Arthur Upfield: Batchelors of Broken Hill

“Everything,” Luke Pavier claimed. “I know everyone. I know all the two-up schools, all the baccarat joints, all the molls. I know the inside of every mine and the contents of every mining manager’s report to his directors before they get it.”

“But you don’t know who poisoned two men with cyanide,” interposed Bony. “Be patient, and some day I’ll tell you. You will co-operate?”

“I always co-operate with the police.”

“Rubbish,” inserted his father.

The young man smiled, waved a hand, departed, and his father conducted Bony to the Sunset Club, where they were given a table in an alcove.

“I think you’ll get along well with Crome,” Pavier said when they were engaged with cheese and celery. “Crome is a good man, but we don’t have the opportunities of unravelling subtle crime. He’s the chief of the Detective Office. You’ll come to understand all our limitations, and our difficulties in a place like Broken Hill. People here are prosperous, healthy, and clean mentally as well as physically. Contented, too, because of the amity between the workers and the companies-not without former years of strife. Before these cyaniding cases, crime hasn’t been serious for several decades, and often the visiting magistrate was presented with the white gloves of a clean register.”

“Your son Luke-is he a journalist?”

“He is, and, I’m told, a good one. With him his paper comes first, as with me the department does. At home we never talk shop. He’ll use you up if you’re not wary, but he can be helpful. He flayed Stillman in his paper.”

“I have always found Stillman a most unpleasant person,” Bony said. “His observations are coloured by a singularly distorted outlook. It was hinted to me that a change in the commissionership might be to his detriment.”

“I’ve always impressed on the minds of young constables that there isn’t the slightest excuse for a policeman not being a gentleman,” Pavier observed. “You obtained a copy of Stillman’s official summary, of course?”

“Yes. Disappointing in real value. Throws much of the onus on Sergeant Crome for having permitted the customers to leave Favalora’s Cafe before questioning. In fact, Stillman wriggled out by blaming all and sundry, excluding himself.”

“No one blames Crome for that affair at the cafe more than Sergeant Crome,” Pavier said. “The circumstances, however, relieve him of some of the blame. It was a hot and sultry day, unusual for Broken Hill, where the summers are very hot with little if any humidity. The temperature today, for instance, is somewhere about ninety-eight degrees but isn’t trying. Old Parsons was just the type to collapse from the heat. And Crome knew him, too.”

“Crome didn’t get along with Stillman?”

The Superintendent gave one of his rare smiles, and this one was minus laughter. Bony side-stepped the subject.

“If Crome will work with me,” he said, “we’ll put Stillman hard and fast into his box. Well, thanks for the lunch.”

Pavier went first down the stairs to the street, satisfied that Bonaparte and Crome, and Crome’s staff, would team well, and pleased that first impressions had not endured. Arrived on the pavement, he heard Bony exclaim:

“Jimmy! How are you, Jimmy?”

Pavier did not hear the ensuing conversation, crossing the street to Headquarters, and Bony kept an eye on the Superintendent, smiling at Jimmy the Screwsman, who was emphatically uncertain of the situation.

“On holidays, Inspector,” asserted Jimmy, inwardly cursing his luck. He watched the smile fade from the blue eyes. “Honest, Inspector. Haven’t taken a trick now for years-true.”

“Of course you haven’t, Jimmy. Been long in Broken Hill?”

“Since October. Decided to go straight, and found the only chance of doing that was to get right away from the cities.”

“So you were here when Goldspink was murdered, and a man named Parsons, eh?”

“Now look here, Inspector,” pleaded Jimmy. “You know I wouldn’t go in for murder. You know very well I’ve never carried a gun or ever done any bashing.”

“Working?”

“N-no. Holidaying, as I told you.”

“I marvel that you were not picked up by the boys from Sydney-Inspector Stillman, too.”

“Never showed out,” declared Jimmy, wishing the pavement would become mud soft enough to bury him. The terrifying blue eyes went on prodding his ego with blue-hot needles.

“Where living?” came the barked question.

“Twenty-two King Street, South Broken Hill.”

“Much left of the cash you took from the bookmaker’s flat in King’s Gross?”

Jimmy fought a losing fight. The blue eyes were terrific.

“Most of it,” he confessed. “I’ll do a deal, Inspector. I’ll return the lot if you-”

“Don’t bargain with me, Jimmy. I’ll issue orders. You will stay put. If you clear away from Broken Hill without my permission, I’ll track you ten times round the world if necessary to get you put away for a nice seven years of the best.” The blue eyes softened, and Jimmy was truly grateful. “Be around, and don’t get yourself arrested. By the way, your tie is a monstrosity. Run along and buy yourself others at the shop owned by the late Sam Goldspink. Take afternoon tea at Favalora’s Cafe and make love to the waitress who served old Parsons with his last cup of tea. Clear, Jimmy?”

“You want me to work with you, Inspector?”

“I didn’t actually say so, Jimmy. Some distance along the street I see a young man who is a reporter. You don’t know me at all well. We met, you will remember, at a reception at Government House in Brisbane.”

Thoroughly shocked, Jimmy the Screwsman sauntered down Argent Street.

Problems for Bony

BONY WAS delighted with his office, a small room situated at the end of a corridor and plainly furnished. He had only to turn in his chair and thump the wall to summon Sergeant Crome.

He liked Crome at their first meeting. Big, inclined to stoutness, not much hair, and grey at that, Crome was both dynamic and kindly, impatient with himself and tolerant unto others, and very early Bony sensed that he was perturbed by the discovery that he had not been equal to events. What Crome needed was a renewal of confidence.

“Sit down, Crome, and smoke if you want to,” Bony told him when Pavier had left after the introduction. “Before we’re through we’ll do a lot of hard smoking. Tell me about yourself. Married?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant, producing pipe and tobacco. “Have two girls in their early teens. I was a senior constable stationed at Bathurst when the Superintendent was an inspector. That was eight years ago. The Super’s been a good friend to me.”

“He gave me the impression that he could be. During the period you’ve been stationed here how many homicide cases have you been engaged upon?”

“Not including these two cyanide cases, nine. Of those nine, only one was difficult to break open. You see, sir, here in Broken Hill we don’t have gangster feuds, very few bashings, and rarely a sex crime.” Crome lit his pipe and tossed the spent match into the emptyw.p. b. “Superintendent Pavier is the best senior officer we’ve ever had at Broken Hill. He’s trained most of us, and he invented a system to identify characters reported from other centres. Every train and aircraft is met. Social evils which experience has proved everywhere cannot be stamped out are here quietly controlled, and, despite the surplus of males, our women are safer than in any city in Australia.”

“What about petty offences-robberies?”

“Not much of that-until these last few months.”

“Convictions?”

Crome’s small grey eyes hardened. He hunted a purpose behind the bland eyes lazily looking at him.