Bony and the Black Virgin

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “He came to the Lake Jane homestead and there he found Carl Brandt. Carl Brandt killed him, and, with his own and Dickson’s swags packed on his bike, he left Lake Jane and followed the same course southward as taken by Dickson. Getting this far, someone murdered him and took over the swags and the bike, and, if we assume the same southerly course is followed by Brandt’s murderer, he would eventually arrive at Broken Hill, and then proceed still southerly to Adelaide. Relay race, with death waiting at the end of each section.”

  “The way you put it makes it look likely,” Pointer agreed.

  “Carl Brandt loved dogs, remember. It appears doubtful that he would have left the Lake Jane dogs chained to their kennels, and the fowls locked in their yard without water. Had he murdered Dickson he would not have left the dogs chained, to prevent them following him. Being himself murdered, we presume that he left Lake Jane in panic haste, being menaced by the person who killed Dickson, and who caught up with him in this desolate place—to go on his escape route with the swags and Brandt’s bike. How is that?”

  “Reasonable enough,” agreed Pointer. “It’s what the police thought.”

  “It is what the murderer of those two men wished the police to think. What about that theory?”

  The big man studied Bony’s profile.

  “Could be nearer the bullseye,” he said. “I have a theory, too. Brandt loved dogs. He had two. When he went to the Lake Jane job he left those dogs with me, saying he’d have enough to do carrying meat from sheep that perished at Rudder’s Well for the Lake Jane dogs. Supposing he expected to meet Dickson at Lake Jane, and didn’t want his own dogs with him when he had to make a bolt for it? Supposing that, after he killed Dickson, a pal of Dickson’s arrived and chased him over here and killed him?”

  “Feasible. As feasible as the others, Jim. It is an extremely tantalizing problem—my reason for consenting to accept this assignment. How far, direct, are we from Lake Jane?”

  “Eighteen miles, near enough.”

  “Rough country?”

  “Yes. Lot of drift sand now. We’d find it rougher in the ute. Be sandbogged a lot. Anyway, the blacks and police prospected all that country for Brandt’s bike and things.”

  “Easier going after the rain comes?”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  “To proceed, as we think Brandt intended, from here, it would be twenty-one miles to Jorkin’s Soak on the road to Broken Hill. Let’s return to your homestead. I think we’ll run over to Lake Jane tomorrow.”

  Again following the defined track between these watering places, Bony said:

  “When those men were killed the weather was cool and windy. Long before that, Brandt was working here pumping water, and doubtless he spent some of his time shooting foxes and kangaroos for their skins. Long told me that he wasn’t a horseman, and not a particularly good bushman. D’you think he was good enough, however, to find his way across country to Blazer’s Dam?”

  “Well, he must have been good enough, mustn’t he?”

  “Answer my question, please.”

  “Good enough at that time of year, but not now. The mirages now would have slewed him; they’d slew better men than he was. Why do you ask that?”

  “To make the picture a little clearer. It doesn’t, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t, Bony. I don’t like being beat. I was born in Wilcannia. I went to school there before going down to Adelaide to top off. I’ve been working in this back country ever since, and I think I could claim to know every sandhill on Fort Deakin and neighbouring properties. I’ve worried over this mystery ever since it happened seven months ago, and I don’t forget other mysteries before my time which have never been solved. If you solve this one, you’ll be a wizard.”

  “Time is on my side, Jim. What Time has covered, Time will uncover. Men have disappeared, many men, since the whites took over this Land. Sandhills and sandridges have blown away to reveal a man’s grave. Stockmen have ridden through a belt scrub on a hundred occasions, and find on the hundred and first a skeleton which had been lying there for decades.

  “Call me a primitive, and I shall not mind. I believe in the Being which rules this Land, who watches from behind every tree and every sandhill. Respect it, and one lives to grow old. Ignore it, flout it, and it will first send you mad and then slay you. Every aborigine knows and respects it.

  “This Spirit of the Land is subject to many moods. It can be benign, jealous, vengeful, and it has a sense of humour. It assisted the murderers of Dickson and Brandt by giving them plenty of time before the first body was discovered, and more time before the second lay exposed. Doubtless it has been sniggering at the efforts of every hurrying policeman, and of every white man who is alien to itself, although familiar with the physical contours of the Land it rules.... It will not snigger at me, but it will try my patience, my human patience, because I am with it and of it through my maternal forebears.”

  Following this peroration, Jim Pointer drove well past Bore Ten before he said:

  “You and Robin should get along. She talks like that sometimes. I’ve often caught her staring at a tree or sitting on a dune and staring into space. Her mind then isn’t in her head. It’s away to billy-oh. You must see some of her paintings.”

  “I am looking forward to doing so. Is she happy here? Young women these days crave for the bright lights and social gaiety.”

  “We don’t think it’s the bright lights she wants, and there are times when I don’t think it’s unhappiness in love that’s her trouble. She and Eric Downer thought much of each other once, but the drought has affected him badly.” Pointer paused, and Bony did not interrupt his thoughts. “Robin, as you will have judged, is a strong-minded wench. She’s been used to bossing it over the hands and the aborigines. What with that, and because I’m easy-going, and the Boss is always very nice to us all, I believe that she has the idea that all men are still little boys. It could be that you might correct her on that point.”

  “It is possible, Jim. I like being placed on the defensive now and then. Exercises the mind.”

  “I don’t. I’ve so many things to think about.”

  “This Eric Downer. D’you like him?”

  “Very much. We all do. He’s got guts, and he has brains. But—well, you see, old Downer sent him to a top-class public school in Melbourne, and he was about to enter the University and study for a medical degree when his mother died, and he gave it all up to come home and work with the old man.”

  “He regrets having made that sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice?”

  “I don’t think so. What I do think has happened to him is that he resents this drought which has put us all back on our haunches. Having had to abandon the ambition to become a famous doctor, he set out with a new ambition—to become a famous pastoralist. Behind it was the pride in his school. On occasions he still wears the old school blazer, and in his room are all the trophies and bits and pieces which a feller saves but usually puts away and looks at only now and then. Get my drift?”

  “Surely,” replied Bony. “Perhaps it’s the little boy in him which attracts Robin.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “She could be very good for him, Jim. Many men are happy for being mothered. And, as we know, many truly great men were made great by the women they married. I am one of them. When Marie, my wife, says ‘Do this’ or ‘Do that’, I always obey, choosing to take the line of least resistance.”

  “You! I don’t believe, it. You’re not like me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then we’re both liars.”

  “You may be right,” Bony laughed. “What I do think about your Robin and Eric Downer, from what you say of him, is that they have supreme confidence in themselves but none at all in the world about them. They’ll grow out of that, if they retain common sense, and I think your Robin certainly has that. This is their first experience of a real drought, and when it is well behind them, they’ll be chastened and much wiser
.”

  Later, Pointer said, obviously referring to Bony’s last remark:

  “Yes, a drought is a good chastener.”

  They reached L’Albert in time for afternoon tea, and when gathered on the south veranda, Pointer suggested that Robin show the visitor her pictures.

  “Some of them are proper horrors, Bony,” her mother said. “But all are really well done. The Convent Sisters wanted Robin to continue to study, but ... I think I know why. Robins finds painting pictures too easy. Do you know anything about painting?”

  “About painting, no,” Bony replied. “But when I pay the piper I choose the tune.”

  “I should be indignant, but I’m not,” declared Robin. “You’ll find a lot of my stuff you won’t like, Bony, but I’m sure you will understand it. Shall we go now to the Chamber of Horrors?”

  “Yes, of course.” He followed her to the far end of the south veranda, around to the other side of the house, where the veranda had been glassed in and curtains expertly hung to provide essential lighting. Robin drew aside a curtain, and the late afternoon sun flooded a section of the floor. On the rear wall hung pictures as though in a gallery.

  “One of my early efforts,” the girl said quietly, as they stood before a painting of some sugar gums in full prime, and giving shade for a group of horses. The trees and the animals were well drawn, but Bony was doubtful about the application of the colours, and said so.

  “Ah! I like a candid critic,” Robin said. “Now what about this one?”

  There were several other pictures which, Bony decided, were of the same period, but when he stood away to examine the next one, he knew at once that this was much later. It portrayed a man in tattered clothing and running across a barren waste. The risen sun cast his shadow before him, black on the ground; and at its extremity was an open grave. The arms of the man were raised, and the face tilted upwards, as though appealing to the diabolical Beings lurking in the sky. Behind the man stood a blasted tree, in which lived a dark Being whose cheeks were distended and mouth pursed to blow a stream of fire darts into the man’s back. Seen dimly in the trunks of other trees were men or women all masking their eyes with a hand that they might not see.

  Bony’s blue eyes encountered Robin’s dark and inscrutable gaze. His brows rose inquiringly, and she said:

  “The Desert Spirit Slays a Man. This one is titled ‘The Fool’.”

  Instantly Bony was recalled to Brandt’s Wall. The entire background was given to a perpendicular wall of sand, so well executed that it appeared about to curl forward and crash like a wave. One third of the way up scrabbled a rabbit, and its efforts to gain the summit were clearly evidenced by the little avalanche of sand it was creating. At the base of the sandhill a dog was pawing and scratching at the sand, widening the avalanche which surely would carry the rabbit down and down. The omission of extraneous details made this a remarkable work. Bony was lavish with his praise.

  “Ah! And what is this picture supposed to represent, Robin?”

  “‘A Flower Suckling a Bee’. An example of contemporary art.”

  “Then the piper would never be paid for that ... by me.”

  “Many people have no ear for music,” Robin said, a slight smile about her alluring mouth. “They pay for the title.”

  “You should put that idea on canvas and call it ‘Another Fool’. Now I do like this one. You have captured the wind in the trees and caught the sand-smoke atop that sand dune. And this one, too, of the shadows cast by dune and ridge and hump at sundown. What’s on the easel?”

  “You won’t like that, Bony.”

  “Oh! Why?”

  “You might resent the subject on personal grounds. I did it months ago, so there’s nothing personal in it. But I would rather you did not see it.”

  There was a challenge in her eyes he couldn’t fail to miss, and when she was aware that he saw the challenge, she turned casually aside and talked of another picture.

  “May I raise the curtain, or drape, or whatever it is called?”

  “Be it on your own head.”

  Lifting the cloth, he tossed it over the back of the canvas and stood away the better to regard it. In the centre of the picture, extending from foreground to background was what appeared to be a narrow fogbank. To the right was a youth in running gear, trying to reach the fogbank, but held back by gossamer threads held by a group of white people. On the other side a nude aboriginal girl was striving to reach the bank of coloured fog, and she was held back similarly by a group of her people, who had the bodies of animals and birds. The expression on the faces of the boy and girl was of eager anticipation, and on the faces of those restraining them, either horror or despair.

  “You call that?” he asked harshly.

  “Kipling: ‘Never the Twain shall Meet’.”

  “Appropriate. But the East often meets the West.”

  “Physically, of course,” Robin conceded. “Mentally, spiritually, never.”

  “Kipling was wrong. You are, too. The East and the West meet in me. Why did you paint that?”

  She met his steady gaze without flinching.

  “I warned you, remember,” she said. “I did it when a visitor told us the story of a white boy and a black girl who eloped after the parents of both had done everything to stop them. They were found lashed to a tree trunk, the tree between them. They were dead. And no one ever knew whether their murderer was white or black.”

  “I refuse to be depressed, or to believe Kipling. I like best that picture of the wind in the trees and playing with the sand dune.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bony Visits the Downers

  ON JIM POINTER’S braking the utility at the house steps at Lake Jane, John Downer was standing on the veranda and Eric appeared from the machinery shed. The blue heeler recognized Pointer’s smell, but was distinctly suspicious of Bony, until Bony spoke, when he ran ahead of the visitors to the veranda to welcome them properly.

  “This is Inspector Bonaparte, John,” Pointer said. “Out here for a couple of days or a couple of years, depending how he goes. Eric, meet Inspector Bonaparte.”

  “Glad to meet you, Inspector. Better a policeman than a cloudless sky,” returned old Downer. “Come on in. I made a pot of tea soon’s I heard you coming. Great day, if it would rain. How’s things in your part of the country?”

  “No different, worse luck.”

  No matter the time of day or night, the visitor was urged to be seated and plied with something to eat with the tea—and to hell with coffee. Coffee is acceptable only near a pub where it can be drowned with rum or gin.

  “Of course,” assented old John, on Pointer’s suggestion that Bony stay a few days. “We’re living hard these times, but we’ve got plenty of water, as you can see. We just knocked off for a bite to eat when I heard you coming.”

  “Knocked off is right,” drawled Eric, shrewdly examining Inspector Bonaparte. “How are things going with you, Jim?”

  “Same as with you. Nothing doing, Eric. Only hard smoking and waiting for rain. It’ll come soon. The Inspector persuaded Nuggety Jack and Dusty to dig up their rainstones and make it.”

  “They did?” asked John, suddenly serious.

  “They said they’d get to work,” replied Pointer. “We offered ’em a five of tobacco and a case of jam. They’ll ‘sing’ for rain for a week for that.”

  “They’ll ‘sing’ for a year, and then claim they made it,” Eric contemptuously asserted, and his father vociferously backed the aborigines.

  “Tell you what, lad,” he said, sternly. “The abos never start ‘singing’ to their rainstones unless they are pretty sure rain isn’t far away. They’re cunnin’ enough for that.”

  “What’s your opinion, Inspector?” Eric asked, grey eyes slightly appraising. Bony, who was now feeling what he thought was racial hostility behind the probing grey eyes, and remembering what Pointer had said of Eric’s cultivated school background, replied with a counter.

  “I don’t
know a great deal about the aborigines. You see, I was found when a small boy beside my dead mother, under a sandalwood tree. It was said that my mother was killed for giving birth to me. Anyway, I was given over to a Mission, where the Matron reared me and saw to my education. What with High School and the University, followed closely by a police career, I never had the opportunity of joining in sacred tribal rituals I would have had, had my father been black.”

  “Oh, you went to Uni., did you? What Uni., Inspector?”

  “Brisbane.”

  “Lucky fellow! Did you gain a degree?”

  “Bachelor of Arts.”

  “Again, lucky fellow.” Now approval was plain to see on the younger Downer’s face. “Glad to have you with us, I’m sure. We need a bit of brainwashing. In the best sense, of course. How’s everyone at L’Albert, Jim?”

  “The sinus troubles have let up on the wife during the last few days,” answered Pointer. “The Boss said when he brought the Inspector that Mrs Mawby has been pretty crook with sinus, and so’s several others down the river.”

  “I knew something would happen when they put disease into the rabbits,” snorted John. “Stand’s to reason you can’t loose germs and things into animals without us humans getting it. I never heard of anyone having sore eyes and noses and sinuses before they loosed the myxomatosis.”

  “Myxomatosis is non-communicable to humans,” Eric said a little stiffly.

  “That’s what the quacks tell us,” John argued. “I seen Mrs Mawby with it and a couple of kids in Mindee, too. Same symptoms exactly. Don’t you reckon, Jim?”

  “Could be. Still, the stuff did reduce the rabbits before the drought got to work and killed off the lot. But they’ll come again, and then the quacks’ll loose something else on ’em, and we’ll get rotten bones or white blood, and the quacks will blame the fallout.”