Arthur Upfield: Murder Must Wait

“We’ll begin at the beginning… your brother-in-law.”

Passing to the porch and so into the brilliant sunlight, Yoti addressed himself to Thring.

“You live next door, Mr Thring. When did you see Mrs Rockcliff last?”

“Matter of fact, several days ago,” replied the neighbour. “My wife last saw her about eight on Monday evening. Mrs Rockcliff was then going out.”

“Without the baby?”

“She never took the baby out with her at night.”

“Just left it in the house… alone?”

“Yes. That’s what made us worry. Yesterday morning Mrs Rockcliff didn’t take in her milk and paper, and didn’t collect her mail from the box. When more milk was left this morning, and more papers, and another letter, we got concerned about the baby in case Mrs Rockcliff hadn’t come home on Monday night. I knocked at the front door several times this morning. I went round the back and knocked again. I didn’t think to try if the front door was unlocked.”

“Mrs Rockcliff never left the baby with anyone when she went out?”

“Not that we know of, and the wife’s a pretty observant woman. In fact, she’s said more than once it was a shame to leave the infant all alone in the house at night.”

A car slid to a halt beyond the knot of people gathered at the street gate.

“How old was the baby?”

“Eleven weeks.”

“You were on speaking terms with the mother, I suppose?”

“No more than that,” Thring replied, adding: “Exceptingthat I’ve done her garden now and then. We know the baby’s age because we knew when Mrs Rockcliff went to hospital and when she came home.”

A blind man could have told by the footsteps on the cement path that a doctor was walking it. Dr Nott was tall, large and dark. He wore no hat, and the leather bag appeared as having been tormented by rats.

“Spot of bother, Sergeant?” he surmised as though commenting on the weather.

“Mrs Rockcliff, Doctor, seems to be dead.”

“H’m! And the baby?”

“No baby. Crib’s empty. Looks crook to me.”

“It will be crook… if the baby has been abducted. What’ll it be? The fifth?”

Yoti went into the house, followed by the doctor. Essen planted himself in the doorway, and the constable stolidly regarded Mr Thring and continued to say nothing.

At the bedroom, Yoti stepped aside to permit Nott to enter. He watched the doctor release the spring blinds, turn to regard the cot. It seemed that the baby was of prior importance even to Doctor Nott, for he came back to the cot to peer into it and at the feeding bottle on the low table, having no apparent interest in the dead woman. He gained Yoti’s approval by touching nothing… till he came to examine the body. Presently he said:

“Lower the blinds.”

Yoti nodded, waited for the blinds to reduce the starkness of Death, withdrew before the doctor and crossed the hall to the lounge. The doctor thumped his bag on the polished table, sat on the table-edge and produced cigarette-case and lighter.

“Been dead, I’d guess, about thirty-six hours,” he stated.“Takes it back to last Monday night… sometime. Hit with something blunt and heavy. Could be a hammer, or the point of a walking-stick handle.”

“Was done as she entered the bedroom, I suppose?”

“Looks like it. Merely the one blow was enough.”

“Know anything about her?”

“A little. Came to me early in December. Wanted to book in at the hospital. Managed it all right, although she’d left it very late. She told me she had come up from Melbourne after her husband had been killed in a road accident.”

“Why come to Mitford, d’you know?”

“Yes. Said she thought the dry conditions here would be better for her lungs. I agreed when I found that one was touched.”

“Where did she live in Melbourne?”

“I don’t know that, Yoti. She did say that her doctor was in practice in Glen Iris. Doctor Allan Browner.”

“You contact him about her?”

“No reason to. Can’t you get her background?”

“Haven’t tried so far. Neighbours aren’t helpful.” Their eyes clashed. “If the baby isn’t located we’re going to have our backs bent.”

“Can’t go on,” Nott said, sadly, and Yoti fancied he saw disapproval on the large white face. “Whatd’youthink they’re stealing babies for?”

“I’ve been asking myself that one. Can understand a woman pinching a baby because she had to have one, but no woman wanting a baby would pinch five, and commit murder. And don’t sit there being superior. You ought to know why a lunatic pinches babies, lunatics being up your street, not mine.”

The table rocked when Nott slid off.

“I can make four guesses, one for every infant,” he said, his dark eyes wide and hard. “And each guess would make you shiver, tough as you have to be. You’ll have the CID crowd out here again, I suppose?”

“Possibly, depends.” Nott saw relief come to Yoti. “They’re sending a detective-inspector to look into these baby cases, a man who boasts he has never fallen down on a job. He can have this one and welcome. As young George used to tell me when he couldn’t do his home lessons, I’ve ‘had’ it.”

“You have my sympathy, Yoti. Well, I’ll be seeing you. I’ll do the p.m. tonight. About nine do?”

“Yes.”

The doctor took up his tattered bag. Footsteps in the hall halted his first step to the door. He looked at Yoti, and knew they were in agreement about the footsteps not being made by First Constable Essen, or one of Yoti’s constables.

The sunlight shimmered upon the table, flowed across the linoleum, to frame in the illumined doorway a grey-suited figure carrying a velour hat. It was like looking at a framed portrait. They could see the faint stripe in the grey cloth of the creased trousers and the creaseless double-breasted coat, the sheen of the maroon-coloured tie about the spotless collar. They noted the straight black hair parted low to the left, the dark complexion of the face, the white teeth, and the whimsical smile. They could not evade the sea-blue eyes, or side-track the feeling that everything about themselves, inside and out, was being registered by those blue eyes.

“What the devil…!” thought Dr Nott.

Although Sergeant Yoti had never before seen this man, he experienced swift release from depression.

‘Am I Correct?’

“SERGEANTYOTI? I am Inspector Bonaparte.”

Dr Nott, the practised observer, noted the evidence of physical and mental virility, how the light gleamed on the black hair like newly broken coal. Yoti, who stood with military stiffness, said:

“Glad to see you, sir. This is Doctor Nott.”

Nott inclined his head, continuing to be intrigued by a name.

“The constable at the Station told me where to find you. Homicide?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh! Of little concern to me… unless…” The blue eyes were abruptly masked.“Unless the absence of an infant is in question.”

“The baby is missing,” Yoti said. “It could be the Fifth Baby.”

“Ah!” The grey velour was dropped on the table, andfascinated, Dr Nott watched slim fingers make the worst cigarette he had ever seen. “Could this murder be assumed to be an effect of the theft of a fifth infant?”

“Assumed, yes,” replied Yoti.

“Then the murder is within the assignment given me to locate the thief or thieves of several infants. Do you agree?”

The senior police officer stationed at Mitford hesitated before nodding assent, for, being a civil servant by training and by nature, it was natural to avoid wherever possible the awful bugbear-responsibility.

“I am pleased you are willing to concede so much,” Bony went on, and puffed out the match. “Fourkidnappings, and not a lead gained by the CID, and now the fifth… assumed… supported by a murder which, also assumed, wasn’t premeditated and thus should give a dozen leads. Having one lead in hand, I require but one more. You are about to leave, Doctor? Please delay a moment until I learn the meagre details from Sergeant Yoti.”