Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“No. I am expecting developments in this Loftus case.”

“How far have you got? What have you discovered? Was Loftus murdered? Do you know who murdered him? When are you going toeffect an arrest? How-”

“For heaven’s sake, cease your machine-gun questions.”

“By the Great Wind! I’m not a Doctor Watson. I tell you I’m not,” Muir declared with sudden passion.

“You are,” Bony said definitely. “You will remain a Doctor Watson for a further period of four days, five days at the most. You will retire to Merredin, where you will do nothing but pretend to be making inquiries. You will report to your chief that you are about to finalize this matter, having received a lead from me. Patience will win you promotion.”

Into John Muir’s wide, fearless grey eyes flashed an appealing look. His red hair was tousled by the freckled fingers which tore through it like horse combs.

“Be a sport now,” he entreated. “Tell the tale. Was Loftus murdered?”

“He was.”

“Who killed him?”

“Cock Robin.”

“A man ought to pick you up and shake you. You’re the most aggravating cuss I know.

Bony sighed deeply. “Your only hope, John, is in the cultivation of patience. Age might change you. For your sake I hope it does. I will give you your bird in the near future. There is plenty of time for that. Now tell me what Todd told you about the case which has them bluffed. Relate the details to me slowly and carefully. Omit nothing, nothing. Banish from your mind any thought of Andrews and of Loftus.”

And so for more than two hours they discussed the Queensland case. They read copies of statements and reports. They studied roughly drawn maps and many enlarged photographs of aborigines, tracks, blackfellows’ signs, or what might be signs, and pictures of station scenes.

“To me everything now is quite plain,” Bony said at last. “That is a blackfellow’s sign, although the ignorant would not think so.

“It describes a violent death, a death of vengeance, carried out by an aboriginal. The emu feathers stuck among the fan-arranged sticks at the bottom of a steer’s leg bone denotes the totem of the killer. The murdered man seduced a gin, and the gin’s husband or lover slew him.

“Yes, despite all this, the killer was not a black. He was a white man, devilish clever, who, however, made the one inevitable mistake. Clever as he was in forging the sign, he forgot to add the hair of a black woman, which a black killer would have placed just below the emu feathers. The murder was committed by the only white man who could possibly have done it. In the morning, John, I will telegraph Todd to arrest Riley. You see, I can successfully conduct a case through the post. Easy isn’t it?”

“Easy! By the Great Wind! If only I had one-tenth of your gumption, Bony.”

“Patience will give you just as much gumption. You must learn to proceed slowly. Now go. I will accompany you to your hired car. Remain in Merredin as I said. You will hear from me soon.” At the Depot gate Bony gazed long and earnestly towards the south-east.

“What the dickens are you looking for?” demanded John Muir.

“Even at your departure you must ask a question. I shall have to arrange a scale of fines for your questions according to their degree of pertinence. Your last question of tonight, John, I will answer. I am looking for the reflection in the sky of a burning haystack. Now, good night! Good night!”

Needlework

AS BONY expected, Mrs Loftus definitely refused to sell her hay. Yet by no means did her refusal indicate any guilty knowledge of the whereabouts of her husband, for the stack might well be the property of the Agricultural Bank; or she might think that the run of good harvests would not continue beyond this year, when certainly the price of chaff would rise.

Still, the detective regarded both Mrs Loftus and the hired man suspect. He had cast his net and had landed his catch. He had examined fish after fish until but two remained which bore the outlines of that terrible marine monster, the stingray.

Contrary to his emphatic assertion to Hurley that he knew just where George Loftus was, he was not positively sure that the body was where he suspected it to be, and he was sure only that Loftus was dead from that sense of intuition which had stood to him in the past. Had it not been for his rash promise to Lucy Jelly, had not her father interested himself so much in the Loftus case, Bony might at this stage have handed the case over to John Muir, confident in the sergeant’s ability to finalize it, and himself have returned to Brisbane.

But he had given that promise to Lucy Jelly. In winding up the case Muir would not separate the two cases as Bony hoped to do in order to keep Lucy’s father out of it if possible. And now, in keeping his promise to her, he would complete the case against the two suspects in his own peculiar way. He was the relentless nemesis, the king of Australian trackers well forward on an easy trail.

In his possession was a duplicate of the key guarded by the secret of the table leg. That morning experts in Perth had reported on the three hairs submitted to them: that long hair which Bony had taken from Mrs Loftus’s hairbrush, the short hair he had found in the lace of Mrs Loftus’s pillow, and the second short hair he had secured from Mick Landon’s hair-comb. The experts stated that the two short hairs originally grew on the head of the same man. It was, therefore, proved that Landon had slept in Mrs Loftus’s bed the night or one of the nights previous to the Jilbadgie dance. And if Bony’s belief in the position of Loftus’s body was correct, then it was more than likely that, as Mr Jelly had surmised, Landon had not been in his right bed the night the farmer had reached home.

The detective had arrived at that most interesting point in any criminal case, the point where surmises and theories are proving to be correct. In the one circumstance of the urgency of his return to his native State he would have relinquished his investigations to John Muir, but it was the circumstance of Mr Jelly which kept him back from such action. Normally the case was not rightfully his, but since he had decided to carry on in orderto fulfil his promise to Lucy Jelly, he delayed action against the suspects until he had discovered the receptacle fitted by the secret key and had laid bare the secret of Mrs Loftus’s mattress.

Doubtless he would not have appeased any other officerso easily as he had appeased John Muir. The Western Australian knew Bony, knew his methods, had experienced the iron of his will. Bony had said, “Go away for from three to five days. I will send for you”, and Muir had gone, knowing that Bony would send for him, would hand over to him the completed case, would allow him all the credit before departing for Brisbane satisfied with the knowledge of his triumph.

Early in the morning, after John Muir returned to Burracoppin, Hurley related to Bony what had transpired during his visit to the Loftus farm. Mrs Loftus had received him alone: Landon was out on the harvester machine and Miss Waldron had driven herself to Merredin. At Hurley’s casual inquiry regarding the sale of her haystack Mrs Loftus had become momentarily agitated, had regained control of her features in an instant, and then had said that she had no intention of selling.

She wished to know the name of the prospective buyer, and, this information not being obtained, she was made easier when Hurley said he would apply to a farmer farther south who had two stacks of last year’s hay, one of which he might sell. Then she made one slip. She revealed her true thoughts of Bony; revealed the lie she had acted the Sunday he had visited the farm when she was so friendly, by saying to Hurley in a parting shot: