Arthur Upfield: Death of a Swagman

Again she nodded, and he saw that she was struggling to remember something.

“Don’t worry your head about anything now,” he urged her.“Later on will do, when you write to me after you receive my letter.”

She persisted. Then she smiled, saying:

“I know. I heard young Mr Jason tell the garage cat that you were a funny kind of man, like him, looked down on by everyone. But I don’t look down on you, Bony. I love you… like young Mr Jason.”

“Oh, I forgot, Rose Marie. Young Mr Jason is waiting to see you. Shall I tell him? Yes? Very well! Good-bye, and thank you for giving me afternoon tea in the lockup with your beautiful tea set with the blue stripes round the edge.”

She smiled at him, wonderfully, when he drew back and motioned young Jason forward. At the door he turned to see the young man on his knees beside the bed, on which he had laid the very large dolls, Thomas and Edith, brought from the station by Bony.

Out in the hall Bony shook hands with Mrs Sutherland and Dr Scott. On the veranda he shook hands with the Rev. Lawton-Stanley and Edith Leylan. On the sidewalk he shook hands with Mrs James and asked after her husband. Mrs James told him that the Rev. Llewellyn James was not at all well, that he had a violent headache following all the excitement of the preceding day. She herself was quite well, and she thanked him again for cutting the wood for her.

Straight as a ramrod, Constable Gleeson stood beside Marshall’s car, in which the sergeant sat waiting at the wheel.

“Good-bye, Gleeson,” Bony said, offering his hand. “I shall not forget you in my report. All the best.”

“All the best to you too, sir,” replied Gleeson.

“Thank you. And don’t you ever forget that I am Bony to my friends.”

Bony got in beside Marshall, who was to drive him to the railway at Ivanhoe. He had made his adieu to Mrs Marshall, and now saw her hurrying toward them from the police station. Arriving a little breathlessly, she passed into his hands a box, saying in a whisper:

“Just a little snack for the road.”

Like his namesake, he smiled at her and pinched her cheek. And then the car was moving down the street. Many of the people on the sidewalks waved to him. The car slid off the macadamized roadway on to the natural earth. Ahead of them lay the mighty Walls of China, grandly impervious to the schemes and the hopes, the hates and the loves of little human beings.

“There are some women who are utterly hopeless,” remarked Bony.

“Referring to…?” inquired Marshall.

“Mrs Llewellyn James.”