Arthur Upfield - Man of Two Tribes

“Welcome, Inspector Bonaparte, into our exclusive Association. I publicly announce your elevation to a Fellowship of the Released Murderers’ Institute.”

A Body for Bony

“IAPPRECIATE the honour,” Bony said gravely. “I have many questions which must wait, and doubtless you have many to ask, but first things first. The body. Take me to it.”

“Better arrest thistwirp,” offered Joseph Riddell. “He hated Igor Mitski ’coshis voice reminded him of his missus. Didn’t like Igor singing to us, an’ Igor was better than the blasted wireless singers too.” Maddoch again shouted his innocence, and when Riddell once more taunted him the girl broke in with:

“That will be all from you, Riddell. You’re taking a back seat from now on. You’ve no proof that Clifford killed Mitski, so keep your silly big mouth closed.”

Bony swiftly intervened.

“It would seem that all of you are murderers, that all but one have been convicted and released on licence. Other than not having periodically reported, you are of no official interest to me. But you say you have a dead man on yourhands, that he was killed, and you infer that one of you killed him. Where is the body of this man?”

“Jenks! The lamp,” said the doctor, adding to Bony: “Jenks is the custodian of the lamps and the oil, which is in short supply.”

The ex-sailor struck a match and applied it to the wick of a hurricane lamp. The doctor took it from him and led the way into the tunnel. They could walk upright, and the floor was level. They passed on the left a branch tunnel from which issued a faint moaning sound. The main tunnel entered a chamber, the limits of which the power of the lamp failed to reach. Bony was conducted past a huge boulder which had fallen from the roof, and over a clear space. Havant stopped, and his lamp revealed a man lying on his chest, and a narrow stream of blood extending into the darkness. He was dressed in working clothes, rough and durable.

“He hasn’t been moved?” he asked the doctor.

“No. I lifted his head by the hair. The frontal bone has been crushed. Death was obvious, and before I could examine him further, my attention was distracted by the arrival of your dog.”

“Turn him over, someone.”

Jenks did so, and the woman cried out.

Bony estimated that the dead man was close to six feet in height. The body was reasonably well nourished, the face clean-shaven, and the iron-grey hair clipped short.

“With what was he killed?” asked Bony.

“We don’t know,” the girl answered.“Probably with a piece of stone.”

“We haven’t looked for the weapon yet,” volunteered Brennan.

“Bring more lights, if you have them. We’ll look for it now.”

Jenks departed, and Bony watched his departing figure in the tunnel against the daylight at its far end. He asked who found the body, and Mark Brennan said he had found it about half an hour before they discovered the arrival of Bony. When asked under what circumstances, he went on:

“I was with Myra looking for her scarf in the passage leading to the air shaft. We heard Igor shout out something like ‘Do not! Do not!’ Then he shouted once, ‘Help!’ I left Myra and ran with our lamp to see what was wrong. I collided with Doctor Havant just as I reached the main passage, and he said he’d been in what we call the hall, so Igor wasn’t there. We came here, and met Riddell carrying a lamp and Maddoch was with him.”

“Leaves Jenks. What about Jenks?”

“Jenks just turned up to hunt for Mitski with us,” replied Brennan. “We looked around here, and I happened to find the body. It’s a pretty large place as you can see.”

Bony couldn’t see until Jenks arrived with three hurricane lamps. The four lamps standing on the boulder enabled him then to see the extremities of this cavern.

“It is obvious, Inspector, that one of us is a murderer,” tritely observed Dr. Havant.

“Any other passages leading off this place?”

“One that ends in a cul-de-sac. Another goes down to what we call the Jeweller’s Shop, and from there on to what I named Fiddler’sLeap .”

“Other than those present, there are no more of you?”

“No. One of us killed Mitski with a rock.”

“Howd’you know it was a rock?”

“Because he was killed with a blunt instrument. We have no blunt instruments other than rocks ranging from small pebbles to the size of this boulder. We have knives, table knives. Mitski wasn’t killed with a table knife.”

“In your opinion, Doctor, would the blunt instrument have blood on it?”

“The answer is difficult, Inspector. Probably not if only the one blow was struck; most likely if more than one blow.”

Bony bade them stand back, and he spent several minutes looking for the weapon. The floor was entirely clean of debris, and on his mentioning it, he was informed that all debris had long since been removed to the short passage which ended in a cul-de-sac.

“We will return to the place where we met,” he said, and the obliging Doctor Havant explained that that had been named the hall.

The return to ‘the hall’ was welcomed by Bony who felt distinctly uneasy in that eerie cavern. They stood watching him, waiting, as he sat on the pack-saddle and fell to making the inevitable cigarette. Their behaviour was unlike normal people, who would have sought information and explanation, and he wondered what this attitude could mean. He recognised the wisdom of delaying satisfaction of his own curiosity.

“Makeyourselves easy,” he said. “I’ll talk first, and before I begin one of you answer a question. Are you being kept here against your will?”

All spoke at once, and he waved them to silence. That some of them had been imprisoned here for a long time was evidenced by their faces, and a child could have deduced that they would not have remained had they found a way of escape.

“You know who I am, and what I represent,” he began. “You know that I am a tracker of men, but you don’t know my personal views on crime and criminals.

“I did not frame the laws. Officially, I am not concerned whether a law is sound or futile. Officially, I am not concerned with whatever penalty is imposed for breaking a law. Personally, as a private citizen, I have an abhorrence of murder, the crime which concerns us. To make myself clear, there is another point.

“Each of you men committed a crime and was released when constituted authority chose to think you had been sufficiently punished. Because you did not comply with certain conditions I am able, officially, to prove that you were forcibly prevented from compliance. That isn’t a rash statement, for I believe I have the key to the reason behind this enforced detention, if you do not know it. Do you?”

“We do not, Inspector,” Havant said.

“We’d ruddy well like to,” snorted Riddell.

“We’ll pass it for the moment,” Bony continued. “I was assigned to find a missing woman known as Myra Thomas, who disappeared from a train. The Police held nothing against her, following her acquittal, but the Police were, and are, interested in her because she is a missing person. You are all missing persons, and it is the duty of every policeman to search for such.

“I set out to look for Myra Thomas, and eventually was led to this place by the aid of several clues, including her scarf. Having located her, I would have freed you also, had I not been found wanting in wariness. As I see it now, I am one with you, a prisoner. I have no doubt that you have tried many times to find a way to freedom, and with the introduction of my fresh mind, we may solve this problem.

“Now for the crux of future relations between you and me. If anything happened to me, and eventually you found a way of escape from this hole, you would never find your way back to civilisation, even if you were not hunted down by the persons who brought you here, or by their agents. We are now more than two hundred miles from the nearest homestead, and in the most relentlessly hostile country in Australia.