The men skinned diligently, and Bony noted their reaction to this work. The girl mystified him, for she watched the skinners and now and then regarded the background of their work with undoubted enjoyment. MacLennon was sullen; Carney was, as usual, cheerful; Lester worked fast and automatically, because his mind wasn’t on the job.
Some of the kangaroos returned ... those who hadn’t reached the water. The rabbits were gathering into heaps about the dead ’roos, and these were doomed as they had not taken in water and instincts were shattered. Now and then a flock of birds came to whirl above the Channel and depart at high speed as though aware they must find water before the sun again became a killer. The crows attacked the living rodents gathered in growing heaps, for when a rabbit died others crowded on it, too stupefied to run for cover from the risen sun.
“Righto, blokes, no more,” Barby called. “The sun’s rotting ’em already. We musta got through four thousand.”
The fur was gathered into bags to keep till dried on the wire bows. Thousands of carcasses were left in the one trap-yard: the other wasn’t touched and now the sun was destroying hundreds of pounds worth of fur. MacLennon said:
“It’s up to you, Bony. We got to go far?”
“No. You understand, I hope, that if you interfere with the remains the police will be annoyed?”
“My troubles!” snorted MacLennon.
“And that the locket, if still with the body, is the property of the State?”
“Just too bad,” sneered Lester. “Caw! You talk like a judge.”
They proceeded, the four men and the girl keeping close to Bony.
“I don’t understand your avid interest in a locket you claim was worn by Gillen when he was drowned,” he said. “I’m not going to be drawn into any trouble with you or the police. If, as I said, you interfere with the remains, the police will want to know why. They would say that until the authorities prove Gillen was drowned, it could be that one of you murdered him. They will certainly want that locket. Why is it so important to all of you? What d’you want the locket for?”
“Just to see what’s inside it,” replied Lester.
“You ain’t got no right...” MacLennon began, when Carney stopped him.
“Now look, Mac, lets recognize facts, and let’s behave decently. It wouldn’t get us anywhere if we all rushed it like a pack of dingoes. We’ll let Bony find the locket, and we’ll let him open it for us all to see.”
“Fair enough,” agreed Lester, but MacLennon started again to argue, and this time Joan stopped him with a verbal lashing which stunned Bony and caused Lester to sniffle thrice.
They did not see the weed-shrouded remains of Raymond Gillen until Bony stopped and indicated the skeleton. Silently he waited, and one by one they looked up and into his wide and ice-blue eyes.
Carney was grave and self-possessed. Lester licked his upper lip, and the watery blue eyes were avaricious. The girl’s mouth was compressed to a straight thin line of scarlet. Barby was white about the nostrils, and MacLennon’s face was twitching at the corners of his mouth and under his cheek-bones.
“Go on, Bony, get it,” cried Joan.
“All right! Now stand away, all of you.” They drew back, and he ordered them to retire still farther. They obeyed. He sank to his knees, continuing to watch them. He delved with his hand under the skeleton. The cord had vanished. A little groping, and he found the key. The locket was half-buried in the sludge. He stood, showing the locket to the watchers, and they surged forward to surround him. Carney exclaimed:
“Good on you, Bony! Open it for us.”
Chapter Twenty-one
The Locket
UNHURRIEDLY, BONY rubbed the locket against his trousers to clean it of weed and dried mud. The four men watched his hand manipulating the locket; the girl watched his eyes, enigmatically. He was smiling. A lesser man might have so reacted to this situation creating self-importance, but to Bony it was merely the prelude.
MacLennon twisted his great hands about each other; intent like an eagle ready to pounce. Carney stood with hands against his hips, balanced on his toes, an easy smile about his mouth and faint amusement in his eyes. Lester forbore to sniffle. His mouth was slightly open, and for once his eyes were strong and steady. George Barby’s teeth were worrying his upper lip. There was a vertical frown between his brows, and perplexity was clearly defined. For a long second Bony’s eyes clashed with the girl’s green eyes, suddenly wide and probing.
The locket was heart-shaped, of modern design and was studded with a solitary square-cut sapphire. When Bony displayed it on the palm of his hand, the others crowded about him.
He was unable to open it with a thumb-nail, and Barby presented a clasp-knife. Deliberately, he prised the locket apart on its hinges, to reveal on the one side the picture of a woman and on the other that of a man.
Suspended breathing hissed from MacLennon, and Lester sniffled and deserved a cuff.
“Get the pictures out, Bony,” urged Carney. “Could be writing on the back.”
With slight difficulty, Bony managed to lift out the picture of the woman. There was writing on the back of the print ... the word “Mum”. On the reverse of the picture of the man was the word “Pop”.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything else,” drawled Bony.
“Lemme look,” rasped MacLennon, and Carney said, warningly:
“Go easy, Mac. Look again, Bony. Look for small letters scratched outside or inside the locket. There’s something we want to see.”
“There is nothing,” Bony said after a swift examination of the locket. “What did you expect to see?”
MacLennon cursed and grabbed, but Bony’s fingers imprisoned the locket. He stepped back to avoid MacLennon’s punch and then Joan was confronting the ex-pugilist and shouting:
“You animal, Mac! Behave yourself.”
“It’s my locket, Joan. It’s mine.”
“Shut up,” cried the girl furiously. “It’s mine more than yours.” She swung about to confront Barby. “You look at it, George. Bony can’t see anything. I can’t see anything, and Mac can’t, either. But you look at it to satisfy him.”
“Damned if I know what all the botheration is about,” Barby said, flatly. “There’s nothing inside the locket bar the two pictures, and there’s nothing on the back of them except “Mum” and “Pop”. Why the fuss?”
“Gillen had a lot of money, that’s why,” bawled MacLennon, surging past Joan.
Joan opened her mouth, caught back the words. Carney grinned, and this abused word is the correct one to describe his expression. Lester licked his drooping moustache like a dingo watching a fox being killed by eagles. Still perplexed, the trapper said:
“Gillen had money, so what? Did one of you murder him for it?”
They became still, and passivity was smashed by Mac-Lennon.
“He could of been, George,” he shouted. “I wouldn’t know. He had a lot of money in his case, wads and wads of it. Must have stolen it from a bank or something. He woke up to someone after it, and planted it and put the clue to the place in the locket. We been waiting for the tide to go down to get at that locket ... all of us.”
“Not me,” chirped Lester. “I knew nothing about no locket”
“Lot of rot, seems to me,” drawled Carney, rocking on his heels. “Better quit and pass it up.”
“No damn fear,” roared the heavy man. “Someone’s got Gillen’s dough. And I’m having me share, or else.”
“Me, too,” interjected Lester. “Find anything, George?”
“Nothing,” replied Barby, and slipped the pictures into place and closed the locket.
“But there is. There must be. Gillen said there was,” persisted the enraged MacLennon.
“All right, Mac. You look.”
MacLennon snatched the locket and opened it easily with his thumb-nail. He dug the pictures out with his dirty nail, peered at them with screwed-up eyes, and at the locket inside and out. And with varying reac
tions the others waited, united only in contempt for this Doubting Thomas. Bony stood a little to the rear of the group, his fingers working at a cigarette but his eyes missing nothing. He hoped for more from MacLennon, and was given more. The big man threw locket and pictures to the ground and with hands knotted into clubs glared at them.
“One of you got here first. You got here ’fore we did, Bony.”
The limelight played on Bony, and Bony nodded.
“Yes, just before dark last night. You asked me to get the locket for you if I should find the remains. Joan did, too. But the locket belongs to the State, who will hold it for the rightful owner at law. The State is going to ask us a lot of questions, such as how did the locket come to be forced open and the pictures tossed on the ground. And what is this yarn about a lot of money in a dead man’s suitcase. In fact, the State is going to be most tiresome.”
“I told you to shut up, you fool,” snarled the girl at Mac-Lennon. “Harry tried to shut you up, too. Now spit out the rest of it and be a bigger fool.”
“All right, I will,” roared MacLennon. “Harry showed us a letter writ by Gillen, saying he’d spotted his case being interfered with, and that he’d planted his money and put the clue to the place inside his locket. So if the one who mucked about with his case really wanted his dough he’d know where to find the clue but they’d have to get the locket off him first. Twelve thousand quid and some was what Gillen had, according to you, Joan. You told us Gillen had showed you that dough to make himself sweet with you. And Harry found the letter in the case instead of the money ... accordin’ to him.”
“Could of been some double-crossing,” followed Lester’s sniffle.
“Yair, of course,” shouted MacLennon. “One of you got in first. One of you got that money. And by hell I’m gettin’ my share of it. I’ll ... smash your rotten...”
“You’ll drop in a fit, that’s what you’ll be doing,” sneered the girl.
She received a slap to the face which sent her backwards. Carney sprang at MacLennon and got in a right royal haymaker which splayed the ex-pugilist. Then they went to it, and Carney quickly proved he was no gentleman in a real Australian brawl ... boots and all.
The girl scrambled to her feet. Lester danced and sniffled and shouted:
“Four to one, Carney! Sock it in, Harry. Four to one Mother’s boy. Let ’em alone, Joan! Get off it! Cripes! Odds is short now. Two to one, Carney. Caw! Let ’em alone!”
Joan was hanging to the big man’s shirt and kicking at his ankles. Carney got in a walloper, and Lester began the count. Calmly, without the trace of a smile, George Barby remarked to Bony:
“When thieves fall out, honest men like you and me steps in.”
Bony was reminded of a picture of hounds pulling down a stag. He retrieved the locket and the miniatures, replaced the pictures, and pocketed the locket. Then he smiled at Barby:
“It must be time for smoko, George.”
“Yair. Very dry argument this morning, Bony.”
Carney was kneeling and waving his hands as though in obeisance to King Sol. Joan was behind MacLennon and doing her utmost to scalp him. MacLennon was yelling, and Lester was urging Joan to “pull his ears off”. Then Carney left the ground in a flying tackle and the combatants became a heap. Bony turned away, and Barby walked at his side and said:
“Did you hear Ray Gillen laughing and laughing?”
“Yes, I heard it,” Bony replied, gravely. “I thought it was ghostly merriment.”
They came to the Channel, invisible beneath the covering of drowned animals. The crows were now the flakes of a black snowstorm, and dotted on the flats the eagles were gorging. Here and there, farther away, daintily walked the emus, their tail feathers billowing like the skirts of a ballerina. The kangaroos had gone, but a few of the galah host still lingered about the dunes.
“Funny about that letter MacLennon said Carney found in Gillen’s suitcase,” Barby drawled. “What d’you make of it?”
“I wish that MacLennon had been a little more elucidative, George. It does seem that Carney found such a letter in Gillen’s case, and we may assume that Carney found that letter after Gillen went swimming, that he was anxious about the money, having been told by Joan how much there was, Joan having been told by Gillen. Which supports what you overheard that night when Joan and Carney discussed money. We now know why no one left Lake Otway after Gillen was drowned. Why everyone was so interested in Lake Otway’s inevitable demise. Did you ever see Gillen writing letters?”
“Can’t say I ever did,” replied Barby, taking up one of the bags containing rabbit pelts. “Never said anything about his mother or father, or about any pals.”
Bony heaved a bag to his back, and together they went on. Near the sandbar, Bony turned to see the three battlers and the referee walking slowly after them. They were widely spaced, and obviously not engaged in friendly conversation.
“It is going to be abnormally hot today,” he told Barby. “I wonder what has happened to Martyr. Someone ought to have arrived by now. Must be after nine o’clock.”
“Ought to come any time. I’m goin’ to get on with stretchin’ these skins. Won’t have a chance after the mob gets here. Betcher the Sergeant’ll be out askin’ questions. What do we say about the locket?”
“Haven’t decided. I think the police will be far too interested in the fire and the fate of Mrs Fowler to bother about Gillen’s remains just now. Have you enough bows for all these pelts?”
“Not near enough.”
“Then I’ll cut some more after smoko.”
They dumped the heavy loads in tree shadow. The dogs welcomed them dispiritedly. The cats yawned and went to sleep again. The pet galah screeched, and Barby opened its cage door and it fell over itself, such was its haste to gain freedom. A rabbit had found a bread-crust at the edge of ash marking the fire site ... and continued to eat.
Bony took empty water-buckets to the reservoir tank, and saw rabbits crouching under the long trough. The trough was empty and he removed the chock from under the ball valve and permitted water to gush into it. Immediately, crows appeared to caw raucously, and galahs came to perch on the trough edges. Barby’s dogs jumped into the water and lapped as it ran under their tummies. The rabbits beneath the trough waited for the water to drip from the iron seams.
The warriors entered camp, Carney carrying the third bag of skins. They were sullenly silent, and the men stripped to the waist and carried towels to the trough to bathe their bruises and abrasions. On his way with filled buckets, Bony encountered Joan, whose left cheek was still inflamed by the smack from MacLennon. She actually smiled at him, but it didn’t raise his blood pressure.
In sullen silence a meal was eaten, and afterwards Bony took a file to a heap of old fencing wire and cut lengths to be bent to U shape. Lester assisted Barby to stretch the pelts over the bows and thrust them upright by pushing the points into the soft ground. The skins were board-hard and dry in less than twenty minutes, and eventually were removed and packed into a wool-sack.
When it was ten o’clock, the heat was almost combustible. Lester estimated the temperature to be about 112 degrees; Carney 115 degrees. The cats demanded watered tummies, and the galah sought similar attention from the solicitous Barby. Immediately the tea-billy was empty, another was placed on the fire, smokeless and almost invisible in the glare of the sun.
The men and the girl clung to the shadow cast by the hut. Whenever they drank, perspiration oozed from face and body within minutes. Joan had a basin of water and she saturated somebody’s shirt and draped it about her head. Carney wished they had a pack of cards.
It was just before eleven, and Lester was voicing doubt that Martyr could have reached the telephone at Sandy Well, when the crow fell from the cabbage tree where Bony had tethered his horse. It uttered a long-drawn c-a-a-h as it nosedived to the ground without a flutter.
“Last time I seen anything like that,” Lester said, “the local shade temperature was 123 degrees
.”
“That’s what it is here and now,” Carney stated with conviction.
“Assuming that Martyr’s utility broke down between Lake Otway and Sandy Well, what would he do?” Bony asked, and Carney answered him.
“He’d try and fix the trouble. He had a full gallon waterbag for himself, and a tinful for the radiator. And a mile off the track midway there’s a well called The Shaft. If he couldn’t get the lump of junk to go, he’d wait till night and walk on to Sandy Well.”
“And if he didn’t get to Sandy Well by nine last night, more’n likely there’d be no one in the River office to answer his ringing,” supplemented Barby. “That would mean he’d camp there and wait for the Boss to ring at half-past seven this morning.”
“What do you think Wallace would do on being told about the fire?” persisted Bony, actually to break up a moody silence.
“He’d tell Martyr he’d be out as soon as he could. He’d know we was all right, and Martyr was all right,” replied Barby. “Mr Wallace would ring the police at Menindee, and the Sergeant would have to get a doctor, and as far as I know the nearest doctor would be at Broken Hill, seventy miles off. Or he might come out without a doctor. I reckon Wallace would come out without waiting for the Sergeant.”
“What good would a doctor do? Tell us that,” sharply urged Joan.
“A doctor has to certify how your mother died,” Bony said, adding: “And also how Gillen died.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Something to do
AFTER DAY AND nights when the air had remained still, the wind came. It was neither strong nor gusty: a gentle wind in pressure, but hated for its heat. It came from over the depression, came over the sandbar and down along the creek bed to destroy even the imaginary coolness of the shadows. It lacked even the virtue of strength sufficient to worry the flies.
Death of a Lake Page 16
