Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“Now, now, Bony old friend,” rumbled Canno. “There’s no argument, only a spot of worry over what the blasted papers are stirring up. All we want to do is to help as much as possible.”

“Then why the devil didn’t you chase the reports on that stuff we sent to your lab? Why haven’t those reports been flown to me if they were too revealing to be telegraphed or telephoned?”

“Surely you have received them?”

“Of course not. I’ll tell you what you can do. Arrange with District Headquarters to let Yoti have another four constables out of uniform, when Yoti will assign two or more to Essen. We have to guard the infants at the hospital, and keep an eye on the babies of fool women who still leave them outside pubs. Was that tracker lounging about outside, Essen?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not agree to my men coming in?” Canno asked.

“Because, Super, your men had their opportunity here, and seemingly preferred to play ‘two-up’.”

“Insulting little pal, aren’t you?”

“I could do better.”

Alice was there with a large tray, which she placed on the desk. She began to arrange plates and cups in their saucers, and Bony went on:

“There isa traffic in babies as you know. Doubtless you have covered all the ins and outs of such traffic where you suspected it, and Bolt will have done the same. Now make your men work, Super, on another angle of the same traffic. You will rememberDavos in Vienna, andLumsdon in Argentina. The same horrors could be practised in our own cities, in a hideout anywhere; even in a supposedly respectable house.”

“What?” Canno almost shouted. A cup clattered, spilled some of its hot tea over the tray. Then Alice was gripping Bony’s shoulders, her hands rigid and her face frozen.

“Davos! You don’t think… Devil worship… black mass… babies being crucified upside down… babies… not here in Australia…”

“Steady, Alice McGorr,” Bony quietly urged, and Alice stood stiffly while one could count four, and then proceeded to serve them with afternoon tea.

The Stolen Masterpiece

OFCOURSE, Bony did the honours, escorting the great man to the airport, and only when he was airborne did Superintendent Canno feel like the mother-in-law who has been diplomatically evacuated.

Alice McGorr was doing something to a hat with needle and cotton when Bony returned to his office-bedroom and immediately asked if the reports had arrived from Sydney. Instead of betraying exasperation with the delay, he left no doubt in his assistant’s mind that he was immensely pleased with life in general.

“We haven’t been working hard enough,” he told Alice when rolling one of his absurd cigarettes. “Great Whitefeller Chief not satisfied with what we, of the lower orders, have done in Mitford.”

Alice tried to smile, gave up the attempt, saying:

“I’m sorry that I made such a fool of myself.”

“But you didn’t, Alice. You supplied just the right touch of drama to my idea put forward to rock the Great Whitefeller Chief on his throne. He was on the verge of knocking me for a sixer so that he could tell his Commissioner that he had ‘fixed that Bony feller’ and the alleged experts could return to Mitford.”

The girl’s hands resting on the desk expressed her mood.

“Do’youreallythink that those tiny babies were done to death like you said?”

“It’s a possibility, Alice. The fact that the five babies were all healthy boys tends to make me uneasy, as does the fact that prior to our coming to Mitford the abductors did not make one mistake. You have been thinking that those babies were stolen for what… and why?”

“To sell, the same as stolen cars,” she replied. “Foundling homes have long waiting lists for adoption and many people can’t wait too long. They’d be too old. Properly organised the racket pays well. There was the case of Nurse Quigly who ran a very private hospital in Melbourne. She was in cahoots with a doctor, and an unmarried girl expecting a baby could have it safely at her hospital, never see the infant, walk out and back to her job. The babies were sold to people aching to adopt one. Quigly and her doctor received as much as five hundred pounds for a baby and never less than fifty pounds.”

“The variation of price dependent on the purse, of course. Would male children fetch more than females?”

“No. The Matrons of the Homes say that as many people want a girl as want a boy.”

“And so we return to the fact that all our five babies were boys. If our baby-thieves were running a racket similar to your Nurse Quigly they would steal easy babies, steal a baby girl from a pram rather than take the risk of stealing a boy from the Olympic Bank. Did you ever hear of the Satanics?”

“No,” Alice said as though she didn’t want to hear.

“I know very little about them. A few years ago in Sydney the remains of three male babies were dug up in a garden at the rear of a large house. The investigation stopped when bogged down by official impatience, but there was reason to believe that the people who occupied the house at the time the children died were Satanics, a particularly virulent organisation of Satan Worshippers. Therefore, we must accept the possibility of such practices.

“What you need just now, Alice, is sunshine in your mind. Put on your hat and stroll along to the hospital and see the Matron; I’ll phone her you are coming. I want you to look over the Infants’ Ward and find whatis the routine at night for their welfare and take note of the general plan of the building.”

Alice left, obviously glad to be up and doing, and Bony used the house telephone to talk with the Matron. On returning to his room he found Essen waiting.

“Mail just delivered,” Essensaid, expectancy and impatience writ plain on his large face. He had placed on Bony’s blotter several letters and one large official envelope. He was invited to sit and, having glanced at the envelopes, Bony selected the large one for first opening.

“Under the initialsP. R. on the clothes’ tags areJ. Q.,” Bony eventually told Essen. “Coincidence, I expect, but Alice mentioned less than an hour ago having known a Nurse Quigly who was in the baby-adoption racket.”

“I remember the case,” Essen said. “Four years ago. Quigly was said to be fifty-two years old and she got eighteen months. Our Mrs Rockcliff isn’t Nurse Quigly.”

“The section of wall plaster tells us nothing excepting that the mark left upon it is of a well-known hair dressing which is free from gum and contains ingredients not included in any other formula. You will see a jar of it on my dressing-table behind you.”

“The sweepings from the bedroom floor gave better results. Two male hairs, dark brown, and having other attributes which need not concern us until we find that murderer. There are several hairs from the head of the dead woman, and no less than five hairs from another woman’s head. You will recall that you found one long hair caught in the spring mattress and obviously pulled from the head of the woman who crawled under the bed. This is one of the five hairs from the woman not Mrs Rockcliff. They are black, like mine. But they haven’t been treated with any hair dressing.

“The section of the report dealing with fingerprints is disappointing, or would be had you not dusted and photographed. Only the prints left by the dead woman are clear. The prints of the unknown woman’s gloves show they were made of a cotton material and the enlargement of the mended tear will surely interest Alice McGorr. The unknown man’s prints prove he was wearing rubber surgical gloves. You may examine the report at your leisure.”

“Thank you, and thanks, too, for that remark you made about me to the Superintendent,” Essen said. “That right, we’re to have reinforcements?”