Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“I see what you mean. Well, she was not unlike Mrs Peel, or Mrs Nott, the doctor’s wife, or even Mrs Marlo-Jones… shortish, stoutish, quick in movement. But it wasn’t one of those women.”

“Why are you so definite?”

“Because that woman was wearing bright blue, so unkind to the elderly woman, Inspector. The other women I have mentioned usually wear pastel colours. And when they forget their age they wear dizzyflorals.”

“H’m!” Bony rose to go. “The baby was only seven weeks old. Was he a healthy child?”

“He never had a day’s illness,” replied Mrs Coutts, remaining seated. “He hardly ever cried, and he slept well, too. That’s why I didn’t bother about him immediately after lunch that day.”

Mrs Coutts nodded to Alice, and, on glancing at Alice, Bony found her nodding in reply… or in sympathy. Alice departed, and Mrs Coutts hastened to say:

“I find my writing so very absorbing, Inspector. I become quite lost in it, and very often the characters take full possession of me.”

“It must be absorbing.”

“Yes. I hope to succeed as a novelist. I’ve written several short stories, you know. I gained first prize at our Mitford Literary Society.”

“Congratulations! How many have you had published?”

“None, as yet, Inspector. Our President, JamesNyall, the well-known Australian novelist, says I have to master the art of writing down to please editors. One has to learn to commercialise one’s talents. Not that I really want to do that, but I must be practical. My husband, who is very practical, insists that if a story isn’t acceptable to an editor it’s worth nothing. So silly of him.”

“Perhaps one oughtn’t to be too practical in any of the arts,” Bony suavely agreed. “Er… The Mitford Literary Society, by the way. Do Mrs Peel and Mrs Nott and Mrs Marlo-Jones belong?”

“No. Mrs Marlo-Jones has given talks, but, as she says, she’s far too busy to undertake another interest.”

“You have met these ladies, socially?”

“Oh yes. At sherryparties, and that sort of thing.”

“During the vital period of time, after your husband returned to his office and you found the baby missing, were you called to the telephone?”

“No. I mightn’t have heard it if it did ring. I was barely conscious of the thunder.”

“What led you to think your husband had taken the infant with him to the office?”

Shutters fell before the green eyes, and Mrs Coutts almost hurriedly pushed back her chair and rose from the table. Alice appeared in the doorway, and Mrs Coutts looked at her and would have spoken had not Bony remained with obvious expectancy of being answered.

“Oh, I don’t really know, Inspector. Sometimes my husband teases me about my writing. Says it takes me away from everything.”

“Including the baby?”

“Of course not.”The green eyes were hardening. “He came in for lunch one day when the child was whimpering and I was in the kitchen. I couldn’t leave what I was doing, preparing something, and he accused me of neglecting the baby and said he’d take it with him to the office and let his fool of a secretary mind it. More in fun than not, naturally.”

“Quite.” Bony expressed the hope of ultimately recovering the child, and Mrs Courts accompanied them to the front gate. Again in Main Street, he said:

“Well, give, Alice.”

“Filthy house,” Alice stated as though in the witness-box. “You said I wasn’t to ask the woman questions, and I didn’t… out loud. She’s balmy on her writing, and everything else rots. She didn’t give a damn about the baby, and she deserved to lose it. I know the type. Baby probably died of sheer neglect, and she buried it in the garden.”

“What a prognostication! Why were you and Mrs Coutts making faces at each other?”

“Oh that! I was making excuses so that I could see the rest of her house.”

“So that now we know…”

“The pattern, Bony. Five babies kidnapped. Five tiny babies. Five boy babies. Five healthy babies. Five neglected babies. Sounds like a horrible nursery rhyme,” Alice recited grimly. “Three mothers in the same social set: two mothers outside. Three mothers drink sherry, one mother drinks gin, and one is thought to drink nothing worse than tea.”

“It’s possible that the infants were not chosen for abduction because they were superficially neglected by the mothers, but because that superficial neglect made easy the abductions.”

“You don’t think that, Bony.”

“No, I do not believe it, because the abduction from the bank was not easy, and the abduction from the pram outside the shop and the pram outside the hotel was decidedly risky. Let us go into the Library and make a few discoveries about Mrs Rockcliff.”

“Has it occurred to you that the abductions began after Mrs Rockcliff came to Mitford?” Alice asked when they stood in the portico of the Grecian front of the Municipal Library.

“Yes, I have considered that point. Now, leave me to interview the librarian. If Essen is still here, interest yourself in the robbery.”

Essen was no longer in the building, which, being a museum as well as a library, entertained Alice. For a while they remained together, examining cases of aboriginal relics, photographic sections of the Murray River, the bridge nearby, of the local fruit and wine industries. There were models of the paddle-wheel steamers, now almost extinct, models of water-wheels, pictures in oils, etchings, water-colours, and displays of native weapons.

For a few moments, Bony studied a large-scale map of the district, showing Mitford to be the hub of radiating roads. Including the river, there were sixteen exits from the town, and through one of those exits five small infants had surely passed.

Other than a young woman at a bench rebinding a book, and an elderly man seated within a glass-fronted office, the place was empty. Bony strolled into the Reference Room, where he found a Who’s Who and looked up Marlo-Jones. Born 1881, making him 71. DSc, Adelaide. Dip. Anthropology. Research Fellow in Anthropology, Adelaide. H’m! Well up in his field. Publications: ‘Ceremonial Exchange Cycle of theWarramunga Nation’. Married Elizabeth Wise. No mention of children. Recreations: gardening and walking. Knowledgeable old bean. Full of sting at 71. Would live beyond a hundred.

Bony spent a further ten minutes with the famous, looking up one who ought to have been hanged four years previously, three who should be serving gaol sentences, and one concerning whom he was slightly doubtful. Then he studied the insect specimens in glass cases, and wondered who had classified the case ofmollusca found in the Darling and Murray Rivers Basin. Alice was looking at a journal in the Reading Room when he entered the glass-fronted office.

“I am Detective-Inspector Bonaparte,” he said to the scholarly-looking man, and as usual noted the flash of astonishment, disbelief, caution, reserve. “You may wish to telephone to Sergeant Yoti. I am investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs Rockcliff, and I understand she was a regular borrower from this library.”

Interest now predominated in the pale grey eyes.

“Yes, Inspector Bonaparte, Mrs Rockcliff was a regular borrower. In fact, there are three of her books not yet returned to us. They are, presumably, still at her house.”

“Do you happen to know her taste in literature? One of the books at her house is a biography, and two are classics.”

“I do know that her taste wasn’t the usual run of the mill,” replied the librarian. “She liked biographies, having a special preference for world-famous authors. Her novels could be only the best. I was decidedly grieved about her.”

“Was she interested in writing, or any of the arts?”