Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

“Of course! Now I see. Just what a man would do, isn’t it? Draw pictures of a woman in outdoor clothes and not give her a handbag. You wait till I see him.”

Bony almost spoke. He watched the vivid face drained of merriment, saw the dark eyes lose expression, and gain it. Her voice was so low that he barely caught the words.

“The handbag! I remember that woman’s handbag. I remember noticing it when Mr Goldspink was talking to her. Something red about it, and I hate red.”

Bony waited. The girl stared at him, and then at Crome. Crome waited. After what appeared a long interval Bony asked:

“Can you now remember the customer’s face, her clothes?”

Mary shook her head and then exclaimed:

“But I remember the handbag. I can see it now. It was a faded navy-blue suede bag with red leather drawstrings. It was squarish in shape. I’ve never seen one since that time Mother gave me a bag like it to play with when I was very little.”

“What are drawstrings?” asked Bony.

“You pull them out to open the mouth of the bag, and you pull them close to shut it, and the strings become loops to carry the bag with. Oh, I remember that bag. I’d know it again. I’m sure I would.”

“Well done, Miss Isaacs,” Bony said warmly. “You couldn’t tell me anything about the customer’s hands, I suppose.”

“No. You see, she was wearing gloves.”

“What type of gloves-colour?”

“They were like her bag, old-fashioned, navy-blue cotton,” replied Mary, and Bony added to his notes. Without looking up he said:

“Crome, fetch Mr Mills. He’s waiting in the public office.”

They sat, Bony and Mary, and each face bore a tiny smile of triumph. Youth looked at the man who seemed ageless, on whose dark countenance was not one line and in whose dark eyes gleamed dauntless courage that began before him and would live after him. And matured man looked upon youth with warm approval of human beauty and the spirit which bore it aloft like a banner.

Crome and Mills came, and Bony made the younger man sit at his place at the desk.

“I’ve been extremely careless, Mr Mills,” he said. “When giving you the particulars of the woman I omitted to tell you she had a handbag.”

“Course she’d have a handbag, David,” interposed Mary. “You should know. You’ve often enough asked why I carry one.”

“I ought to have known,” Mills was contrite. “I could paint one in easily enough.”

“So I thought. The point is, when. Mary says the bag must be navy-blue, faded, with red drawstrings.”

“Do it in a few minutes when I get home to my brushes and colours, Inspector,” asserted the young man.

“You haven’t dismissed that taxi, Crome?”

“No, sir. You told me to keep it.”

“You go with Miss Isaacs and Mr Mills in that taxi, and Mr Mills at his home will paint in the handbag.” Bony profusely thanked the artist, saying:

“Miss Mary will give you instructions about the bag. She’ll tell you about the gloves I want you to put on the hands. I’d like both of you to promise not to say anything of this to anyone.”

They were eager in their assurance, and Mills said they should be back before noon. Crome asked:

“Will you see the other girls, sir?”

“No, not till this afternoon. Have Abbot escort them back. Bring them again at three o’clock. And don’t look at me as though you think me clever. I forgot about that handbag. And the gloves.”

Bony sat again at his desk. He might have progressed farther than he was thinking. He might be given time enough to find that woman and discover cyanide in the blue handbag. The menace was real. It hung over Pavier like a ton weight suspended by a fine wire from the ceiling of his office. It kept Crome awake at night and ringed the man’s eyes with red. It haunted Abbot despite his youth and small degree of responsibility. Cafe proprietors were worried by lack of custom, for men and women hadn’t forgotten.

He slipped the residue of Mills’s sketches into a drawer and drew to himself a writing-block. For a moment his pen hovered above the paper, then he wrote:

“To Sergeant Crome. Instruct all men in all branches to look for an elderly woman. Tall. Walks with slight stoop. Carries navy-blue handbag with red drawstrings. Might be wearing grey suit, grey hat, and shabby navy cotton gloves.” The pen stopped, and Bony scowled. Now he was up against police procedure, that hateful thing which often balked him and which often he had spurned and triumphed over. If the bag was spotted, there might not be cyanide in it-then the arrest of the owner would create an uproar. He wrote, therefore: “Woman must be permitted to return to her place of abode that she be identified-unless identification obtained earlier. Important: woman’s suspicions must not be aroused!”

Signing his name, he left the memo on Crome’s desk and went out to walk up and down Argent Street. He could think clearer when in motion. How often had Time been his cherished ally? Time wasn’t his ally now. Time was a Thing disguised as a human being who carried between thumb and forefinger a pinch of cyanide.

Three Gave Something

AT ONE o’clock Bony returned to his office to find on his desk the latest edition of David Mills’s work and a report from Sergeant Crome to the effect that the instruction concerning the woman and the handbag had been put into operation. Every policeman henceforth would be watching for the woman carrying that old-fashioned but distinctive receptacle.

Bony removed the string from the rolled drawings, back-rolled them to make them flat, and sighed his satisfaction. There were the three coloured pictures of the woman, and in each she carried the navy-blue handbag with the red drawstrings. In one she held it under her arm; in the remaining two pictures she held it before her, open, her gloved hand inserted. In one of these pictures the woman gazed directly at the beholder, and in the other she held her head bent and peered as though above spectacles.

The handbag stood clear in perspective; the face, unknown even to Mary Isaacs, was less marked than the attitude of the figure. If the woman appeared on the streets with that bag and in that suit, no policeman could fail to recognise her, but if she appeared differently, dressed and carrying a different handbag? Decided progress, but it was not decisive.

Abbot came in.

“You still want those girls on the mat, sir?” he asked.

Bony glanced at his watch and remembered that he had not eaten. He invited the detective to look at the pictures.

“I’ll see those girls at three sharp, Abbot. Have these pictures pasted on to stiff cardboard and nailed to the wall of the general Detective Office. See to it that every man in the department is taken to study them. You’ve seen a copy of my instructions?”

“Yes, sir. It’s already been duplicated and is being issued.”

“Crome at lunch?”

“Yes, sir. Should be back at one-thirty.”

“Inspector Hobson is, I think in charge of the uniformed men?”

“That’s so, sir.”

“All right, Abbot. Have someone fetch me some sandwiches and a pot of tea, please.”

Ten minutes later Bony heard Crome in the next office and he summoned him by thumping on the division wall. Informing the sergeant what he had ordered Abbot to do about the pictures, he asked:

“Your department on anything special?”

“No. Few routine jobs, that’s all. Those pictures are good, eh?”

“Excellent. Think you could get Hobson?”

“Expect so.”

Inspector Hobson was tall, lanky, stiff.

“I’ve already issued orders to all men coming on duty to look at those drawings, Bonaparte, as well as to obey your instructions,” he said in tones like breaking glass. “Happy to assist.”