Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

Leaving the half-used ball of twine near the only door of the house, he strode swiftly andunfurtively towards the dogs, crying in a loud, stern voice for them to cease. Two obeyed, but the third was loath to stop, crouching and alternately barking and snarling. This was the one ferocious animal among them. He could see it dimly, crouched. When the others seized upon the bones this dog spurned his share, and without waste of time the detective found a stick and masterfully proceeded to thrash it till it slunk into its kennel. After that they all remained quiet.

He spent five valuable minutes closely examining the haystack, becoming satisfied that no attempt had been made to remove anything from its interior. His next move was to the house. He discovered that a Yale lock had been fitted to the door. A close scrutiny of the two windows revealed that someone, probably Landon, had increased the efficiency of the clasps by the addition of two extra to each window, but these catches being far more simple than the Yale lock, it was but a matter of half a minute before he was in the house, searching the two rooms with his electric torch. The house, as he had expected, was empty of human beings.

Able to open the door from the inside, he passed out, picked up the binder twine, pulled it taut, and tugged three times. The answering three tugs immediately came back. He cut the twine, made a loop of the line end, and dropped this over the handle of a tin washing dish he balanced against a leg of the washing bench on the narrow east veranda. When Hurley pulled the twine the dish would be upset with a clatter and the loop end freed for Hurley to pull back, hand over hand, to the farm fence.

With much satisfaction, Bony waited for Lucy Jelly to join him.

“Are you quite steady?” he asked when she did join him.

“Yes, Mr Bony,” she whispered, which made him say:

“You may talk normally. There is no one here. There is not the slightest need to be nervous, and Eric will warn us in ample time if they do return early from the meeting. Come along.”

Conducting her into the house, he closed the door but left open the kitchen window through which he had gained access. They could not fail to hear the wash-basin fall over should Hurley pull on the binder twine. When in the bedroom the detective lowered the blind, and then, to save time, he gave the torch to the girl and began searching for the repaired slit at the foot of the mattress.

“What do you think of that, Miss Jelly?” he asked when he had carefully laid back the bedclothes and had arranged the mattress for her easy inspection of Mrs Loftus’s sewing.

“Bring the lamp nearer, please,” she requested, adding when he obeyed: “She used number forty in cotton. It is well that you did not cut the stitches. I doubt that I can do it good enough to deceive her. See! She has featherstitched it after herringboning it almost exactly in line with theovercasting. Why, it will take me more than half an hour to do it like she has done it. Hold the light still closer.”

Swiftly Bony glanced at his watch to note that the time was eighteen minutes past nine o’clock. For forty minutes the farmer’s meeting had been in progress, and much could be said and decided in forty minutes.

“Cut the stitches and go ahead,” he told her with unwonted sharpness. “Doit as well as you can. Make a good imitation. Let me assist, if possible.”

“Then fix the lamp so that you can hold things.”

With string he tied the lamp to the bedrail, drawing no knots, permitting the brilliant shaft of lift to fall directly on the work to be done. He was told to pocket several reels of cotton and to hold one particular reel of cotton, the number forty, and a packet of needles. The scissors flashed in the light as they snipped, snipped, snipped at the intricate stitching. Care and time were expended in gathering the extremely short pieces of snipped cotton, and it was after a lapse of five minutes before Bony gently inserted his hand into the opening and his fingers began to grope for the secret of the mattress. When, with care not to bring out any of the flock, he withdrew his hand, he held a small flat package wrapped in white paper.

The package was tied with white cotton. Holding it to Lucy, he told her to cut the cotton with her scissors. His long, brown, pink-nailed fingers quickly removed the wrapping paper and revealed a folded wad of treasury notes, which further examination proved to be of one-pound denomination. In the middle of the fold lay a man’s gold safety pin with a single small moonstone in its centre. The tie or collar pin Bony fastened to the lapel of his coat. He counted the notes. There were sixty. Their serial number was K/11. They were quite new. Their running numbers were within twenty of the numbers of the notes Mrs Loftus had paid to the garage-men.

Placing the notes safely in a pocket of his jacket, Bony carefully prepared with newspaper a dummy package which he wrapped in the white paper, and this he placed in the same position among the flock which the genuine package had occupied.

“Now, Miss Lucy, get to work. Make haste; try to replace those puzzling stitches. I may yet have to play Mrs Loftus a little longer,” he said with triumph in his voice.

“Needles and that numberforty cotton, please,” she said with a calm efficiency which delighted him, even though he had met many calm and efficient women in the bush.

He fell to watching the slim fingers threading the needle, the eye of which would have daunted any man. He saw her first secure the lips of the seven-inch slit with what he afterwards learned was overcast stitching, the needlepassing the cotton through the original holes. When she began the herringbone stitches he saw her difficulty in using the holes Mrs Loftus had made, yet marvelled at her dexterity. It was fifteen minutes to ten o’clock. She began the featherstitching.

“I can’t see it! I can’t do it!” she breathed.

“Never mind the original holes now. Make as good a copy as possible of her stitching.”

The light gleamed on the now slower flashing needle. Across the darker bands of the mattress material the featherstitching made him realize how difficult was her task, hopeless of accomplishment to any but the most practised. Despite the necessity for haste, she made a splendid copy of Mrs Loftus’s work, although Bony was unable to appreciate it properly. When it was done Lucy said:

“Unless she takes the mattress out into strong light I think she will not discover the trick.”

He saw the paleness of her face when she stood up, even though her face was outside the light beam. Now that her work was done, the terrific excitement was becoming felt, threatening to overwhelm her. Gently he took her hands in his and said firmly:

“Thank you! You have behaved wonderfully. Remain calm. There is absolutely no cause for nervousness. There is yet plenty of time. Just wait two minutes.”

Quickly he detached the string from about the lamp. Now its circle of light swept over hessian walls and moved across every floorboard. It gleamed on the polished surface of the table and flashed across the picture on the easel. Finally it halted on the floor at his feet.

“It is not here,” he said.

“What is not here?”

“A small box having a lock fitted by a peculiarly shaped key. Stay there.”

His voice, she noticed, had lost its soft inflexion. No longer was he the courteous acquaintance, the understanding friend. The guttural liquids of his aboriginal ancestry had crept into his voice, as their hunting stealth had crept into his limbs. When he walked into the kitchen his legs were like clock springs and his body rested on the extreme tips of his sheepskin boots.

Following him to the door of the bedroom, she stood to stare at his grotesque figure revealed by the quick-moving light which never once shone directly out of the window. She wondered why he did not lower the blind, as he had done in the room behind her. He was now examining the glass-fronted bookcase, now beginning the task of taking from the shelves every book to see if there might be one which really was a box fashioned like a book.