Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

“ ’Coursehe will,” snapped Sawtell. “I’ll locate him pronto.”

“If you do locate him, he won’t tell you,” Bony quietly stated.

“Won’t tell! Coo! He’ll tell, all right.”

“Have you ever been able to make a black-fellow talk when he will not? No, Sawtell, you won’t make him talk. I made the mistake of not keeping my eye on him, but we were all too busy last night. Locate him if you can, but don’t let him suspect that we know of his trickery.”

“Why not? What’s his little game?” asked Walters.

“If he knows who murdered Mrs. Overton, his little game is blackmail. To blackmail, he must contact the murderer. He, therefore, could lead us to the murderer, provided we were sufficiently expert in shadowing him. It will be a task for me. However, I fear much for Abie.”

“You’re right, Bony. Abie would be a mouse trying to blackmail a cat.” Walters chewed his upper lip. “Well, what next?”

“Relax till the reinforcements arrive. You two get on with your routine jobs. I’ll look around for Abie.” Bony smiled, and they wondered at his calm demeanour. “When you go out, be sure you haven’t a drawing pin stuck to one of your shoes.”

Bony left. Walters scratched his chin. Sawtell said:

“What’s he mean by that crack?”

“That I am the murderer,” replied Walters “Told me I wore down my shoes same way as the murderer does, that I make the same stride as the murderer does, that I am the murderer’s weight. Nice chap, isn’t he?”

“Are you the murderer?” asked the sergeant.

“Are you?” shouted the inspector.

Sawtell burst into laughter. Walters grinned. The tension vanished.

Bony visited the stores, at which he purchased drawing pins and gained the information that the government offices, the council office, the State school and the college did not purchase their drawing pins at the stores. The drawing pin attached to the murderer’s shoe was useless as a lead, but as one of many pieces with which to identify the murderer it did have value.

Any man in Broome being sufficiently astute to wear rubber gloves, and to clean door handles so that the imprint of the rubber would not be recorded, would be wide awake to the ability of the native trackers and would almost certainly use a pair of discarded shoes in which to commit his crimes. It was most improbable that he would wear the shoes save when on murder bent. As this expert on tracks was aware, no two men walk exactly alike, and the tracks of the murderer, seen in Mrs. Overton’s house and on her garden paths, rendered to Bony distinguishing peculiarities which would be registered by the ground from any other shoes he wore.

But like the drawing pin, footprints could not be regarded as conclusive evidence, but as supporting evidence of the contiguity of the murderer with his victim. Bony had not told Inspector Walters that the murderer placed the same pressure on his toes as upon his heels, whilst the inspector dug his heels into cement, such being the emphasis with which he placed his heels.

Bony was “hoorayed” by Keith Walters racing home on his bicycle for lunch, and the boy was asked to stop. Keith circled and drew alongside.

“Have you seen Abie today?” Bony asked.

“No. What’s he done, Mr. Knapp?”

“Absent from duty. D’you know of any blacks camped near the town?”

Keith shook his head, and said the nearest camp was on the Cuvier Creek half a mile down from Dampier’s Hotel.

“Have you ever visited the blacks’ camp out there?”

“Rather. They put on a corroboree a couple of months ago. We watched ’emthrowing spears and boomerangs and things.”

“Did you, indeed. That must have been interesting. How did you go?”

“In cars. All the school couldn’t go, you know, so we cast lots. I was lucky. The masters cast lots, too.”

“And who were the lucky masters, d’you remember?”

“Mr. Percival, and old Stinks, and Tubby Wilson. The head arrived after we did. Mrs. Sayers brought him, old Briggs driving. She shouted tea for all of us. Her car was loaded with eats.” The boy’s face became awfully serious. “I forgot about Mrs. Overton. Mrs. Sayers brought her, too.”

“Did you like Mrs. Overton?”

“Oh, yes. All the fellows liked her. She was arattlin ’ good sort. One of prefects was caught out crying about her being killed like that, but no one chiacked him for it. We all felt like it, you see.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. Well, you had better get along home for lunch. I’ll not be long after you.”

At the police station office the Derby constable was presented to Bony. He was dapper in physique but a hundred per cent in mental alertness. Sawtell was taking him home for lunch, and Mrs. Sawtell was putting him up. He would report to Bony at seven.

The children having left the luncheon table, Bony asked if there had arrived any communication from Darwin concerning Arthur Flinn. Walters said that Darwin knew nothing to Flinn’s discredit and that for several years he had been the buying agent for a large jewellery firm in New York.

“Don’t get us anywhere with Flinn,” concluded the inspector.

Following lunch, Bony borrowed Mrs. Walters’ alarm clock and permitted himself one hour of sleep. Meanwhile, Walters had telephoned Dampier’s Hotel to ascertain if Abie had been seen out there. No one at the hotel had seen Abie, and the lubras working there had not seen him at the camp. Keith received orders to prospect for the tracker on his bike when he left school for the day.

Awakened by the clock at two, Bony spent an hour doing nothing bar meditate and chain-smoke. He had afternoon tea with Mrs. Walters at three o’clock, and at three-thirty was sauntering into Chinatown. And shortly afterwards he was met by Johnno.

“Oh, Mr. Knapp! I look for you. I try see you arrive. You arrive, eh?”

“I have arrived,” agreed Bony, unable to withstand the smiling face of the sunny Javanese.

“You like go fish, eh?” Johnno went on, shoulders and arms expressing recognition of a wish which must be granted. “I take you see my friend. He has motor-boat. Sometimes motor-boat he go ahead when myfriend say go astern, and he go astern when my friend he says go ahead. No matter. We arrive, we put out the lines.” Johnno’s hand and arms illustrated putting out the lines as though they were employed heaving a drunk out of a music-hall. “No fish, no matter. We sleep, we eat, we drink. You come now see my friend?”

“Yes, Johnno, why not?”

They walked together along the ill-kept sidewalk fronting the inhabited iron shacks with their leaning veranda posts and rotted floor-boards.

“You live always in Broome?” Johnno asked.

“No, Johnno. I must soon leave and go back to work. But I shall always remember you and our drive with Mr. Dickenson to Dampier’s Hotel.”

“Ah! We go one night before you leave. We have night out, eh?”

“I will think that over, Johnno,” Bony said, the twinkle in his eyes. “We might make a party of it.”

Johnno was immensely pleased. He conducted Bony past the store and towards a large shed where the street ended above the slope of the beach. They passed between the shed and a huge stack of empty oil drums, and in this narrow sandy laneway Bony saw the tracks of a man who wore a size-eight shoe and who pressed his feet evenly on the ground. The tracks stopped at the bottom of four steps leading to a loading stage at the wide doors of the shed.

As they mounted the steps, Bony heard from within the shed a sound like flakes of slate falling upon a marble slab. The smell of ozone was strong, and of tar, and when he entered the shed he saw against the far side a small mountain of pearl shell. At the foot of the mountain squatted two of Johnno’s countrymen. They were sorting the pearl shells into large and shallow floor bins and the light from the opened doors formed bars of pearl as the shell was tossed through the air into one or other of the several bins.