Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

He was continuing to pick his teeth when the police jeep stopped and three men came up the veranda steps.

“Evening, Mark,” said Walters, nonchalantly.

“Evenin’, Inspector. Evenin’, Sergeant.”

“This is Mr. Knapp,”proceeded Walters.“Personal friend of mine from over east. Criminologist, and all that. Might be able to help us solve these murders.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Knapp,” Black Mark said in a voice thrice the volume of a normal man’s. “You’re welcome to what you can see and find out. I’m an inoffensive man, as the inspector will back me, but I’d be mighty obliged if you could point out the man who murdered Mrs. Cotton. Point him out privately.”

Bony smiled easily, saying he would keep it in mind. He asked what had been done with Mrs. Cotton’s personal effects.

“Well, nothing was touched in her bedroom bar the bed linen,” obliged Black Mark. “Probably you know that the body was taken from the yard and laid on the bed, where it remained most of the day. After the body was removed, I took all her things and locked ’emup in her bedroom. Being her executor, I had the solicitor out here and that’s what he advised me to do. Later on, thed. s from Perth looked in, but they didn’t do much.”

“Were you with the Perth detectives when they entered the bedroom?” asked Bony.

“Yes. I went in with ’em. They were interested mostly in the window fastenings. Like to look at the room?”

“I would.”

Black Mark conducted them to a large well-furnished room containing a stripped double bed now laden with all kinds of women’s possessions. There were several trunks of the kind seldom seen today, and a treadle sewing-machine, and a dozen or so silver trophies won by Mrs. Cotton’s husband.

Bony examined the window. It was one of the casement type and quite large. The usual fly-netted screen was fitted on the inside. It was not possible to force the window from the outside without breaking the glass. With the window open, the screen provided a degree of protection, for unless the netting was slit the catch-lock could not be turned back.

“Who brought the body here from the yard?” Bony asked.

“I did, with a man named Jenks taking the feet.”

“The door wasn’t locked… then?”

“No. There wasn’t even a key in the door.”

“How often did Mrs. Cotton walk in her sleep?”

“Very seldom,” replied Black Mark. “Not once in six months, I’d say. Seems to have done it when she was. over-tired. She never wandered far, and usually woke up by herself and went back to bed.”

“On that night Mrs. Cotton was killed, the bar was busy, I understand,” Bony went on, calmly regarding Black Mark. “Was the noise in the bar particularly loud?”

“Yes. We had a bit of a party. Five prospectors in for a spell.”

“So that if Mrs. Cotton had cried out for help, either here or in the passage without, or even in the yard, you would not have heard her?”

Black Mark hesitated, seemingly reluctant to agree.

“What about the staff?” persisted Bony. “Could they have heard a cry for help?”

“I don’t know,” Black Mark replied. “I been thinking along that line, and I’ve questioned the maids and the cook and her husband. They reckon that if Mrs. Cotton had sung out they would have thought it was someone in the bar.”

“So that it was comparatively easy for anyone to walk into the place, knock on Mrs. Cotton’s door, push her back into the bedroom and strangle her?”

Very slowly Black Mark said, softly for him:

“I’m afraid it was. But she was found in the yard, remember.”

“When the Perth detectives were here, did they examine the contents of the dressing-table, and the drawers of that tall-boy and the inside of the wardrobe?”

“They looked into those things but they didn’t take anything out.”

“Sawtell… did you, or Pedersen?”

“Yes, just looked into the drawers. Black Mark was with us. We were trying to find if anything belonging to the dead woman had been stolen. Everything seemed in order.”

Bony opened the door of the wardrobe and burrowed his head and shoulders beneath the hems of the close-packed rack of dresses, and later on, both Walters and the sergeant admitted they were not surprised when he brought out a bundle wrapped in a piece of linen.

Sawtell obeyed Bony’s order to remove the books from a small table, and on the table he broke open the bundle.

“What the hell’s that?” demanded Black Mark, his eyes almost glaring at the strips of torn and ripped silk of several colours. “Looks like women’s silk under-things.”

“I think, Mr. Mark, that Sergeant Sawtell will take charge of these pieces of underwear,” Bonysaid, an edge to his voice. “You have not seen them before?”

“I certainly haven’t,” declared the licensee furiously. “I don’t get it.”

“Tell me, was Mrs. Cotton a woman of tantrums? Is it possible that she tore these garments in a fit of temper?”

“No, of course not. Mrs. Cotton was a fine woman, and sweet-tempered, excepting when she had good cause to blow up. She wouldn’t have done all that. Why, she went to market good and hearty only the week before she was killed because someone stole a nightdress of hers off the drying line.”

“Stole her nightgown!” echoed Bony, his eyes blazing.

“Too ruddy right. Said it was one of her best silk ones. We have some pretty hard doersdrinkin ’ here, but we never hadno thief before that nightdress was pinched.”

“What about the aborigines? Are they trustworthy?”

“No, they’re not. But they wouldn’t have pinched it, or pinch anything else, because they know one of ’emwould tell us.”

“Can you recall the date that the garment was stolen from the line?”

“Yes. Let me think. Mrs. Cotton was murdered on the night of April 12th. That was a Thursday. The nightdress was stolen on theSat’day before. We were extra busy that day. We had the football club picnicking out here, and the Buffaloes were having their annual outing. There were a lot of school kids, too. Most of all that lot went back to town at sundown.”

“Most of them?”

Black Mark reminded Bony of an outraged porcupine. His hair and beard were distinctly uncurled.

“Fifty or sixty of the men stayed on till nigh midnight,” he answered.

“Were many of them strangers to you?”

“Yes, they were. I don’t know everyone in town. But they wouldn’t pinch a nightdress off a clothes line. No one does that sort of thing up here in theNor ’-West.”

“H’m! Fetch me a broom, please.”

Black Mark looked his astonishment and made no comment. While he was absent, Sawtell re-rolled the silk items into a bundle and wrapped that in a pillow slip. On Black Mark’s return with the broom, Bony ordered them all outside while he swept the floor. There might have been sufficient dust to fill an egg-cup. There was nothing but the dust, so far as the human eye could detect, but Bony gathered it into a specimen envelope.

“Take us out to see the clothes line,” he requested.

They were conducted to the yard and through the wicket gate to the strip of lawn over which was stretched two long wire lines. When loaded with washing, the lines were kept aloft by forked poles. The inspector said:

“There would be no reason for anyone just visiting the hotel to come here, would there?”

“No,” answered Black Mark. “As you saw, there’s a notice on the little gate reading ‘Private’.”

“But anyone crossing the main yard could easily see the clothes on the line,” Bony pointed out. “Who did the washing that day, d’you know?”

“Two lubras from up the creek. The blacks have a camp there.”