Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

Abie was clearly startled. He laughed again and ran back beside the path to the low scrub. He was tremendously excited, but Bony was not deceived. Bony was evincing interest in the late Mrs. Overton’s distant clothes line when he heard Abie say:

“I no know-emthat feller.”

“You never seen him track’s before?” demanded Sawtell.

“I no know-em.”Abie was decidedly dejected by the admission of failure. “Himbin China-feller, p’haps. P’haps him bin black feller camp in Chinatown.”

“All right, Abie,” Sawtell said, cheerfully. “You bin good tracker all right. You show-um good track that feller come along here and go in house, eh?”

Carrying his tin of fishing lines, Bony sauntered away towards the police station. At the end of the lane, he glanced back to find that the sergeant had disappeared, probably to secure the house. Abie was rolling a cigarette, his felt hat slightly tilted to one side like Sergeant Sawtell’s hat.

Half an hour later, Sawtell entered the police station office. The local Press correspondent had just left in a great hurry for the radio station. In one of the cells off the compound was lodged Ronald Locke.

“Let me see your casts, please,” Bony requested, and Sawtell produced them. “I’ll take a quick look at the impressions. Must memorise them.”

Walters called the sergeant to his desk, and Bony carried the casts out to the damp earth about a rose tree. He pressed the casts to the ground and stood back to see them. The print of the naked foot he would, of course, never forget and would recognise again. The other, the shoe-print, caused him to frown. It was not the print of the shoe which was worn down on the inner side of the heel, although it was the same size. It did happen to be a left print, but there was no circular indentation showing that to the sole of the shoe some object had been adhering. It was, in fact, an excellent print of Mr. Dickenson’s left shoe.

Abie’s Defection

BONY put the casts on Sawtell’s desk.

“Where’s Abie?” he asked.

“Dunno! Out in the yard, I suppose. You want him?”

“No.”Bony remained standing. “When you made those casts, you are sure that you took them from the prints pointed out by the tracker?”

“Positive. I got Abie to run a line round them with his finger.”

Bony turned away and sauntered through to the kitchen.

“You must be starving,” Mrs. Walters remarked, and Bony, wrenching his mind from Abie, smiled and said that he supposed he was. She busied herself preparing his breakfast, and he crossed to the doorway and stood looking out over the compound. Abie wasn’t in sight. Constable Clifford was locking the door of a cell, under an arm a pair of shoes. With a motion of his head, Bony invited the constable to join him.

“Are those Locke’s shoes?” he asked, and was told they were, and that Sawtell wished to compare an imprint from them with the casts he had made under Abie’s directions. “Let me see them.”

Bony examined them. They were size seven. Those shoes had not made the impressions of Sawtell’s casts, nor had they made the impressions from which Bony had made his casts. The casts were of a shoe size eight. Nevertheless, a man having a shoe size seven could wear a shoe size eight in which to conduct his murders.

“Thank you, Clifford. Tell the inspector that when convenient I’d like to have a word with you here.”

Clifford departed for the office and Bony sat down to breakfast. He said nothing to Mrs. Walters as she served him, and she could see that he ate automatically. She was washing the dishes when he rose from the table and carried the china to the washing bench. Picking up a drying cloth, he proceeded to dry the dishes as she washed them.

“What do you know about Mrs. Overton, her friends, her relations?” he asked.

“Not much, Bony. No one here knew her husband: he died before she came to Broome. She was making a trip round Australia and decided to live here permanently. I think there was a man in her life, somewhere.”

“Yes, he lives in Melbourne. His name is Bryant. You’ve never met him here?”

Mrs. Walters shook her head, and hoped that her guest would not drop her favourite china toast rack.

“Mrs. Overton was well liked in Broome,” she said.“Quite a friend of Mrs. Sayers. Worked hard with the Methodist Church and their SundaySchool, and among the boys at the college. The young people all liked her. She had a way with children round about twelve and thirteen.”

“Did she entertain much?”

“Not a great deal. She didn’t drink, but she never outwardly disapproved of people who do. Although she never served liquor in her own house, she often attended parties where drinks were laid on.”

“The people she invited to her house would be of theelite of Broome, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Is Arthur Flinn among theelite?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Walters frowned. “I was at one of Mrs. Overton’s afternoon teas when he appeared. I don’t think he was quite welcome. Just an impression, you know. I remember thinking that his effect on me was probably the same with Mrs. Overton. There are some men, Bony, who seem to want always to paw a woman. You know the type, perhaps.”

“Yes. Go on, please.”

Mrs. Walters laughed mirthlessly.

“Women are peculiar,” she averred. “They can’t stand some men even touching them, and they seem to like it from other men. One afternoon when the radio was playing a dance tune, Sergeant Sawtell was in here and he grabbed me in his arms and made me dance. Had it been Arthur Flinn, I’d have screamed.”

“Thank you. Let’s move away from the unpleasant Flinn. Now, can you tell me if Mrs. Overton employed domestic help?”

“I’m not sure about that. I’m inclined to think not.”

“Well, then, did she have a woman in to do her washing?”

“I’m not sure about that, either. Mrs. Sayers would know.”

Bony was placing the dried dishes in the correct place in the kitchen cabinet when Clifford returned from the office.

“Cup of tea?” asked Bony, swinging round from the cabinet. The constable betrayed his astonishment and looked at Mrs. Walters, who said:

“Of course he’ll have a cup of tea. Anyone will have a cup of tea here at any time.”

Clifford appeared uneasy as Bony brought the cup and saucer and the milk from the safe. Being waited on by an inspector was a new experience.

“Was the arresteffected without incident?” Bony asked.

“Yes. I got hold of Locke and told him he was wanted, and that he’d better not raise any argument about it. Black Mark wanted to know why I was taking him… when I had him in the jeep. They didn’t know about Mrs. Overton at Dampier’s Hotel.”

“What was Locke’s reaction?”

“He was quiet enough. Said it would catch up with him some time.”

“Meaning?”

The grey eyes in Clifford’s tanned face flickered.

“I don’t know. He could have referred to the breach of parole or to these murders. Full of conceit, and, I’d say, a born liar.”

“No one interrogated him yet?”

“No.”

“Where’s the tracker?”

“In his camp in the stables, I think.”

“Thanks, Clifford. When you go back to the office, mention to the sergeant that I’d like to be present when he does interrogate the prisoner.”

Bony left for thecompound, and in the sunlight he took time to roll a cigarette. The stables then were to his right, the building erected long years before the coming of motor transport to the North-West. On the left were the nine cells. They could be counted easily enough. Each door was an iron grille from floor to roof.

Without haste or hint of purpose, Bony strolled to the stables. There was a chaff-room stacked with fodder: asaddlery room containing polished harness, and seven horse stalls. The stalls were vacant. Skirting the stalls, Bony came to a loose-box, and within the loose-box the tracker lay asleep on old blankets laid out on straw. Abie had removed his greatcoat and military boots.