Arthur Upfield - The Bone is Pointed

When the door at the far end of the veranda was opened, the drumming of her fingers instantly ceased, memory still vivid of that occasion when she had first met Mr Napoleon Bonaparte at the horse yards. Her blue eyes with the violet irises continued to stare at the printed page, and did not glance upward to meet the eyes of the Karwir guest until he came to stand before her.

“I hope I have not delayed lunch over long, Miss Lacy,” Bony said, gravely. “It was a little difficult to take the first step from under the shower.”

Almost impersonally she studied him: his suit of tussore silk, his white canvas shoes, the entire polished grooming of him. It was as though her mind was still commanded by what she had been reading. Before rising, she said:

“You have caused no inconvenience, Mr Bonaparte. The weather dictates a cold lunch. My father and brother have gone to Opal Town to-day, so you will have to put up with my demands to be amused. Will you take that chair?”

“Thank you.”

Bony assisted the girl to be seated at the table, before he took his place opposite her and then moved the vase of flowers lightly to one side.

“I met Mr Lacy and your brother on the road this morning,” he told her. “Evidently your father prefers a car to an aeroplane. He takes a great interest in court work, I understand.”

“Yes. He likes to feel he’s a dictator. I have often sat in court and watched him. He fines all culprits two pounds and costs, and, should one attempt to argue, he shouts him down. I suppose you are accustomed to being a dictator all the time.”

“A dictator! Why, Miss Lacy, I am the victim of several dictators. Colonel Spendor, my wife and my children are to be numbered among them.”

“But what of your victims? Don’t they regard you as a kind of dictator?”

Bony smiled. “Their nemesis, perhaps,” he corrected, adding as an afterthought: “And then only when they’ve been apprehended. Before being apprehended they think they are the dictators, issuing orders for me to follow. Then they reveal astonishment when they are informed that, as the old song puts it, their day’s work is done.”

For a little while they gave attention to the food, and then Diana, setting down her knife and fork, said, slightly frowning:

“You know, you puzzle me. I’ve heard you say that you never fail to unravel a mystery. Is that really so, or were you boasting?”

“Since I became a member of the Criminal Investigation Branch I must have conducted at least a hundred investigations,” Bony replied. “Some were quite trivial; several were very involved. No, I have not yet failed to complete satisfactorily any case I have taken up.”

“Do you really think you will succeed in completing this one?”

“I can see no reason why I should not.”

Again Diana gave attention to her plate. She did not look at Bony when she put her next question.

“May I assume from that that you are-what shall I say?-well forward in your investigation?”

“Er-hardly. As a matter of fact, I have made very little progress. This disappearance case, taken up so long after it actually began, is proving to be most difficult. Even so, I see no reason why I should not succeed in finding out what happened to Jeffery Anderson. Success depends only on the factor of time.”

“And luck?”

Bony considered, Diana regarding him with her eyes turned slightly upward as her face was turned down to her plate. She was very much mistress of herself and inclined to underestimate the man she could not bowl out socially.

“And luck,” Bony repeated. “Yes, I suppose a little depends on luck, if coincidence may be regarded as providing an investigator with luck. I think luck plays only a small part, certainly a much smaller part than the mistakes committed by the criminal. Even in my present investigation, I have been favoured by one bad mistake made by someone.”

“One bad mistake!” the girl echoed. “What was that?”

“As I have said, time is the only practical factor on the side of the investigator, Miss Lacy,” Bony went on, gently ignoring her inquiry. “Given unlimited time, no investigator need fail.”

Perhaps Diana suspected a trap, or perhaps she feared rebuff if she pressed her question concerning the mistake he mentioned.

“The sole basis of my reputation for uninterrupted successes is my inability to leave an investigation once I have begun it,” Bony said. “I suppose I have conducted at least a hundred investigations as I think I mentioned. The majority of them were completed within a week or two. Some, however, occupied my attention for many months, eleven months being spent on one. I hope you will not become bored with me should I have to spend eleven months on this Anderson case.”

She raised her head and actually smiled at him. It was as though strain had relaxed. She said:

“Eleven months is a long time, Mr Bonaparte. Wouldn’t your wife and children come to miss you?”

“Alas! I fear that my unfortunate wife, and my no less unfortunate children, have formed the habit of missing me. Still, were I a sailor they would be even more unfortunate. Then, of course, there is another side to these prolonged absences from home. We are an affectionate family, owing probably to the effect of absence on the human heart.”

“Now you are being cynical.”

“They say that the cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and who never fails to see a bad one,” said Bony, smiling. “That being so, I am no cynic.”

Diana appeared to think the conversation was drifting, for she said:

“From what you tell me you seem to have a free hand with regard to the time taken in your investigations.”

“Yes. Oh yes! I see to that. Punctually at the end of the first fortnight that I am away from home my wife writes imploring me to return, and my immediate superior demands to know what I am doing. Then, after the first month, Colonel Spendor writes to announce that he has given me the sack, the word ‘sack’ being his. Having received the sack, I then have to interview the Commissioner and have myself reinstated without loss of pay. Colonel Spendor is the kind of man who likes to sack me, and then likes to feel the glow of generosity when reinstating me.”

“From what you, say, Colonel Spendor must be more or less like my father.”

“More, Miss Lacy, much more. Pardon me for seeming familiarity, but you and I have something in common. We both know how to manage human lions for their own good.”

Bony’s effort to warm the girl towards him failed. The barrier she had erected between them refused to give to his assault. For a second or two he gave attention to his food, while his mind worked at this problem of the immovable barrier.

That his reading of this charming Australian girl was at fault he declined to admit. She was a little white aristocrat; he an Australian half-caste. It was not, he felt sure, a sense or knowledge of racial superiority that formed the unbreakable barrier, else she would not have been here sitting at table with him. He had never seen her smile with real warmth, nor detected warmth in her voice. And yet she was warm, a chip off the old block. No, it was not racial superiority that had built the barrier. There was an entirely different explanation, possibly knowledge of secret events, or a suspicion of them, which affected her or those to whom she was loyal.

Loyalty! That was it. This vivid young woman was opposing him because of loyalty to someone his presence at Karwir might ultimately affect. There was no hint of admiration in his eyes when he raised them and spoke to his hostess.

“I like lions, human lions,” he told her. “When one has removed a lion’s skin one finds a new-shorn lamb. My chief blasts and damns me, his face scarlet, his eyes globes of ice. He shouts. Yes, he likes to shout. He shouts at me, telling me to get out of his sight. He loves to tell me I’m no policeman. He tells me I am a rebel who ought to be shot for insubordination. But, Miss Lacy, he has never said I was a fool. Tell me, please, whom it was you met at the bloodwood-tree on the boundary fence that day I arrived here.”