Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“I-I-oh, I hope there hasn’t been another murder done. I couldn’t stand…” Mrs. Nelson cried softly, the fire with which she had described her threats to Simone burned to cold ash.

“What’s that?” Bony demanded, his entire attention centred on the possibilities of the horseman’s errand. His body, to Mrs. Nelson, was silhouetted against the sword of light cast across the street by the hotel lamp, and she saw it stiffen. From along the Broken Hill road, swiftly rising in tonevolume, came the pounding tattoo on sandy ground of the animal’s hoofs. Both half-caste and white woman could picture the rider crouched along the horse’s neck, a great horror on his ashen face.

It seemed that Mrs. Nelson no longer could bear the suspense engendered by the oncoming horse and rider. She rose from her chair and stepped quickly to the veranda rail at Bony’s side, there to clutch the rail with smallberinged hands.

Somewhere in the void beyond the end of the street came to them a sharp metallic report which further agitated Mrs. Nelson and sent Bony hurrying below. Mrs. Nelson heard men’s voices raised, and out through the main door of the hotel ran James, the barman, and his several customers. Mr. Smith appeared in front of his shop, his rotund figure illuminated in the light-sword cast by the hotel lamp.

The pounding of hoofs rose in crescendo, but no faintest indication of horse and rider was to be seen in the black void of night until man and animal abruptly burst into the light-sword, to be followed by a rolling cloud of dust. A stockwhip cracked like a machine-gun, metallically. The horse was reined back upon its haunches, and then its rider sat and stared at the gathering of men outside the hotel, which now included Bony.

“What’s up?” demanded James Spinks.

The little crowd moved towards the rearing horse.

“Look out!” someone shouted. “Harry’sridin ’ Black Diamond.”

“What’s up?” shouted the youthful Harry West. “Nothink’sup. Can’t a bloke ride to town without all the populationwantin ’ to know what’s up?”

“What do you mean by riding to town like that?” James wanted further to know, and Bony saw that his face was drawn and ghastly white.

“Well, how was I to come? Think I wasgonna lead this devil of a horse?” complained Harry. “Stiffen the crows! It’s a bit thick if a bloke can’t ride to town to see his girl without being roared at. You draw me a schooner of beer time I get in fromparkin ’ this cross between a lion and a tiger-cat.”

“Drat him!” Mrs. Nelson cried softly. “Drat him! He gave me quite a fright.”

A Dangerous Man

THE DAY FOLLOWING that evening when Harry West, mounted on Black Diamond, had so perturbed Mrs. Nelson and Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was Sunday. There was no faintest wind this day, but the sky was tinged with an opalescent white, hinting at wind within a few days.

The quietness which governs a city on Sunday also governs a station homestead, especially during the afternoon. Even the birds seem to respect the Sabbath. The morning had been spent by Bony and the other hands washing clothes and cutting hair, and then, although Hang-dog Jack said he did not believe in cooking on Sundays, he presented the noonday meal with the air of a man quite ready to accept congratulatory remarks as his due.

There was no afternoon smoko tea for the hands on Sundays, and, having made his own tea and shared it with Bill the Cobbler and Young-and-Jackson, Bony quietly gathered together the Wirragatta weather reports, a writing-pad and a pencil, and crossed the river to thecamelman’s hut on the far side.

This was a small corrugated-iron hut, but fortunately a drop-window in the wall, opposite the door, when opened provided a cooling draught of air. Under the window was a roughly made table, and along each vacant wall was a roughly made bush bunk. For a seat at the table there was an empty petrol-case. Bony found this hut, occupied only by the two fence-riders when at the homestead, to be an excellent retreat.

With the hundred and twenty monthly weather sheets before him, the detective began to continue his study of them. Each sheet duplicated data supplied to the State Meteorological Bureau, and each day of every month the station book-keeper-in-office had entered the number of points of rain fallen, if any, and general remarks on the conditions of the weather. From all these records Bony completed the plotting of a graph showing throughout the ten years covered by the reports the incidence of wind-storms; and, as he expected, the index curve rose to its highest point in late October and early November. After these two months the number of wind-storms was greatest in September; then in March, and least of all in February.

It will be recalled that the three crimes now occupying Bony’s attention were committed-the first during the night of 10th-11th November, the second during the night of 17th-18th March, and the third during the night of 30th-31st October-all during a period of twenty-four months.

On each of these dates the wind had blown with hurricane force, and Bony’s conclusion from this, as well as from his observations among the Nogga Creek trees, was that the significance of the dates might have been produced not by the activities of the Strangler so much as the opportunities presented him by a chance victim. The fellow could go out in the weather conditions he evidently liked fifty or a hundred times and meet with a victim but once.

On the other hand, and this appeared the more likely, he might well have known the approximate time when a victim would pass a certain way. Quite a number of people would know that Alice Tindall spent her last evening of life in the kitchen of the Wirragatta homestead and that she would be walking back to the camp at Junction Waterhole. Quite a number of people knew that Frank Marsh was in Carie that last night of his life, that he was working for and living with theStorries, and that he would be walking to the selection from the township.

An even larger number of people knew that Mabel Storrie was at the dance in Carie, but all these people knew she had been escorted from her home by her brother on the truck, and all these people thought that she would return home on the truck with her brother. Only when the dance was over were Tom Storrie and the truck missing. Only by chance, or seeming chance, did Mabel part from her lover when half-way home, to go on alone.

Sergeant Simone certainly had some grounds for arresting Barry Elson, but Bony considered them not nearly sufficient. That the lovers did part company, that Mabel did go on alone and Elson return to the hotel, Bony was morally certain.

Heproceeded a step farther. A man knew that Alice Tindall would be returning to her camp from the homestead late one night. Weather conditions promised another day of wind and dust to follow. Knowing the character of the girl, this man knew she would refuse an escort. Therefore, pre-knowledge and not chance had given him the opportunity to strangle her. The same reasoning could be applied to the murder of Frank Marsh committed in the identical weather conditions. But in Mabel Storrie’s case it must have been chance, not pre-knowledge, which had presented the Strangler with his opportunity to attack her.

Two of these three cases, therefore, were alike with regard to presuming that the murderer had pre-knowledge of his victim’s actions. It raised again the possibility that the attack on Mabel Storrie had been done by an imitator of the murderer of the other two, but telling against this possibility was a third fact. Alice Tindall and Mabel Storrie had been attacked from the branch of and under a tree along the same creek, whilst Marsh had been killed three-quarters of a mile from a tree, near the Common gates.