“That’s the way it began and ended, and Jeff doesn’t know anything. We don’t want him to know, ever. He’s been hurt badly enough, and besides, he’s always been kind and generous to my mother and me. So you’ll remember, and keep off Marvin should he ask questions?”
“All right,” consented Bony. “You say he suspects that Marvin came home. What raised his suspicions?”
“Luke coming home, we think. You see, Luke and his wife and children were down over the Christmas and New Year, and then he came this last time alone. To make it worse, the other day the police came asking if we’d seen anything of Marvin. After that, Luke insisted on Marvin going away and keeping away.”
“A tragedy, indeed,” murmured Bony. “Must be a terrible burden on his mother. Yes, I’ll be most careful if Jeff asks lead-questions.”
“Thank you, Nat.”
Sadie stood and gathered the mug and flask into the sack, and Bony dismantled the rod, line and reel. He cut a length of cord-line to loop through the gills of the great fish to carry it, and they were ready to leave when the girl said:
“What would make Jeff think he could pump you is that Emma’s very friendly with Elsie, the policeman’s wife. Emma might have told you something or other what Sam had told her. That could be the way Jeff’s thinking. And now Marvin’s gone away again, we all want the whole affair forgotten.”
“Yes, of course, I can see that,” Bony said gravely. “It does happen that Matt and Emma are genuinely concerned about Jeff’s health. Matt told me how close in friendship they’ve always been. I can understand how they wouldn’t want to discuss the Rhudder affairs with me, being a complete stranger. So don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
She nodded her thanks, and her eyes were bright as, without evasion, they sought his and apparently emphasized the head nod. Glancing at her watch, she said:
“We must get on home. Nearly lunch-time, and I’ve to take mother up to Timbertown this afternoon to do some shopping. I’ll carry the gear. You’ll have enough to do with the fish. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?”
In the car, Bony insisted that the fish be halved, and on arriving at the garden gate he was instructed to drive into the rear yard and to the meat-house. There with a sharp knife he filleted the fish despite Sadie Stark’s protests that she could do it quite well. For the second time, she asked him to be silent about the adventure with the sneaker.
“I’d never hear the end of it, if they knew.”
Old Jeff was on the veranda waiting to receive the visitor, and at once it was apparent that he was starved for companionship. The kingfish was certainly a fine catch, and he remembered that back in some year or other his father had caught one which scaled at ninety-five pounds.
After lunch Bony was introduced to further treasures and was genuinely interested in several very old maps on which only parts of Australia’s west coastline were drawn, maps prepared by the old Portuguese and Dutch cartographers. Bony heard the car leave for Timbertown and following afternoon tea served by Mrs Rhudder, he made his excuses.
The morning certainly had been exciting and the afternoon full of absorbing interest. He left old Jeff no longer being difficult, and felt that Mrs Rhudder was well satisfied with his efforts in cheering her husband.
Driving back to the Jukes he was able to employ his mind wholly on Sadie Stark. Like all Mona Lisas she wasn’t so deep once a man awoke to her peculiar personality. It is the mysticism which attracts the white man, making of him a fly caught in the web of magnetic eyes and a slow smile. Such female power would have no influence over an aborigine, and Bony was half-way to the aborigine.
Was there any significance in there being only one tea mug? Was the delay in warning him of the sneaker intended? Had the sneaker won there would, of course, have been no use for a second mug. And then, as it turned out, had the confidences about Marvin been intended to confirm the story that Marvin had left the district?
When the wise man doesn’t fall for a Mona Lisa, then he must respect her. Bony had respected this local one from the moment she had studied him obliquely under the pressure lamp in Matt’s living-room.
Chapter Sixteen
Takes a Woman to Know a Woman
SCRABBLING up a rock with a sneaker after you in the morning, and riding a black gelding full of steam in the morning are not common occupational risks for normal detectives. Even the over-imaginative could not envisage a representative of either the F.B.I, or Scotland Yard being thus employed when on duty.
The gelding needed exercise, and he had certainly been exercised when he and his rider reached the camp back of the ridge. Neck-roped to a tree, he was deflated, and an ugly memory was almost expunged from Bony’s current thoughts.
Constable Tom Breckoff came down to meet him.
“Bored yet to the point of mutiny?” asked Bony, making for shade and there producing the inevitable tobacco and papers.
“Quite a vacation, Nat. You caught a good fish.”
“A forty-pound kingey. Oh, I was forgetting. I brought a few pounds of cutlets, and Emma sent a tin of lard. Here, put it somewhere away from the flies.”
Breckoff looked his gratitude when taking the fish to the fly-proof safe suspended from a branch.
“I was never lucky enough to get one that big. Trust those Rhudders to know the best places. We saw you bring it over the sand-bar to your car. We watched you take it to the homestead meat-house. And I won a bet of a couple of bob off Lew who said you’d forget us. Hey, Lew! You owe me two bob.”
Lew waved and turned to look out again with Fred who had the glasses. Breckoff reported:
“Luke and Sadie went fishing late yesterday. Genuine this time. Came home with a load. Could have been for Luke to take up to Perth. Was that him left about three-thirty this morning?”
“That was he,” replied Bony. “The Senior stopped him and searched his car for possum skins, and didn’t find Marvin. Anything else?”
“All yesterday. This morning, though, old Jeff went on a tour of inspection. Left the house bright and early. Four-twenty ack emma. Came out at the back with what looked like a .22 rifle in his left hand and a crutch under the right armpit. Hardly light enough to shoot by. Anyway, he went in and round all the sheds, and he was still at it when Mark Rhudder came out, and it looked as though he joined the old man on the inspection. Then Sadie came out, spoke to them for a few moments, saddled a horse and rode away after the milkers. The play ended when Mrs Rhudder came out in her dressing-gown, and she and Jeff argued for several minutes, or what looked like an argument, before the old boy went in for good and his wife had the rifle off him.”
“Quite an entertainment, Tom. Now what, d’you think, was old Jeff looking for?”
“Bit hard like,” replied the constable, grinning. “He could have been checking up on what Luke might have taken with him.”
“It might have been that. You noted the car taking Mrs Stark and Sadie to town?”
“Yes. Sadie came out properly dressed at one-fifty-one. Got their car from the shed and picked up Mrs Stark at the yard gate at two-two.”
“What were they doing in that eleven minutes?”
“The old battle-axe didn’t come out right away, and the girl occupied the time filling the radiator and testing engine oil.”
Bony wanted to know if the shoppers had returned and was given a negative reply. He expressed concern that the horses had been neck-roped to trees all this day following the previous day, and it was agreed that Bony would drive them back to their home paddock.
“I’m thinking of taking Lew and making a camp among that cliff tea-tree,” he said. “From this point you can’t see what is done on the beach either side the entrance. So I’ll collect Lew late tomorrow. Clear?”
“Yes. I’ve been talking to the trackers about not being able to watch the beaches and the homestead at the same time. Marvin still...”
“Is there somewhere, Tom. I think Sadie knows where he is, and from what you saw it’s likely that old
Jeff suspects it. Now what?”
Fred was waving to them to go up.
From the ridge Bony saw the car travelling fast beside the Inlet, and through the glasses could see the gulls rising before it and landing again after it. The evening wind was coming from the north to ruffle the water, and to the west a high-level cloud haze was about to accept the sun. Beyond the high dunes he could not see Ted’s Rock, nor could he see Australia’s Front Door beyond the cliff tea-trees. Mark appeared and began drafting cows into the milking shed. Eventually the car entered the rear yard and was driven directly into the car shed.
“Well, they didn’t buy a case of whisky,” remarked Breckoff. “Would have unloaded that at the house door.”
“Could be they leave it to Mark,” said Lew. “Bit heavy.”
Mrs Stark came from the shed and walked across to the house. She carried a medium size wicker shopping-basket. A few moments later Sadie appeared and the watchers could see she carried nothing but her handbag. Recalling how she was dressed that morning, Bony decided she was now looking very smart in a green dress and a pink straw hat.
Half an hour later he mounted the gelding and drove the horses back to the homestead yards for Matt to say what paddock they should be put into. It was then after six, and, at dinner, he opened the subject of sneakers.
“The one which came this morning wasn’t at all like the one we saw coming in round the Door. The sea was flat, and the first I saw of it it looked like an oil slick.”
“I told you, didn’t I, that when the sea’s flat that’s the time a sneaker is most dangerous?” responded Matt.
“How far out do the liners pass, steaming east?”
“About four miles,” Matt answered. “Where did you fish?”
“Off that big rock beyond the sand-dunes,” Bony replied, diffidently.
“Ted’s Rock. He was taken off that rock. On a day like this, at low tide, it often happens a sneaker comes in fast and it’s rising up under you when you expect it to rise high and break before hitting the rock. Sadie was watching, eh?”
The question was almost idly put and required no answer. Bony merely nodded and continued to enjoy the thick fish cutlet done in eggs and breadcrumbs to a crisp brown.
“You get big kingeys at times off that rock,” Karl said, and told of catches in the past, and after a period Bony spoke again to Matt.
“Would I be right in saying that after first sighting a sneaker under today’s conditions it would take only twenty seconds to reach the rock?”
“It wouldn’t be any more.”
Emma changed the subject by asking if he had had a nice lunch at the Inlet, and he occupied five to ten minutes speaking of his reception by old Jeff and his wife before asking if Sadie and her mother had called in.
“Sadie came in to ask if we wanted anything in town,” replied Emma. “It happened that I did want some dish-towels, and a kettle for the primus. She brought the things back.”
“Did Sadie say what they were going to buy in town?”
“Yes, that she was going to buy herself a couple of house frocks.”
“Summery, gay, light kind of dresses, eh?”
“Oh yes. There’s some pretty dresses to be got nowadays.”
“When she came in on the way back with your things did she say she had bought the dresses?”
“She did. My! What a man you are, Nat,” Emma chided him, her eyes twinkling. “So interested in women’s clothes.”
“Well, I was wondering what they went for. Tell me this. Let us suppose I took you to town, and you bought a nice dress, they’d pack it in a bundle at the store?”
“No, of course, they wouldn’t. You get it in a flat cardboard box.”
“Good! Now, when I brought you home and ran the car straight into the motor-shed, and you got out and walked to the house, would you leave the box with the dress back in the car, or would you want to bring it with you to look at the first available moment?”
“She wouldn’t leave it in the car,” interposed Matt emphatically. “Emma wouldn’t leave anything in the car.”
“Well, I wouldn’t forget and leave a dress.”
“Perhaps Sadie didn’t buy a dress today,” persisted Bony.
“But she said she did. I asked her if she’d got what she wanted and she told me she had.”
“Then it could be that Sadie is a little liar. I wonder if we could check that. How many stores are there in Timbertown?”
“Only one where Sadie would stop for a house-frock. Is it important?”
“It could be important to know if Sadie told the truth or not. It would be important if we found that Sadie told a lie about so trivial a thing as a house-frock. She could be expected to lie if she bought, say, clothes for Marvin. Even so, why mention a house-frock at all? I must check for several reasons. From the ridge I could see her walking from the shed to the house without carrying anything except her handbag, and her mother had a small shopping-basket. You say the store people wouldn’t wrap the dress into a small rolled up parcel which could have been in Mrs Stark’s basket. If Sadie had bought the frock, then why didn’t she carry it to the house to open the box and admire her purchase as a normal woman would do? I waited for more than half an hour, and even then she didn’t return to the car for the box.”
“I’ll tell you what, Nat,” Emma said brightly. “We’ve never caught out Sadie telling a lie, have we, Matt? I have a good friend who manages the dress section at Baumont’s. She’d tell me what Sadie bought.”
“Too late now, and Muriel’s not on the phone,” Matt objected.
“Then I’ll take Emma to talk with this friend tonight.”
“That will be nice, Nat,” Emma said, and Matt chimed in: “All right, when do we start?”
“You don’t start, Matt. You stay at home and hold the fort. Emma, please get ready. We’ll do most of the trip to town in daylight.”
Emma looked doubtfully at Matt, and Matt nodded assent and was supported by Karl.
“Do you good, Missus. After we cleaned up, Matt can read the blood-and-gutzer for a change. He’s been having it a bit too easy.”
Emma and Bony left thirty minutes later, and he surprised her by stopping the car and switching off the ignition, and then getting out and standing to one side. Until a small bird flew from one stately tree to another, nothing moved in this part of the forest. The level field of bracken, the taller fronds of the tree-ferns, the silver and brown trunks of the great trees raising high their canopies of leaves to trap the light of the sunset sky, all were as stilled as though caught by a camera. Until a wattle-bird chortled it was utterly silent.
“If only all Australia was like this forest,” Bony said when driving again. “So cool and silent and waiting, as it has been waiting for a million years and won’t mind waiting for another million. Waiting for what? Sadie? Dress Sadie in closefitting moss-green clothes, give her a green felt hat to wear, have her sit on the top of a fern-tree, and you’d see one of the Little People who might tell you what the forest is waiting for. Sadie of the mysterious smile, of the all-knowing, pitying eyes, Sadie who has lived for a million years.”
Following a short silence, Emma said:
“You’re a strange man, Nat. You’ve made me see Sadie for the first time, and we’ve known her for twenty-five years.”
“You know, Emma, there have been occasions when I wished I had my Marie with me. Marie isn’t at all like Sadie. Marie is stout and comfortable with my arm about her, and when I kiss an earlobe or pat her well-padded behind she gurgles, and the laughter is a light in her black eyes. To her everyone is as a printed page. She can read me as easily as a book. She could read Sadie aloud for me.”
“Then she’s pretty good at reading if she can read you, Nat. Marie is your wife, I think you said.”
“Marie is my sweetheart and my wife, the mother of my sons and my mother. She is both my master and my slave. And to be all that she hasn’t to be a Mona Lisa.”
“Do you dislike S
adie?”
“Certainly I do not. What I am trying to say is that to my Marie, Sadie would be no problem. I won’t admit to you that she’s a problem to me. But...”
Emma continued to relax in the car, and was content with her thoughts. She was feeling that her own life was as limited as one of her broody hens, and that the man beside her was an eagle temporarily interested in a mislaid egg. It was dark when they reached town and she directed the driver to stop at one of the neat timber-built houses.
Having witnessed Emma being welcomed by her friend, Bony smoked a cigarette and was about to toss the butt to the roadway, and thereby commit a felony in this fire-endangered area, when a gruff voice said:
“Could cost you a quid, or three months.”
“Hullo, Sam! Get in before you book me for thinking of other matters.”
The large, raw-boned policeman slid into the car.
“Business or a spree?”
“Business.”
“Oh! I was hoping it was a spree. I got a couple of bottles at home in the fridge.”
“The spree shall follow the business,” Bony said, lightly. “Did you see the Stark women in town this afternoon?”
“It’s my town, isn’t it? I saw both of them. The old lady spent the afternoon at a friend’s place, and young Sadie did some shopping.”
“Where did she shop? What did she buy?”
“At Baumont’s Store. Came out with a few things in a basket, and one of the girls brought out a longish and flattish parcel, and another one what looked like a shoe-box. Good news!”
“Where were they stowed, the parcels?”
“In the boot. Sadie said she wanted them in the boot. The basket she put on the back seat. More good news?”
Chapter Seventeen
Bony and the White Savage Page 12