Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“Dreadful!” murmured Mrs Loftus.

“It was a pity they shot him dead,” her sister said fiercely. Turning to her, Bony said:

“I believe that the utmost penalty the fool law inflicts on the killers of little children is ridiculously disproportionate to the enormity of the crime. Not being a Christian, I am not swayed by sickly sentiment. However, I have read your Bible and believe in the Old Testament’s statement of justice so aptly condensed into the phrase, ‘An eye for an eye.’ To accompany the painless death of such a monster with legal and religious ceremonial is but to mock the little victim’s cries for justice and vengeance. I am uncertain that vengeance belongs wholly to God. The torturers of little children should be pegged down on an ants’ nest.”

“Oh!” whispered Mrs Loftus, her face white, her eyes staring.

“So they should,” Miss Waldron said with emphatic agreement.

“Cruelty will be stamped out only by cruelty,” was Bony’s opinion.

“And yet the cruelty of theMiddle Ages did not prevent crime,” Landon pointed out.

“Soft-hearted leniency hasn’t diminished crime,” Bony returned swiftly. “The tortures of theMiddle Ages were crude, and men were then better able to stand pain than they are today. The discovery of anaesthetics has made us increasingly sensitive to pain. Man, a few years ahead, will faint when he cuts his finger.” Bony was quite calm when he made these statements. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, when he said: “If you will excuse me, I will run over your burglar’s tracks. I would like you ladies to remain in the house so that you will not confuse them. If you accompany me, Landon, please keep behind me always.”

Outside the house he asked:

“Can you tell me precisely where you stood when you fired at the man?”

“Yes,” Landon assented. “I was about four yards west of that broken-down grindstone. I fell over it when I was running after him.”

“Good! Now, please, don’t talk.”

Walking to the grindstone, the half-caste saw the tracks left by Landon wearing slippers. He saw, east of the grindstone, the tracks of a man coming from the cart shed, turning abruptly eastward, where he staggered, saving himself with his hands, and then turning to the edge of the stubble paddock. The prowler had come from the direction of the main road and had returned to it after he was shot.

Without speaking, Bony proceeded to investigate on behalf of John Muir. Pretending to follow a track, he circled the cart shed before crossing the short distance to Landon’s camp, which he also circled.

“Missed anything?” he asked the hired man.

“No. Did he go into my tent?”

“If he did, it was while you were at the dance. Your constant passage through the entrance has wiped out any tracks he might have left. But I think he did go into your tent.”

Slowly then the tracker walked to the dam, to find between the mullock banks a thirty-foot square of water fenced from the stock. A windmill raised water to a galvanized-iron tank on tall supports, from which it gravitated through pipes to the trough behind the stables and to the house.

Now southward walked Bony, passing the snarling dogs chained securely to their kennels of case boards, to a small shed containing superphosphate bags and other lumber. Fowls scratched in the shade. From that place he went on to the long haystack, and for the first time Landon offered a question.

“Did he come here?” he asked.

“He did,” Bony replied cheerfully. Bending forward, he pointed to the straw-strewn ground. “There is the mark of his right foot. Can’t you see it?”

“Be damned if I can!”

When he stood up Bony was smiling. Walking along one side of the stack, he noted the holes at its base where the dogs had scratched in the ground in search of coolness and the fowls had scratched to clean themselves. At the south end of the stack the shadow was longest, for the sun then was at the zenith. Here the detective paused to stand pinching his bottom lip.

“Did the fellow come here?” Landon demanded.

With his index finger Bony pointed at the ground.

“He passed along there,” he said, impatient at the other’s doubt; then impassive for a moment, a man sorely puzzled. Acockbird, perched on a pole leaning against the stack, crowed vigorously. The blowflies hummed like a harvester machine in a far paddock, anxious to remain in the deep shadow, swarming in the crevices among the straw.

Bony’s vacant stare became focused upon Landon. Landon’s mouth was a straight line, the lips drawn inward. His peculiar blue eyes were wide, expressionless, their gaze fixed on Bony’s face. Not a muscle of his face moved. It seemed almost that he waited. Bony said:

“I cannot understand the interest your burglar took in the dam, your tent, the superphosphate shed, and in this haystack. You know, it does seem that Loftus, if it were he, hoped to discover an object which might be outside as well as inside the house.”

Abruptly the detective moved away, walking direct to the house, where he was met by the anxious and curious women. He told them that the burglar had first visited the house and then had wandered about the homestead until he was shot.

Once again at the broken grindstone he followed the man’s real tracks to the edge of the stubble and at once began to zigzag across it. Seven times he pointed out to the interested Landon a drop of blood on yellow straw. Unable longer to see footprints on the broken and matted straw, the drops of blood few white men would have seen blazed the trail for Bony.

On the far headland of the paddock he again saw tracks, now crossing a narrow, iron-hard ribbon inside the rabbit fence, and now beyond the fence crossing the wider and grassier ribbon between farm fence and road. The tracks turned south along the main road, but Bony turned northward, walking up the long sand slope till he was about midway to the summit, when he stopped and turned to Landon, saying:

“Here your man climbed into a car. His tracks go no farther. He wore several pairs of socks over his boots. His size in boots is either seven or eight. He would weigh about eleven stone. It might have been Loftus had not the dogs been lured away.”

“It was George Loftus. He takes an eight boot.”

Bony laughed. “Have it your own way,” he said lightly.

“It must be Loftus. Who the devil else would come poking about and take nothing that we know? Anyway, Mrs Loftus will appreciate what you have done for her. Let’s go back for a cup of tea, and then I’ll take you to Burra in the car.”

“I will not put you to that trouble, Mick, thank you all the same. I’ll leave you here and walk back. I shall enjoy the walk. Convey my compliments to Mrs Loftus and to Miss Waldron, and thank them for me for that excellent breakfast.”

“Getting the car will be no trouble.”

“Really, I would prefer to walk,” Bony said with smiling finality. “I hope to meet you all someday soon. Perhaps at a dance. Aurevoir.”

They smiled at each other at parting as two dogs undecided whether to be friends or not. Bony, walking down thenorth slope to the old York Road, wondered about many things. He wondered why Mrs Loftus and her paramour were so perturbed by the theft of a candle; why they were so anxious to know who it was whom Landon had shot; why Landon had shot instead of first tackling the prowler; why he said he shot him with a rifle, and why he had not produced the rifle to back his statement.

Mr Jelly Is Shot

ERIC HURLEY was three days late returning to Burracoppin. With strange thoughtlessness, probably due to inexperience of sandy country, the Rabbit Department had permitted the farmers south of Burracoppin to clear the land to within one chain of the fence on its west side, subsequent stubble fires burning off the low bushes which are the natural protection against wind-driven sand.