Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Very well. I haven’t much more to say. Obsessed by the idea that I might be a murderer, I took a trip to Sydney and interviewed my old head master and house master. Careful questioning brought to light a significant fact. I had never been known to walk in my sleep unless a gale of wind was blowing from the land, from the west. Sea gales never affected me. While in Sydney, too, I visited an authority on somnambulism, giving him a false name and address. From him I learned that sufferers from somnambulism had been known to commit crimes, chiefly theft, and that in Austria, before the war, there was a case when a husband cut his wife’s throat when in a state of somnambulism.

“You will, I hope, begin to appreciate my dreadful problem. What should I do? Without any evidence against myself, I decided that to confess my fears would be foolish. A confession not based on some evidence would only cause my sister great distress and achieve nothing save possibly to have myself confined to a mental hospital for observation. If I could have been sure I was the murderer, then I could take my own life and no one need ever know the reason for the act.

“When Frank Marsh was so horribly attacked, I knew that something would have to be done. I appreciated the extraordinary cunning of this devilwho went out and killed, but yet never attempted an attack on Hang-dog Jack, who could most certainly handle and kill him. He knew that. And so did I. Searching for evidence againstmyself became a frantic effort. I had to know the truth before I could even hint at my fears, even to my sister.

“Then I thought of you. We had heard quite a lot about you from Marion Trench and her husband, of Windee, and as my father knew your Chief, Colonel Spendor, I wrote to him, feeling fairly sure he would send you if it were possible.”

“That you did not confide in me when I first arrived is to be much regretted,” Bony said steadily, although the recital was tensing his nerves and sweeping him with a great compassion.

“It would have achieved little, and I might then not have found myself master of the situation. The crimes had been committed before you arrived, remember. After all, my suspicions might have proved groundless-the outcome of a too vivid imagination. If only I could have got evidence incriminatingmyself! If only I could have found the clothes I wore on those expeditions along Nogga Creek! A dozen times have I ransacked this room and mystudy. God… can’t you understand what I have gone through, and what I am now going through?”

Bony was mute. He had never seen agony painted on a man’s face as it was painted on this virile young man’s face lit by the flickering oil lamp and the sinister light of the day beyond the room. The wind mocked and screamed and bellowed in turn. The chairs on which they sat and the floor beneath their feet vibrated ceaselessly. Martin’s voice was higher, and he spoke more rapidly when he continued:

“When Donald Dreyton found a scrap of grey flannel cloth in one of the Nogga trees, I searched again for clothes, this time for a damaged pair of grey flannel trousers. I never found them. I possess two pairs of light-grey trousers and these are in good condition and perfectly pressed.”

Borradale paused to pass the back of his left hand across his wet forehead, but not for an instant did he remove his gaze from Bony, or move by a fraction of an inch the muzzle of the revolver aimed at Bony’s heart. First despair, then rebellion, and now a great weariness was in his voice.

“No, I have never found a shred of evidence pointing at myself. I can’t understand it. I have thought and thought about it until I thought I would go stark raving mad. I am not normally a vicious brute. I have never consciously thought of injuring anyone. Why, even to sack a man gives me pain.

“And then the other day-or was it yesterday?-you told me you would finalize your case within a week. I knew you would succeed, for I had summed you up and knew you to be not a boastful man. I thought if I really was the murderer, if I really was the man who swung himself from tree to tree along Nogga Creek, as Hang-dog Jack had shown me the murderer did, then I would set a trap for myself. You see, I intended never to stand on a drop with a rope about my neck or live my life in a lunatic asylum. So I arranged the shot-gun on the tree-branch I knew the murderer would leap to, and I aimed the gun so that when it went off it would kill him.”

“I saw you setting your trap, Mr. Borradale,” Bony cut in, “and after you left I took out the cartridges. I thought you were trying to get ahead of me by catching the Strangler. Had it not been for that trap, I would not have made the bad mistake about Hang-dog Jack this morning.”

“I take it that prior to that trap-setting you guessed that I was the murderer. I would like to know how you guessed, but there isn’t time for me to hear that. Last night I went to bed as usual. I awoke with the report of a gun in my ears and a violent stinging pain along my right ribs. I found myself clinging to a tree-branch, and in a kind of horrible nightmare I hung from it, not knowing where I was, and yet knowing I was somewhere on Nogga Creek, and what I had been doing there. Can you imagine a more terrible awakening than that?

“Then at a little distance from me someone fired shots. I thought that they were directed at me, and I fell from the tree to a soft patch of sand on the creek-bed. I was feeling sick from the pain at my side. Close to me there were men shouting and fighting.

“I knew then, as I crouched on the bed of the creek, that I was the Strangler. I felt-for I made no effort to make a closer examination-that I was wearing old clothes and old tennis shoes. In my mind was the one idea-to get away and get back into this room, where I always kept the means to escape myself should I find the evidence of my guilt.

“So I crept away and then ran hard all the way back to this room, where I lit the lamp and found myself wearing a grey-flannel undervest of the kind I have never bought, a pair of dark-grey flannel trousers I never remember to have seen, and a pair of tennis shoes I remembered having purchased in Broken Hill. You will find the clothes and the shoes under the bed.

“Where I have kept them I don’t know; I cannot tell you. I found my hands to be not only red-raw, but stained with green tree-bark. I have never seen that stain before, and on my return formerly I must have carefully washed them and then emptied the water out into the garden before hiding my old clothes and shoes-where, I do not know-getting into my pyjamas and then into bed.

“That, inspector, is all I can tell you. There is nothing I can add. The whys and the wherefores I cannot explain. Now for my requests. I know you will grant them. Afterwards, after I have escaped from myself, please relate all I have told you to my sister. Please try to convince her, as I have tried to convince you, that consciously I am entirely innocent of these terrible crimes.”

“Yes, but-”

“There can be no buts. I have seen my road for so long that I cannot mistake it. I am a kind of monster-a Jekyll-Hyde man-but I did not make myself what I am. If I surrender to you, I may escape the rope, but I will surely be confined to an asylum for the remainder of my life.” The steady voice broke at last. “I could not bear that; it would be too terrible. I don’t deserve the agony of a trial. I am innocent, I tell you, innocent! But… but look at my hands.

“I want you to tell Dreyton about everything, too. I want him to know that I am not a conscious monster. My sister loves him, and I have thought sometimes that he loves her, but would not speak on account of his poverty. I have willed him my half-share of Wirragatta so that no longer will he be poor. I wanted him in the office because I desired that he and Stella should be brought more often together, and because I was losing grip on the station’s affairs. Lastly, I want you to ask my sister to be sure that young Harry West is made boss stockman and given one of the cottages to take his bride to. No, not last. There is something else. I am going to ask you to grant me this request as a favour.”