Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

“Has he visited you often?”

“Yes, been here lots of times.”

“How many people, d’you think, would know the plan of this house?” asked Bony.

“Everyone in Broome, I should think. I don’t mind ’emwandering around at my parties.”

“Dear me! And I am supposed to be infallible. Would you have your domestic do the washing tomorrow?”

“I would, but there isn’t any. She washed on Monday.”

“You would be most helpful if you did have your personal washing left out on the line tomorrow night.”

Mrs. Sayers’ wide mouth formed an O.

“All right,” she assented. Then she giggled and cried: “I think you’re just the loveliest man!”

The Fisherman

THE next day being Saturday, Bony went fishing in the afternoon with Bill Lung and Johnno. Sawtell, who happened to be in Chinatown, saw the three men in the boat heading down the creek for the open sea, and he snorted with astonishment.

The boat could not be termed a motor-cruiser and there was nothing of comfort in it and little of cleanliness. Pieces of bait were still about from a previous trip, and the fish Johnno was cutting into bait was far from fresh. He sang as he worked, and the Chinese owner stood with the tiller between his legs and steered. Despite the smell of petrol he lit a cheroot from a match seeming to have a flame a yard high.

Out in the broad Roebuc Bay there was little wind. Through the holes in the canopy of mottled grey cloud the sunlight fell in bright bars of brass to rest upon the world. The water of the comparatively shallow bay was clear light-green, and so, too, was the gull which flew over the motor-boat. Bony had never before seen a green seagull. The wings and breast were diaphanously emitting the most wondrous tint.

Conversation being difficult because of the engine noise, Bony was content to loll on the stern thwart and appreciate the surroundings. Broome, hidden, save for a few buildings, behind the salmon-pink dunes, would entice the seafarer to think it a metropolis. The long white jetty and the buildings at its base appeared to have no purpose, and farther to the north the large sharp-angled Cave Hill College threatened the sprawling Mission.

Bony felt inexpressibly sleepy. For a week his sleep had been taken in minimum doses, and now the sea air made a definite attack upon his eyelids. Johnno saw him rubbing his eyes, and laughed. Bill Lung was looking for his sea-marks and yet left the tiller to fetch a pair of tinted glasses from the tool-box.

The engine being stopped and the anchor tossed outboard, the ensuing silence lingered beyond Johnno’s chatter and Bill Lung’s soft drawling voice. Two gulls came winging above them, and Bony removed the glasses. The sun was now shining on this deep water, and the gulls overhead were translucently blue.

“I’ve fished often enough in the Pacific, but I’ve never seen green and blue gulls until today,” remarked Bony. “They must reflect the colour of the sea.”

“That’s so,” agreed Bill Lung. “I’ve never noticed it before. Be good for trade if some of the pearl shells was coloured like that.”

They fished for an hour and caught nothing. Then Bony’s line was taken away despite all his efforts. He had fastened the end of the strong hand-line round the thwart, and the line became taut and then snapped asunder.

“That feller too big, eh?” laughed Johnno. “He’s a sting-ray, perhaps, or a shark. Good-bye line and hooks. Good-bye everything.”

At the end of a further hour, during which Johnno landed a small flathead and nearly went overboard in his excitement, Bony knew he would have to sleep. There were many questions he had wanted to put to Bill Lung, but these would have to wait. Sleep he must. He slid off the thwart for the bottom of the boat and slept.

The renewed uproar of the engine awoke him. He felt refreshed and surprised by the setting sun spraying the sea with crimson lacquer. The cloud canopy was now salmon-pink and the dunes of Broome were white. Bill Lung pointed upward at the flying gulls. They were crimson.

On the way home, Johnno sat up in the bow and sang, and Bony sat with the Chinese at the tiller.

“Thanks for the trip,” he said. “I’ll remember it, and the gulls.”

“Like Broome?”

“Very much. Should be all right now the strangler has been caught.”

“Think he has?” shrewdly parried Lung.

“Don’t you?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Remember the ripped nightdresses left beside the bodies. Don’t tally with a young man.”

“Then what kind of a man would he be?” asked Bony.

Lung continued to gaze towards the mouth of Dampier’s Creek now opening to them amid the mangroves.

“Well?”

“I’ve often tried to imagine killing someone,” he said. “And I haven’t succeeded. I can’t even imagine the frame of mind I’d have to be in to kill a man, let alone a woman. The killer here, I’d say would be about as old as you and me. As my father would say: ‘The wise man feasts in the morning, for the night will bring gall to his palate.’ ”

The sun had set when they stepped ashore. Johnno hurried away to his lodgings to eat preparatory to the night’s work with his taxi, and Bony sought Mr. Dickenson. Having found him with the aid of two coloured children, he gave his orders for the night, and walked briskly to the police station.

“I do really regret being late,” he told Mrs. Walters. “Normally, I’d have no excuses.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ve just finished washing the dishes. I’m breaking Harry in good and proper.”

“You’ve set a terrible example,” complained the inspector. “And then you leave me to it and go fishing. Catch anything?”

“No, but I’m going out fishing again tonight.”

“Must be nice to be in a Criminal Investigation Branch.”

“There are advantages,” admitted Bony, and sped away to shower and change. When he sat down to dinner, Walters sat by the window.

“Any alteration of duty for Clifford and Bolton?” asked the inspector.

“No.”

“Sawtell reports that it looks as though Mrs. Sayers’ washing will be left out all night.” He thought he was imparting an item of news missed by this detective who wasted time on a fishing trip.

“Mrs. Sayers is splendidly co-operative,” averred Bony. “I have but to suggest anything to her. I shall be on hand.”

“You workingto a plan?” Walters asked, and Bony admitted to it. Mrs. Walters sat at the table with him, and noting the faint evidence of strain under his eyes, she said:

“Why not a night in bed? Harry or Sergeant Sawtell could watch that line.”

He smiled at her provokingly.

“I had three hours’ sleep this afternoon,” he said. “I went fishing that I should sleep, and now I’m very much awake and ready to fish all night.”

“Better have someone with you in case you get a bite too heavy to land,” urged Walters.

“Oh, I won’t land him tonight. I want only to feel him nibbling. Once I know he’s nibbling I’ll prepare a bait with a dozen hooks buried in it. That will bea bait he’ll take, and he won’t get away.”

“Do you know who he is, Bony?”

“Now, Mrs. Walters, whatd’you expect me to answer to that? If he nibbles at the line tonight, I’ll know who he is, although it will be so dark that I’ll see only the blurred shape of him. As I told you, he has been drawing a sketch of himself, and if he steals a garment from Mrs. Sayers’ line tonight he will have added the final and vital feature of identity.”

The children came in from the compound to work at home lessons and Walters departed for the office. He was faintly irritated by Bony’s evasiveness: at one moment feeling high confidence in him and in the next assailed by doubts and the gnawing fear that a fourth widow would be strangled.