Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

“I take it that you believe that murderers are mental defectives?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And, as insane people, should not be hanged?”

Mr Jelly was emphatic when next he spoke.

“Let us get down to brass tacks, as my old father used to say,” he went on. “In the bad old days, when they hanged a man for looking crossways at the squire, it was considered that man was a free agent, able to distinguish right from wrong. In these days if a man brains his wife with a beer bottle, and more especially if the man belongs to the professional class, and he acts mad, the alienists will prove that he is, and their opinion is taken as accurate. You see, we have swung right round to the opposite outlook or viewpoint of crime and criminals.”

Mr Jelly crossed his legs. Enthusiasm for his subject was warming him.

“The only man who ever really understoodcriminals was Lombroso, the Italian. He said, and could prove what he said, that a murderer, or any felon guilty of brutality, inevitably bore certain physical marks. These people can be picked out as easily as he picked ’emout in his day. I can pick them out: a very shrewd man, who wasn’t a doctor, taught me how. Never mind who he was or where he taught me. The fact stands that Lombroso was right as regards killers. I give in to the oh-my-poor-brother fools when dealing with lesser criminals, because stealing and like offences are the result largely of environment; but, as I have said, if a man or a woman is a potential killer, either or both can be detected by physical abnormalities. So that, assuming you were branded, as God branded Cain before and not after he killed Abel, as many people think, you should be put away before you cut my throat, not after, because when my throat has been cut it can never again be uncut.”

“But the difficulty would be in setting up the authority in the first place, and, in the second place, the examination of the people,” Bony objected.

“I realize that,” Mr Jelly agreed thoughtfully. “Still, the fact remains that many murderers should never have been allowed outside a lunatic asylum. Nonning and Fling, Wells and Mann were mentally unbalanced. I visited Wells and Nonning in jail and found theLombrosian brand on them. Wilde, the burglar, was sane, but he was branded too. Like many criminals, his final crime was the culmination of a life of crime.”

“You do not believe in the death penalty?” asked Bony quickly.

Mr Jelly’s grey eyebrows became one straight bar. He said sternly:

“Every right-minded man must believe in the extinction of killers. The death sentence is a tremendous deterrent. It bulks large in the mind of a man who would like to kill, or who regards killing lightly, but himself fears death. No punishment would ever stop the subnormal or the abnormal, but abolish the death penalty and murders committed by sane men will increase mightily. No, what I think is that many murders need never have happened at all. I believe that penal control should be exercised over potential killers who have once come into a prison to serve a sentence for a lesser crime.”

Mr Jelly was now fingering idly the empty picture frame. He talked on and on about his killers, interesting Bony with his wonderful memory of their trials, with, now and then, grim allusion to the manner in which it was reported that they died. Presently the detective’s mind was jolted back to his business at Burracoppin.

“Yes, I am sure poor Loftus was murdered,” Mr Jelly was saying. “He would not have disappeared voluntarily. I have got my own ideas, of course. It will all come out some day. Someone will find him under a stone or in a hole. I am a great believer in the saying ‘Murder will out’, and I am going to put the picture of Loftus’s killer in this frame, after he is hanged. Poor old Loftus! He didn’t ever do anyone a bad turn.”

Yes, Bony was extremely interested in Mr Jelly. He thoroughly enjoyed his visit at the farm, and when he and Hurley reached the Rabbit Department Depot he said as much.

“I am glad you enjoyed yourself,” Hurley said with a yawn. “I did-thank you!”

Theories

THE MORNING of the fourteenth day since the disappearance of George Loftus witnessed Bony dump a load of posts near the wrecked car. Somewhat to his annoyance Eric Hurley’s dog accompanied him, the boundary rider having departed on his long northern trip of inspection.

It was a superb day-warm, cloudless, brilliant. What little wind there was came from the east. The air was filled with a low pulsating sound produced by the combined action of harvester machines and tractors in the wheat paddocks far and near. Already so early in the season the bags of wheat were being rushed by truck and wagon to the rail sidings. The land, having peacefully dozed for nine months, had quickened to feverish life.

To Bony, used to the solitudes of the eastern side of the great heart of Australia, this bustle and noise of Western Australia’s wheat belt seemed to push him spiritually farther away from his aboriginal ancestry than at times had the roar and the bitter grimness of the cities. Here was the white man’s life in all its naked virility, all its indomitable courage, its inventive genius. From the spot on which he was standing he could see mile beyond mile of land, which had been abandoned in its desolation by the hardy nomadic aborigines and now was one huge chequered garden. This morning Bony was proud that he was half white and wistfully longed to escape the environment of the mid-race for the upper plane of the white.

He had thoroughly examined every inch of the ground, giving only five minutes to the hunt for clues between spells offencework in order not to raise unnecessary comment from the drivers of passing traffic. With hope in his heart he searched for the bones of recent history. He saw the masses of impressions made by motor tyres and the boots of those who had been attracted to the scene. He saw dog tracks, the tracks of a goanna, two snakes’ tracks, and tracks left even by a centipede. He found a cigar end which at one time had been soddened by rain and now was tinder-dry and brittle. Matches, cigarette ends, an old boot, a half-inch spanner, and an old felt hat provided him with quite a collection.

Yet definitely nothing of importance. Bony hummed lightly whilst he cut out the old decayed posts, dug from the ground the rotted butts, and placed the new posts in position, rammed firm the earth, and bored the wire holes. The disappearance of Loftus presented possibilities of surprise and drama that made him happy. Now and then Ginger departed on a hunt for rabbits and was made happy, too, by the absence of restraint. He returned from these expeditions with heaving sides and lolling tongue and stretched himself in the shade to regain bodily coolness. A blowfly sometimes hummed near him at which he snapped, and always there was the higher, more persistent note of the machines stripping the wheat.

A goods train passed with roaring wheels towards Burracoppin, and the driver waved a friendly hand to Bony. The truck drivers who were forced to stop to open the gates in the longest fence in the world-1,350 miles-conscientiously closed them on seeing Bony working there. They were addicted to leaving open those gates, provingthemselves good gamblers in betting against being caught and subsequently fined by a police magistrate.

At noon Bony filled his billycan from a tap at the government farmhouse and brought it near his work to boil for tea. The time he allowed the tea to “draw” he spent seated behind the steering wheel of Loftus’s car. With the front wheels on level ground and the back wheels resting on the huge water pipe below ground level, the position in which he then was, although not comfortable, was not precarious. For a little while he imagined himself George Loftus, partly drunk, realizing slowly the stupid thing he had done.