Arthur Upfield - The Barrakee Mystery

Both men were obliged to laugh. Blair, however, remained perfectly serious.

“But, look here, Blair. Honestly, now, where were you about eight-thirty last night?” persisted the sergeant.

“I told you,” Blair returned. “I murdered the nig by ’itting’imon the ’eadwith a rotten cucumber. I own to it. You arrest me, Sergeant-and see ’owyou get on. Two ofyous! Why, I could crawl over you.”

“Not in the office, Blair. You’d smash the furniture,” Thornton murmured.

“All right, Blair. You had better go,” the policeman said resignedly.

Blair rose slowly to his feet, the goatee now at its normal right-angle with the bottom of his chin. Slowly he walked to the door, as though reluctant. At the door he turned, a man bursting with some hidden withheld information. The sergeant was at once hopeful; Blair slowly returned to the desk and, leaning forward, whispered:

“Say, are you quite sure you don’t want to arrest me, Sergeant?”

“Quite sure. When I do, I’ll arrest you.”

“My oath! You, with yourbloomin ’ speelers to lend a hand.”Blair almost cried with disappointment. Then, appealingly: “But ’avea’eart, Sergeant! Don’t bung me in next time to whitewash the jail. Igoes to Wilcannia and gets drunk like a respectablewowzer, not to whitewash jails. That’s a bit thick.”

With a regretful nod, Blair left them.

“What do you make of Blair?” asked the squatter, chuckling.

“Blair is a fighter, not a murderer,” replied Sergeant Knowles, grinning. “The two don’t mix outside a drunken brawl, and this murder was not the result of a drunken brawl. How many house servants have you got?”

“Three. Martha the cook, Alice the maid, and Mabel the laundry girl.”

“Humph!” the sergeant re-read his notes carefully. Then, looking up, he added: “I’ll have a look at the corpse. Then we’ll look at the scene of the killing. Then I’ll examine the blacks in that camp up-river. As far as your people are concerned, I am not satisfied with Clair. I’ll send Trooper Dowling with him to see if he did set traps last night. Also, Mr Thornton, Frank Dugdale did see someone in the lightning.”

The Only Clue

“Damn the rain!” rasped Sergeant Knowles, staring down at four wooden pegs set at the points of a cross to mark where the body had been found. “There is not a track left for a black tracker to see, let alone a white man.”

“What seems significant to me is that theabo stood six feet four inches in height, and yet, as you say, the blow at the crown of his head was delivered downwards,” murmured the squatter. “Such a combination rules out any man of medium height, unless he adopted Blair’s plan and used a pair of step-ladders.”

“Just so,” the sergeant agreed absently. He stood on the river side of the four wooden pegs and consequently faced the garden fence. “Is Dugdale in love with any of the maids, or with Miss Flinders, do you know?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no evidence of any love-affair. Why do you ask?”

“For no real reason,”came the absent response. “Let us go along to the camp. Hallo! Who is this?”

Along the bank of the river, walking towards them and thehomestead, came a young lubra. The two men watched her approach, the sergeant at least noting the springing gait and the beautiful contours of her limbs. Her age might have been twenty, but her figure was unusually lovely for a lubra, for somehow the angular awkwardness of the aboriginal girl changes with startling rapidity to the obesity of the gin.

She was dressed in a white muslin blouse, a neat navy-blue skirt, black stockings and shoes. She wore her cheap but well-fitting clothes with the unconscious grace of a white woman. When close, she looked at them fearlessly.

According to the white man’s standards it cannot be said that the Australian lubra is anything but ugly. This girl, however, was a rare exception. Her face was oval and flat. Her forehead neither receded nor bulged, but was high and broad. Her nose, for an aboriginal, was not spread, and the nostrils were finely chiselled; whilst her lips, thicker than those of the white woman, were by no means as thick and coarse as those of the average black. For an aboriginal she was remarkably good-looking.

“Good-day, Nellie! You goingup to the house?” Thornton asked kindly.

She smiled, and the sergeant noted that her smile was restrained and not the customary broad beam.

“Yeth, Mithter Thornton,” she said. “MithessThornton sent for me to give Mabel a hand. Shewashtomollow.”

“Ah, yes! Tomorrow is Monday, isn’t it?”

“What is your name, young lady?” Sergeant Knowles put in.

“I’m Nellie Wanting.” She regarded the blue tunic with awe, the man with native dignity.

“Who is your mother?”

“Sarah Wanting.”

“And your father?”

“I dunno,” she replied, with utter simplicity.

“Well, well! We won’t keep you.”

They watched her move across the billabong and climb the farther bank to the garden gate.

“A fine-looking lass, that,” essayed the sergeant thoughtfully. “I wonder who she’s married to, or who she’s living with. It’s all the same to them.”

“Heartwhole, I think. Anyway, she’s a good girl, and comes up to give the maids a hand two or three times a week. What now?”

“I think we’ll go along to the camp.”

The policeman rowed the boat upstream, and during the short trip did not speak. He was a man who, whilst making an excellent officer and an efficient administrator of a police-controlled bush town, would never make a good detective. Detectives are necessary in centres of population. In the Australian bush a good policeman must combine the qualifications of soldier, scout, and administrator.

Simple murder, with the murderer defined and at large, he could have dealt with. The apprehension of a known criminal would have been a matter of tracking, even across the continent. But, whilst his inquiries were not yet complete, the rain had obliterated all tracks made prior to nine-thirty the night before.

At the camp they were greeted by Pontius Pilate, engaged in the somnolent variety of fishing, which is to say, fishing in the mood of caring little if the fish bite or not. He moored the boat for them, and with deep seriousness escorted them up the bank to the fire near the humpies.

“Who is here, Pilate? Wake your people up and tell them I want to see them,” ordered the sergeant.

The buck growled a few unintelligible words, and, as spiritsraised by incantation, there appeared an enormously fat gin, another only a shade less fat, two thins laths of girls about sixteen, and five younger children. The young fellow, Ned, rose from the ground beneath a gum, yawned, and stretched himself. He still wore the moleskin trousers; Pontius Pilate was still barely half-covered by the simple blue shirt.

“Where are your trousers?” Sergeant Knowles demanded severely.

“Well, boss, you see Ned, he ride-it outlaw, and him pants all busted. So I loan him mine. Byim by, ole Sarah she fix Ned’s pants, and I git mine back.”

“Which is Sarah?”

“That Sarah. SheSarah Wanting,” answered Pontius Pilate, seating himself tailor-fashion with extraordinary dexterity; and pointing out the huger of the two huge gins.

“Well, you mend Ned’s trousers quick and lively, Sarah,” she was ordered. “We can’t have Pontius Pilate wandering about like an angel.”

Sarah said nothing. Her eyes widened and protruded.

“Now, Pilate, who is your friend that got himself murdered last night?”

The black fellow’s countenance assumed tremendous gravity.

“He got one hell of a bash, eh, boss?” he said.