Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

“Sorry I wasn’t able to call at your hotel last night, Inspector,” the young man said nervously, and Bony told him to forget it, as Mary Isaacs had telephoned about his sick mother, and he expressed the hope that Mrs Mills was much better.

“Come along to my office. I won’t keep you long.”

He sat Mills in the visitor’s chair and produced a packet of cigarettes. Mills was perhaps a little older than nineteen, fair and fresh-complexioned, lean and alert and, as Bony was instantly to learn, modest.

“It’s generous of you to come and see me, Mr Mills, after the very bad impression made on Miss Isaacs by a detective we won’t bother to mention,” he began. “Miss Isaacs told me you are a lightning cartoonist. Would you work confidentially for me?”

“Yes, I’d be glad to,” replied Mills. “I hope Mary didn’t boost me too much, though. I still have a lot to learn and a lot of study ahead. If I can help, well, I’ll do my best.”

“There mightn’t be much money for your work,” Bony warned. “But you may eventually receive much helpful publicity. I am after the person who poisoned old Goldspink, and no one, not even your Mary, can identify him or her. We’ll say it’s a woman, but we must not talk about it-outside. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Good! Take this sheet of paper and draw me.”

Mills produced his own pencils from a top pocket and fell to studying Bony’s features, the point of a pencil poised above the paper. Then without his looking at the paper for a second, the pencil worked with incredible speed. The paper was passed back to Bony, who regarded it with astonishment and carefully placed it in a drawer, intending, on the instant, to have it framed and hung in his own study.

“I envy you your gift, Mr Mills,” he said, and meant it. “Have you done any colour painting, if that is the right term?”

“Water-colours. I’m studying that now.”

“Excellent! Now I have here the description of a woman your Mary served that afternoon Goldspink was murdered. I have obtained the description partly from Mary and partly from the cashier. No other at the shop can help us. The details are vague, incomplete. I am hoping that with the limited details I can give you might be able to build, as it were, a picture of that woman. You will have to employ your imagination, perhaps make two or even three pictures, so that when shown to certain people, including Mary, they may assist those people to recognise the original. Will you try?”

“Certainly. What are the particulars?”

“The woman wore a grey suit and a grey felt hat having the brim turned up all round. She wore the hat straight-like a man wears a hat, not to one side. The hat had a pale blue band.”

Bony waited for Mills to jot down these items before proceeding:

“The woman’s face was neither thin nor fat. She was slightly above average height, and as she stooped a little she was probably well above average. She had the trick of inclining her face downward and peering as though used to looking above spectacles. Draw her with and without spectacles, if you will.”

“Not much to go on,” Mills observed, looking up from his notes.

“That’s true. But do the best possible with what you have. Give me more than one full length figure, and also a series of faces both full face and profile. You may hit on just the right type to be identified.”

“All right, sir. I’ll do them to-night and let you have them first thing tomorrow.”

“Thanks a lot, Mr Mills. Grant me an added favour. Do not permit your Mary to see them. Leave that for me to do. Clear?”

“Certainly. I’ll leave the sketches here for you at about eight in the morning. Glad to be helpful, sir. Rotten business, thesecyanidings .”

“Horrible.” Bony rose and accompanied the young man to the outer office. “Not a word about this to anyone, remember.”

“That’ll be OK, Inspector.”

Mills departed. Luke Pavier appeared from nowhere and laid a restraining hand on Bony’s arm.

“Anything of a break yet, Mr. Friend?” he asked, and the constable moved closer. Bony smiled and led the reporter to the public bench, where he invited him to be seated.

“Would you like to play on my side?” he asked.

“Sure. I’ll team with anyone who’ll play with me.”

Bony steadily regarded Luke, the son of Louis.

“All set, I lead. You have my word for it that, if you co-operate, you will be given the opportunity of being in at the arrest. My demands on you may, however, be heavy.”

“Suits me, Mr Friend.”

“Good! Dine with me tonight?”

“I drink-a lot-with my dinner.”

“At six. At my hotel.”

They parted, Bony returning to his office and telephoning for lunch to be sent in to him. He worked until four and then went out and down Argent Street to Favalora’s Cafe, where he enjoyed tea and toasted raisin bread with Jimmy the Screwsman. He returned at five and ‘barged’ into Superintendent Pavier’s office.

“Hoped to catch you before you left, Super,” he said, slipping into a chair and nursing a small package. “Often found it wise practice to rest the mind from a major investigation by indulging in a minor one. Kind of a busman’s holiday. Felt I had to do something whilst waiting for what appears to be the inevitable third cyaniding. You have no objections?”

Pavier merely stared at him.

“On November tenth last year, the wife of a mine manager suffered the theft of jewellery which she valued at sixty-five pounds. The licensee of the Diggers’ Rest swore that he lost four hundred and seventeen pounds from his safe on the night of December second. And a woman racehorse owner lost the sum of one hundred and eighty pounds from her cache inside her mantel clock sometime about January ninth.

“Those robberies were never cleared up, Crome tells me. Won’t do, Super. Only encourages more burglaries. I have here the sum of six hundred and sixty-two pounds, being the recovery of the losses sustained. You might fix it up for me.”

Pavier accepted the package, slit it open with a paper knife, and disclosed the packed wads of treasury notes.

“Make an arrest?” he asked quietly.

“Oh no. Couldn’t do that. I never arrest a pal.”

“Will you do me a favour?”

“Naturally.”

“Come home to dinner with me tonight so that I can tell you in my own unfettered manner just what I damn well think of you.”

“Another time, Super. This evening I am dining with your son.”

At Morning Tea

THE DESK was littered with sketches of women. Among them were three full-length coloured drawings of a woman in a grey suit and wearing a small grey hat with the brim turned up all round. In each picture the face was different. There were several sheets of paper, each having half a dozen feminine faces presented at every angle, some with spectacles, many showing the eyes peering above the spectacles. David Mills had done an excellent job, and Bony was pleased, for in every sketch Mills had depicted the probable age of the possible poisoner.

There were three girls who might recognise in one of these sketches a living woman. They were Mary Isaacs, the cashier at the shop, and the waitress at Favalora’s Cafe. If only one of those girls could say: “That picture is like the woman,” then the entire police personnel could be put to hunt for her.

It was quarter to ten. Bony rang Switch and asked to be put through to Superintendent Pavier’s secretary. Almost at once a strange voice said:

“Policewoman Lodding.”

“Oh! Miss Lodding,” Bony exclaimed, and mentioned his name and rank. “I haven’t been presented to you. You have been away ill, I understand. May I come and talk to you?”