Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

“Which of you is the better rifle shot?” he asked his perplexed audience. “Rowland is,” Morris admitted promptly.

“Very well. Now, Mr Rowland, I want you to lie down about twenty feet from these eggs. I want you to fire a bullet from the Winchester exactly through the middle of one of the eggs, and a bullet from the Savage exactly through the middle of the other. Take your time and don’t miss, for probably we could not find another emu eggshell in Mount Lion.”

The trooper loaded the Winchester and took up the specified position. When the rifle cracked the egg very slowly fell from its supporting tee, and Bony, picking it up, said: “See, the bullet has passed through the egg, making a very neat round hole through each side. With my penknife I will mark it with a ‘W’. Now the other, Mr Rowland.”

The action of the bullet from the Savage rifle was markedly dissimilar, as was the report of the exploding cartridge. The egg collapsed at the moment its water content was whisked away in spray. But one small piece of shell remained, the rest having been dispersed in a thousand fragments. On that one piece of shell Bony scratched the letter “S”.

“Thank you!” he said. “The experiment was entirely successful. Let us return to the office.”

Again seated in his chair, with Sergeant Morris in position at the farther side of the paper-littered desk, Bony fell to making his eternal cigarette with the long thin fingers bequeathed him by his mother. With his head bent to the task he nevertheless now and then looked up at the stern military face of the police sergeant, a ghost of a smile playing about his mobile lips.

“Once, I think, I told you that murder generally is a very sordid affair, yet to a man of my intelligence a crime very easily finalized,” he drawled softly. “The number of men-and doctors are included among them-men of mental ability who have tried and dismally failed to destroy the bodies of their victims, is remarkable. Perhaps the difficulties that confront a murderer desirous of utterly destroying the body of his victim should make law-abiding normal people very thankful. Equally thankful, too, the police who investigate crimes of this kind.”

“I should say so,” Sergeant Morris interjected sharply.

Bony waved his hand airily. “The chief and overwhelming evidence against a murderer is the victim’s body, or part of it. A body, or identifiable parts of a body, being found, convicts ninety-nine murderers in every hundred. The odd one escapes justice not through his own cleverness, nor by good luck, but because the investigating officer is a fool.”

The sergeant frowned. Bony continued blandly: “In British law a charge of murder made when no body or part of a body is found is almost unknown. There is one case recorded, and one only. A woman named Perry and her two sons were hanged for the murder of a farm bailiff without the production of a body by the prosecution. It may be surmised, therefore, that when, a few years later, the supposed murdered bailiff turned up alive, he caused no little surprise. This case may be the cause of the judicatory authorities being very particularabout making a human body the basis of a murder trial.

“In any case, if a killer can manage to destroy without trace the body of his victim, his chance of escaping due punishment for the crime is excellent. You remember that I told you I knew six wholly different and effectual methods of destroying utterly a human body with agencies and implements obtainable by anyone. Windee has revealed to me a seventh.

“I know now how the murder was committed and the body destroyed. I know that there were two, possibly three, men implicated in it. I know the name of one man, and may be excused for guessing the name of the second. The third man I do not yet know. To complete my case I want this third man’s name and also the motive.

“You may say that to establish a motive for murder is the most important part of a prosecution. I agree. In this case, however, it has been necessary first to establish the fact of murder, because the body of Marks, or any recognizable part of it, does not now exist. The discovery of the motive will indicate the third man, whom as yet I cannot name.”

“Who are the other two?” Morris demanded.

Bony’s smile contained a hint of scornful remonstrance.

“I believe,” he said slowly, in a manner which implied that he believed nothing of the sort, “I believe that all great detectives in fiction, Mr Sherlock Holmes and DrThorndyke among them, never divulged their progress in a case until it was finished, so far as they were concerned.”

“But, damn it, we are notbook detectives!”

“Your objection is perfectly legitimate, my dear Morris. On the other hand, although I am not a book detective, neitheram I an ordinary policeman in plain clothes, despite my official rank and connections. I am a man who has never yet failed to finalizea ease allotted to me. Why? The answer is simple. I have from the beginning refused to be bound by red tape. I have never cared a tinker’s curse for chief commissioners, advancement in the service, instant dismissal from it, or any other of the many things that govern a policeman’s career.” Bony rose to his feet. “Nothing influences me in my profession but the elucidation of some mystery, which often is extremely simple. Permit me to leave you now. I have an appointment with Father Ryan. I am taking with me Marcus Aurelius and Virgil.”

“Who the devil are they?” exploded Sergeant Morris.

“They are, I think, strangers in Mount Lion,” replied Bony, walking out.

“ABloomin ’ Corker”

BONY PASSED an hour with Father Ryan, and the little priest, although he failed to convert the half-caste from Paganism, revelled in the luxury of a mental bath. The light and airy room which his host used as his study, the shelves of books on theology, history, biography, and philosophy, as well as the great table used for writing, delighted Bony, and made him feel a rare regret that he had not given his life to the practice of the arts instead of the detection of crime. When at last he rose to leave, Father Ryan waddled round the table and clasped in his the two hands of his visitor, exclaiming:

“My son, you leave me with memories of a delightful conversation, and a little touched with sorrow that the Church failed to call you as a young man. What a missionary you would have made! What convincing arguments you would have put forward, and with what eloquence! Almost you have convinced me that the Greek philosophers were right and Christ wrong. You have touched my mind, but you have not weakened my faith. The reason why your philosophers are wrong, the reason why man ever marches forward and upward, is because of the faith which is within him in an ideal, which is God. Aurevoir, and my heartfelt gratitude!”

“Your reverence is kind-and a most worthy antagonist,” Bony replied, smiling down into the round chubby face. “I will call on you again before I leave the district, which I regret I shall have to do soon. I, too, say ’aurevoir ’!”

At the gate the trooper joined him, asking him to return to the office, because Sergeant Morris wished some further talk with him. With a hint of amusement in his blue eyes, Bony entered the office, and with assumed resignation slipped into the vacant chair and at once proceeded to make a cigarette.

“Thereare one or two points in this Marks case which I would like you to explain more fully,” the sergeant said persuasively.

“Well, go ahead.”

“You say that you know how Marks’s body was destroyed. Am I to understand that it was destroyed utterly?”

“That is the fact I endeavoured to explain.”

“It is going to be very difficult, then, to satisfy a judge and jury that Marks is dead.” For a moment Sergeant Morris paused. “Have youhope of bringing forward other evidence to prove it, or in an effort to prove it?”