Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

This house contained four rooms. There were no connecting doors, each room opening to the veranda. One was unfurnished. Two were furnished with a single bed. Mrs. Eltham’s room was large and well furnished, and contained a double bed. Each room had the usual glazed window, in addition to which was the universal fly-screen on the inside fastened with a snap lock.

The door of Mrs. Eltham’s room was closed, and Bony tested the handle for prints and found it clean. Within was sufficient light enabling him to locate the electric switch, and he operated that with the point of a match. It, too, was clean of prints. Bony re-closed the door and stood with his back to it.

Beyond the bed was the window with its fly-screen closed and its lace curtains drawn aside. The bed was exactly as when the body had been found on it, the top sheet folded over a blanket and counterpane and the whole partly turned back as though the woman had been on the verge of getting into bed when attacked. On the door side of the bed was a small woolly mat, on the far edge of which was a pair of embroidered slippers. Over the bed’s foot sprawled a floral linen dressing-gown, and on one of two chairs lay a flecked tweed skirt, a lemon-coloured sweater, a satin brassiere and slip, and silk stockings.

When Bony moved, the dust-filmed mirror reflected his actions as he bent over the bed, when he opened the door of the wardrobe and saw the packed dresses on hangers, and when he gazed upon the dressing-table appointments and noted the dust on them and on the glass surface. There were no signs that a struggle had taken place in this room, or elsewhere in the house. There had been no signs of a struggle in Mrs. Cotton’s bedroom, either. The murderer had had time enough to remove all signs of a struggle in Mrs. Cotton’s room, and here he had much more time to do so. But why? The killer could have caught the women by the neck and could have possessed sufficient strength to prevent any disorder. But why the laying-out of the body on this bed after the nightgown had been ripped from neck to hem?

Bony sat on the vacant chair and made another of his extraordinary cigarettes. He scrutinised every point of the picture illumined by the light falling from the briar-pink shade. He tried to recreate the dreadful drama of that night of May 5th, tried to feel the woman’s growing alarm and swift horror when she heard the stealthy steps on the veranda or within this dark room. There was no cord switch with which to switch on the light without leaving the bed. To do that she needs must leave the bed to reach the switch beside the door. Had she seen her murderer? He had choked her from in front. Had she been caught and strangled before she could reach the light switch? Or had she left the room to investigate the stealthy footsteps when attacked? Questions! The answers would have made the picture much clearer.

For what had the man, seen by old Dickenson, come into this room? This was a question having much more of urgency than those others. Find its answer and a great step would have been taken by this patient and relentless tracker of men towardshis quarry.

Gradually, Bony came to feel that there was a flaw in the picture of the room. When fully conscious that there was a flaw, he sought for it and could not see it. There was nothing wrong with the bed. There was no significance in the arrangement of the dressing-table appointments. The woman’s clothes lay over the other chair in the order in which she had removed them. The small clock on the bedside table had stopped at 2.34. Whether it had stopped in the morning or the afternoon could not be proven. There were no pictures on the walls, and all the personal photographs had been removed by the police.

Presently, Bony’s restless eyes were directed to the bowl of dead flowers on the chest-of-drawers. On wilting to death, the flowers doubtless had changed the position they had occupied when alive. The stalks were not of the same length.

Those flowers had been originally arranged by a woman and, moreover, a woman with artistic tastes. Most women are expert in arranging flowers. Marie, Bony’s wife, spent a goodly portion of her time with flowers, and he had often watched her bringing a kind of orderly symmetry from chaos.

The dead flowers ought not of themselves to have fallen into a compact mass towards one side of the bowl. When the homicide men came, the flowers would not have been dead. They might have lifted the flowers to ascertain if anything had been dropped into the water. They might have moved the bowl to examine it for finger-prints. It was then that Bony recalled upsetting a vase of flowers on his own dressing-table whenever a drawer was rebellious.

He examined the dust on the surface of all the furniture, leaving the chest-of-drawers till last. The evenness of the dust film on the chest convinced him that it had been wiped after the finger-print men had left.

On pulling out the right-hand top drawer it stuck slightly and the dead flowers spilled from the bowl. He went through the contents of all the drawers, comprising bed and table linen, curtains and towels. All but the towels had been ironed. The ironed articles had been opened out, for the folds were not exactly as ironed, and that could have been done by the investigators, who also could have disarranged the flowers, or even upset them.

There were drawers fitted to the dressing-table and he looked into them. Other than face creams and powder, wads of handkerchiefs, packets of cigarettes and stockings there was nothing to interest him. Within the wardrobe, in addition to the rack of frocks there were several hats on a shelf, a drawer containing gloves, and a compartment containing shoes. Nothing of interest there.

Again in his chair, he made another cigarette and again examined the over-all picture of the room. There was something wrong, and patiently he sought to locate it. Being a woman’s room, although a married man of many years, it defeated him. He wished that his wife were there, sure that she would have seen or understood what was wrong with it, what made it incomplete. Being merely a man, he was puzzled by something which to a woman would have been glaringly obvious.

“Give!” he murmured. “Give!”

Not the least important, there was still the floor. He took from his case a powerful torch, and began on the floor about the chest-of-drawers. The floor was less dusty than the veranda spaces without. He found innumerable flower petals at one side, proving that they had been swept off at one end of the chest. He found a bobby pin near the foot of the bed table, and he found a flaky object which at once captured his interest.

It was not easy to lift from the floor, but having done so he rose to his feet and stood directly under the electric light to look at it on the palm of his hand. It was like a large fish scale, but had nothing of the fish scale’s polished surface and strength. When he dented it with a thumbnail, the dent remained. When he pressed hard with the nail, he could not divide it. The surface was pitted as though with a fine needle. It was a dull white in colour.

Fully thirty minutes he spent crawling around the floor. He found two more flakes, another bobby pin, a number of long hairs, five spent matches, parings from a pencil, and shreds of silk. These objects he placed in specimen envelopes from his wallet.

Again on his feet and contemplating the bed, he knew what was missing from this woman’s bedroom. The clothes-laden chair shrieked it. He looked down on the floor between the door and bed, for there he had found the wisps of silk. There was no silk in the chest-of-drawers. He rolled back the bed clothes and lifted the multi-spring mattress. There was nothing beneath it save the canvas sheet protecting it from the wire bed mattress.

The murderer had ripped Mrs. Cotton’s nightgown from neck to hem and had left the garment beside her body. He had similarly torn Mrs. Eltham’s nightgown and left it lying on the mat beside her bed. What had he done with Mrs. Eltham’s underwear?