Arthur Upfield - The Barrakee Mystery

“Oh! In what way?”

“We both adore the Emperor Napoleon, Ralph. In fact, our first interview ended almost theatrically.”

“Explain, please.”

She told him, and Ralph’s interest in Bony was excited.

“I must make his acquaintance,” he announced. “Although I have read Mr Abbott’s history, I cannot agree that the Emperor was quite thedemi -god that historians would have us believe. Still, he was a great man, in that he always played the game when his opponents did not.”

“Which was where he made his greatest mistake,” she said swiftly. “Anyway, Ralph, let us put aside the Emperor for a little while and discuss something else-ourselves, for instance.”

“The subject will be equally interesting. How shall we start?”

“I have been thinking a very great deal about you, Ralph, since you came home from school,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “I am glad, so glad, that you are learning so well and quickly to take up your burden. Sometimes I think I shall not be much longer with you, and when my call does come I should like to know that your position in the world was assured and that you were settled.”

He would have spoken, but she went on hurriedly.

“No, no, dear. Don’t be alarmed. I am not going to die for a long time yet. Your father and I have decided to go down to the sea directly the shearing is over, and I shall come back a new woman. We’ll talk about you, and the plans I have made for you. You don’t mind my making plans for you, do you? All mothers do.”

“Of course not,” he said gently, uneasiness about her health in his eyes, and shocked by the first hint of mortality in his young life.

“You know, dear, that when your father and I are taken, you inherit Barrakee andall your father’s wealth, after sufficient has been deducted to provide Kate an annuity. But, when you become the Squatter of Barrakee, you will need a good wife. A good wife means so much to a bushman. Ralph, don’t tell me unless you wish, but have you thought about Kate?”

“As a wife?”Ralph asked, with not a little surprise.

“Yes, as a wife. Do you love her, Ralph?”

“I do. I am very fond of Kate,” he said warmly. “Why she is the prettiest girl in the world, and the sweetest; but I’ve never thought of her as a sweetheart. Honestly, it always seemed to me that we are brother and sister.”

“No doubt; but you are only cousins,” Mrs Thornton said softly. Then, reaching forward, she took both his hands in hers. “Never forget, Ralph, that I think only of your happiness. Had I not been so sure of Kate, I would never have mentioned her in this way. Whatever you do, never marry except for love. There is plenty of time for you, but Kate is a beautiful girl, and every man makeshimself agreeable to her, courts her, and could easily fall in love with her. I would hate for you to suddenly discover that you loved her when it was too late. Think about it, will you?”

“Certainly I will.” He laughed gently. “It would not, I think, be difficult to love Kate sufficiently to make me want to marry her. As a matter of fact, I never thought about it, but, now you have made me think about it, there’s no knowing what may happen.”

For several moments she looked into his dark, handsome eyes, searchingly, longingly, a great affection in hers. Slowly and softly, she said:

“If you were to fall in love with Kate, Ralph, and one day, not necessarily soon, you were married, I should be so happy. You see, I love you both, and I am afraid that some other boy will win her, a prize that should be yours.”

Again they looked deeply each at the other. Their eyes eventually falling, a silence fell upon them, a long silence broken by Ralph pushing back his chair and standing over her, saying:

“Give me a week, Little Lady. I’ll search my heart and tell you then what I find there.”

Bony’s Imagination

BONY RECLINED with his back against one of the trestles supporting the first boat to be repainted. All the old paint had been burned and scraped off, and the boat, lying keel uppermost, appeared like an old hen whose feathers have all dropped out. He sat in the sun, smoking a cigarette, and looking with vacant eyes at the border of gums on the farther bank of the river.

By his side lay a slab of cement-hard clay, dark grey in colour, and about a foot square. That morning he had cut it carefully out of hard ground near the garden gate.

To ordinary eyes there was nothing of interest about that slab of dry clay. To ordinary eyes there was no mark on it until they had gazed for a long time at its flat surface. Then might vague perception dawn of a series of opposing curves, very faint and irregular in impression.

Bony’s eyes, however, were not ordinary. He saw here on the flat surface a clear impression of a man’s left boot.

Over all that vast area of Australia not broken up by the plough the ground is an open book for those who can read. The history of the wild is written there. Reptiles and animals cannot live without making and leaving their mark. Even birds must alight sometimes and register themselves by their tracks.

The reader of the open book gains proficiency only bypractice, and his final expertness is limited by his eyesight. The habit of observation is the first essential, knowledge of the natives of the wild thesecond, and reasoning power the third. Whilst the first and third essentials make a white man an efficient tracker, the second essential, combined with supervision, makes the black man an expert tracker. And, through his black mother and his white father, Bony possessed the three essentials, plus abnormal vision; which was why he was a king of trackers.

His keen eyes saw impressed on the piece of clay that which only the microscope and the camera would reveal to the white man. A freak of Nature had preserved it from the rain that had fallen after it had been made, for it was the only track left.

The depth of the curves proved that the imprint had been made after three or four points of rain had fallen and slightly moistened the surface. The succeeding rain had not been prolonged sufficiently-and the gauge at the homestead proved that the quantity had been twenty-eight points-to dissolve the surface into sufficient mud to flow into the indentations. Why that single track had been preserved was because the surface of the clay on which it had been made was absolutely level. Thus gravitation had not caused mud to flow there as it had done on all surfaces not absolutely level.

To Bony’s keen vision and reasoning was due the revelation that the person wearing a No. 9 boot who made the impression stood on that spot two or four minutes after the thudding sound that evidently killed King Henry reached Dugdale. And, allowing half a minute for the killer to make sure of his work, two minutes and three seconds were necessary for him to walk rapidly away from the corpse, across the billabong, to the place where he left the solitary track. Bony had walked it, and timed the walk.

The wearer of a No. 9 boot, therefore, was in the vicinity of the murder at the precise moment the deed was done. If the wearer had not actually struck the blow, he had been within seventy-three yards from the place where the blow had fallen.

It was a clue, certainly, towards the elucidation of the crime. Bony was intensely happy. For a whole week he had searched when opportunity offered for that possible track. And, knowing that a No. 9 boot is generally worn by a person of twelve stone and over, by a quick process of elimination the finger of fate pointed to three persons-Clair, John Thornton and Martha the gin.

Within twenty-four hours of his arrival Bony had noted the boot size of every person on his list, other than Martha. He knew that John Thornton’s boot size was No. 8, and he knew, too, that Clair’s was No. 9. That afternoon he had ascertained that Martha’s elastic-sided riding boots also were the man’s size No. 9.