Arthur Upfield - Batchelors of Broken Hill

“H’m!” Pavier dropped the letter he had opened whilst Stillman was speaking. “Am I to understand that you took over from Bonaparte yesterday afternoon?”

“That is so, sir,” Stillman replied, made wary by the glint in the eyes watching him.

“I assume I am the officer in charge of this division, Stillman. I hope to hear that Bonaparte told you to go to the devil. It is for him to be informed by me of the contents of Sydney’s instruction.”

“I thought it was understood-”

Bony walked in.

“Morning, Super!”

“Morning, Bonaparte!” Pavier returned, and Stillman gracefully stepped back, to savour in full the ‘sacking’ of this upstart. “I understand that Stillman has already spoken to you of an instruction he conveyed from Sydney. Er -here it is.”

“Don’t bother, Super.” Bony drew a chair to the desk and sat down with his back to the standing Stillman. “I’m leaving for Brisbane on the 11.20 am plane, and I have to call on Mrs Robinov to pave the way for a romantic friend of mine. Here is the report on work accomplished for your division, and I would like to make a verbal report in the presence of two of your officers who have been splendidly co-operative and have revealed marked initiative. Would you kindly call for Sergeant Crome and Detective Abbot?”

Superintendent Pavier used the telephone, and whilst speaking glanced at the superscription on the foolscap envelope. It was addressed to him and marked: ‘ Shorthand Notes and Transcriptions.’ The handwriting was that of his son. Crome and Abbot came in. Pavier lookedquizzingly at Bony, who invited them to be seated. Stillman remained standing. No one saw him.

“Well, Super, we have tied up those homicide cases,” Bony began briskly. “In the morgue we have the murderer of Muriel Lodding, and in the lock-up we have the murderer of Goldspink, Parsons, and Gromberg. My report covers the investigation conducted by us since my arrival, and you will, I believe, find it clear and journalistically concise. As I said a moment ago, I am happy to commend Sergeant Crome, who has been most cooperative and keenly helpful, and Senior Detective Abbot, who has shown equal zeal and marked intelligence.

“I will run over the essential points. You will find in the report several additional items concerning the Tuttaway family history. Tuttaway himself was doubtless insane all his life, but because he had an outlet in creative work of a sort he was regarded as merely eccentric. He became, as we know, world-famous as a magician.

“In those early years of mounting success Tuttaway was accompanied by his sister Henrietta. She was as great as Tuttaway, and both were undoubted artists in their chosenmetier.” The word was split in pronunciation for Stillman’s benefit. “Henrietta Tuttaway’s finest work on the stage was to present half a dozen famous queens in history, making the changes so swiftly as to give the audience the impression of a procession of queens. She was also an expert sleight-of-hand performer.

“Henrietta admits her brother made her stage success possible. As a young girl she revealed incipient insanity, but her brother seems to have steered her clear of serious trouble. Eventually they bought a house in Ealing, London, and to the household Tuttaway introduced the girl we know as Muriel Lodding. It was his intention to train her to take her place in one of his shows. However, Muriel Lodding was not enthusiastic, and Tuttaway, naturally cruel, tormented her. The case in Victoria was a repetition of history.

“Muriel Lodding received deep affection from Henrietta. It became Henrietta’s mission to protect her as much as possible from her brother, but as the years went by her mental health deteriorated and gave Muriel Lodding much concern. On tour in America, therefore, when Henrietta was left in the house in Ealing, Muriel ran away from the company and returned to England, and within a few days both women were on a ship coming to Australia. After arrival they changed their names and gave out they were sisters.

“Eventually they heard that the Great Scarsby had returned to London, and subsequently that he had arrived in Sydney. They found sanctuary in Broken Hill, and here Henrietta, who claims she is the widow of a man named Dalton, appeared to recover in health.

“Muriel Lodding’s great fear was George Henry Tuttaway, who had exercised sadistic dominance over her. When he escaped, she wanted Mrs Dalton to move on with her, even return to England, and the fact that she merely had to apply to you, sir, for police protection to ensure safety from the man seems to have been countered by Mrs Dalton’s determination to remain in Broken Hill and herself deal with her brother. We found placed ready in a kitchen drawer a butcher’s meat saw, butcher’s knives, and several hessian bags, and we now know that these articles were purchased by Mrs Dalton ten days after the escape.

“It cannot be proved whether Muriel Lodding suspected Mrs Dalton of poisoning those three men. Mrs Dalton states that Lodding was not implicated, but I think, in view of the fact that three men were poisoned within two days following each of three mental illnesses suffered by Mrs Dalton, and which occasioned Lodding to ask for sick leave, that Lodding must have suspected. We do know that Lodding once met Mrs Dalton returning home in the guise of a much older woman, and her failure to report her suspicions was probably due to a sense of deep obligation to Mrs Dalton.

“The effect of the escape on Mrs Dalton was, in Dr Hoadly’s opinion, the subsequent mental upsets. During these upsets she had to be controlled. Following the crisis, when Lodding felt she could return to work, Mrs Dalton’s mind entered a secondary phase when she was not so completely mad as to appear in public dressed as Queen Victoria, and sufficiently sane to avoid through disguise the consequences of her phobia.

“This phobia, or hatred of her brother, was the product of several characteristics in the man, the major one being a long habit of feeding like an untrained child. To the sane, a mere pebble, but to Mrs Dalton a volcano which erupted when he escaped. His escape drove her to seek men like him, and by poisoning them she received temporary satisfaction in having destroyed that which she loathed.

“She used a small syringe and, following practice, was able to conceal the instrument in her hand and squirt the poison accurately for a distance of two or three feet. The first two victims were selected. Gromberg she met in the street and followed to the hotel lounge, and O’Hara she saw beside the fountain. Both Miss Isaacs and Goldspink knew Mrs Dalton, but so perfectly did she disguise herself that neither Goldspink nor any of his assistants recognised her that afternoon she poisoned him. Parsons habitually visited the cafe. She went there often as Mrs Dalton, and most likely was not as Mrs Dalton when she poisoned Parsons. The afternoon she poisoned Gromberg she was looking for a victim, and because she sometimes shopped at Mrs Goddard’s grocery store, she had rubber pads inside her cheeks and her nostrils to make her something like that woman.”

Bony related the story of the glass daggers; of the meeting of Tuttaway with his sister in Mrs Dalton’s house; of what had transpired.

“It’s all in my report, Super. Dr Hoadly’s preliminary report is attached. His opinion is that Mrs Dalton is decidedly certifiable. Goddard and his store of poisons and other questionable possessions I leave to be investigated. And where Tuttaway has been living must also be left with you.

“To conclude. Tuttaway, the poseur, the actor, had to purchase gloves in Broken Hill, where the wearing of gloves is as rare as a top hat. Abbot produced George Henry Tuttaway from the Records, working only on a description given by a man who had seen him buying the gloves. The haft of the dagger used to kill Lodding was discovered by Crome to have been found inside Mrs Dalton’s garden gate. And I recalled seeing Muriel Lodding seated at her desk and abstractedly toying with a pencil. The pencil appeared to slide in and out of her fingers of its own volition, and so quickly as to make it appear to flow like brown water. That gave me the first link between her and the Great Scarsby.