Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“My name’s Fred Wilmot. What’s yours?”

“Napoleon Bonaparte. What are you doing here?”

“I’m the tracker, the car washer, and the wood chopper. What are you doing here?”

The black eyes were insolent, the full mouth pouted with subdued anger. Black eyes encountering blue eyes began to falter and finally looked down at the barrow, anywhere to avoid those blue eyes. He was a well-conditioned man in his early twenties, handsome by aboriginal standards. The open neck of the blue shirt revealed the cicatrices of the full initiated male, a fact arousing interest in Bony, whosaid:

“I am a detective-inspector, Fred Wilmot… in other words, a big-feller policeman. Where’s your camp?”

No answer. The voice which had been purely accented drew ice from thin air.

“Where is your camp?”

“Up the river.”

“How far?”

“Three miles and a bit.”

“Which side?”

“This side.”

“You stay here at night or go back to camp?”

“Go back. I got a bike.”

“And how long have you been working for Sergeant Yoti?”

“This time since last Tuesday. Time before about three months. I beenaway for a spell.”

“Oh! How many people in your camp?”

Black eyes now lifted to encounter blue eyes, and the blue eyes were no longer extraordinarily large and menacing.

“Round about seventy to eighty,” replied Fred. “It’s a Mission Station. The minister is Mr Beamer, Methodist.”

“I’ve heard of him,” purred Bony, and produced his case containing tailor-mades. Fred accepted a smoke, and the ice began to melt, but still he tried to avoid as much as possible the blue eyes. He began to lift the barrow handles when Bony’s next question stopped him.

“How long have you been at the Mission?”

“ ’Boutfive years. The Ole Man’s there and the rest of us. We’re Darling Riverabos, from up Menindee way. You been to Menindee?”

“Several times. I knew old Pluto.”

“He’s dead. Died long time ago.”

“So I heard. Well, I see you have a job to do before sundown. You can carry on.”

Black eyes were swiftly shuttered, and Bony felt amusement that the little lesson in discipline wasn’t appreciated. Too much money, and too much spoiling by government and societies interested in aboriginal welfare, produced too many FrederickWilmots.

Bony Waits

THEROOMoccupied by Bony at the police residence possessed the advantage of ready access from the garden. It was small, plainly furnished, and, being on the south side, cool and airy. Formerly it had been the room occupied by young George Yoti now in the Traffic Branch, Sydney, but Bony was urged to make full use of the desk and, did he wish, young George’s portable typewriter and the shelves of novels.

Bony, showered and changed, was seated at the desk when from the garden door Yoti asked if he might come in. He was welcomed and offered young George’s rocking chair.

“Still half an hour to dinner,” he said. “How’s your day gone?”

“Full of promise,” replied Bony, swinging sideways and crooking a leg over the chair arm.“Haven’t achieved much other than atmosphere and backgrounds.”

“Your Alice McGorr any good?”

“She pleases me, yes. I sent her home with Essen and, I think, she departed with rebellion in her heart, so I rang Essen’s house and gave her an assignment for this evening. As Essen was just leaving, I didn’t delay him. Did he raise anything, d’youknow?”

“Yes and no. He visited all the banks and none had an account in Mrs Rockcliff’s name. I went over to see the Postmaster, he and I being sort of friends and belonging to the same Lodge, and he promised to question his staff and examine his records to find if Mrs Rockcliff had an account at the Commonwealth Bank or received money through the Post Office. Said he would drop over this evening to give us the results.

“Returning to Essen, he visited the woman’s butcher, milkman and baker, and also the grocer. She ran monthly accounts, and there’s a peculiarity about this which might be significant. She paid all her monthly accounts on the 12th of the month… in cash. Seems that she drew money, or was paid money, regularly once amonth, doesn’t it?”

“It would seem so,” agreed Bony.“Anything on her associations here?”

“Nothing, or next to it. She didn’t belong to any women’s guild, or to any sports club, or reading circle. She was a regular borrower from the Municipal Library, and seems to have spent a good deal of her time in the reading room. If she had a friend or friends here, Essen can’t locate any as yet. His sister and her husband say she never had visitors excepting the Rev Baxter, and Baxter says she went to church every Sunday evening, but would not join in church activities. He christened the child at church, but she never took the child there afterwards.”

“What about the agent who let the house to her… references?”

“The boss, named Martin, wasn’t at the office this afternoon, but the clerk told Essen the house was let to Mrs Rockcliff on a year’s lease, and she paid three months rent in advance in lieu of a reference. She took the house on October 12th. Before living there she stayed at the River Hotel, and according to the Lodgers’ Book she arrived at that hotel on October 9th. In a taxi. We dug up the driver of the taxi, and he says she stopped him in Main Street about eleven in the morning and asked him to recommend a hotel. That’s as far back in her history as we’ve gone.”

“H’m! Eleven in the morning. Does that time coincide with the arrival of a train or plane?”

“No. The first train gets in at 2.20 pm, and the first plane arrives at 9.45 am. Seems likely that she came to Mitford by car. Police at Albury up-river and Mildura down-river are going into that angle. Course, she could have come down from a station up north, or from a farm down south. Could have arrived here in a hired car or a friend’s car.”

The old pipe had gone out, and Yoti applied another match, the while regarding Bony with moody eyes, and suddenly Bony smiled and then watched the Sergeant’s face register annoyance.

“We should keep in mind salient facts: some material, others abstract,” he said. “Before I came to Mitford four babies were abducted, and the four crimes were thoroughly investigated. About the time I arrived here you discovered a fifth abduction and a murder. Nothing emerged from the first four baby abductions to give us a lead in our investigation of the fifth. We start with nothing relative to those five babies, yet we must combine those five abductions and attack the problems as one.

“The person or persons who abducted those five children live here in Mitford. They move about as we do. They are, naturally, greatly interested in what we may be doing. Almost certainly they know by now that Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is in charge, and they will bespecially interested in me. Without doubt, if one person is responsible for those abductions, he, or she, is extremely versatile. When we go back in criminal investigation, we find that circumstances, coincidence, and what may be termed luck have been vital to the success of the investigators or of the criminal. To date, the baby-thief has had the luck, and the investigators have missed out. So what have we?

“A person, acting alone or in collaboration with others, believing he, or she, is extremely clever, but, none the less, must be a little anxious to know what D-I Napoleon Bonaparte is doing and is likely to do. As I’ve often said, if a criminal would be still after the commission of his crime, he would more often escape retribution, but, fortunately for law and order, he cannot be still.