Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

Sergeant Marshall came driving out to the street in his car, and he waved to Mr Jason to proceed, but Mr Jason was adamant. He remained standing, posed as though gazing upon the figure of grief recumbent on the roof of his hearse, but actually glaring at the sergeant, who drove his car in a circle to bring it to the rear of the hearse where the bearers got in with him.

Again Mr Jason surveyed the throng. Then he turned to the front, raised his hand with the tall hat clenched in it, nudged young Jason with his foot, and before he could sit down nearly fell over the seat when the driver viciously let in the clutch and accelerated down the street at unseemly speed.

Just beyond the township the minister’s car shot out to the street from the parsonage, thence to keep a respectable distance to avoid much of the dust.

“Young Tom’s making no bones about this planting,” observed the yardman. “The old bloke will be rampant mad time we hit the cemetery. He likes to enjoy his funerals.”

“He enjoyed giving me ten days,” Bony said lightly.

“Takes ’imselfseriously, does old Jason,” asserted Hudson. “Not a bad fault, either. Used to be an actor, once, in his young days. Tom once told me that his old man still has albums full of press notices about his acting, and every Sunday evening he reads ’emall through. Funny old bird, all right.”

“Got a lot of good points,” remarked the sergeant. “Remember how he helped Ma Lockyer and her kids when her husband was rolled on by his horse?”

“Yeh. And that never come out till long afterwards, did it? An’ I understand that he acted as nurse for old Doc Scott when Boozer Harris nearly died that time withwhiskeyitis. I was working onTintira then. Iain’t saying anything against old Jason.”

Presently the hearse reduced speed and entered the cemetery and drew up beside the grave dug that morning. Mr Jason dismounted, carrying his hat in the crook of an arm. They removed the coffin from the hearse whilst he uttered little cries in a soft voice:

“Steady now! Slowly does it! Honour the dead! The dead know all things and we nothing. Gently now!”

The hot north wind teased his black hair and played on his moustache like invisible fingers on a harp’s strings. His white face emphasized the dark eyes which gleamed with the anger his voice did not betray. When he stepped back Mr James stepped forward.

The wind also played with the unruly brown hair of Rev. Llewellyn James, and with the skirt of his crepe gown. The light blue eyes had not failed to notice Mr Jason’s anger, the sergeant’s stiff military bearing, the unassuming figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the loose stance of thebushmen bearers.

He produced a book, coughed, began to read the burial service in his singsong nasal voice, and Bony wondered why a man should adopt such a voice when conducting a religious service. Mr James read rapidly. He made no pauses between sentences. It might have been he who had promised old Sinclair his truck by five o’clock.

Mr Jason placed his top hat on the ground, and upon it placed a stone to keep it there. He removed his frock coat, took up one of the shovels and assisted his son to fill in the grave. The minister joined the policeman and began to ask questions concerning the dead man, to which Marshall returned evasive answers.

“Give us the shovel, Mr Jason,” suggested Harry Hudson. “I’m used to hard yakka.” And the filling in proceeded apace, young Jason working with evident haste to get the job done Mr Jason came to stand with the sergeant and the minister, anger still smouldering in his eyes.

“Will you relieve my son, Ted?” he asked the yardman. “We have a pressing job to get out.”

“Righto, Mr Jason. Give us your shovel, Tom.”

Young Tom ungraciously flung down his tool. The yardman grinned without mirth. The young man ambled to the hearse, started its engine, and roared away out to the road and up the gradient towards the town.

“Your son needs a little tighter rein, Mr Jason,” remarked the minister undiplomatically.

“There are more than myson in this district, Mr James, who need to have faults corrected.”

“Meaning, Mr Jason?”

“That people who live in glass houses should not throw stones, Mr. James,” replied Mr Jason. “Pray, do not let us wrangle here among the dead.”

“But, Mr Jason-”

“Please!” cried Mr Jason commandingly.

On the homeward journey Mr Jason sat beside the sergeant, and Bony occupied the rear seat with the yardman and Harry Hudson. They left the cemetery without speaking, but when on the track the sergeant said conversationally:

“We all seem to have been kept pretty busy lately.”

“To be sure,” responded Mr Jason.“Three deaths and three burials all within five weeks, and that after several years with no deaths. The vagaries of life are often mystifying. As Longfellow wrote:

“There is a Reaper whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.”

“Death is certainly a reaper,” murmured Marshall, and Mr Jason stretched forth his right hand and quoted with rich articulation:“ ‘O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?’ ”

“I think we could do with a drink,” announced the yardman, sotto voce. “The day’s getting warm. Give mea coupler deep-nosers, an’ I’ll recite ‘The Passing of DanMcTavish ’ in eighteen verses and a bit.”

They all went into the hotel-even Sergeant Marshall and Bony, the jailbird. And everyone at the bar delayed drinking until Mr Jason had loaded his pipe, lit it, and had inhaled with tremendous satisfaction. No longer was he angry, but to Mr Watson’s great disappointment he did not beat his previous record.

The Battle of Pros and Cons

“WE SUFFER from a number of disadvantages not experienced by crime investigators in a city,” Bony said in that quiet, unassuming voice of his. He had completed the making of half a dozen cigarettes, and now he glanced up at Sergeant Marshall, who was seated on the far side of the office desk. The door was closed and the windows were closed, too, although the evening was warm.

“One of those disadvantages,” he went on, “is seldom recognized by the unthinking. The unthinking immediately rush to the conclusion that a killer is more easily discoverable in a small community than in a large one, whereas in fact the smaller the community in which a killer has operated the greater the difficulty in locating him-that is, if he has a brain. Fortunately you and I have opposed ourselves to a killer having a brain, and, also fortunately, we have to locate him in a small community. Those two facts give us cause for self-congratulation, eh?”

“Well, if you know where we are or what it’s all about, I don’t,” grumbled Marshall. “And I can foresee trouble in that letter of yours toD.H. Q. telling ’emin most uncivil-service-like manner to keep out.”

Bony leaned back in his chair and chuckled.

“My dear man, we don’t bother aboutD.H. Q. when we’ve got such a splendid job like this on our hands. Don’t worry so. We can’t help little Mr Watson telegraphing the account of the hanging to his papers, to be followed by the certainty of city reporters barging in and messing around when we want everything to go on quietly. And if Pro BonoPublico writes to the local press and demands to know why the killing is not being investigated by a Redman or two from Sydney, well, we must shut our ears to the clamour. It might force me out into the open through an announcement that the great Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on the job, but that is a fence we will take when it is reached. This is my case and yours, and no one is going to be allowed to interfere with it or with us.”