Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

“The town dam mill was barred to you because an employee of the Shire Council lives in a hut there, and, moreover, this man is in the habit of returning to his hut at all hours of the night from Merino.

“The best mill of the three for your purpose was at Sandy Flat. There a station employee rarely lived. And so you often visited Sandy Flat and released the mill, then climbed to the tank stand to be as near as possible to the fan wheel so that you could watch it whirling round and round in the moonlight.

“Sandy Flat, however, is three miles away, and so you hit on the idea of riding there and back on a horse, a car or truck being out of the question by reason of its engine noise. You could not very well keep a horse yourself, because your son would get to know the purpose of it, and so you approached the Rev. Llewellyn James and you told him a story of romance.

“You told him that you wished to pay court to Mrs Sutherland and that you feared the reaction this would have upon your son. You suggested to the reverend gentleman that he should have a horse to use in his parish work as a change from the somewhat old car provided by his parishioners. You offered to buy a good horse for him, and to pay the feed bills and the stabling charges provided that he would permit you to use the horse at night to pay secret court to Mrs Sutherland. Mr James demurred. He didn’t like the idea of riding a horse as a car demanded less exertion. So you offered to pay him a pound a week honorarium if he would assist you in your ambitions of the heart. Mr James accepted and finally grew to like horse riding.

“And so, Jason, you would leave home late at night, take the horse from Mr Fanning’s yard, having also taken Mr Fanning into your confidence, and ride out to Sandy Flat, where you would release the mill regardless of whether the tank was full of water or not.”

Mr Jason listened with stony calmness.

“Watching windmills is not an illegal act, Jason, but one cannot approve, however, of your action in putting into the minds of two men the thought that Mrs Sutherland was receiving secret court from you. That is of no concern to the police, but it most certainly should have been the concern of the Rev. Mr James. The little scene between him and you at the graveside of the swagman put me slightly out of gear, as your son might well say.

“The employment by Mr Leylan of a stockman at Sandy Flat stopped your visits to the mill there, and there was no other that you could visit with safety on moonlit nights. Kendall, the man employed at Sandy Flat, appeared to be satisfied with his home, and that urge in your mind to watch the revolving fans of a windmill became steadily stronger and stronger-until finally you decided that Kendall would have to be removed.

“It is, of course, impossible for me to follow the process of your planning to remove Kendall, but it is fairly certain that an objective of even greater importance than killing Kendall was to give the hut an evil reputation so that Kendall would have no successor. The killing would have to be done inside the hut, or in its vicinity, not here in Merino or elsewhere in the bush.

“Your greatest obstacle lay in the natural conditions at Sandy Flat. All about the place, outward from it for a mean distance of half a mile, the ground was covered with fine sand. There were no patches of wire grass, noclaypans, over which you could pass without leaving tracks for even the police to see if the wind did not erase them. How to achieve that passing over such ground without leaving tracks? As Longfellow wrote, how ‘Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen’?”

Into the dark eyes gazing so steadily and so solemnly at Bony flashed an expression of pain, and for the first time Mr Jason interrupted:

“It was not Longfellow who wrote that line, but Shakespeare,” he said.

Bony bowed his head, saying:

“Thank you for correcting me, Jason. No doubt that line was in your mind when you planned to murder George Kendall. Anyway, you found that by wrapping strips of hessian about your feet your footmarks were made infinitely more difficult to discern.

“You may correct me again later on, but it appears that the time Kendall was killed was not quite of your own choosing. You knew that Kendall came to town on the evening of the social dance, and that he had booked in for the night at the hotel. Here was an opportunity for windmill gazing. Late that evening you rode from Merino on the horse presumably belonging to Mr James. You tethered the horse well back in the scrub and walked in your hessian-covered feet to the mill, and when your passion had been satiated you walked back to your horse.

“You may correct me on this point, too, later. When you got back to your horse you found Kendall quietly waiting for the horse’s rider, quite probably thinking that the rider of that tethered horse was engaged in a spot of sheep stealing. You were discovered.

“The wind was blowing strongly enough to wipe out the faint imprints made by your hessian-covered feet, and you knew that a windy night was essential. And so you killed Kendall with a billet of scrub wood, and you carried his body to the hut.

“Then you discovered that the body had bled during its journey on your back, and, properly to stage the killing inside the hut, you killed one of the ration sheep in the near-by pen, drained its blood into a basin, and then spattered the sheep’s blood over the floor about the dead man’s head.”

Mr Jason’s hands moved slightly.

“In such a case as you present, Inspector, I would not impose a fine of five shillings,” he said. “It is based entirely on assumption prompted by imagination.”

Bony’s brows rose a fraction, and he said, with no trace of triumph or exaltation in his voice:

“Indeed, it is not so, Jason. You were seen to carry the body into the hut. You were seen to kill the ration sheep and drain its blood into a basin which you took into the hut. You were seen to skin and dress the sheep’s carcass and to hang it in the meat safe so that the police would assume the killing of the sheep had been done by Kendall before he left for Merino.”

Mr Jason leaned forward over the desk and stared at Bony.

“Who saw me?” he demanded, and over the face of Constable Gleeson spread a mirthless grin.

“Why, the man you strangled with a strip of hessian,” Bony replied with feigned astonishment that such a question should be asked. “Unfortunately for you, that man was a genuinesundowner, not an ordinary stockman looking for work. Put yourself in his place. From some point of concealment, probably on the far side of the meat house, he saw you coming with Kendall slung over your shoulder. He watched you go to the pen and kill the sheep and bring back its blood in a basin. He saw you enter the hut with the basin of blood, saw you come out again, saw you go back to the pen, and then saw you come to the meat house carrying the skinned carcass of the sheep. He noted the hessian covering about your feet. It was quite simple for him to put two and two together.

“After you had gone, did he walk to Merino and report the matter to the police? No. Did he travel to a station homestead and report there? Of course not. That class of men hate the police and would not be drawn into a murder case on any account. He argued thus, however. He argued that it might be many days before the body was discovered, and during that period one of his ownclass might happen along and blunder into the scene of the murder. And so, in loyalty to his own class, he drew on the door of the hut a warning to keep away.”

Bony paused for Mr Jason to comment.

“Thatsundowner didn’t hate the practice of blackmail like he hated the police. He wrote to you and arranged that you hand him money or place money for him to obtain, perhaps, underneath the hut. You forestalled him by reaching the hut before he did, carefully wiping out your own faint tracks with a flail, and when he entered the hut you-but you know all that happened, for it was related to you when you held the inquest. Matches? Certainly. The pistol which the constable has just removed from your person you obtained from the body of the man you strangled and then hanged.”