Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

“Well, he’s got to stay away from that camp,” Clark insisted. “It won’t last much longer, when we’ll be in the clear andthem two can romp around much as they like. Oh, hell, damn this busted leg. Time I meet up with them fellers what done it, I’ll put ’emin hospital.”

“Too right!” agreed the old man. “Damn crook all right. You know when you getoutta here?”

“No. Doc Delph he says the more I muck about on the foot the longer I’ll be here. Any’ow I’d be here a ruddy long time if you and the others ‘sung’ it good. And it would get better quicker if you come and see me more. You tell young Fred to come. I can get moreouter him.”

Bony left when a huge lubra wearing a white apron and a white linen hat suddenly appeared and berated the old man for staying so long, and on the ground in front of the veranda door he drew a particularly venomous drawing of Satan in a fit.

Reaching the tree where he had left the bike, he freed his toes and donned the number nines, and from there pushed the machine all the way to the made road, satisfied that on the following morning his antics would create much ado.

People were pouring from the two cinemas when he arrived in Mitford. Youths astride motor-bikes were ogling girls on the sidewalks, and other young men, with oiled hair gleaming, were escorting women to the milk bars. No one noted the seedy-looking character turn in at the Station, save Alice McGorr and Mrs Yoti, who were about to enter the police residence by the back door.

“Ah, now what have you two been doing this evening?”

“Enjoying our freedom,” replied the Sergeant’s wife. “We are about to make a pot of coffee and sandwiches for supper before Alice goes home. Would you call my husband and Mr Essen? I think he is in the office, too.”

Bony did find Essen with theSergeant, and on the desk between them a bottle of beer. When Bony clumped across the bare floor, Essen noted his shoes and stared blankly at his baggy trousers and limp black shirt.

“You been to a ball?” he asked succinctly. Bony slipped into a chair.

“I have been employing my artistic talents, Essen. Any news?”

“Nothing,” replied Essen, placing a glass before Bony, who drank appreciatively, and from a trouser pocket produced a folded slip of paper.

“Look at this metal dust, and give an opinion,” he said, and poured himself another drink.

Whilst the two men crouched forward over the paper, and the white light beat upon the metal dust mixed with other metal scraps, Bony rolled and lit a cigarette. He slipped from his tired feet the shoes belonging to the Sergeant’s son, without need to untie the laces, and at last Essen said:

“Too light for gold and it isn’t copper.”

“Filings, seems to me,” said Yoti.

“Filings, all right,” agreed Essen, and to Bony: “You know the answer?”

“I have the thought that it’s filings from keys made for snap-locks.”

“That’s it.” Essen brought a bunch of keys from a pocket, selected one and laid it upon the filings. “I’ll bet my job against a trey bit you’re right.”

“Your decisiveness pleases me,” murmured Bony, andlaid upon the desk what looked like… just what it was. “Perhaps you could be as decisive with that.”

Yoti said quickly: “Plaster of Paris. Look! Part of a key impression on this surface. Yale-type key, too.”

“I could not find other pieces to complete the impression,” Bony said. “We might then have made a key and tried the lock of Mrs Rockcliff’s house, or that on the bank door.”

Essen sat back. Yoti eyed Bony, either with suspicion or hopefulness.

“Are you telling?” asked the Sergeant, and Bony presented him with a strip of celluloid. “You found that, same place as the plaster and the filings?”

“In a blacksmith’s shop within a hundred miles of this office.”

Bony smiled and was saved the bother of answering questions by Alice, who appeared to say that supper was ready, and would they please come, as people wanted to go to bed sometimes. Being domesticated men, they rose and followed her without protest.

Bony first went to the laundry, where he left the number nines and put on his own shoes, before entering the house, where supper was being served in the kitchen. Alice refrained from looking directly at him. No remark was made about the old tweed trousers or the black shirt, because they were Bony’s props. Munching a sandwich, Alice was strongly reminded of her deceased father, who, when about to depart on a ‘can’ operation, invariably dressed as Bony now was… in dark clothes and with not a spot of white visible.

Later, when she was crossing the dark yard to enter Essen’s car, he to take her to his home before making the rounds of his guard posts, she found Bony beside her.

“You went to the Library?” he asked softly.

“Of course. The librarian said that the whole place was closed to the public on November 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30, while the interior decoration was being done.”

“So! You know, Alice, that’s good team work.”

Wet Shoe-Prints

EARLYTHEfollowing morning Bony returned the bicycle to the shop, and assuredhimself that no tracks of its tyres remained near the Police Station to be seen by Tracker Wilmot.

It then being too early for breakfast, he sauntered down Main Street and took the side road to bring him to the river. Here the river bank was under cut grass maintained by the Parks Department, and the road fronting the residences of the elite ran straight and level and broad to meet the sun. It was going to be another hot day, but there were no signs of wind strong enough to make Mitford unpleasant. The wind came from the north and whispered to Bony the secrets of a million years, tales of tragedy and of love, and of those Beings who created a paradise for the black fellow to enjoy, and then forgot about it and him.

The glorious colours of that paradise faded as the waters dried up and the winds came to scorch and wither and to braise the living with hot and faceted grains of sand. Men were compelled to use their minds to survive, which they did by the rigid application of two practices: the one, birth control, the other, elimination of the unfit.

So there was sustenance for the chosen, and the chosen remained loyal to the Creators of the Paradise, handing down from generation to generation the telling of history by word, by the dance, and the pictures on the walls of caves. And until the coming of the white aliens there was laughter and law in the land.

The first white man to set foot in Australia brought with him the Serpent from the Garden of Eden, when no longer was there in all the land law and laughter… only the slow progress of segregation into compounds and Settlements of the ever dwindling remnants of a race.

There was the Aboriginal Settlement supported by Christian Church and controlled by their representative, the purpose of the Churches to make amends, although but a fraction, for the evil done by the Serpent; the ambition of their representative to give back to the aborigine his traditions and his self-respect. Could that ambition be realised by encouraging the old practices only so far as approved by white law and when the white influence had brought the black fellow to a condition of spiritual chaos?

Here and there on the broad and placid plane of the river the currents came to the surface to smile at Bony, slowly crinkling like the dimples on a baby’s face, and the simile made him smile although his heart was heavy with foreboding of what he might exhume. Turning, he strolled back the way he had come, arriving at the Police Station to sniff the aroma of frying bacon and good strong coffee.

Yoti came in late, to receive a quiet rebuke from his wife.