Arthur Upfield - Murder Must Wait

It wasn’t an old tree stump smouldering away for days. It was a camp fire, and just beyond it was a rough humpy constructed with tree branches. Thatmuch the tiny flames revealed before retiring to permit the red eye to continue its angry watch.

Bony sculled silently down the creek till coming opposite a large lantana clump partly growing in the water. Here he went ashore, pulling the boat into the cane-mass, and then as silently boring through the mass to dry land. On stepping forth from the lantana he was wearing the sheep-skin overshoes which would leave no imprints on these hard river flats.

He stalked that camp fire without making sound enough to disturb a finch, seeing its red eye where he expected to see it, and finally squatted behind a clump of low cane-grass situated within a few yards of it.

Save less than a dozen, all the aborigines had gone on walkabout. Those who had remained would be sleeping in huts, not here beside this stagnant backwater. There was no normal reason for this lonely humpy, indicated by the fire as being inhabited, excepting perhaps that an aborigine had brought here his newly-wedded bride. In view of the prowling Kurdaitcha not even the most obedient bride could be expected to honeymoon in such solitude.

The false dawn came, followed by darkness more intense, and a little cold wind to make Bony shiver. A fox barked as though at the squatting man, and seconds later barked again from far away. It was when that second bark had been blanketed by night, and Bony saw the first shaft of soft light high in the sky, that the baby cried.

There reached him the low murmur of gentle soothing; the baby quietened. The dawn shafts were spearing the night when the child cried again, this time demandingly. A woman said sleepily:

“Was’matter, little feller?”

The voice was the voice of an aborigine. The baby yelled, old enough to know how to claim attention, and, a moment after, the red eye vanished. The baby continued to cry, and soon there appeared a faint glow which grew swiftly bright to reveal the aboriginal woman tending her fire.

The blazing fire proved the humpy to be a tent almost made invisible by green tree branches. Bony could not see the mouth of the tent. The woman stood and the firelight showed her to be tall and graceful. She was wearing male attire, a suit of flannelette pyjamas, and her black hair was banded with a blue ribbon. Bony remembered her. She had been with old Wilmot when he visited the Settlement with Alice. She left the fire for the humpy, soothed the infant who wouldn’t be soothed, and came out carrying a feeding-bottle, a tin of powdered milk, and an old billycan. The billy she filled at the creek and placed over the fire.

The infant, understanding that screaming failed to bring instant doting attention, stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Like all the mothers of her race, this woman loved babies and was versed in the exquisite art of being cruel to be, kind. The baby was hungry and so food must be prepared for it, but to worry about the screaming would be the height of folly because the cry lacked that poignant note of pain. Calmly this woman watched the water heating, and only when it was boiling did she go to the tent and bring out a jug in which to mix the milk.

She brought cold water from the creek to cool the milk before pouring from the jug to the bottle, her movements unhurried, her face expressive of abiding content. Taking the bottle to the tent, she spoke to the baby and the baby started a yell which was stopped by the bottle teat. Thereafter the soft voicelullabyed.

Bony could remain no longer, for now the water of the creek was visible and the kookaburras were greeting the New Day with their ironical laughter. The boat was safe enough from chance discovery, and silently he walked up the creek and so to the red gum near the blacksmith’s shop.

The tree was bent by the years and scarred by innumerable climbing boys. They had made a path upward by the only way, and Bony climbed this path to reach a rough platform at the junction of two branches with the trunk, the work also of the Settlement children.

Like the woman at the fire, his movements were deliberate as he made himself comfortable on the roughly-woven sticks. He smoked two cigarettes, and now and then he smiled at little mental images and refused to permit ugly thoughts to disturb his mind.

Having pocketed the two cigarette-ends, he told his mind to sleep till nine o’clock. His mind slept. His mind awoke at nine o’clock when the sun was high and the ants already were up the tree gathering its sweet exudations.

A bull-ant objected to his presence, and he flicked it into space with a snapping forefinger. The marauding red ants took no notice of him, and he politely ignored them. He climbed, and at the higher elevation commanded a clear range of the Settlement.

Three magpies were warbling on the office roof, and the smoke from the Superintendent’s chimney was almost the colour of washing blue. Then a lubra in a white dress and white shoes emerged from the hospital to take something to the incinerator, and Dr Beamer appeared from his veranda to cross to the office. After him trotted a grossly fat fox terrier, who quickly gave up the idea of escort duty for the pleasure of rolling his left ear on the ground to remove stick-fast fleas.

At twenty past nine Bony saw the dust rising behind the car bringing Essen and his constables, and five minutes later the noise of the car propelled Mr Beamer from his office and his wife to the door of the house veranda. A conference was held, and ended by Mrs Beamer and one constable walking to the hospital and Mr Beamer with Essen and the other constable making for the lines of huts.

All quite normal. The Superintendent would know who of his people had not gone on walkabout, and what huts they occupied. Several figures rose from beside a communal fire, and others appeared from the huts, totalling nine. Finally, all gathered into a small party and walked from the huts to the hospital, Bony recognising old Chief Wilmot, his son Fred, the watch-mender, and he who ran the store. There was an ancient crone and two young women.

Questions. Did the Beamers know of that woman and baby living in the tent shrouded by green boughs? Did old Chief Wilmot know? Almost certainly, for nothing and no one would escape his notice. Bony gazed over the lesser tree-tops to the area of dark-green lantana, and failed to see the faintest wisp of smoke from that camp fire.

The policeman and Mrs Beamer entered the hospital, and Essen and Mr Beamer with the aborigines filed in, leaving one constable on guard at the door. Bony waited five minutes for the woman with the baby to appear, watched for the slightest betraying movement and saw nothing. Then he went to ground, the entire Settlement his for examination… for one hour.

The constable at the hospital door saw him cross behind the blacksmith’s shop to the lines of huts, noted the extraordinary footwear, and with great interest watched him as long as possible.

The ground was dry, flaky, hard beneath the flakes. Only from point to point was the ground powdered by feet; about the Superintendent’s house, where all traffic stopped, about the school and the hospital, was the ground churned to dust. Paths made by naked feet skirted the lines of huts, because off the paths waited the three-cornered jacks having needle-pointed spurs.

Bony’s first objective was the communal fire, still alive, and the huts closest to it. They were single-roomed shacks, containing a table and hard-bottom chairs, and mattresses of straw lying on the floor.

Utility blankets lay on one of two mattresses in the first hut he visited. A military greatcoat and a couple of cotton singlets served for a pillow. Hanging from nails driven into the walls was a military felt hat with the brim unclipped to the crown, an expensive stockwhip, a pair of goose-neck spurs in which the rowels had been replaced with sixpences to produce the louder ringing, and a gaudy silk scarf denoting feminine ownership.