Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“Catch your burglar?” Bony asked.

“No. What a fool thing to achieve. Slab of rock four by five feet and about three inches thick. Got in through a back window, easing the catch with a knife. Left glove smudges on the window glass. One smudge on the inside of the window tallies with the glove print we found under Mrs Rockcliff’s bed, the mended glove.”

“I hate to express doubt, but are you sure?”

“Camera proves it,” answered the enormously satisfied Essen.

“Go on,” commanded Bony. “You have my attention, I assure you.”

“There was more than two in this robbery, but how many I don’t know. The windows open over a cement path encircling the entire building. There must have been more than two because the object stolen was carried out via the back door, round the side of the building to the front, where they must have had a utility or truck waiting.”

“Right on Main Street! In full glare of street lights!”

“Street lights are switched off at one am. Constable Robins made his last round at 2.15 am. There was then no vehicle outside the Library. Near-by residents don’t recall hearing a motor arrive or start up, but as Main Street is on a slight slope, the vehicle could have coasted from the west end, stopped at the Library, and then pushed off down to the other end. It could have travelled a full half mile without the engine running.

“What is certain is that they went to the Library to pinch that rock drawing, and that one of them was the woman who crept under Mrs Rockcliff’s bed at the time she was murdered.”

“The librarian told me he doesn’t know the meaning of the drawing, and, further, that old Professor Marlo-Jones doesn’t know what it means, either,” Bony added. “It would appear that the meaning has no significance, that it was stolen for its value as a museum piece, or stolen at the behest of an unscrupulous collector. Marlo-Jones may be able to help. He might know of such a collector. Being busy with the burglary, you were unable to interview Mrs Ecks on the lines I suggested?”

“I was, but the Sergeant agreed to let Robins do it. Found out that when Mrs Ecks’s baby was pinched there were altogether four prams, as we know. Of the five babies outside the pub, Mrs Ecks’s baby was the only boy.”

“Good. Substantive evidence that the abductor wanted only male children.” Bony made a note. “I think we ought to do something about the hospital, see that every precaution is taken that a baby boy or two isn’t stolen from the infants’ ward. There were male twins born there last night.”

“Be hell and damnation if those twins were pinched,” Essen said. “Whatd’youreckon is behind these abductions? I don’t get it.”

“You will, eventually. Patience, Essen, patience. The enemy is on the move. They made a slip when putting Mr Bertrand Marcus Clark to tail Alice. They… now, as Alice would say, what’s brewing?”

Voices, deep and loud, drew near. Heavy feet clomped on the cement outside the door, and then the door was filled by a mighty man having short, straight, grey hair, a ponderous paunch, and the feet of a dancer. After him came Yoti.

Essen jumped to attention. Alice, observing the movement, also stood. Bony stepped forward, a smile on his face, but no smile in his eyes.

“Why, it’s Superintendent Canno, and all the way from Sydney.”

“Good day, Bonaparte. How are you?”

“Excellent. But, being among friends, Bony to you. Permit me to present my cousin, Alice McGorr, Miss McGorr is studying my methods. Hopes to set up a private school for third-rate detectives.”

“Haw! How do, Miss McGorr?” Canno sank gracefully into Essen’s chair. Yoti said something and went out. Alice and Bony sat. And Canno added: “Friend of mine, name of Bolt, mentioned something about you assisting Bony. You must find him very trying at times. Everyone else does.”

“I find him always original, and so nothing else matters,” replied Alice, who then thought that association with Bony had destroyed all discipline in her. “Shall I go along and ask Mrs Yoti for some tea?”

The Chief of the Sydney CID chuckled like rumbling thunder.

“Damn good idea, Miss McGorr. And I’m not going to argue with you over our mutual friend.” He stood when Alice got up, chuckled again, and sat when she had gone.

“Thatlass has a hell of a reputation,” he announced. “What are you up to with her, Bony?”

Bony washed his hands, saying:

“You ask her that, Super, and then find out how it feels to be bounced out of the room and on the path outside. Anyway, I am pleased to be seeing you. Why come?”

“Just for the pleasure of seeing you.”Canno loaded a large pipe and applied a match, Bony waiting. Essen, now seated, waiting as he had not been dismissed. “Had to run down to Albury, so decided to come over here to see how you’re going. How are you going?”

“I am satisfied.”

“Yes, I know that, Bony. But what progress?”

“Decidedly more and decidedly faster than that made on three cases undertaken by your best men, Super.”

“Yes, but… Look, Bony, my ‘Commish’ is getting windy over press opinion sent from here. They aren’tso hostile to us over this Rockcliff murder as over the baby series. I know Janes and all his men fell down, but we have public opinion to cope with. The ‘Commish’ said last night if there’s another baby bust up in Mitford we’ll all be kicked out of our jobs.”

“And what does your Chief Commissioner suggest is to be done about it?”

“That every man jack of us rushto Mitford and tear the town to shreds.”

“Do you agree with your Chief Commissioner?”

“Well, I think we ought…”

“Relax, Super.” Bony slowly rolled a cigarette, and the large CID Chief smoked a shade too vigorously, thereby betraying perturbation. “I will run over with you these Summaries, and then say that which will enable you to tell your Chief Commissioner to take a running jump at himself. Tell me, first, could you or Janes, or any other senior officer in your Department, look at a six-weeks’-old baby in a pram and tell its sex?”

Canno pursed his lips and spurted a thin shaft of smoke at the ceiling.

“Go on, answer me,” urged Bony. “You’re the father of a family of six. Janes has a son and a daughter. Both familymen, like me. You answer my question.”

Superintendent Canno slowly complied.

“I don’t think I could say with certainty. I’m no chicken sexer.”

“Of course you couldn’t. Yet what happened? Among your experts there wasn’t one woman. How, then, could you expect teams of men to dig successfully into this series of abductions? I had Alice McGorr in mind when I accepted this assignment. I want printsphotographed, I call on Essen here who is an expert photographer and who is wasted in a small town like this. And when I want to know about babies, do I ask a policeman? I ask a policewoman.

“Now for these fool Official Summaries. There’s no mention that the other babies outside the pub where Mrs Ecks’s baby was stolen were females, proving that the abductors wanted a male child, as were the babies previously stolen. There’s no mention that the child belonging to Mrs Delph was reared, nursed and minded by the cook while Mrs Delph ran around Mitford attending plonk parties. There is no mention in the relative Summary that the telephone in the manager’s office at the Olympic Bank is an old-fashioned contraption nailed to a wall, and not one theory put forward concerning the theft of the child from that bank.

“So I could go on and on, but to do so would weary you with the crass stupidity of your teams of alleged experts. I’ve been assigned to this case only three days, and you want the murderer and the abductors handed in right away. Essen, step outside and make sure your tracker isn’t listening. Not once but fifty times I’ve been given an assignment when the great white investigators have fallen on their big fat… yet I’m to be bullied into producing the criminal from a hat within three days. That’s why I cock asnook at you now, at your Commissioner, at my own, at every detective officer in the country. You can take it or leave it. I will produce the murderer of Mrs Rockcliff, and the abductor of her baby, when it suits me, and with or without your leave.”