Arthur Upfield: Murder Must Wait

At eleven the next morning Alice McGorr landed at Mitford and was welcomed by First Constable Essen.

“Ordered to meet you, Miss McGorr, and told to take you straight home. You’re staying with us, and we have to make you take morning tea before you join up with the Big Boss. Give me your case.”

Alice McGorr liked Essen and his wife. She liked her room. She fell in love with the baby. She liked Main Street. She liked the smell of the town itself, of fruit ripening, fruit drying, fruit cooking, fruit rotting, and could not name that other smell, the indefinable, the haunting essence of the untamed hinterland of saltbush plain and mulga forest.

She liked No 5 Elgin Street, although she had read about the murder in the paper when on the plane. Essen conducted her to the lounge.

“Miss McGorr, sir,” he said, and withdrew.

“Ah, Miss McGorr! I’m delighted that you were able to come. Please sit down, and smoke if you wish.” Bony set the chair for her, smiled at her, the shock she gave him never rising to his eyes. He held a match to her cigarette, sat down and asked after Superintendent and Mrs Bolt.

She liked Napoleon Bonaparte.

He listened… and wondered. The face was a tragedy and yet heroic. The tragedy lay in the almost entire absence of chin. The eyes were softly brown, large, beautiful when she was telling of Superintendent Bolt. Her hands were beautiful, too, and well kept. Later, on suggesting she removed her hat, he marked the wide forehead, and disapproved of the blonde hair-do, drawn hard back to a tight roll. The hat was low-crowned and of white straw. It was better off than on. Her clothes… there was something the matter with them… and before he could make up his mind where, she gave him a letter from Superintendent Bolt.

Dear Bony. Now you have it. Think yourself in luck. Remember what I told you about her. She will serve you well, for she has the most extraordinary variety of capabilities I’ve ever come across. You can unload your secrets, confess all your low sins, and she won’t tell… excepting to me. Yet be warned. There’s no weakness anywhere, save with children and sick people, and you may take my word for that.

Attached to the letter was a report by a detective who had interviewed Dr Browner of Glen Iris. Dr Browner declared he had no knowledge of a Mrs Rockcliff, and during the last eighteen months had had no case of an expectant mother which had not been completed by the birth of the child.

Having dropped the letter on a pile of papers, he found her eyes directed to him, and they didn’t waver, but held in the mutual summing-up. She was, perhaps, thirty-five, tall and angular, with good shoulders and well-developed arms. When Bony smiled, her look of appraisal vanished.

“The Biblical writer stated that there is a time to be born and a time to die; he should have included a time to be frank,” he said. “I will be frank with you now. When I want photographs, I apply to an expert. When I want to know why a man died in convulsions, I apply to a pathologist. I want to know more about babies, which is why I asked especially for you. You do know something about babies?”

“I was thirteen when Mother fell ill, sir. There were twins as well as a little sister. Yes, I know something about babies.”

“And learned more when you joined the Force.”

“More about parents, sir.”

“I have agreed to investigate the disappearance of five babies in this town, Miss McGorr. You would like to work with me?”

The eyes only betrayed eagerness.

“I would indeed, sir.”

“We will work in harness. Later I’ll want you to study the Official Summaries on the four missing infants, and will outline what is known of the fifth child, who was, almost certainly, stolen at the time the mother was murdered in this house last Monday night. Those Summaries were compiled by men-mark-by men who when glancing into a pram couldn’t tell the sex or the child. Could you?”

“With very young babies, it would mean guessing, but I wouldn’t often be wrong.”

“H’m! Wait there. I have something to show you.”

The brown eyes watched him leave the room. She sat with remarkable passivity, her shapely hands resting on the table and in sharp contrast to the hard and muscular forearms. A smile hovered about her unfortunate mouth, but it had vanished on his return with two feeding bottles, which he placed side by side on the table.

“Tell me what difference you find in those bottles,” he asked. “You may touchthem, they have been tested for prints.”

Alice McGorr viewed the contents of each bottle against the window light. The liquid in each was a coagulated mass of seeming solids and bluish water. She took up each bottle to examine closely the teat, and then, arranging them as he had done, she sat down.

“Although of different makes, sir, both bottles are of standard size,” she began. “This bottle contains a preparatory food, and this one contains cow’s milk. The teat of the bottle of preparatory food has been in use for some time, it’s soft from constant sterilisation. The teat on this bottle of cow’s milk is quite new. It has been sterilised, but very seldom used, if at all. There’s another difference, too. The hole in the old teat has been enlarged with a hot needle, but this other one, the new one, hasn’t been treated like that.”

“Well done, Miss McGorr. The teats when bought would have a standard-sized hole in them, no doubt.”

“Yes, sir. You see, the makers say the size of the hole is just right for the average baby, and that it induces the baby to exercise its mouth and throat muscles when getting its food. Much more often than not, though, a baby isn’t strong enough, or too lazy. It’s like drawing at a cigarette that’s too tightly packed. So the mother enlarges the hole with a needle.”

“And then the baby is content?”

“Yes. But the hole mustn’t be too large or else the baby will have hiccoughs,” Alice continued gravely.

“H’m, reminds me of the beer swill,” said Bony, not daring to smile. “I’ll replace these bottles. Wait there, please.” On returning, he went on: “Mrs Rockcliff leased this house, but furnished it herself. Last Monday evening she went out at shortly after eight o’clock, leaving the baby in the cot at the foot of her bed. It appears that she often went out at night, leaving the infant unattended.

“I will not tell you more than that now, and before we go to lunch I want you to do what you like with the place to find the answers to these questions. One: What was Mrs Rockcliff’s character? Two: What were her habits in the house? Three: Why does the bottle in the bedroom contain cow’s milk, and the bottle on the kitchen bench preparatory food? And any other information you may glean.”

For a full hour Bony silently watched Alice McGorr at work, effacing himself. She examined the bedclothes, the interior of the baby’s cot, and the clothes in the wardrobe. She rummaged into drawers and cupboards, removed the contents of shelves and expertly looked at cooking utensils. She brought the washing in from the line. She fingered the curtains, examined the backs of the few pictures, lifted the linoleum along the edges. She glanced through the magazines and opened the covers of the few books. And when she was done, her hair was wispy with dampness and her hands were dirty.

“That woman was proud of her baby,” she said, when seated at the lounge table and smoking the cigarette from Bony’s special case. “The baby’s clothes arehand-made, and expensive material. The needlework is simply glorious. I can see her making those little garments, every stitch a beautiful thought for the baby.”

“And yet Mrs Rockcliff left the infant alone for hours at night,” murmured Bony.