Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“Very neat,” agreed Yoti. “Didn’t Bulford tell you who rang him that afternoon after his wife went out?”

“I did not ask him about that,” replied Bony. “It is stated in the Official Summary that Bulford said no one rang him that afternoon after his wife left.”

“All right, but how did second person know first person was talking to Bulford on the telephone? There’s no call-box in sight of that door.”

“From outside the door the second person could hear the manager at the parlour telephone.” Bony glanced at his watch. “H’m! Almost eleven. Time Policewoman McGorr reported. Remarkable woman, that.”

“Brains, or to look at?”

“She thinks all the infants were stolen because they were neglected. Could be right.”

“Neglected! How the hell does she make that out?”

“Neglected while mother drinks gin in a pub. Neglected while mother gallivants about to plonk parties… plonk being Alice McGorr’s designation of a sherry party. Neglected baby left to cook to rear so that mother can rush off to plonk party. Neglected baby left alone while mother goes out to the library, or to meet a boy friend. Something of a pattern, isn’t there?”

“Could be,” Yoti conceded.

“As we progress other patterns will emerge,” Bony continued. “Timeitself will provide coincidences joining events, coincidences which, it is said, never occur in real police work.”

“Don’t agree. I can name a few for a start.”

“Of course. I was thinking of my biographer’s difficulties with the critics… Ah, sounds like Alice McGorr.”

Alice appeared in the doorway, came striding to the desk. She was carrying that straw hat. The frilly collar of her blouse was torn, and when she tossed the hat upon the desk they saw that something tragic had happened to the crown. Something had happened, too, to her brown eyes, and there was a mark on her negligent chin which could be the beginning of a bruise. Bony placed the chair Essen had vacated, and she flopped into it as though her legs were wired.

“Did you meet with an accident?” Bony asked.

“An incident, not an accident,” she snorted. “I thought I was being tailed before I reached Betty Morse’s house. When we were walking to theDelphs ’ place I was sure. He was still tailing when we left theDelphs, and he was hanging on when I left Betty at her house. So I waited in the dark under a tree. As he went by I grabbed him and marched him to the nearest street light for a look at him. I didn’t like him, and he wouldn’t say what he was after.”

“Awkward, Alice. Did you break anything?”

“Had to,” Alice confessed. “He was twice my weight, and he fell hard. I heard him complaining to a man that his arm was broken, he had a crick in his neck, a sort of concussion and a sprained ankle.”

Bony Visits the Sick

BEFOREBREAKFASTthe next morning Bony made additional notes covering the results of Alice McGorr’s visit to the Delph’s cook. These notes were supplementary rather than additions to the build-up of the background against which five infants had been stolen and a mother of one murdered.

Having breakfasted, he rang Essen to pass the order to Alice that she was not to report to him until after lunch, when they would interview Mrs Coutts concerning the abduction of her baby, and at nine o’clock he set out for the Public Hospital to chat with the man who had tailed Alice the previous evening.

Permittinghimself to hope that the shadowing of Betty Morse and Alice was evidence of the first move made by his opponents, Bony sauntered along Main Street as the shops were being opened, and then took the cross-street to reach the river boulevard and the hospital. A hot north wind was threatening to raise the dust, and to bring the indefinable scent of the Inland which was to become so significant. The river gums already were spraying their perfume of eucalyptus.

Following an interview with the Matron, awardsman conducted him to a single bed ward.

There was nothing clear-cut about the patient, a veritable League of Nations having subscribed to his pedigree. Bony dissected him in a flash of time: two parts Australian aborigine, three parts Malay, one part Chinese, three parts European, and one part Brazilian gorilla.

The name on the hospital chart above the head of the bed was Bertrand Marcus Clark, which might have annoyed that pioneer Australian author.

The bed was a heavy ironone, and a pair of handcuffs anchored the patient’s left foot. Otherwise he was as comfortable as medical science could make him, despite the right foot being in plaster, the left arm in splints, and the top of the cranium being bandaged. Small dark eyes regarded the visitor balefully, and Bony kept out of reach of the uninjured right arm.

“How are you this morning?” Bony gravely asked.

“What’s it to do with you?”

“I…er represent the police,” Bony said soothingly. “It would seem that you erred in your assessment of the situation in which you ultimately found yourself last night. Foot-cuffed to the bed, too.”

“I didn’t do no ’arm,” vowed Bertrand Marcus Clark, adding a rider, however.“Only being in town after sundown. Met an old bloke I knew years ago. Camped down the river a bit, he was, and I went with him for a bit of a yabber. He had a bottle of gin, and that sort of mucked up the time.

“When I got going from the Settlement, it was dark, but not dark enough to go straight through the town. I ’ad to keep to quiet streets, not wanting to be grabbed by the police. Then all of a sudden three blokes jumped me. I clouted one flat and booted another in the stomach, but the last one got me arm over a shoulder and snapped the bone. Then I got slogged in the ankle, and me head bashed in.”

“What a fight, Bertrand. What happened then?”

“Passed out, of course. Icomes to and there’s a bloke bending over me what lives in the nearest house. The ambulance comes, and Constable Essen gets rough ’cosI’m in town after dark. When I won’t tellno lies about it, he gets properly nasty, and I remembers I still got one good fist left.”

“Quite a beano, Bertrand,” sympathised Bony. “Still, you’ll receive only six months. One for resisting arrest, one for bad language, another for being in town after sunset, and three for following two young women with intent to molest. We could, in fact, work it up for three years.”

“I’m tellingyou’s the truth. Don’t I look like theflamin ’ truth?”

“You look terrible to me,” admitted Bony. “Did I not know thetruth, I would believe the number of your assailants was thirty, not three. The picture you present this morning must read: Aboriginal thug, intending to molest defenceless white girl, inadvertently mistook his mark, as intended victim is expert in the art of judo and the Australian Science of Boots-and-All-In. Too bad… for you, Bertrand.”

The patient was able to turn his face to the wall, and kept it there.

“Further, Bertrand, you are a liar, as was proved later last night when Constable Essen found no friend camped downriver at the place you said you visited him and enjoyed his hospitality. Gin you said it was which delayed you. I’m glad you chose gin, Bertrand. Never indulge in plonk. Leave plonk to the elite of the allegedly superior race.”

The patient continued to gaze at the blank wall.

“For you the prospect is indeed gloomy,” Bony went on. “And yet, in your grave extremity, you have a friend. None other than Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte… otherwise me. Come clean and tell me why you tailed that innocent young woman, and I will persuade her to withdraw the charges against you of assault, battery, doing grievous bodily harm, and making a hell of a bad mistake. Then you would have only to spend one week in the jug for being in town between sunset and sunrise.”