Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

“The padre knows everyone, including all blackguards. Please pardon me. Mrs Marshall, allow me to present to you an old friend, the Rev. Lawton-Stanley.”

Mrs Marshall was delighted. She found herself wanting to talk, and Bony had gently to interpose himself.

“And this young lady is an especial and a very dear friend of mine. Rose Marie…permit me to present to you the Rev. Lawton-Stanley.”

Lawton-Stanley did not stoop to conquer. He had done that even before he noticed the little girl. He stooped to take her hand and to smile into her face, and he said softly, as though she only was to hear:

“Rose Marie! I am happy to meet you, Rose Marie, happy, indeed, to meet any of Bony’s friends. You remind me of someone I cannot now recall. Did I hear you singing during the service?”

“I hope so. I tried to sing loud enough,” she replied.

“I thought I heard you. Keep on singing, Rose Marie. Sing all the day through. Open your chest and sing hard. And then you will grow up to be a wonderful woman.”

Rose Marie nodded, for she was unable to speak. She heard him chatting with her elders, heard her mother issue the invitation to supper, and heard the acceptance. And then she realized that she was walking alone with Miss Leylan’s Frank, walking up the street behind her mother and Miss Leylan and Bony, and Miss Leylan’s Frank was asking her all kinds of questions.

When she retired to go to bed, she gravely wished each one a good night, gathered into her arms Edith and Thomas, walked out through the doorway happily tired. By that time Bony had made himself known to Edith Leylan, and they had discussed the country within the Wattle Creek boundary east of the Walls of China; water holes, shapes and areas of paddocks, and the various classes of timber and feed. And then, when covert glances were being directed to the clock, Bony put a direct question to Lawton-Stanley:

“What is your opinion of Mr James as a preacher?”

“I am inclined to think there is room for improvement.”

“He interests me,” Bony stated. “I find him quite a study. His heart is not in his work, and that would not be due entirely to a weak heart. Do you think it not impossible that he is an impostor?”

“Why do you consider such a thing?” countered the bush evangelist.

“From the time he entered the pulpit this evening to the time he vacated it,” Bony said slowly. “Mr James did not utter a single word from his own mind. Did you not observe how he read everything; everything from hymn announcements to the benediction?”

“Yes, I did note that.”

Lawton-Stanley’s face registered sadness.

“Are you interested in James… professionally?”

Bony chuckled.

“I am interested in everybody, professionally,” he said. “Now, after all this shying away, let me have your opinion of Mr James.”

Lawton-Stanley looked up and into the blue eyes of the half-caste, to see in them and on the dark face no trace of the chuckle. From that he understood that Bony had made no idle request.

“My opinion of him hasn’t altered from what it was seven or eight years ago when he and his wife and I were students in the same theological college,” he said. “James just managed to scrape through and gain ordination. He probably wouldn’t have survived to be ordained had it not been for Lucy Meredith. She was studying to become a deaconess, and she was brilliant. How James was ever recommended by his church minister and elders for admission to the college always has beaten me. All he ever wanted was an easy and respectable job, a job requiring no effort, or very little, for a small return.

“Anyway, Lucy Meredith married him, married a lazy dog wanting only ease, even ease with hunger. From the beginning of his call she always wrote all his sermons and prepared every part of his service.”

“And chops the wood for the kitchen stove,” added Edith Leylan. “I’ve seen her.”

“And cleans his boots too,” added Mrs Marshall. “Rose Marie saw her at it one day.”

“Do you think he has a weak heart?” Bony asked.

“I do not,” firmly replied Lawton-Stanley. “He has never suffered from anything worse than muscular inactivity.” They could see the pain on the evangelist’s fine face. He added: “Would you mind if we do not discuss him further? You see, I don’t like thinking ill of anyone.”

“Very well, Padre,” Bony assented quickly. “You can safely leave me to do all the ill thinking. I revel in it.”

Bony’s Philosophy of Crime

ON THE LAST DAY of Bony’s incarceration he and Marshall were seated after lunch on the rear veranda of the station house. The sergeant had remarked on Bony’s apparent inactivity as a detective whilst imprisoned, and he expressed the hope that after this day his superior might get down to solid work. He had spoken in the casual fashion of the bushman, and Bony would be the last to take umbrage at what the big man said.

“It’s like this, Marshall,” he explained. “There is a much greater detective than I, one with whom I have allied myself to a very great degree. I refer to Providence.

“It doesn’t matter two hoots whether the form of the evil is a murder or an unjustly harsh act. Evil is always countered by God, or Good, or Providence, or whatever name you might choose to give it. You and I know, as well as other sensible and experienced men, that Evil never blesses, and the evildoer never prospers. I recognized that eternal law years ago… which is why I am an investigator of crime and not a super-master of crime.

“Why should I rush about and demand of every Tom, Dick and Harry the answer to this and that question? Why, when by merely keeping open my eyes and my ears and exercising ordinary common gumption the murderer of George Kendall and that swagman will surely reveal himself as the sting-ray in mynetful of fishes?”

“Your general idea may be all right, Bony, but while you are waiting for Providence to lend a hand another poor devil may be murdered.”

“I grant you the contention,”agreed Bony, “but I doubt that still another murder would be prevented by rushing about and cross-questioning everyone in the district. Think now. Investigation of a common passion-and-bash murder is almost always elementary. But this Kendall affair is not a common passion-and-bash murder. I have never thought it, and do not now. Did I not tell you that this case on which we are engaged is in the Jack-the-Ripper class? The man we seek is cold and unimpassioned. He thinks and plans, and gives nothing away.

“Now look at me. I am an emotional man. I have a soft heart. I am naturally a kindly man. If I permitted emotion and kindliness to control me I would never unearth a criminal. I never allow emotion or even humanitarian thoughts to sway me in the slightest whilst I am investigating a murder. I was not emotionally concerned because Kendall was murdered, and old Bennett probably frightened to death before he could be murdered, and that swagman strangled and hanged.

“To me the three deaths here are pointers in a puzzle. I would be regretful if another person were murdered by the man we are after, but I would not be perturbed and would not accept it as a personal affront. I would not blame myself for not having caught the murderer before he committed the fresh crime. Not a bit of it. I proceed calmly and without undue haste, gathering clues and proofs with each successive murder, until I have enough.”

“Sounds all right,” agreed the sergeant doubtfully.

“Itis all right,” Bony asserted. “I always win. People say what a jolly fine fellow Bony is, how sagacious. Actually all I do is to wait for Providence to toss the clues into my open hands. I do little but wait… and watch… and observe Providence doing the work for me.”