Mr Jelly’s Business

by Arthur W. Upfield

  It was not now letters he wished to write, but to talk with John Muir, and, when able, he left Mr Thorn and Mr Poole and crossed to his room at the Rabbit Depot. Twenty minutes later the sergeant joined him.

  “Good night, Bony,” he said with restrained quietness when he had carefully closed the door. “How goes it?”

  “Excellent, John. Your trip, I hope, was successful?”

  “Yep. I landed Andrew Andrews without any trouble. He proved to be one of those birds who give up when caught, and now he’s due for fifteen of the best. The Chief was mighty pleased with me, but he seemed a little disappointed with you. Can’t understand why you haven’t reported progress.”

  “That is as I wished. I wanted you to get the credit for the location and arrest of Andrews. I am glad that you have got it. I want you to get the credit for this Burracoppin case, and you will get it if you obey my instructions. As you know, I am indifferent to authority. Unlike you and your colleagues, I do not dream of promotion. The excitement of the chase is all that I desire. You saw Marie?”

  “I went to see her, of course. She gave me afternoon tea.”

  “And you boiled the kettle and danced her round the kitchen to stop her speaking her mind to you for interesting me in this case.”

  “You’ve had a letter from her?”

  “This morning. And how did you find Colonel Spender?”

  Only with an effort did John Muir refrain from laughter. Then:

  “I had to report to the old boy. Like a fool I let the cat out of the bag when I told him about the Loftus case and you taking hold of it. He didn’t look too healthy then. He kept on calling me ‘sir’; that is, when he got his breath. He said: ‘You’re a damned scoundrel, sir. I’ll have you broken, sir. I’ll raise hell, sir.’ You go back, Bony, by the quickest and shortest route.”

  “It is now too late, John. The ‘sack’ will be on its way through the post. I shall have to think out a quite original method to gain reinstatement, and I am almost run out of ideas.”

  “I’ve a letter for you from Inspector Todd. He’s much worried. He said all the things the Colonel said, bar adding the ‘sir’.”

  Smiling, Bony took the proffered envelope, tore it open, and extracted the contents. Before reading it he said:

  “Go outside, please. Look at the sky east of north. Look for a red glare in the sky.”

  “Eh!”

  “Please, John.”

  Bony’s voice had suddenly become hard. It was not the hardness of a superior so much as the steel hardness of the master displeased by a pupil’s rebellion. The sergeant went out. Bony read Todd’s long letter, which described a case beyond Cunnamulla made extraordinary by features of aboriginal participation in it. Reading between the lines, the detective saw Colonel Spender’s plea for immediate help on account of the victim’s relationship to the most powerful politician in office. Presently he glanced up at John Muir, who had come in to report.

  “I can’t see any glare in the sky. Is it a joke, Bony?”

  “No. I am expecting developments in this Loftus case.”

  “How far have you got? What have you discovered? Was Loftus murdered? Do you know who murdered him? When are you going to effect an arrest? How—”

  “For heaven’s sake, cease your machine-gun questions.”

  “By the Great Wind! I’m not a Doctor Watson. I tell you I’m not,” Muir declared with sudden passion.

  “You are,” Bony said definitely. “You will remain a Doctor Watson for a further period of four days, five days at the most. You will retire to Merredin, where you will do nothing but pretend to be making inquiries. You will report to your chief that you are about to finalize this matter, having received a lead from me. Patience will win you promotion.”

  Into John Muir’s wide, fearless grey eyes flashed an appealing look. His red hair was tousled by the freckled fingers which tore through it like horse combs.

  “Be a sport now,” he entreated. “Tell the tale. Was Loftus murdered?”

  “He was.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Cock Robin.”

  “A man ought to pick you up and shake you. You’re the most aggravating cuss I know.

  Bony sighed deeply. “Your only hope, John, is in the cultivation of patience. Age might change you. For your sake I hope it does. I will give you your bird in the near future. There is plenty of time for that. Now tell me what Todd told you about the case which has them bluffed. Relate the details to me slowly and carefully. Omit nothing, nothing. Banish from your mind any thought of Andrews and of Loftus.”

  And so for more than two hours they discussed the Queensland case. They read copies of statements and reports. They studied roughly drawn maps and many enlarged photographs of aborigines, tracks, blackfellows’ signs, or what might be signs, and pictures of station scenes.

  “To me everything now is quite plain,” Bony said at last. “That is a blackfellow’s sign, although the ignorant would not think so.

  “It describes a violent death, a death of vengeance, carried out by an aboriginal. The emu feathers stuck among the fan-arranged sticks at the bottom of a steer’s leg bone denotes the totem of the killer. The murdered man seduced a gin, and the gin’s husband or lover slew him.

  “Yes, despite all this, the killer was not a black. He was a white man, devilish clever, who, however, made the one inevitable mistake. Clever as he was in forging the sign, he forgot to add the hair of a black woman, which a black killer would have placed just below the emu feathers. The murder was committed by the only white man who could possibly have done it. In the morning, John, I will telegraph Todd to arrest Riley. You see, I can successfully conduct a case through the post. Easy isn’t it?”

  “Easy! By the Great Wind! If only I had one-tenth of your gumption, Bony.”

  “Patience will give you just as much gumption. You must learn to proceed slowly. Now go. I will accompany you to your hired car. Remain in Merredin as I said. You will hear from me soon.” At the Depot gate Bony gazed long and earnestly towards the south-east.

  “What the dickens are you looking for?” demanded John Muir.

  “Even at your departure you must ask a question. I shall have to arrange a scale of fines for your questions according to their degree of pertinence. Your last question of tonight, John, I will answer. I am looking for the reflection in the sky of a burning haystack. Now, good night! Good night!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Needlework

  AS BONY expected, Mrs Loftus definitely refused to sell her hay. Yet by no means did her refusal indicate any guilty knowledge of the whereabouts of her husband, for the stack might well be the property of the Agricultural Bank; or she might think that the run of good harvests would not continue beyond this year, when certainly the price of chaff would rise.

  Still, the detective regarded both Mrs Loftus and the hired man suspect. He had cast his net and had landed his catch. He had examined fish after fish until but two remained which bore the outlines of that terrible marine monster, the stingray.

  Contrary to his emphatic assertion to Hurley that he knew just where George Loftus was, he was not positively sure that the body was where he suspected it to be, and he was sure only that Loftus was dead from that sense of intuition which had stood to him in the past. Had it not been for his rash promise to Lucy Jelly, had not her father interested himself so much in the Loftus case, Bony might at this stage have handed the case over to John Muir, confident in the sergeant’s ability to finalize it, and himself have returned to Brisbane.

  But he had given that promise to Lucy Jelly. In winding up the case Muir would not separate the two cases as Bony hoped to do in order to keep Lucy’s father out of it if possible. And now, in keeping his promise to her, he would complete the case against the two suspects in his own peculiar way. He was the relentless nemesis, the king of Australian trackers well forward on an easy trail.

  In his possession was a duplicate of the key guarded by the secr
et of the table leg. That morning experts in Perth had reported on the three hairs submitted to them: that long hair which Bony had taken from Mrs Loftus’s hairbrush, the short hair he had found in the lace of Mrs Loftus’s pillow, and the second short hair he had secured from Mick Landon’s haircomb. The experts stated that the two short hairs originally grew on the head of the same man. It was, therefore, proved that Landon had slept in Mrs Loftus’s bed the night or one of the nights previous to the Jilbadgie dance. And if Bony’s belief in the position of Loftus’s body was correct, then it was more than likely that, as Mr Jelly had surmised, Landon had not been in his right bed the night the farmer had reached home.

  The detective had arrived at that most interesting point in any criminal case, the point where surmises and theories are proving to be correct. In the one circumstance of the urgency of his return to his native State he would have relinquished his investigations to John Muir, but it was the circumstance of Mr Jelly which kept him back from such action. Normally the case was not rightfully his, but since he had decided to carry on in order to fulfil his promise to Lucy Jelly, he delayed action against the suspects until he had discovered the receptacle fitted by the secret key and had laid bare the secret of Mrs Loftus’s mattress.

  Doubtless he would not have appeased any other officer so easily as he had appeased John Muir. The Western Australian knew Bony, knew his methods, had experienced the iron of his will. Bony had said, “Go away for from three to five days. I will send for you”, and Muir had gone, knowing that Bony would send for him, would hand over to him the completed case, would allow him all the credit before departing for Brisbane satisfied with the knowledge of his triumph.

  Early in the morning, after John Muir returned to Burracoppin, Hurley related to Bony what had transpired during his visit to the Loftus farm. Mrs Loftus had received him alone: Landon was out on the harvester machine and Miss Waldron had driven herself to Merredin. At Hurley’s casual inquiry regarding the sale of her haystack Mrs Loftus had become momentarily agitated, had regained control of her features in an instant, and then had said that she had no intention of selling.

  She wished to know the name of the prospective buyer, and, this information not being obtained, she was made easier when Hurley said he would apply to a farmer farther south who had two stacks of last year’s hay, one of which he might sell. Then she made one slip. She revealed her true thoughts of Bony; revealed the lie she had acted the Sunday he had visited the farm when she was so friendly, by saying to Hurley in a parting shot:

  “Take my advice, Eric, and don’t introduce your friends to your best girl. One of them has been paying Lucy a lot of attention, and a fence-rider cannot stand that, because he is away for such long periods.”

  “The old man is still away,” Eric said with a grin which wiped away the possibility that Mrs Loftus’s poison had had any effect on his mind. “So I can court Lucy as she should be courted. I am to tell you that she and Sunflower expect us both for tea at six o’clock this evening.”

  “That is delightful of them,” cried Bony. “I shall be most pleased to accept.”

  “Good-oh! I’m going out there for the day—I’ve got three Sundays to take out—and I’ll come for you about five o’clock. Try and knock off on time tonight.”

  Bony smiled generously, saying, “Permit me to remind you that I haven’t any Sundays to take out, that I am working for the Rabbit Department, and that I shall be late for work if I do not go along for my breakfast at once.”

  Hurley sighed.

  “I wish I had the gift of the gab,” he said. “I wish I could talk like a book. Tell Ma Poole that I’ll be up for brek at eight.”

  Leaving the Depot, Bony walked rapidly along the main street. Beyond the station, already eight or nine wheat trucks awaited admission to the wheat stack now daily growing steadily higher. A large sheet of white paper bearing roughly printed letters in red ink, pinned to the notice board outside the post office, attracted the detective’s attention, and, reading it, he was informed that the officers of the local branch of the Wheat Farmers’ Protection Association desired the attendance of every member at the meeting to be held at the Burracoppin Hall the following Saturday evening. Mick Landon’s neat signature was appended as the secretary.

  Now a little less hurriedly, Bony went on his way, his gaze fixed reflectively upon the ground. Next Saturday night Landon would be in Burracoppin at that meeting. Would Mrs Loftus accompany him? Mrs Loftus was a member of the Association, Bony knew. She would have a vote. Probably she would accompany Landon. And if Mrs Loftus and Landon attended the meeting it seemed certain that Miss Waldron would go with them, for Miss Waldron would be nervous of remaining alone at the farm after what had occurred there.

  “You are quite an expert needlewoman, Miss Jelly,” Bony said when, after tea, Lucy and he were sitting on the veranda and Hurley was helping Sunflower with the washing-up in the kitchen.

  “Yes. I am supposed to be very good,” Lucy admitted with low laughter. “Do you like this?”

  Bony’s gaze travelled swiftly from the ample figure of Mrs Saunders, then gallantly watering a single rose-tree with water ladled from a petrol-tin bucket, to the silk-worked table centre, almost finished, which lay spread over the girl’s lap. The sun was about to set. The still air throbbed with the incessant hum of the tireless harvester machines.

  “It is certainly very beautifully done,” he told her with an engaging smile. “It must take long and constant practice to be able to do it so well.”

  “I have almost finished it. Would you like to guess for whom it is intended for a gift?”

  “For Eric?”

  “Oh no! One does not give a man a table centre.”

  “Then it must be for Mrs Saunders. If not she, then I give up.”

  “It is not for dear Mrs Saunders, either. I’ll tell you. I am making it for your wife.”

  “For Marie?”

  “Yes. Will she not like it?”

  “Like it!” he echoed. “Why, of course she will like it. We have nothing so beautiful as that in our home, because one could not buy such exquisite work in a factory-filled shop. Like it! My wife will adore it. Indeed, it is very kind of you.”

  Bony’s blue eyes were lit by the bright flame of his mind. He was glad that he had promised this young woman to remove the shadow over her life, and his sentimental heart beat at its nearness to her sweet presence.

  “I am glad you think she will like it. I wanted to show my appreciation of your kindness to us, and this centre will remind you of us when you are at home in Queensland. Will that be soon?”

  “It will, I think, be soon.”

  Pensively he stared out over the vast extent of cleared flat country to the far-distant mottled-green sand rise with the clumps of ragged trees along its summit. The proposed gift touched him as nothing ever had done. She was saying:

  “May I ask when you expect to leave? You see, I would like to know so that I can finish this for you to take with you.”

  “I shall be staying in Burracoppin until I have learned the reason of your father’s strange absences, and that will be shortly after he receives the next telegram calling him away. Meanwhile, would you like to join me in a little adventure?”

  Lucy Jelly regarded him with wide, steady eyes.

  “Tell me about it,” she said invitingly.

  “I am badly in need of the services of a good needleworker,” he began slowly. “Unfortunately, I can use a needle only in a crude way. You remember I told you how your father was shot, and I know you have been wondering what I was doing near the Loftus homestead to see it done. Actually, long before the Loftus people returned from the dance, I thoroughly examined the interior of the house. There I found several most interesting things and came across a little mystery which has been bothering me. I found that a small opening had been made in the flock mattress of Mrs Loftus’s bed, an object pushed among the flock, and the opening most neatly sewed up again.

  “Badly
as I wanted to know what the mattress concealed, I dared not cut the stitches because I knew that I never could sew up the slit precisely as Mrs Loftus had done. Of course I could not make another opening, for she would discover it, and it was important that she did not know I had been there.

  “Later I thought of you. You could sew the slit again exactly as Mrs Loftus had done after I had cut her stitches and found what she had hidden there.”

  “But whatever would she say?” asked Lucy.

  “She would not know. We would go there next Saturday night if she and her sister and Mick Landon go to the farmers’ meeting at Burracoppin, which I think most likely. They should be away at least three hours, so that we would have plenty of time.”

  “Is it important that you should know what she has hidden?”

  “Were it not I would not dream of asking you to assist me.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. I am sorry I asked you that.” For three seconds she paused, biting her nether lip. Then, with sudden resolution, she added: “I’ll help you. What number cotton did she use? Was it white cotton?”

  “What number?”

  “Yes. Sewing cotton is numbered according to its size and strength. Very likely, as the mattress is of strong material, she would have used a forty cotton. It was cotton, wasn’t it? It was not white thread?”

  “Inside a lady’s room I am an utter fool. Still, I believe Mrs Loftus used white cotton and not thread. But the number of the cotton...”

  “In that case I will take several different cottons, several sizes of needles, and some white thread because some thread is very like cotton.”

  “But surely Mrs Loftus would not note a change in the number of the cotton she used?” Bony asked, aghast at his exposure of his lack of knowledge.

  “It would be quite likely for a clever woman to do so, and Mrs Loftus is a very clever woman. If you want her work copied, let us make a good copy. What time shall we go?”