Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“Ah! Has that garage been long vacant?”

“Yes, about a year. The garage on the other side of the railway does all the business now.”

Once past the garage and the wide, good road running up a long, low hill south, they abruptly left the town, the road becoming narrow when it began to wind through whipstickmallee and gimlet trees. Now and then to his left Bony could see the rampart of mullock excavated from the great pipeline trench, with the railway beyond it.

“By the way,” he said, smiling, “I understand that Mrs Poole’s husband is a Water Rat. Precisely in what manner is such an epithet applicable to a woman’s husband?”

Inspector Gray chuckled.

“The men employed along the pipeline are called Water Rats because often they have to work deep in water when a pipe bursts.”

“Thank you. And what are the Snake Charmers?”

“They are the permanent-way men. Now that you are a Rabbit Department employee you are aRabbitoh.”

It became Bony’s turn to chuckle.

“Whatare the road repairers called?”

“Well, not being a blasphemous man, I am unable to tell you.”

“Then I must invent names for them myself. Did you know George Loftus well?”

“Moderately well. He was never a friend of mine, although he has been here five years.”

“Tell me all you know about him, please. What he looked like, everything.”

The Fence Inspector hesitated, and Bony saw that he was weighing carefully the words he would use to a police officer when there would have been no hesitation had Bony been an ordinary acquaintance. Why men and women should be so reserved in the presence of members of the police, who were their paid and organized protectors, was a point in human psychology which baffled him. At last Gray said:

“I suppose Loftus would be about twelve stone in weight, and of medium height. He was a rather popular kind of man, a good cricketer for all his forty-one years, would always oblige with a song, and was a keen member of the local lodge. For the first three years he worked hard on his farm, but he slacked a bit this last year. He left most of the farm work to his man.”

“Did he drink much?”

“A little too much.”

“His wife on the farm, still?”

“Yes. She is a good-looking woman, and, I think, a good wife.”

“Any children?”

“No.”

“The farm hand? What kind of a man is he?”

“He’d be about thirty. A good man, too. Loftus was lucky in getting him. Mick Landon his name is. Born in Australia. Fairly well educated. Is the secretary of several local committees and is theM. C . at all our dances.”

“Do you know, or have you heard, what Mrs Loftus intends doing if her husband cannot be found?”

“Well, my wife was talking to her the other day, and Mrs Loftus told her she didn’t believe her husband dead and that she was going to run the farm with Landon’shelp until he came back.”

“I suppose his strange disappearance has upset her?”

“Yes, but there is more anger than sorrow, I think. Of course, he might come back at any time. There’s old Jelly, now. He disappears three or four times every year, sometimes oftener, and no one knows where he goes or what he does.”

“Indeed! You interest me. A woman, perhaps?”

“Knowing Bob Jelly, I can think so. Here we are at the fence.”

The Wheat Belt

A WIDE tubular and netted gate in a netted fence four feet nine inches high, and topped with barbed wire, halted further progress. Climbing from the truck. Bony made a swift survey of the surrounding country.

The fence ran north and south in a straight line, to the summit of a northern rise and to the belt of big timber to the south. Elaborate precautions had been taken in its construction to keep it rabbit-proof where it crossed the pipeline, whilst the single-track railway line passed over a sunken pit. The fence gate had been repaired, but the wrecked car was still lying partly down on the massive pipeline. The half-caste paced the distance between fence gate and car and found it to be little more than fourteen yards.

About five hundred yards beyond the fence was a house belonging, he was informed, to the Rabbit Department farm, and then occupied by the farm foreman. Also beyond the fence, and on the farther side of the railway, was a farmhouse occupied by a farmer named Judd.

Gray was disappointed when Bony failed to run about like a hunting dog, as all good detectives are supposed to do. For a detective he seemed too casual, and his blue eyes too dreamy. Yet Bony saw all that he wanted to see, which was that the backing of the car from gate to pipeline was done quite naturally, with no tree stumps to make the act a matter of chance.

“I hate the word, but I must use it,” Bony said softly. “I am intrigued. Yes, that is the word I dislike. The railway crossed by the rabbit fence makes a perfect cross. On all four sides the land is cleared of timber and now is supporting ripe wheat. Here is difficult country in which to hide a human body indefinitely; for, supposing the remains of George Loftus were hidden somewhere among all those acres of waving wheat, it would be only a matter of time before a man driving a harvester machine came across them. Assuming that Loftus was killed, what object could his murderer have in hiding his body for only a few weeks, excepting, perhaps, to put as great a distance between himself and it before the body was discovered. And to carry the body weighing twelve stone to the nearest timber, which I judge to be not less than three-quarters of a mile distant, would be no mean feat.”

“It’s mighty strange what’s become of him,” the Fence Inspector gave it as his opinion.

“I shall find him alive, if not dead.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. My illustrious namesake was defeated but once-at Waterloo. I was defeated once… officially, at Windee Station, New South Wales. I shall not meet my Waterloo twice.”

Inspector Gray hid his face with cupped hands, which sheltered a cigarette-lighting match, to conceal his silent laughter. Bonyproceeded, unaware of the effect his vanity was having on his companion. Pointing to the fence, he said:

“I see several posts which want renewing. I suggest that you employ me cutting and carting posts and replacing those old ones. It will give me bothopportunity to look about and time to study this affair. Now, please, take me on along the road Loftus would have taken from here to his house.”

Proceeding southward west of the fence, the land to left and right appeared as a golden inland sea caressing the emerald shores of bush and timber. The drone of gigantic bees vibrated the shadowless world-the harvesting machines were at work stripping fifteen bushels of wheat from every acre.

Crossing the old York Road and then continuing straight south, the truck sped up a long, low grade of sandy land which bore thick bush of so different an aspect from that familiar to Bony in the eastern States that he was charmed by its freshness. Here this bush, by its possible concealment of the body of Loftus, presented a thousand difficulties: for in it an army corps could live unseen and unsuspected.

“What is your real opinion of this case?” Gray asked.

“Tell me your opinion first,” Bony countered.

Silence for fully a minute. Then:

“This is the twelfth day since Loftus disappeared. It is my firm belief that he didn’t just wander into the bush and perish. As you see, there is as much cleared land as uncleared bush. Loftus was not anewchum, and even anewchum hopelessly slewed would surely come to the edge of cleared land, where nine times in ten he would be able to see a farmhouse. I think he was killed for the money he might have had with him-anything from a shilling to a fiver-either where his car was found or at some point on his way home, possibly as he crossed the old York Road.”