Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

The woman’s eyes grew small, and her large mouth pursed in an expression of genuine horror.

“That cloudiness! You don’t think-”

“And don’t you, Mrs Wallace,” Bony urged. “Let’s have these times straight. Wally Sloan last filled Mr Gromberg’s glass at about twenty past five, and you left the lounge at twenty-five to six. Can you remember who left after twenty past five and before you did?”

Mrs Wallace frowned as though Bony had made an indelicate remark. She continued to frown as she filled Bony’s cup and added brandy to her own.

“Several people went out-mostly women from my end of the lounge. The party next to me left just before I did.”

“Did you happen to see these people pass Mr Gromberg? They would all have to pass at his back, wouldn’t they?”

“They’d all have to do that, the way he was sitting. I’d seen some of ’emthere beforeyesterdee. That’s funny! The party sitting next to me was a queer one. I spoke to her twice, and she never said nothing, so I didn’t bother. Drank ginger ale, too. First of all I thought she was there waiting for a man to turn up. Then I reckoned that couldn’t be as she wasn’t the sort to be waiting anywhere for a man.”

“Can you recall if she passed particularly close to Mr Gromberg?”

“No closer than need be,” replied Mrs Wallace. “I thought she knew the woman sitting my side of Gromberg and with her back to the passageway. Just as she got to this woman she put out her hand as if she was going to touch her, thensorta altered her mind and went on past Gromberg. She never put her hand near Gromberg’s glass. I’d swear to that.”

“Just now you said this woman was a queer one. What was queer about her?”

“Well, she drank ginger ale in a pub lounge, for one thing. There was another thing. She didn’t want to talk to me-not that I pressed her. Them that’s independent can be, far as I’m concerned. Looked to me like she’d never been in a pub before and wasexpectin ’ to meet the devil any time.

“Old-maidish. You know, you can tell ’em. She didn’t wear aweddin ’ ring, but that’s neither here nor there these days. This one was about fifty and got up to be thirty. Some of ’emare pretty good at it, but they don’t pull no wool over May’s eyes.

“Then there was her handbag. Kept it on her lap all the time and fumbled to get at her purse, and Wally waiting for his money and people yelling for more drinks. Once she nearly knocked her ginger ale all over her dress, what shemustar kept in lavender. It was blue and white, and I haven’t seen thatsorta silk for years. And do you know what I got a peep of in her handbag? I’ll tell you. It was a baby’s dummy.”

“A baby’s dummy!” echoed Bony.

“A baby’s dummy. I seen the thing, I tell you. Pale brown rubber teat like beer. I hate ’em. Never give my kids them filthy things. Poor little mites. They trail all over the floor, with the cat playing with ’emand the dog licking ’em. And then the fond mother picking it up and stuffing it back into the little rosebud of a mouth-flies, dirt, spit, and all. The only thing a baby should have to suck is a good big clean mutton bone. No meat on it, of course-not at the start.”

“What kind of handbag was it?” came the inevitable question.

“Handbag! Blue, I think. The old drawstring sort. Red drawstrings they was. Now what would a baby’s dummy be doing in a virgin’s handbag? You tell me that, Inspector.”

As Mrs Wallace expected an answer, Bony murmured:

“It’s beyond me. Would you know the woman again?”

“I certainly would.”

“Excuse me for a moment. I’ll show you some pictures I have out in the taxi.” He was back under the minute, and Mrs Wallace looked at Artist Mills’s work and slowly shook her head.

“No, she wasn’t anything like them women,” she said in a manner precluding any doubt. “The handbag looks like the one, though.”

The Hidden Woman

ON THIS Sunday afternoon Bony walked with Wally Sloan to the man-made crater top of the broken hill and looked down upon the city courting the fabulous line of lode fashioned by chance to the shape of a giant boomerang. The sun was yellow in a cadmium sky, and beyond the jumble of the tree-denuded Barrier Range the celestial dome imprisoned ghostly clouds.

They sat on a pile of hardwood, and Sloan, having regained his wind was inclined to talk, and because he wanted to rest his mind from its many problems Bony was satisfied to let him talk about Broken Hill. At their feet, beyond the narrow flat, ran the centre of the city-Argent Street-and away to the southward the populous suburb of South Broken Hill sprawled like a great mass of conglomerate upon the vast plain stretching away to the Murray River.

Sloan related the story of how the original syndicate raised new money by creating fourteen equal shares, and how a game of euchre decided the sale of one of these shares for? 120. Had this share remained intact, within six years it would have been worth? 1,250,000.

“That’s money,” Sloan said. “You didn’t want faith, and you didn’t want vision. All you had to have was luck-just to hold on to something you thought worthless. Now look at her. She isn’t big, but she’s got the doings, that little city of ours. The state and federal governments draw twelve million quid a year out of her, and still she has to have everything of the best from beer to refrigerators.

“She’s a healthy city, too, a long way different to the times when the smelters were here. Men used to be walking home, or going to work, and drop in their tracks in a kind of fit, and when it rained good and heavy and made the street gutters run, the poisons from the mines killed cats and dogs by the dozens.”

“It’s evident that you like Broken Hill,” commented Bony.

“No place better. I’ve done well.”

Wally Sloan was free, in the company of a man he liked, and the ‘sir’ was therefore absent. A funny little man, Bony thought, and yet in his way a great man.

“You never married?” Bony asked, and the question brought a dry chuckle.

“No. Think Ioughta be?”

“You’re not old and beefy like those others, Sloan. You’re safe enough, I think.”

“You getting any warmer?” asked Sloan.

“I’m not saying. Your Mrs Wallace said that the woman sitting next to her was got up to look half her age, and she walked upright. She was not the woman thought to have been the customer in Goldspink’s shop when he was poisoned, but she carried the same handbag. It is Mrs Wallace’s opinion, and I am strongly inclined to rely on the opinion of a woman like Mrs Wallace, that the woman who sat next to her was a spinster, and yet in her handbag was a baby’s dummy, or comforter. What do you think about that?”

Sloan refrained from answering so long that eventually Bony looked directly at him.

“I don’t know,” Sloan said. “I don’t understand women, and I’ve never met a man who did. When the Lord banished Adam and Eve from Eden, He put a gulf between men and women that’s never been bridged and never will be. I know this, though, that liquor makes men and women more human, makes ’emdrop their guard. And I know this, too, that there are men and women who never drink because they’re afraid of other people seeing just what they are in heart and mind. That party sitting next to Mrs Wallace drank ginger ale that afternoon because she wanted all her wits about her to poison old Gromberg, not because she never drank anything stronger. The baby’s dummy stumps me.”

Sloan stared down at Argent Street, and then he said:

“If Mrs Wallace said the party was a spinster, then she was. I’ve known Mrs Wallace-let me think-perhaps eleven or twelve years. She worked in the bar with me, in other pubs, too, and when you work in bars for that long you get to know men and women from the feet up. I’ve nothing against a man, or a woman, who doesn’t drink, but I never trust anyone who doesn’t drink, or smoke, or swear, or lose the old temper. Perhaps the woman with the dummy in her handbag keeps it to pretend she has a baby, and the thought of what she missed is driving her to murder.”