be waiting for him.”

  Inspector Walters regarded Bony beneath glowering brows.

  “If you’re not waiting for him, I shall be finished,” he said softly and deliberately.

  “And I...” Bony looked steadily at Walters. “And I will be more than that. I shall have failed for the first time in my career, and for the last time. My career will be ended, for my pride will have been destroyed. If I fail in this case, the pride which drove me on and up to the summits of many Everests of achievement will vanish, and all the influences so powerfully and continuously exerted on me by my maternal ancestors will inevitably draw me back to the bush, to become as so many others like me, a nomad, a pariah.”

  For a short space, they sat in silence broken only by the laboured breathing of the dog. Inspector Walters, Police Administrator of one tenth of the continent of Australia, had need to be no mean psychologist. He understood exactly where this remarkable man stood, the courage he had from youth to defeat all those terrific obstacles, and the pit always before his feet. He regretted having spoken of his own career. If the murderer successfully struck again, Henry Walters could say farewell to promotion, might even be relegated to a less important post. That would be little, indeed, to what this strangely-named half-caste would receive for failure to locate the man who killed the widows of Broome.

  “Sorry I spoke like that,” he said gruffly. “It’s a good move, letting everyone think we have arrested Locke for these murders. You’re the boss. Use us up. Sawtell and I will be liking it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Early Bird

  IN the eastern sky three horizontal bars of high-level haze were tinted and polished like the great oyster shell brought to Broome, and the Morning Star audaciously tried to bedazzle the ancient and emaciated moon. When the cloud bars were stained gold by the dawning, Bony arrived at the end of the laneway passing the rear of Mrs. Overton’s house, and sat down to await the day.

  The night fought valiantly with the day, with the inevitable result, and, the battle decided, Bony arose, took up his tin of bait and fish-lines and, instead of following the laneway, climbed through the fence and went looking for mushrooms. Inside the grass paddock opposite Mrs. Overton’s back gate, he came to a wide ribbon of blown sand on which, as he had hoped, were the footprints of the man wearing a size-eight shoe with a circular object adhering to the left sole, and the print of the man without foot-covering.

  Beneath the fish-lines, Bony produced a bottle of water, plaster of paris, a fruit tin and a small trowel, and within six minutes had taken a cast of each man’s footprints. With these concealed beneath the fishing gear, he proceeded parallel with the lane until he reached its far intersection, intending to skirt the building block and so reach Mrs. Overton’s house by the front gate.

  He was on his way, well pleased with the “mushrooms” he had gathered and confident that he had not been observed. He had climbed through the fence at the far end of the paddock when he met Mr. Dickenson.

  “You are out early this morning,” stated the old man. Mr. Dickenson glanced at Bony’s tin and advised fishing from a point about a hundred yards down the creek from an old lugger. Bony gravely thanked him, and asked why he was out so early.

  “I can manage with about four hours of sleep,” explained Mr. Dickenson, adding: “when I’m in normal health and my heart is not troubling me. After seeing our friend retiring to bed last night, I felt that I had had a busy day and deserved relaxation. I felt the need of more of the relaxation this morning, but I recalled our little agreement. Flinn won’t appear until around ten o’clock.”

  “What time last night did you cease to keep watch on Flinn?”

  “What time? When the Seahorse closed at eleven. Flinn was then on the front veranda. He was tight.”

  “Pardon my pertinacity. How did you manage to observe Flinn retiring to bed?”

  “I went round to the rear yard and I saw him in his room undressing.”

  “Thank you. Can you tell me to what degree he was intoxicated?”

  “About as drunk as you were that night we returned from Dampier’s Hotel.”

  The smile born on Bony’s face was killed by reproof.

  “Then Flinn couldn’t have been tight. I wasn’t.”

  “Flinn was tight. I watched him drinking whisky all the evening. That was an achievement of which I am not a little proud this morning. Flinn was quite able to undress himself. If you require a precise estimate of his condition, then he was twice as tight as you were.”

  “I was not tight. Inspector Walters will bear me out. Have you heard of the latest murder?”

  “No. Who was the victim?”

  “A Mrs. Overton.”

  “Indeed! A nice woman. Strangled?”

  Bony nodded and Mr. Dickenson sadly shook his head. They might have been discussing juvenile delinquency. The old man asked if anyone had been arrested for this latest crime, and Bony told him that Clifford had left for Dampier’s Hotel to bring in Richard Blake for questioning.

  “That young fellow might be the guilty party,” Mr. Dickenson conceded, thoughtfully gazing at Bony’s fishing gear. “Is it known when Mrs. Overton was murdered?”

  “The night before last. The murderer also almost succeeded in killing her little dog. It had to be destroyed.”

  “A pity. It was an affectionate little animal but not, I imagine, anything of a watch dog. Yes, it could have been young Blake. He was in town late the evening before last, and I remember that he was in town that night Mrs. Eltham was murdered. Did you ever see Mrs. Overton alive?”

  “No.”

  “Doubtless you have seen her body. She would in life have been physically strong. Blake is not a large man, or powerful. Still...”

  “You doubt that it was Blake?”

  “I would require clear proof before I would believe it.”

  “It was not Blake, you think, whom you saw that night leaving Mrs. Eltham’s house?”

  “That is what I believe.”

  “Does your opinion alter when I tell you that Richard Blake is Ronald Locke, the Sydney murderer? You may remember the case.”

  “I remember the case. It does not alter my opinion. Do we now relinquish our interest in Mr. Flinn?”

  “No. We maintain our interest in Mr. Flinn ... you and I. I’m so glad you have assented to assist me. As you do, I don’t think Blake is the man we want. However, his arrest will allay fear in the people of Broome, and I would be so pleased did you not make public your opinion just expressed, and further that you do broadcast the news item that Blake has been arrested for the murder of Mrs. Overton.”

  Mr. Dickenson stroked his Van Dyke beard and permitted a twinkle to enter his eyes.

  “It was, I think, Shakespeare who wrote: ‘O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side.’ My friend, I like subtlety. Provided that he be not subjected to too much mental...”

  “Between ourselves, Locke won’t be charged with murder,” Bony cut in. “But I want everyone, including this Broome murderer, to believe that he has been. You will understand why?”

  “Perfectly. Further slight inconvenience for Locke will not come amiss. I will continue to take an interest in Flinn, and should you think I could be of assistance in other
directions, call on me.”

  “It’s very good of you,” Bony said, warmly.

  “It’s good of you, sir.”

  They parted, and Bony saw Mr. Dickenson enter the laneway which would take him past the rear of Mrs. Overton’s house. Two minutes later, he entered the house from the front, finding Sawtell in the kitchen.

  “Coo! What you got there? Fishing lines?” asked the sergeant.

  “Yes I fish for men. An hour ago the inspector sent Clifford out for Locke. Would you like to dash off home for breakfast?”

  “You must have seen blazing hunger in my eyes. Won’t be long.”

  “Oh, don’t hurry. I’ll spend the time in meditation. Bring Abie back with you. Follow routine. What tracks he indicates, make a cast. They might be useful later on.”

  The sergeant having left, Bony wandered through the house. The doctor had reported that Mrs. Overton had been strangled by a man standing behind her, and such were the injuries that, in his opinion, it was the same man who had killed Mrs. Eltham and Mrs. Cotton. The body had been removed to the morgue by the undertaker and his Malay assistant, and the inquest would be held this day ... to be adjourned as those previous inquests had been.

  A plane for Perth was due to leave at nine, and Walters would now be preparing his reports for Headquarters to accompany Bony’s personal letter to the chief of the C.I.B. Another plane was expected to leave about six in the evening, and Bony urged that Clifford take his prisoner down to Perth in that. It would leave them a man short in the team, but old Dickenson could step into the breach.

  The time he was alone he spent going through the dead woman’s papers. He read the letters found in the post box. There were no locked drawers, and no safe, so that he had access to everything. He learned that Mrs. Overton was interested in church missionary work, and that she had contributed to missionary literature. There was a man in Melbourne who wanted to marry her and it appeared that her dead husband’s mother approved. A legal firm in Perth managed her financial affairs. Nothing of importance, but several matters of interest. Two of Mrs. Overton’s correspondents mentioned Mrs. Sayers, who, it appeared, was much admired by Mrs. Overton, and one writer referred to Mrs. Overton’s attachment to the boys at Cave Hill College, and her work at the Methodist Sunday School.