Death of a Lake

by Arthur W. Upfield

  It was a relief to gain the comparative dimness of the trees about Johnson’s Well, where they were welcomed by Barby’s dogs and his now vociferous galah. Bony jumped to the ground immediately the truck stopped. With a flourish, he opened the door for Joan Fowler.

  “Welcome to the bandits’ lair, my lady!” he cried, and bowed.

  Her clouded eyes widened, brightened. She smiled, wanly. As she stepped from the utility, he moved swiftly to offer a helping hand. The act was spoiled, for he tripped, lurched slightly, almost fell against her. Their hands missed contact, and his palm was pressed against her breast.

  “Forgive my clumsiness,” he pleaded gravely. “I hope I did not hurt you.”

  The suspicion leaping in her eyes was beaten back. He was so confused, so contrite, so damn silly like all men. She smiled again, graciously.

  He wondered if the jewellery he had felt inside her blouse had hurt her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Riddle of the Safe

  THE TENSION CONTROLLING these men had broken during the short journey from the homestead, and for the first time they appeared to Bony as normal individuals. Lester sniffled and chortled and swore at the dogs, who were threatening Barby’s dogs; MacLennon even laughed when Carney suggested bathing in the troughs, and George Barby waved to the hut and invited Joan Fowler to take possession.

  Joan presented a character facet which might have astonished anyone other than these bushmen ... and they were gratified. She looked into the hut and walked round it. She studied the position of Barby’s camp fire, and the contents of his tucker box she surveyed with marked contempt. She looked at the salt-encrusted meat-bag hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, and finally inspected the men, who had paused as though for orders.

  “You think again if you’re thinking all this is going to beat me,” she said. “You thought I’d weaken when Martyr slung me into this. Thought you’d get rid of me, didn’t you? What a hope! All you can offer me is a couple of clean blankets and a clean suit of pyjamas. And if you have a clean pair of trousers, Harry, I’ll borrow them. A skirt and scanties won’t do here.”

  No one argued. Bony assisted Carney to carry the bedstead, brought from the quarters, to set up at the far side of the hut. Barby carried the mattress, and Carney supplied two blankets which happened to be comparatively new. Lester tore the dirty covering off a feather pillow and expertly covered it with one of Barby’s snowy cooking aprons. They even placed a wool-pack on the ground beside the bed to serve as a mat. With unspoken mutual consent, they left it to Harry Carney to conduct the girl to “her room”.

  It was after five o’clock, and seemed to be even hotter than at noon. When removing the horse’s neck-rope from the tree, Bony glanced upwards into its shadowy arches and saw the minah birds and several crows, every beak wide agape, every wing drooping as though to permit a cooling draught of air to reach their breasts. He said nothing of his intention to ride the horse back to the homestead and release it in its own paddock.

  It was too hot to ask the animal even to canter.

  Human reactions to the destruction of the homestead he reviewed with calm detachment, and found himself now rather in the role of spectator than of director, for he had been content to watch human reactions and unfolding events and evade interference.

  Excepting for that one incident of prodding the suspects by focusing interest in the tank filled with dead birds.

  There could be no better example of stirring lethargic suspects than the destruction by fire of the homestead, for this event exerted strong influence on minds as well as the circumstances governing the lives of these people. And Bony experienced neither regret nor jealousy that he had not been the agent.

  As the horse carried him at a fast walk, itself anxious for freedom and a drink, Bony surveyed the results of the fire upon all those vitally concerned. To begin with, the overseer. Hitherto, Richard Martyr had appeared to be reticent, aloof, moody, given to introspection and far too much exercise of imagination. Then, being confronted by the ruin of the homestead, instead of dismay, even rage, because of carelessness, he had betrayed elation.

  The effect of the fire hadn’t been manifested in the others until they reached Johnson’s Well, when they welcomed the change of living conditions. That was out of focus, because stockmen do not welcome a change from homestead food and homestead comfort to a rough camp where they would have to sleep on the ground and battle with the flies for stew on a tin plate, or kangaroo steak on a slab of baking-powder bread.

  The reason for their satisfaction, Bony thought, was that they were still free to watch each other and hunt for the remains of Gillen.

  The determination displayed by the girl not to leave these men was one of several interesting pointers in the progress of the human drama being played against the drama of the death of Lake Otway. Her possession now not only of her own bank-book and jewellery, but also of her mother’s jewellery, proved that she had placed them in the old handbag behind the door of the toilet which no male would enter.

  That collection had been made and secured before the house caught fire, and had been retrieved by Joan Fowler after the house had burned to the ground.

  “You know, Starface,” he said to the horse, “despite this devastating heat, I’m quite enjoying myself. A nice little cheque for training you and your friends added to my salary, plus the antics of half a dozen men under the influence of green eyes, plus the phenomenon of a dying lake to encourage my interest in natural history, combine to make me look upon criminal investigation as a lost cause.

  “I ask myself, why wrestle with a problem which others will ultimately solve for me? All I need do to earn my salary is to wait upon events, because the Spirit of Drama impels the actors to play their cues. A comfortable attitude to duty, don’t you think, Starface?”

  They emerged from the dune scrub and took the last slope to the homestead bluff. The upper portion of the pepper trees marred the now familiar view, but only this scar was evident, for the fire ruin lay beyond the men’s quarters. The windmill was still, had been for days. The unmistakable silence of the abandoned received Bony, and made the horse restive. It was at this moment that Bony saw the dust mist.

  It lay like a brown fog atop the ridge where passed the track to Sandy Well and the River, and it had certainly been produced by the passing of a motor vehicle. Martyr’s utility had raised dust at that place one hour earlier this afternoon, and the dust now hovering above the ridge could not possibly have lingered for so long a period.

  Bony unsaddled and slipped the bridle, knowing the horse would find feed after drinking at the mill trough, and having stowed the gear in the harness room, he strode to the veranda of the quarters and there recalled the exact movements of Richard Martyr from the moment he arrived in the utility until he left in it for Sandy Well and the telephone ... one hour earlier.

  He then proceeded to check and prove that Martyr had returned to the homestead after everyone had departed in Barby’s utility, and that he had left for the second time shortly following Bony’s departure from Johnson’s Well. Thus the reason for Martyr’s return was quickly established.

  The office safe had been moved, probably stood upright, and then replaced as formerly. It was situated four yards in from the edge of the bed of grey ash, and it was plain to Bony that the overseer had attempted to obliterate his tracks on the ash bed by blowing ash into them, using his broad-brimmed hat to create the draught.

  Heat caused by the fire would now be negligible, but the safe was exposed to the sun and not to be handled with bare hands. Bony had to procure an empty sack to protect his hands and having memorized its position, he stood it up, when he found that the key was in the lock and, like the safe, bore plainly the effect of fire. Bony turned the key, and the door was easily swung open. The condition of the contents was a compliment to the safe maker. There was a stock book, a ledger, a time book, and taxation stamp sheets. In a small compartment were treasury notes, a little silver and
taxation stamps. In the second compartment was the out-station work diary.

  Bony relocked the safe, leaving the key in the lock. There was no doubt that the key had been in the lock when the house burned, indicating that the safe hadn’t contained anything of great value, and, therefore, what had brought Martyr back to open it and take pains to obliterate his tracks over the ash bed?

  Having turned the safe to its original position, Bony scattered ash over its topmost side and, as Martyr had done, whisked ash over his tracks when retreating to the clear ground. The following ten minutes he spent studying the ruins and decided against delving among them. He did circle the ruins twice, hunting for traces having the slightest significance; finding none save those left by the overseer.

  Martyr’s examination of that safe nagged him, and he wished he knew if the overseer had returned to it to correct an omission of duty, such as to report the condition of the contents to his employer, or if he had purposely delayed the examination until all hands were cleared to Johnson’s Well.

  A cawing crow recalled the passing of time, the approach of evening. The sun was westering, and its decreasing heat was now permitting the birds to venture from the shadows to slake their day-long thirst. He must not remain here longer if he was to prevent suspicion, and while crossing to the quarters to obtain a packet of tobacco from his room his mind tore at the covering of this mystery.

  What had brought Martyr back to his office safe? What had occurred to make the hands so cheerful, especially Lester? And why had Joan Fowler so strenuously rebelled against leaving Lake Otway, now dead? And why the defiant front following her arrival at Johnson’s Well?

  He sat on his stripped bed to open the packet of tobacco and roll a cigarette. He stood on the veranda smoking and hesitant to hurry back to Barby’s camp. He gazed long at the rising land-swell and at its summit where he had seen the faint dust fog raised by the overseer’s second departure. Nothing moved on that shadow-etched track.

  Lester! Lester had been comforting the girl when Barby and himself had come. The girl had been sitting in the armchair, dabbing at her stained face.

  That tableau could have been an act.

  Lester! Bony entered Lester’s room. He moved the mattress, finding between it and the wire under-mattress a readymade suit layered between newspapers and kept there for pressing. Under the bed was a small tin trunk, its lock broken, its interior holding a jumble of old clothes, new town shoes, a horse bridle and books devoted to racing statistics. Also under the bed were old boots and, hard against the wall, a paperwrapped parcel. He removed the string, opened one end and felt with sensitive fingers the notes compressed to wads.

  The parcel was about the size of that made up for him by the bank manager at Brisbane. There was neither name nor mark on the outside of the wrapping paper. The wrapping might yield fingerprints. He put the parcel in a saddlebag on Gillen’s motor-bike.

  Passing down the bluff steps to gain the flats, he followed the old shore line, his mind tearing at several facets presented by these two developments ... the fire and the fortune in notes under Lester’s bed. First the fire. The fact that Joan Fowler had collected her own valuables, and also her mother’s jewellery, and concealed them in a safe place to preserve them from destruction strongly indicated that she knew the homestead would be destroyed, and also that her mother would perish in the fire, or her mother’s body would be consumed by the fire.

  Following the fire, she had collected the valuables from the hiding place. That clearly indicated forethought, planning. Had Joan been in possession of the parcel of notes, would she not have hidden it in that safest of safe places ... the women’s toilet? Subsequently, however, she could not have thrust the parcel down inside her blouse, and it seemed feasible to assume that she had taken Lester in as an accomplice-in-part. She could have told Lester that she had escaped the fire with the parcel of money, not mentioning to Lester her mother’s jewellery.

  Secondly, Gillen’s money. When in possession of twelve thousand pounds or more, would Joan Fowler have bothered about her mother’s jewellery worth not more than two hundred pounds? Wearing her own jewellery after lunch, and when the fire began, she could explain, and be believed, by saying she had dressed for the afternoon, and had put on all her trinkets, really as something to distract her mind from the heat. Would she be silly enough, when possessed of twelve thousand pounds, to risk her mother’s jewellery being associated with her escape from the burning house?

  There was a fact not to be denied.

  The parcel of notes under Lester’s bed was free of the dust which lay upon the trunk and the other odds and ends, proving that the parcel had not been under the bed for more than a day or two at most.

  Despite the annoying flies that seemed anxious to drown in his eyes and burrow into his ears, a slow smile stole over Bony’s sharply-moulded features, and aloud he said:

  “It seems, Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, that you will now have to work.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Channel Trap

  BARRY ADOPTED THE plan of trapping rabbits at water holes and dams, and the construction of his fences and traps was much more intricate than the wide-wing fences he had built on the Lake flats.

  The entire Channel was enclosed with wire netting and here and there the wire was brought to a point facing the water, an opening at the point being made to permit rabbits to squeeze through. Thirst-crazed rabbits thus able to reach the water and take their fill could not retreat by the way they had come, and when searching for the way of escape would find it in an outward-pointing V inside one of the two large netted yards.

  Bony arrived in good time to contribute his labour ... physical ... to the work of building the Channel trap. The men worked with good will. What energized them? What drove them despite the heat? Barby’s offer of a fair division of the “catch” had its influence, but this was over-shadowed by the sporting instinct. Even Lester, with thousands of pounds under his bed, worked like a slave.

  The job done, Barby went off to see how Joan was getting on with the cooking, saying he would bring her and refreshments, “to be in at the finish”. The others sat on the low mound spanning the mouth of the creek, and rolled smokes and tried to evade the glare of the sun striking at them across the great depression.

  “I still reckon George oughta been satisfied to fence only one side of that water and have only the one trap,” Mac-Lennon argued. “If all the ’roos I’ve seen this last two weeks arrive here tonight, the ruddy fence will be flattened.”

  Plan of Barby’s netted fence and traps enclosing the Channel

  “Have a try and keep ’em off,” Carney said in his easy manner. “We’ve plenty of guns and ammo.”

  “Yair,” agreed Lester. “By midnight them traps should be two big blocks of fur.” He sniffled ... as Bony knew he would. “Give George a job skinning ’em. Last him a week at least. When we goin’ to look for Ray Gillen?”

  Easy attitudes visibly stiffened. Following a loaded silence, MacLennon asked:

  “You in a hurry?”

  “Yair,” replied Lester. “Like everyone else.”

  The sun touched the far horizon over which the flood water had raced to create Lake Otway. The galahs and the white cockatoos came seeking the water and found it, whirling down to settle on the flats either side the Channel.

  Birds that had been watering every evening for three years at Lake Otway now came to the Channel. They alighted on the flats either side the thin ribbon of water, made suspicious at first by the fence and traps, massing in great patches of colours. The galahs crowded together their grey backs and the dots of pink combs, and the Major Mitchel cockatoos splashed white and raised their combs to produce pink dots on white.

  They topped every inch of the fence and the trap-yards and tumbled to the verge of the water and lowered and lifted their heads like mechanical toys. Every minute additional flocks arrived. The crows came to whirl among those aloft and deliberately generate deeper suspicion
in the vociferous parrots, and make still more shy the hundreds of emus who stalked the flats wide out.

  “Better have a go for Gillen in the morning,” suggested MacLennon, his voice raised to defeat the cacophony of the birds. “When d’you reckon Martyr ought to be back?”

  “Some time tonight, if the Boss doesn’t want him to go on to the River,” replied Carney. “Better hunt for Gillen in the morning, because after the Boss and the rest get out we won’t stand a chance. It seems to be a matter of pulling together ... or else.”

  “Should have looked for him today,” Lester said.

  “You seem mighty anxious, Bob,” sneered the ex-fighter.

  “Yair,” agreed Lester with ill-feigned nonchalance. “Seems we all got a stake in Gillen. Even me and George and Bony.”

  “Meaning?” demanded MacLennon.

  “You don’t need tellin’, Mac. Gillen had a lot of dough. He had a locket. The locket leads to the dough, don’t it?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Carney.

  Lester actually giggled before he sniffled.

  “Not much gets past me,” he claimed, triumph pictured on his unshaven face. “Caw! Look at them birds.”

  MacLennon wriggled sideways like a crab to bring himself closer and able to talk with less demand on his vocal chords. His broad features were distorted by anger.

  “That locket belongs to me,” he shouted. “I won it off Gillen, see? What’s mine is mine. So you keep out of it, Bob. I’m meanin’ that.”

  “Quite a few birds around, eh?” remarked Carney to Bony, obviously with the intention of easing the strain. Of these three men, his was the firmest character and he was now beginning to assert it.

  The appearance of Barby and Joan Fowler could have been the cause of MacLennon’s withdrawal from argument. The trapper carried a bucket of hot coffee and the girl had brought a loaded dish of sweet scones. Wearing a pair of light drill trousers and a man’s shirt, her almost blatant femininity was a travesty despite her powdered face and scarlet lips.