Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

“I’ll be with you, Inspector.”

“You have my assurance that neither Jimmy nor I will pinch anything from the house,” Bony aimed at Crome. “All I ask is that you won’t pinch us.”

The grimness about the sergeant’s mouth faded. The lips twitched. He began to laugh softly, and the sound rose in pitch till it rumbled around the room. Pushing back his chair, he attempted to get to his feet, seemed frozen in the act.

“It’s funnier than you’d read about,” he declared. “I’ll still be laughing if I’m chucked out of the department. Let’s go.”

“Sloan will be waiting to take usburglaring in his car,” Bony said happily.

They rose together. Luke wanted to shake hands with everyone.

And Jimmy Nimmo was positively sure he wasn’t as sane as he had been when he came to Broken Hill.

Jimmy’s Mecca

A FULL quarter mile from the two-storeyed house, Wally Sloan was asked to pull into the cavern beneath the branches of a pepper tree and put out the lights of the car. The nearest street lamp was a hundred-odd yards away.

“If you are investigated by a patrolling policeman, Sloan, you must invent your own explanation,” Bony said. “It’s barely half past nine, and you may have to wait many hours.”

“That’ll be OK with me, sir. I’ll wait till the band plays.”

“Now, Jimmy, you and I will go to it. You others know what to do. Much depends on you. Be wary, although it’s unlikely that Tuttaway will be in the garden before you, and don’t interfere with him unless sure he is leaving the place.”

Crome crossed his fingers and, with Abbot and Luke, prepared to wait thirty minutes. Jimmy and Bony slid out into the void, and the car door was silently closed. Three minutes later they entered the lane passing the rear of Mrs Dalton’s house.

“I’m not as familiar with the grounds as you are,” Bony admitted. “But I have a general picture of the place. You take the left side of the house and I’ll take the right, and we’ll meet at the pine tree at the front. Clear?”

“Okay. What do we look for?”

“Anything unusual. First to survey. Second to plan. Third to operate.”

“Who’s the burglar, me or you?”

Bony chuckled and patted Jimmy’s arm.

“If ever we go into partnership, Jimmy, there’s no policeman living who would catch us.”

Jimmy was first to arrive at the trysting tree, and there he stood with his back to the trunk as he had done the previous night. It was so dark the ground was invisible and the house without form. Two illumined windows on the upper floor were like golden plaques. Waiting for Bony, he watched for him and flinched when a hand gripped his arm. The voice was familiar, like a voice in the memory.

“My side of the house is in darkness. There’s a tool shed and a kind of summerhouse. No one in them.”

“There’s a light in the kitchen on my side, and the blind’s down,” Jimmy reported. “I poked into the garage and made sure no one’s twiddling his thumbs in there. While I been here a woman passed across the blind in the right top room. Where we go from here?”

“You know the windows.”

“The window…”

Jimmy’s voice trailed into the dull ringing of the telephone within the house. Crome had said the telephone was in the hall. Bony waited. The bell continued. Light appeared at the transom above the front door. The ringing bell stopped. Neither man spoke until the hall light went out. Jimmy waited a half minute before saying:

“The window next the kitchen is easy. There’s another easy one on the other side of the house. That’s the one for me.”

“Which one round the corner?”

“Second.”

“I’ll make for it. Give me a minute before you follow-in case anyone should follow me.”

Jimmy counted the seconds before leaving the tree and proceeded by moving each foot low to the ground to feel for any obstruction. The clouds had switched off the stars, and it was a night such as Jimmy loved. Now, however, he wanted just a little starlight that he might be warned of the proximity of the man who had broken one glass knife and could have another he’d like to break. The distant street light beyond the front fence and the metallic glow of the mines in the eastern sector of the invisible sky provided no consolation. He was glad to reach the house corner and hug the wall till he came to the yielding obstruction which was Bonaparte.

“What’s in here?” breathed Bony.

“Lodding’s bedroom.”

“Howd’you know?”

“Saw it before she pulled down the blind. More’n once, too. The room to the front is a lounge. Beyond that is the hall, andt’other side of the hall is another lounge-where Crome and Pavier quizzed the old girl, you’ll remember.”

“All set, Jimmy. We’ll go in.”

To Bony it appeared that thescrewsman became part of the window. He heard no sound. Jimmy spoke:

“She’sjake.”

Bony felt the window. It was raised. Beyond he could feel a blind and lace curtains. He slid over the sill, stood within the room, waited. Jimmy entered. An alert dog might have heard them, but Bony doubted it.

Jimmy rearranged the disturbed blind, intending to leave the window open-a way of retreat-but Bony pointed out that because Tuttaway probably would examine all windows he must not discover that one open.

Jimmy had to admit admiration, and satisfaction, too, for and with his partner this night. Bony stood with him in the ink-black room, feeling the spirit of the place and what lay beyond it, sniffing the scents which can tell so much from so little.

The air was stale, to be felt rather than smelled. There were two distinct odours. Naphthalene and the perfume of cosmetics, and there was something neither could determine, a musty smell of decay beaten back by the perfume and the naphthalene. Silence, a slumbering silence, was undisturbed by the noise of the far-away mines, which could not penetrate these old stone walls and expertly fitted window. There was no light until a dull opaque disc marked Bony’s heavily shrouded electric torch.

The layers of the handkerchief were reduced until the disc emitted a short diaphanous beam without form. The beam moved. An easy-chair crouched like a petrified troglodyte to one side of a massive steel fireplace, blackly gleaming. A small table bearing an electric lamp and two books swung into being, and then the bed beside which stood the table, a three-quarter-size bed, made ready, as though for the woman who would never return.

The dressing-table appointments were expensive and in excellent taste. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe were old-fashioned and of rosewood. The clothing within appeared to be beyond the reach of policewomen and the wives of police inspectors. There was nothing of value to Bony in this room save the pictures on the walls. There were five, and all were photographic enlargements of a woman in period costumes.

“Passage outside this room?” Bony asked Jimmy, who had accompanied him on the tour of inspection.

“Don’t know. To the front is the lounge room the Lodding woman used. To the back two more rooms. Blinds are always down. Must be empty.”

“We’ll examine the lounge.”

Jimmy’s slim hand closed about the door handle, slowly turned it. The door was locked. Steel glinted in the other hand, and steel teeth entered the lock. The door was opened without sound. The passage waited, darkly.

Jimmy closed the door after them but did not re-lock it. Bony glided to the door of the lounge. It was locked. Again Jimmy turned a key and opened a door.

Their feet sank into thick pile. The torch revealed the gleaming outlines of polished wood and the pattern of upholstery, the shapes of small tables, a writing-desk. Glass protecting a large bookcase behaved like mirrors. Jimmy crossed to the windows to make sure they were thoroughly masked.