Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

“You still hold the ball,” Bony went on. “Until we know to the contrary we must think Tuttaway is in Broken Hill. By the way, when making your report to the Super, keep in mind that you are acting on your own initiative and that I am fully occupied by the cyanide murders.”

Crome flushed, nodded grateful understanding, and left. Like many another man, Bill Crome had emerged from rigorous training as an efficient member of a machine oiled by regulations and fuelled by directives. He dared never thumb his nose at those higher up, for he lacked independence and the instinct of knowing the right moment. As a member of a team, he pulled his weight, which is why teamwork is of such value in modern crime investigation.

Bony slipped the top sheet from the blotter, regarded the doodling he had done when listening to Mrs Dalton, and tossed the sheet into thew.p. b. He collected his hat and sauntered along the corridor to the general office of the Detective Branch, spoke to Abbot, and stood before the black-and-white drawings of the woman described by Mrs Wallace and Mrs Lucas. A trifle despondent, he walked to his hotel for dinner.

Jimmy Nimmo reported at eleven. He was wearing a loose-fitting dark brown suit and crepe-soled shoes, and, having made himself at ease and lit a cigarette, he began without preamble.

“I went at eight and stayed till half-past ten. No handbag and no baby’s dummy, either.” Professional pride carried him onward, as though the absence of results was an admission of failure. “I went through that joint from shop to yard office. I looked under counters and in drawers. The till was empty and the bacon cutter wants cleaning. Behind the shop are two bedrooms, a living-room, a lounge, and a kitchen with a small washhouse behind it. One of the bedrooms is occupied by the parties, the other’s a spare.

“Under the bed is a large tin box you can buy from Disposals. It was locked, but the lock’s the kind the old man gave me to play with when I was five. In the box are two. 38 automatics and two hundred-odd rounds of ammunition. Also about four thousand useless petrol tickets.

“Nothing much in the loungeexceptin ’ a hole in the wall behind a glass-front bookcase, and in the hole there just had to be a safe. I decided to risk ten minutes, and fluked it. In the safe is plenty-cash, bank passbooks, and forty-eight gold wrist watches.

“The kitchen had something too. Under a loose floorboard there’s another tin box a bit smaller, than the one in the bedroom, and in it a cashbox holding between seven hundred and a thousand quid. In spite of what you’re thinking, I couldn’t have cared less. Besides the cashbox is a bundle of letters, and, remembering that you used to nose into other people’s letters, I read a couple. Addressed to Mrs Madge Goddard, aimed at ‘Darling Madge by Your Everlasting Arty’. What’s the husband’s name?”

“Frederick Albert.”

Jimmy grinned widely. “Extra to the letters is a black golliwog and nine photographs of a small kid. The love letters being in that box with all the money indicates that the husband don’t know about it. The cashmusta been milked from the shop takings to beat the husband or the income tax-the husband, I’ll bet.”

“You looked under the wardrobe and on top of it?”

“Be easy, Inspector. The bag isn’t in that house, and there’s no baby. There’s two handbags, a snakeskin bag and a black silk affair. Both empty. I poked into everything. Nothing like poison anywhere in the house.

“There’s a manhole in the kitchen, and I took a bird’s-eye under the roof. Nothing but dust and spiders. So I went out back to take adecko inside thewoodyard office. The office is built into one end of the back veranda of the house, and the door has a Yale-type lock I don’t bother with. I found a loose sheet of iron in the roof and went in that way.

“The office isn’t so big but pretty crowded. Usual things, ledgers, files, and docket books. On the wall is two Winchester rifles, a Savage high-powered weapon, and a shotgun. All well kept. Boxes of ammunition on a shelf. In a corner is a stack of kangaroo skins. On another shelf there’s five seven-pound tins of cyanide and a cardboard box containing at some time a round dozen bottles of white strychnine crystals. In the box now are four untapped bottles and one partly used. There’s a stack of docket books going back for two years, and that’s the lot.”

“Quite a catalogue,” Bony said approvingly. “D’youknow anything of kangaroo hunting?”

“Not a thing, but I’ve never heard offeedin ’ them with cyanide andhittin ’emin the eye with a bottle of strychnine. Have you?”

“Cyanide is used extensively, however, in keeping down rabbits and other vermin.”

Jimmy lit another cigarette.

“You know, Inspector, I think the state ought to hire me at two thousand quid a year just to amble around people’s houses. No need to pinch anything, and I could live me natural life. Think of theinterestin ’ things I’d find for government departments-Taxation, Customs, Health. And the police. Read the other day that writers in Russia are best paid in the world. Why don’t Australia use up burglars like Russia uses up their writers? A dozen good burglars would wipe out all the rackets.”

“I have had the idea, Jimmy, for a considerable time,” Bony said, his eyes twinkling. “But Australia being a nation of knockers, I would certainly be knocked down did I suggest it in official quarters. There are decided weaknesses too. I also read the article you refer to, and you will remember that the Russian writer who doesn’t keep strictly to the Party line is very soon retired. How many burglars could keep the lawful line, even at two thousand a year? Know where I can buy a glass dagger?”

“Can’t say I do. Never seen one. Feller told me he saw one in the fist of a Negro soldier. Got anything on the old-fashioned bright steel kind?”

“It seems that the blade of a glass dagger can be filed near the haft and broken off when in the wound, to stop bleeding.”

“Neat, Inspector.” Jimmy stared pensively at Bony. “The papers didn’t say it was a glass dagger.”

“That is so. Other than tampering with the blade for the purpose I mentioned, I cannot see any advantages.”

“Coloured?”

“Blue.”

“Ask the Great Scarsby. I’ve seenfellas like him throw coloured daggers at dames on the stage.”

“That, I think, was the original use for the knife which killed the Lodding woman. We haven’t found the haft yet. When taking your day-time constitutional, keep on the look-out for it. You don’t know of any likely hide-outs Tuttaway could tenant, I suppose?”

“Fair go, Inspector. Those I did know have been pretty thoroughly probed by Crome and his boys. Must be slick as hell rigging himself up. Wish I had his know-how. When are you letting me out?”

“Still pining?”

“There’s that sick aunt, you know.”

“And the attraction?”

“And the attraction. Wants to see my police badge. You got one to spare?”

“Never possessed one, Jimmy. Fixed a date for the wedding?”

“No, she keeps backing and filling.”

“Strange. You should make a very successful shopwalker.”

Jimmy was plainly startled.

“She told you?” he asked.

“No. It’s my own opinion. I hope your intentions are strictly honourable?”

“They’re damned unprofessional,” snorted Jimmy the Screwsman. “I get an eyeful of the pearls and diamonds, and then you butt in and say: ‘Oh no, you must not. You don’t disconnect them burglar alarms, and you don’t withdraw those trinkets from their velvet beds.’ Then, when I make up me mind that I’m keener on the dame than the jewels, and she falls for me, you say that I aim to marry her for ’em. Why must you demons always be so damned suspicious?”