Arthur Upfield - Sinister Stones

“Yes, I could do that. Shall I take a specimen?”

“If you please. This case is beginning to provide interest. Might I have your cooperation by keeping your findings from the public?”

The doctor’s assent was gruffly spoken, and to smooth the umbrage Bony urbanely related how he was once inconvenienced by a doctor innocently mentioning a vital fact to an interested party outside police circles. To Irwin he said:

“Call Laidlaw.”

The almost naked transport driver ambled from the fire, where he had been washing his hands after bundling the corpse in blankets and ground-sheet.

“You said, I think, you met no one on your trip from Wyndham to Agar’s Lagoon?”

“No one at all,” averred Sam. “I seen only theBreensdrovin ’ their cattle to the Meat Works. I passed ’emabout twenty miles north of McDonald’s Stand.”

“How far off the track?”

“Less’nhalf a mile. Kimberley and Ezra Breen was in charge… with fourabos.”

“Thanks, Sam. When would they have passed here?”

“Wouldn’t pass here. Their station’s on the far side of this Black Range. They’d hit the Wyndham track north of McDonald’s Stand at the end of the Range, and that’s fifteen miles away.”

“What kind of outfit did they have?”

“Pack-horses and spare hacks.”

“Well, that appears to dispose of theBreens. Call ’Un, please.” To the yardman Bony said: “Give me your attention, ’Un. You know everyone who passes through Agar’s. Who was the last to arrive there from this track?”

“Sam, of course,” was the instant response. “Afore Sam, there was a party ofGov’ment photographers. They went on to Darwin.”

“When did they arrive at Agar’s Lagoon?”

“LastToosdee. Left again onWednesdee.”

“So that they passed this point some time on Tuesday the 15th. Keep that in mind, please. At what time did they arrive at Agar’s Lagoon?”

“ ’Boutsix.”

“Good! Now tell me who was the last to leave Agar’s Lagoon to take this track, and when.”

’Untook time to answer that one.“ ’S’far as I know, it was MrAlverston and two blacks with him. They left Agar’s about seven in the morning in a utility. It was onToosdee morning. TheGov’ment men said they met him at McDonald’s Stand around noon. They boiled the billy and had a bite of scan afore they parted.”

“And as far as you know, no one was on this track after Tuesday, exceptin ’ Sam?”

“That’s right, Inspector.”

“Very well.”Bony noted the sun time. “Fix those two trackers with a meal. I want to put them to work.”

The yardman having departed, Bony questioned Sam.

“Tell me aboutAlverston,” he requested, and the transport driver said thatAlverston was a stationmanager, and that after leaving the photographers he would drive a further forty miles towards Wyndham before taking the turn-off to his station, which lay to the north-east.

“Did you see any smoke signals on your own journey south?”

“Yes,” replied Sam. “Therewas smokes far away to the west of Black Range.”

“How many?”

“Five in a row. I remember therewas three continuous columns and two broken up. Couldn’t read ’em, of course.”

“That was Tuesday morning… not Monday?”

“Tuesday morning, it was. I noticed them smokes before I met theBreens.”

“All right, Sam.”

The trackers had received their meal and had taken it back to Irwin’s utility, and when Bony approached them they stood expectant, their faces indicative of pleasure as though to receive a great honour. Both appeared absurdly incongruous in their greatcoats and heavy boots. They crouched with Bony as with a stick he sketched on the ground the smoke signals described by Sam. He sought confirmation of his own reading of them.

“These feller smokes,” he said, blandly. “What they bin tell you, eh?”

One kicked at a stone and turned as though to admire a view. The other laughed as though to hideembarrassment, and he said:

“P’hapssmoke fellers bintellum policeman him bin shot.”

Bony smiled his triumph, and they laughed in unison. Neither had been near the deadStenhouse. Neither had overheard thatStenhouse had been shot.

Those far-away aborigines living in the very heart of the Kimberley Mountains knew how ConstableStenhouse had died.

Dead Man’s Diary

THEPOLICESTATIONat Agar’s Lagoon had seldom been as busy as on the morning of August 19th. The township was subdued; the pub deserted. The town goats were indifferent, and of them there were a thousand and one.

Inspector Walters, the Senior Police officer in charge of the vast district of the northern third of Western Australia, had arrived from his headquarters at Broome, bringing with him a doctor, and a constable to replaceStenhouse. Walters was wiry and tough, of average height, greying fast, dark of eye and with a back like a drill sergeant’s. He sat stiffly upright at the table in the main office, and in clipped words told Irwin and Constable Clifford to sit down. Bony turned from studying a large-scale map of theKimberleys and took a chair opposite the Senior Officer.

“You have there…? ” he asked politely, arranging tobacco and papers on the table.

“The post-mortem report on ConstableStenhouse, signed by Doctors Mitchell and Morley. Want it read?”

“Please.”

Inspector Walters cleared his throat like a sergeant-major, took up the papers to avoid having to stoop, and read:

“We found on the left side of the chest, three inches from the mid-sternalline between the fourth and fifth ribs, a wound penetrating into the chest wall and passing through right and left ventricles and left atrium of the heart. Behind the arterial wall a greater destruction of tissues occurred involving the left lung, aorta, the oesophagus, spinal muscles and skin. The bony structures were not damaged. On the back of the body was an irregular exit wound about two inches in diameter. Death was instantaneous. The injuries as enumerated are consistent with those caused by a ·32 bullet fired from a high-power rifle at a distance of approximately thirty feet.”

“In layman’s phraseology, the bullet entered the chest, tore the heart to shreds and emerged from the back much enlarged in circumference and much shorter in length,” murmured Bony. “Where the body rested against the seat back there is a hole in the leather made by this forty-four lead bullet. This bullet then penetrated a tin of oil. No other bullet was found among the dead man’sdunnage.”

“A rigged job?” sharply asked Walters.

“To make it appear thatStenhouse was murdered by his tracker, who cleared out with his own swag, the constable’s rifle, and all the cooked food. Morley states that the blood on the seat, the floor of the vehicle and the stones beneath is animal blood.”

“Damned crude,” Walters snapped.

“Very.” Bony applied a match to what might be called a cigarette.“And yet… revealing. The men who murderedStenhouse are devoid of imagination, but shrewd. They were foolish only when having to deal with a problem which suddenly confronted them. None but men faced by an exceptional situation demanding urgent action would have made so many mistakes when setting that stage for murder.”

“Men! Not one man?” asked Irwin, and Walters nodded approval.

“There were several men. There must have been. It’s obvious thatStenhouse and the jeep were moved to the place where Laidlaw found the body. Charlie and Larry failed to back-track the jeep. They failed to find Jacky Musgrave’s tracks. The jeep’s tracks were obliterated, and the killers knew that the absence of the tracker’s prints at the supposed scene of the murder would be in keeping with the set-up, for had he actually killedStenhouse and cleared out, he wouldn’t have left tracks.”