Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

Mr. Rose was turned three-quarter full to the camera. He had both hands about Mrs. Sayers’ throat. The face was like that of a gargoyle but unmistakably his.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” said Sawtell. “We could sell this picture to the newspapers for a million.”

“I’d like a copy of it,” murmured Bony. “It’s unique. That woman! She behaved magnificently although a little too roughly. I feared for Mr. Rose.”

“Did you expect him to play up on amnesia?”

“Of course. Hiskind always do. Probably practised the surprised look before his mirror, just in case he was nabbed. This picture will rule out that defence when the case goes on trial. The politicians, though, will step in if we don’t find those four nightgowns.”

The police jeep and Inspector Walters’ private car were loaded with men when they stopped before the main entrance of Cave Hill College. With them was Mrs. Sayers.

Mr. Percival met the party, astonishment plain on his florid face.

“I have here a warrant signed by Mr. Willis, Justice of the Peace, to conduct a search of the apartments occupied by Mr. Rose,” Walters said in his official manner. “Mr. Rose was arrested early this morning and charged with wilful murder.”

“Was charged… Mr. Rose was…” stuttered Mr. Percival.

“With murder, Mr. Percival,” interrupted Mrs. Sayers. “You must manage the school until the Board meets. Meanwhile, take us to Mr. Rose’s rooms.”

Bony, Walters and Sawtell, Mrs. Sayers and Briggs and Mr. Dickenson, the two constables and Mr. Willis passed up the wide stairs to the first floor. They entered the study, a handsome room overlooking the town. Books were ranged on shelves half-way up three of the walls. Behind the door stood two safes.

“Mr. Percival, these are Mr. Rose’s keys,” Bony said. “Kindly open these safes.”

Without comment, Mr. Percival accepted the keys. The larger safe contained account books and cheque books, an amount of cash and severalunpresented cheques. All were the property of the college. The smaller safe was opened, and Sawtell extracted its contents, comprising documents and bank pass-books. The silence in the headmaster’s study was significant. Walters and the sergeant were grim.

“Where is the headmaster’s bedroom?” quietly asked Bony.

“Beyond those curtains,” replied Mr. Percival.

The party entered a room as large as the study and also overlooking the town. It was Sawtell who discovered the safe in the corner behind the wardrobe. Mr. Percival was asked to open it. He was dazed by this extraordinary intrusion and the implications behind the search warrant. He tried four of the keys on the ring before succeeding in unlocking the safe, everyone present crowding behind him.

It was Sawtell who removed its contents comprising a pair of binoculars; a pair of old shoes, with a drawing-pin still attached to the left sole, which had not been worn after Abie’s attempted blackmail; and four silk nightgowns.

“That’s the nightie he stole from my line,” stated Mrs. Sayers a little shrilly. “And that one belonged to Mrs. Overton. I remember the time she bought it.”

Bony spoke.

“Mr. Willis, kindly prepare the declarations to be signed by every person in the room, setting out the contents of this safe as produced by Sergeant Sawtell in the presence of us all, and adding what Mrs. Sayers has said concerning two of the nightgowns. She will assist you to describe the nightgowns.”

“We may return to the study?” asked the Justice of the Peace.

“Yes, of course.”

Bony turned to the window. Before him was Broome. Aided by the binoculars found in the headmaster’s private safe, he could clearly see the empty clothes lines behind the houses of the Widows of Broome.

Bony spent the entire afternoon compiling his report for the Criminal Investigation Branch, for Rose was to be taken to Perth by the two constables on the aircraft scheduled to leave at six that evening.

On returning from the airport, Inspector Walters found Bony already at dinner with his wife and two children. The relief from the strain under which he had been suffering was marked by unwonted joviality.

“It’s me for a good long sleep tonight,” he declared, and to Bony added: “And you’re due for a good sleep, too.”

“We shall all sleep soundly tonight,” Bony agreed. “By the way, I have taken the liberty of asking Mrs. Sayers and Briggs, Mr. Dickenson and Sawtell to be here at seven-thirty. I feel I owe it to them to give a short summary of my investigation. I presume you wish to be present.”

“Of course I do.”

“And you, Mrs. Walters, will be most welcome to join us. As you have cooked the dinner, your husband and I will do the washing up. It will be quite a little party with us all in the office.”

“Blow the washing up!” snorted Walters.

“You will assist me in the washing up,” Bony said with mock severity.

“Let the kids do it for once,” argued the inspector.

Keith and Nanette looked uncomfortable and wordlessly appealed to Bony. Bony was firm.

“I am sending Keith and Nanette to the pictures to commemorate.”

Inspector Walters and Inspector Bonaparte did accomplish the washing up of the dishes, and the children did eventually go off happily to the cinema, and Mrs. Walters did change her frock and join the party which gathered in the station office.

“I would like every one of you to accept my grateful thanks for your co-operation in the difficult investigation just concluded,” Bony began. “From each I was given much, and together we have done excellent team work with which the great police organisations of the world’s capitals would be well pleased.

“On this occasion I’ve been confronted by an adversary who was exceptionally intelligent, and, moreover, one who committed his crimes under the most favourable circumstances to himself… The murder of Mrs. Cotton provided no leads to her slayer and gave no indication of his motive. The murder of Mrs. Eltham was accompanied by similar negative results until I was informed that on the night after the homicide squad from Perth had left Broome a man was seen to leave her house in the early hours of the morning.

“What I discovered in Mrs. Eltham’s wardrobe, and subsequently in Mrs. Cotton’s wardrobe, was actually the first lead to the mind of the man who had strangled these women. The second lead was the discovery that both the victims had previously lost a nightgown from their clothes line, and this second lead was closely allied with the first. Other than those two leads I had nothing. I was shown the mentality of the murderer but gained nothing to assist in identifying him, other than the fact that he suffered from a peculiar skin disease named psoriasis.

“Most people, I think, are aware that police investigators very often know who has committed a crime and yet are unable to bring the criminal to trial through lack of sufficient evidence to place before a judge and jury. I had not sufficient evidence to suspect a particular person of these murders, and therefore, to my profound regret, was not in time to safeguard other possible victims.

“The murder of Mrs. Overton revealed that the murderer had adopted a plan of action which was fairly rigid, and this very plan indicated his type of mind and hinted, for that is the word, hinted at his background. His background was made a littlemore clear through his acts, which revealed several of his habits in normal life, such as his passion for tidiness.

“His knowledge of criminology was less than that of the average boy of sixteen. He wore rubber gloves to prevent leaving his finger-prints about the scene of his murders, and then illogically wiped clean the articles he did touch. It became obvious that the man who did that was, although intelligent, quite ignorant of crime detection with which the general public is superficially familiar. I began to think the murderer was a man who had never wasted his time at the cinema and never read fiction less than a century old.