Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“If you love me, you will go without arguing. I have made a mess of everything. Here you see the visible expression of the wreckage of my life. Drive yourself to theKingstons in the car. Please, please don’t stop to argue. Go-at once.”

“But-but-”

“Go!”

Miss Waldron shrank back from the look of blazing fury suddenly leaping in her sister’s eyes. What she saw in them terrified her, and in backing to the door she wanted to scream when Mrs Loftus steadily followed her. The strain at last became unbearable. The mystery of this night, the suspicion that her sister held some awful knowledge, made her long to lean against someone stronger than herself; and her sister would not support her. She began to sob, no longer able to resist her sister’s dominance. Helplessly she permitted herself to be hurried to the car and pushed into the driving seat. When Mrs Loftus had cranked the engine she came back to Miss Waldron to say:

“Good-bye! Go to theKingstons. Tell them not to worry about me. Do not come back till tomorrow afternoon.”

“All right, sis. Let me kiss you.”

“Kiss me! My God, child! Go! Go at once. Do you hear?”

And so Miss Waldron drove off over the bumpy track to the farm gate, stunned by perplexity, horrified by her sister’s strange mental condition. Mrs Loftus watched the red tail-light grow small, saw the sweep of the headlights turn southward when the car reached the main road. A vicelike hand gripped her arm.

“Where has she gone? Didn’t you hear me shout?” Landon demanded sharply. “We had a chance with the car. Why did you let her take the car?”

“Mick! Mick! What does it all mean?” shesaid, quickly limp now that he was at her side to hold her with his love and protection.

“It means-come into the house. Is anyone there?”

His presence, his touch, melted that terrible frozen feeling which had kept her as stiff as a robot. She clung to him now as her sister had wished to cling to her. She was on the verge of hysteria, unable to realize that he was roughly dragging her into the house. He slammed the door shut behind them.

His eyes were bloodshot, the sinister slate-blue eyes unnaturally wide and fixed. He brought his handsome face close to hers, and she wanted to cry out when she knew that the action was not prompted by the old desire to kiss her. Never before had she seen his mouth with the lips drawn back.

“Means?” he said. “It means that the play is over. They must think that Loftus is in the haystack. Anyway, I fired it when I saw Bony and the others leave. I found Bony here. There were two other men waiting to grab me, but I came too soon. Bony’s a tracker all right. A police tracker he is. I’ve got to get away. You have to give me a chance. You can give me a chance if only you keep your mouth shut. I want that money. I want that box to take away and hide somewhere else.”

“You wouldn’t leave me, Mick?” she asked with stricken features.

“Of course I must leave you. You’d be a drag. I’ve got to keep going till I get out of the State. There’s no sense in our both getting caught. I’ll get the box; you get the money.”

“The box has gone. You idiot! Firing the stack won’t help us. Who was hurt?”

“They got the box!” For seconds Landon stared incredulously.

“Yes, they took the box,” she said dully, despair seizing her when she saw him with the eyes of searching truth.

“Well, it only helps them to what they already know. I want that money. It can’t help you. I’ve got to keep going; go before they come back. They’ve taken the girl home. I could hear them talking when they were putting her into the car, even though I was up on the rock.”

“Girl! What girl?”

“Lucy Jelly. She was here with Bony. He charged me, and the gun went off. She was wounded.”

Snatching up a carving knife from the dresser, Landon rushed into the bedroom. Mrs Loftus followed, carrying the lamp. In the act of putting it down on the pedestal table she began to laugh dreadfully.

“You’re a fool, Mick. What chance have you got when they’ve got the black box?” Again she laughed, shrilly, mockingly, with the devilish notes of a kookaburra. “Lucy Jelly! Ah! Ah! Lucy Jelly! Get the money, Mick. You can have all of it. You may go and leave me to face it out alone, dear, foolish, stupid Mick.”

“Stop it!” he shouted when she began to laugh again.

“I can’t help it, Mick. You are just like a poor little bunny in a netted warren with a ferret.”

With one long stroke he gashed the end of the mattress for a yard. He searched for and found the package, looked at it swiftly, placed it in his pocket. And yet again Mrs Loftus laughed.

“Look inside! Look inside! Don’t you understand why Lucy Jelly was brought here?”

With his gaze fixed on her, Landon’s hand went into his pocket and brought out the package. Now looking down at it, he slipped off the covering of white paper, unfolded the newspaper, turned it over, and then allowed it to slip from his fingers to the floor.

“Where is the money, you?” he snarled at her in a way which finally unmasked him, revealing himself to her as a broken reed, a clay idol, a weakling, a cur.

“Can’t you see that they brought Lucy Jelly here to sew up the mattress after they had cut it and got out the notes?” she asked with withering scorn at his mental obtuseness. “It wasn’t Jelly who came here the night of the Jilbadgie dance and took the candle. It was Bony. I remember now that he wasn’t at the dance for hours. He came here and felt the package in the mattress and saw that he couldn’t sew it up if he cut my stitching. He brought the girl here tonight to do that for him. But how he found out about putting George in the haystack I can’t imagine. They offered to buy the hay, knowing that we wouldn’t sell. You would have fired it then, but I met bluff with bluff: But, oh, what’s the use! It’s no use you running away. They’ll get you without very much bother.”

“They’re going to have their work cut out,” he said with quiet defiance. Then with sudden pleading:

“You love me, don’t you, Mavie? Why drag me into it? They’re bound to get you. Why not say that George treated you badly and that the night he came home he was drunk and attacked you? You could clear me if you like, you know.”

“Love you! I don’t love the thing you are. I thought I loved a man. Go on. Run away. But Bony will get you. He’s a police tracker and more-he’s a clever detective. They took off the regular ones and put him on.”

“If they do get me I’ll see that you hang.”

And so they stood, each clearly revealed to the other in their evil beastliness. They shrank from each other, because the horror each saw in the other they each could see in themselves.

“No, they won’t hang me,” the woman said with a vicious laugh. “I have descended from the pioneers. You, you have risen from the gutter.” She ran to the easel and from a grooved crosspiece of the frame snatched a small bottle. Facing him again, she cried: “You would run away with the money, eh? You would leave me to face it out, lie to protect you from what is coming to you, eh? I die that my death will convict you as my accomplice in the murder of my husband. Murder! A nice word. Craven! I go where you haven’t the manhood to follow. But-you-will-be-sent-after-me-Mick. That is sure.”

He watched her lift the uncorked bottle to her mouth. He watched her swallow the contents without making any action to prevent her. He ran out of the house, ran in thefirelit glow towards the great rock, leaving the woman who had wrecked his soul with her allure and whose soul had been wrecked by his unclean beauty, left her writhing on the bed in the first awful sweat of lingering death by poisoning.