Death of a Lake b-18

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “You have seen a real body?”

  “I read books, stupid.”

  They proceeded to the bluff steps. He asked:

  “What did Lester mean when he said everyone has been waiting for the Lake to dry out in order to find Gillen’s body?”

  “It’s been in our minds for a long time,” replied the girl. “You see, Ray Gillen was a… he was hard to forget. If Lester or Mac had been drowned, we’d have forgotten all about them by now. Did you hear what Carney said?”

  “That he isn’t interested in finding Gillen’s body, yes.”

  “When he goes riding tomorrow you keep close by. He’s interested all right. Ray used to wear a gold locket round his neck. Probably still there. Ray promised me that locket, and if Carney gets it he won’t give it up. You get it and give it to me. Will you?”

  “If he promised it to you,” Bony said, with assumed doubt.

  “He did, I tell you. Now no more. But remember, that locket belongs to me.”

  Having arrived at the steps hewn into the bluff face, she ran up them and was nowhere in view when Bony reached the top. Lights sprang up in the house and someone switched on the light in the men’s quarters.

  Bony found Carney already in the sitting-room settling down to read a magazine. Lester slumped into the arm-chair on the veranda, and Bony joined him to sit on the boards and roll a cigarette.

  “Stinker of a night, ain’t it?” Lester complained, and Bony agreed. “Sort of night that dynamo engine gets on me nerves. Bang, bang, bang, right into me head.”

  “I think I’ll carry my bunk outside for the night,” Bony decided.“Too hot in the room.”

  “Good idea. You might give me a hand with mine. Set ’emup back of the building where they’ll be in the shade first thing in the morning. Blasted heat-waves. Can’t stand ’emlike Iusta. Hear how Carney bit just now when I said abouthuntin ’ for Gillen?”

  “Methinks he doth protest too much.”

  “Caw! Youmusta got that off Martyr. He knows a lot of them sayings. Puts ’eminto his poetry, too.”

  “He writes poetry?”

  “Pretty good at it. You understand it?”

  “Genuine poetry, yes.”

  “Can’t stand a bar of it.”

  MacLennonappeared from the darkness.

  “Took a screw at the thermometer,” he said.“A hundred and three. In the shade! In the night! A hundred and three! Be a bitch of a day tomorrow.”

  “We’re sleeping outside,” Bony told him. “Give me a hand with the beds?”

  At break of day the flies woke every man, and Carney said he had had the bush and would quit.

  “Better not,” advisedMacLennon.“Mightn’t be safe.”

  They glared at each other, and Carney, becoming angry, drawled:

  “If I want to quit, I quit, Mac. What you might be thinking don’t trouble me.”

  “No? Well, go ahead and see what happens. No one quitson his own .”

  “Yair, that’s right,” interposed Lester. “No one quits till we agrees on thedivi.” The interjection appeared to calm the others. They both stared at Lester, and Carney said:

  “It’s up to you, Bob. Spill it.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t. It’s up to you or Mac.”

  “Aw, what’s the use,” snarledMacLennon. “Shut uptalkin ’ like kids. Yougoin ’ to work the horses in this heat, Bony?”

  “This morning, anyway,” replied Bony. “Mustn’t let up on two I’m taking through the hoops. I’ll put in a couple of hours before breakfast.”

  They lapsed into sullen silence. Bony dressed and walked to the stables for the fed horse, and knew they watched him. The risen sun already burned his flesh when he rode out for the youngsters, and when the breakfast gong was struck no living thing voluntarily ventured from the shade.

  “If only the wind would rise,” Carney said as, with Bony, he paused to look out over the Lake as they crossed to the annexe.

  “If only to shoo the flies from pestering our eyes.”Bony heartily agreed. “As you did this morning, I feel like quitting. Too hot to work. Might put in a week with George and the rabbits. That’s not water down there. The water has vanished.”

  “Yes. Bloody shame.”

  The gleaming shield still covered Lake Otway, but now areas of mottled grey dulled the shield, and Bony fancied that, even as he watched, these areas were expanding. Following breakfast, he looked again at the Lake. Those grey areas were spreading fast as the last of the surface moisture was sucked up by the murderous sun.

  At morning smoko, the temperature in the pepper tree shade was 117 degrees, and on Lake Otway there wasn’t sufficient moisture to service a postage stamp.

  Nevertheless, the depression wasn’t yet hard enough to bear a horse, and Martyr had sentMacLennon out on a job, and he himself had taken Carney on the utility to work some miles away. Lester, who had been told to take life easy, was hugging the shade of thequarters veranda and reading a sporting paper when Bony rode off to visit George Barby.

  He found the trapper had shifted camp to Johnson’s Well, and that he had begun the erection of his fence around the Channel. Barby was cooking at a fire outside the hut when Bony arrived and neck-roped his horse to a shady tree.

  “How’s things?” shouted Barby. “Come in out of the sun and have a cuppa tea.”

  The dogs barked with no enthusiasm. The galah, perched on a biscuit tin, kept its beak wide open and panted, its wings drooping and reminding Bony of the cormorants. The cats watched Bony, their mouths wide and pink, and their flanks working like bellows. And Barby, lean and tough, was naked save for the towel tethered about his middle with string.

  “Prettyflamin ’ hot, ain’t it?” he said, pouring the ‘cuppa’ into a tin pannikin for his guest.“Sugar on the truck. Bit of brownie in the box.”

  “A hundred and seventeen when I left,” Bony told him.

  “Don’t talk about it. I give up labour. Even the blasted cats can’t take it. Look at ’em. Got to nurse ’em. Watch!”

  Taking the canvas water-bag from the hook suspended from the hut veranda, he stroked one of the cats and without difficulty persuaded it to lie flat on its back. Slowly he tipped the bag and poured the comparatively cool water on the animal’s tummy, and the cat squirmed with pleasure and began to purr. In like fashion, he treated the other cat and, to Bony’s amusement, the galah flopped off the biscuit tin and came staggering to them, wings trailing, beak wide with distress.

  “If you think I’mgoin ’ to keep on doing this all day, you’re mistaken,” Barby protested.

  The galah tumbled over its head to lie on its back like the cats. Barby scooped a rough hole in the sand and poured water into it. He held a finger low and the bird clasped it and suffered itself to be lifted and lowered into the hole, back downward. Then Barby sloshed water over it, and the bird sat up like an angry old man and swore. Then it lay down again and would have purred if able.

  “Ruddy characters,” Barby claimed. “Poor bastards, they can’t stand this heat.” Genuine pity stirred his voice, and he tried to hide it by saying: “There’sseven or eight crows in that tree where you tied your horse. If it gets much hotter they’regoin ’ to perform. You know who chucked allthem birds out of that tank?”

  “Should I?” countered Bony. “When was it done?”

  “Night before last. Anyone missing from thequarters night before last?”

  “MacLennon, Lester, Carney.”

  “What about Martyr?”

  “I don’t know about him,” Bony smiled. “I mentioned to the men that the birds in the tank were to within a few inches of the top. It puzzled them, and Lester said they were not that high when he looked in some time ago.”

  “Wonder what they expected to find,” chortled Barby.“Money? Hell! Gillen? Perhaps. You got no idea who it was?”

  “Lester. He was bashed on leaving the tank.”

  Bony told of Lester’s ruse to allay suspicion by saying he had been tossed, and Barby grinned
.

  “I knew it was Lester,” he said, triumphantly. “I was over here at sun-up yesterday morning, gettingdrinkin ’ water, and right against the tank I found his old beret. He never went anywhere after dark without it. So Bob Lester can’t know where Ray Gillen’s money is planted. Wonder why they bashed him.”

  “You don’t know who bashed him?”

  Barby’sdark eyes were abruptly hard.

  “No. Think I should?”

  “As I see it, George, Carney and Mac followed Lester. They waited for him to empty the tank. When he jumped out, one of them bashed him

  … hard enough to knock him out for several hours. Doesn’t it appear to you that Carney andMacLennon both were after the money and thought it possible that Lester found it among the dead birds?”

  “Looks like it, don’t it?”

  “Therefore, Carney andMacLennon also cannot know where Gillen’s money is.”

  “H’m!” grunted the trapper. “Bit of a mix-up, eh?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Smoke on the Bluff

  ANYTHINGMOREBEENsaid about the gun going off?” Barbyasked, when they were eating lunch.

  “Not a word,” Bony replied. “You make a good curry, George.”

  A bag nailed to the window-frame of the hut would have darkened its interior against the flies, but the heat within was unbearable. They defeated the flies by making a smoke fire in the shade cast by the hut and squatting on their heels either side this small fire to envelop their heads and the meal within smoke.

  “Only tucker worth eating this weather,” Barby said. “I beenthinking about that gun, and where it went off, and what wasworkin ’ up. Something or other will bust before long. You got any idea where that money couldof been hid?”

  “Afraid not. It wasn’t buried among those dead shags.”

  Had Bony been able to forget he was a horse-breaker, Barby quite unconsciously would have repeatedly reminded him, for deep inside the English Barby was ever the superiority towards the ‘native’. It wasBarby’s opinion that his own intelligence and powers of reasoning were far higher than that of the heathen, and this attitude amused and gratified Bony because it cloaked his work as a criminal investigator.

  “I see you are going to trap the Channel,” he said, casually.

  “Yair. I done a bit to the fence along one side and the trap, and I’ll finish this evening and start. What about coming in with me?”

  “I’d like to. Seems to me you could do with twenty assistants.”

  “I could do with fifty.” Barby tossed his tin plate to the ground and groped for the pannikin of tea. “You and me together can’t deal with the mob of rabbits round here. We couldn’t trap ’emand skin ’emfast enough to beat the sun. Then there’s millions right round the Lake what’ll be headed this way tonight for water. All we can do is skin what we can.”

  “The ’roosare going to be a nuisance to your fence,” Bony reminded him.“Any guns with your gear?”

  “Couple of Winchesters and a twelve-bore shot-gun. We’ll have to sit up most of the night to keep ’emoff the fence. Got plenty of ammo, fortunately. Blast! It’s hot, ain’tit. Don’t remember being so hot for years.”

  Bony washed the utensils and Barby crossed to the trough and let water gush into it from the reservoir tank. The dogs loped over to him and plunged into the trough. He brought a bucket of water back to the hut shade, scooped a hole, splashed water into it, and the two cats lay in the water and rolled in the wet sand after the water had soaked away. The galah demanded attention and was given a wet hole all to itself.

  Bony sat with Barby, their backs to the hut wall and with gum-tips whisked the flies fromthe their faces. Barby explored the possibilities of generating power from the sun’s heat, and climaxed the subject by asserting that the capitalists would never allow it.

  “D’youthinkthe scientists will ever make rain when they want to?” he asked.

  “Quite likely,” replied Bony.

  “If they do, they’ll ruin Australia,” predicted the trapper. “What keeps the rabbits down, and the foxes, and the blowflies, and thekangas? Whatd’you reckon?”

  “The droughts.”

  “Course. If it wasn’t for the ruddy droughts no white man could live in the country, and theremainin ’ blacks would migrate to Blighty. Myxotitis! Rot! Just as well spray the rabbits with hair oil.”

  “It seems you wouldn’t like the rabbits to be wiped out,” dryly observed Bony.

  “Because why? There’s hundreds of blokes making a good livingouta rabbits and the fur, and while rabbits run there’s no excuse for any man to be out of work in Australia. I know trappers what take live rabbits into country where thereain’t any, just to let ’embreed up. Why not? Done itmeself, but don’t you ever tell the Boss.”

  Bony laughed.

  “The Boss would be annoyed?”

  “He’d drop dead,” Barby agreed and chuckled. The mood passed, and the note of indignation crept back into his voice.

  “Fancy wiping out all the rabbits what give rich women albino fox furs and coats, and Kohinoor mink and Alaskan capes and things. Fancy killing all the rabbits what could give cheap meat to the working people who got to pay four bob for a pound of measly mutton chops. And just to let farmers buy more cars and crash-bang boxes for the kids. And dirty politicians putting more and more racket money down south in wads we couldn’t lift off the ground.”

  Bony thought it was hot enough without becoming worked up over a mixture of economics and politics, but the wads neither Barby nor he could lift off the ground spurred imagination, and imagination did help to make the heat bearable. Lucky politicians.

  “Yair,” continued Barby. “Somethingwrong somewhere. Old age pensioners freezing all winter in their one rooms down in thestinkin ’ cities, and the politicians rushing round the world on holiday trips we pay for. Theycalls it the March of Science. What’s science done for us, anyhow? Me andyou’s still stuck here in this flaming joint, and millions of workers still got to toil day and night for a crust. Australia! Look, Australia would be the finest country in the world if it wasn’t for the morons running it.”

  “Agreed, George, agreed,” murmured Bony. “Do you happen to see what I see?”

  Bony pointed to the low dune barring the Lake from the creek. Beyond the dune a stark pillar of smoke appeared like a fire-blackened tree supporting a snow-white cloud. Together they stood, and without speaking walked to the dune, oblivious of the sun on exposed arms and the heat striking up from the ground through their boots.

  The base of the smoke column was shot with crimson.

  “Don’t remember seeing any fire alarm, I suppose?” queried Barby, his voice thin. “Better hop into theute and light our fags at the last ember.”

  They shifted unnecessarydunnage from the utility. The dogs were chained. The galah was thrust into its cage. The horse was left in the shadow of the cabbage tree. Without undue speed, Barby drove the oven-hot vehicle over the sandy track to the homestead.

  “Who was there when you left?” he asked.

  “Lester and the two women.”

  “Would’ve made no difference if there’d been a hundred men about the place,” Barby said. “All pretty old buildings. Bit of a spark… pouf… few ashes… all in two minutes… day like this.”

  They passed through low scrub and over ragged ridges and the worldwas utterly still and strangely stereoscopic, the only movement being the twisting column ahead. They saw that the quarters were safe, and the tops of the pepper trees were thrashing in the updraught created by the red remains of the large house. The machinery shed and the store and other buildings were warped but not ignited.

  Lester they found bending over someone sitting in the armchair on the veranda of the quarters. He didn’t notice the arrival of theutility, or of the travellers until they stepped up to the veranda and Barby said:

  “You beentryin ’ to singe the flies, Bob?”

  Lester straightened, and they saw the occupant of
the chair was Joan. Lester’s face was drawn by obvious shock, and he forgot to sniffle.

  “Yair,” he said. “Ma got caught.”

  The girl stared at the smouldering ruin, her hands pressed between her knees. As though whimpering she said:

  “I couldn’t get her out. I tried… I couldn’t.”

  “I was sitting here having a cat-nap,” Lester put in. “I hear a roar and I thinks it’s a willi passing by, till Joan run over and woke me up. Then the ruddy house was going up swoosh, and there wasn’t a chance to get near it. Burned faster than deadbuckbush in hell.”

  “It would in a shade temperature of 117 degrees,” agreed Bony, and Lester snorted without sniffling.

  “Hundred and seventeen!” he echoed. “A hundred and twenty-one when I came back from lunch.”

  “No one else home?” asked Bony, who had unconsciously taken command of the situation.

  Lester shook his head. Joan repeated her whispered statement, then she sat upright and looked dazedly at Bony.

  “I was reading in my room, and Mum was lying down in her room. All of a sudden I was surrounded by smoke and flames. I ran to Mum’s room, but she had fainted or something, and I dragged her off the bed, but I had to leave her. The house was crashing… I couldn’t stop with her.”

  Smoke stains and ash streaked her face and arms. As she continued to stare at the ruins, Bony turned her chair from the picture of desolation. Her hands remained clasped between her knees as though to control theirtrembling, and he left her to procure aspirin and water.

  “Take these,” he said, his voice hard in an effort to defeat possible hysteria. “Bob, boil a billy and brew some tea. Make it strong.” The girl swallowed the tablets obediently. Gently Bony patted her shoulder. “Cry if you can, Joan. It’ll help.”

  He left Barby with her. Lester was making a fire behind the building. He crossed to the machinery shed, noted how close it and the store had come to destruction. The smoke column was now a thin spiral, and high in the sky the smoke had solidified to a huge white cloud. Wherever the overseer was, he must see that cloud.