Arthur Upfield - The Barrakee Mystery

“I don’t believe it,” protested Bony vigorously. “Even should you find what you expect, you will see in the Little Lady’s eyes only a hungry love, a mother’s love. She is ill, Ralph, very ill. Won’t you come back with me now?”

For a little while Ralph was silent. Then:

“No, not now. I will go to Barrakee when it is dark, when no one sees me. I want to see only my mother.” And then, after another pause, he said, looking up again: “Leave us now, Bony, please. I want to think. I must think.”

So it was that the detective went back to Barrakee, leaving Ralph with his face resting upon his knees. Nellie came out of thewhirlie and stood near him, wanting to comfort him, yet afraid. The sun went down, and when it was almost dark he said to her:

“I’mgoin ’alonga Barrakee tonight. You will stay here and if by sun-up I am not back, you will take the boat and go find Pontius Pilate.”

“Oh Ralphie,” she murmured softly.

“You will do as I have said,” he commanded, more than a hint of the buck speaking to his gin in his voice.

Nellie went into the humpy and cried noiselessly. The youth sat where he was, hour after hour, till by the stars he decided it was midnight. Then, rising he crept into the humpy, and with his hands found the sleeping Nellie. He kissed her without awaking her, and so left her, and walked down beside the floodwaters to the causeway and to Barrakee.

He was aware that Mr and Mrs Thornton occupied rooms separated by the squatter’s dressing room. He knew, too, that the Little Lady’s bedroom was between the dressing room and another she used as her boudoir. There was some doubt in his mind whether he would rejoin Nellie immediately for he foresaw the possibility that the woman who loved him might temporarily overcome his determination never again to resume his former status.

His mind, whilst he followed the causeway, was troubled by the old battle which he had considered lost, and well lost, in favour of Nellie’s embraces. No man can forget his mother; exceptionally few look back upon their mothers with no one tender memory.

The whole of his life formed a chain of tender memories of a loving woman, whom he had cherished as his mother. He felt ungrateful, ashamed, not a little frightened; yet he knew that his severance from white people was dictated by a power which only that afternoon he recognized as the power of his ancestry. Realizing that he had brought pain and anguish to the woman who had given him her all, he blamed himself less than he blamed his fate. What he did not realize was that this midnight visit represented the last link binding him to her, that when it had been strained and broken the forces of heredity would become for ever victorious.

Noiseless as a shadow he entered the garden. He moved across the lawn and round to Mrs Thornton’s rooms as lightly as a stalking cat, the inherent tracker in him enabling him unconsciously to avoid fallen leaves and obstacles the touching of which would make a sound.

He came to the boudoir door and, opening it an inch, listened. There was no sound within. Familiar with the arrangement of the furniture, he crossed silently to the bedroom door, which he found open. Still no sound reached him. As silently as he had come he crossed the Little Lady’s bedroom and closed the dressing room door, whereupon he stole to the dressing table on which invariably stood a candlestick, for he knew that the electric current would have been shut off by Mr Thornton at eleven o’clock.

Having matches with him he struck one and lit the candle. He turned then towards the bed-to see no one lying upon it. Yet there was something strange about that bed, not wholly revealed by the dim candlelight. Picking up the light, he stole towards the bed, and by it stood looking down upon the sheet that was spread over a distinctly outlined form.

Even in that terrible moment, when his limbs were shocked into paralysed inactivity, Ralph felt no fear, nor any desire to cry out or run. For a full minute he stood as a statue of marble, and during that minute the world appeared to die and become awhited grave. And then, very gently, he took a corner of the sheet in his free hand and pulled it down from the face of the dead.

The candle became slightly tilted, and drop by drop the grease fell on the sheet. And drop by drop there fell on the sheet, near the grease marks, great globes of tears from his wide eyes.

He set the candle on a bracket at the head of the bed, and very slowly bent forward and touched the Little Lady’s cold lips that would meet his never again. And then gently he lowered his head and pressed his lips to the granite cold brow and icy lips of the dead. Gently, soundlessly, he laid himself down beside the body, his brain numbed by the shock, his limbs strangely heavy. He felt inexpressibly tired. And there, with his head resting on a bent arm, he silently studied every beloved feature, whilst the large tears continued to fall.

There was something tremendous in that soundlessgrief, far more poignant than if it had been accompanied by breath-catching sobs. The lad, during those terrible minutes, saw himself exactly as God had made him, and the sight brought about the revelation of all that he had meant to the dead woman, especially when nineteen years before she had made him her own. She had given him a great maternallove, she had surrounded him with that guarding love, yet a love not potent enough to keep him safe from the power, the unseen power, of his ancestors of the bush. No power was adequate to deal with that inherent, compelling impulse.

The candle on the bed bracket burned steadily down to half its length before he moved. No man might know all that passed through his mind, wearied by the struggle of the last few months, stunned by the disclosure of his origin, shocked by the discovery that the Little Lady, his mother in all but birth, lay dead with a broken heart.

And she had sent Bony for him, and he had not come till it was too late!

He kissed her once, and after a little while kissed her again. One long look, his face saddened by tragic grief, he gave to her to whom he had belonged.

One agonized sob burst from him just before he extinguished the candle; and slowly, very slowly, he drew away from the bed which had become a bier, and passed out of the homestead of Barrakee for ever.

Flood-Waters Subside

TOGETHER WITH Mr Thornton, Bony walked down the veranda steps to the garden. They walked slowly, Bony with bent head, the squatter with head held high, unashamed of the sorrow that welled from his heart and shadowed his fine face. Coming to a garden seat, the half-caste caught his companion by the sleeve and urged him to be seated.

He spoke softly, a world of sympathy in his voice, and told the story he had read from the closed dressing room door, the half-burned candle, the grease spots on the sheet, and beside them the marks of Ralph’s tears… For a while, when he ceased speaking, there was silence. Then:

“What do you intend doing regarding my wife’s confession that she killed King Henry?” inquired Thornton with forced calmness.

“Nothing-nothing whatever,” Bony replied. “As I have said before, I think, I am a detective, not a policeman. Sinclair willingly paid the price. The law is satisfied. The police are satisfied. Knowles will take no action against Dugdale or Blair and McIntosh. The case is finished. Besides, I would find it utterly impossible to tarnish the character of so great a woman as was the Little Lady. If she, and not the poor Empress Josephine, had been the beloved of the Emperor Napoleon, today the nations of the earth would be a peaceful and prosperous World Federation.

“You are a fortunate man in having been her husband. Remember that. It will ease your load. I myself have been fortunate in having known her. I leave Barrakee less vain, less sure of myself, a better man than when I came. Good-bye! My car is coming.”