Bony and the White Savage

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “The Plot Thickens”

  EMMA WASN’T with her friend, and they were able to spend an hour with Sam and his wife, the big blonde woman being vivaciously talkative and her husband tending to satisfy an excusable curiosity. They had travelled the first mile of the homeward journey in silence when Emma could restrain herself no longer.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened, Nat?”

  “Of course. What did happen?”

  “The oddest things. My friend, remember, is the manager of the millinery section of Baumont’s. She didn’t actually serve Sadie, but she knew just what Sadie bought this afternoon. She did buy a house-frock, a plain and cheap blue one. Then she asked to see frocks of much better quality, and she chose one of white silk having red polka dots, short puffy sleeves, and a frilly skirt. She said she wanted it for a young girlfriend. It was a pretty dress and expensive.

  “The assistant was about to put the house-frock in with the white dress when Sadie told her not to as the dress was for her friend and the house-frock could be folded into an ordinary parcel. Then she went to the shoe department where she bought a pair of red strapped shoes.”

  “So she didn’t lie when she said she’d bought a house-frock?” Bony commented.

  “No, that was true. Sadie wanted a hat, and she was difficult about the hat and didn’t buy one after all. She bought a pair of long cotton gloves, white ones. And a large bottle of boronia. Now what’s funny about all this, Nat, is that Sadie paid for everything with cash, when for years everything she and her mother have bought at Baumont’s has been put on the Rhudder account. Of course, being a present for a friend, Sadie mightn’t have wanted it charged to old Jeff.”

  “That’s understandable, Emma,” Bony said. “Has she many friends?”

  “Many friends! No, Nat.”

  “Then the white dress with the polka dots could be intended for herself. She might have the idea of surprising her mother and Mrs Rhudder by wearing it at a party or social engagement.”

  “Not that dress, Nat. Sadie’s much too old for it. It’s a dress for a girl of seventeen. No, it wouldn’t be for herself. My friend is sure of that. There’s something else, too.”

  Emma waited for encouragement, and being prompted, said:

  “An ordinary young girl of about seventeen doesn’t wear a size six shoe. Sadie does, so the shoes must be for herself, and she said the shoes were to go with the dress. She wouldn’t be going screwy, would she?”

  “No, I don’t think she’s unbalanced, Emma. And you don’t, either. It’s turned out to be a nice little mystery, hasn’t it? One with an easy solution, probably. I like your friend Elsie Sasoon. She seemed very happy to see us.”

  “Else is always happy to have people call in,” Emma agreed. “They’ve always been good friends to us. We like them immensely. Sam’s easy going, but he’s a good policeman.”

  Bony related the incident of the cigarette-butt, and Emma said:

  “He’d have booked you if you had tossed the butt to the street. And laughed and laughed for weeks after. Are you pleased with what I found out?”

  “Yes, of course. It does prove that Sadie isn’t a liar, and I am glad about that. Is boronia her favourite perfume?”

  “Always been her favourite. I don’t remember her wearing anything but.”

  The headlights picked out the well-defined dusty road and made of the world ahead a vast cathedral crowded with white pillars supporting a roof blackened by the ages. Bony expected moonlight and thought of the western cloud-haze which now must thwart the moon.

  “Old Jeff was annoyed yesterday about two candlesticks which neither his wife nor Sadie nor Mrs Stark remembered last seeing. They were of iron and very old, and he told me his grandfather discovered them in an old chest he’d found in a cave, and which must have been taken there by a shipwrecked crew. Never mind why a shipwrecked crew would take them to a cave.”

  “I think I’ve seen them but don’t know when,” Emma said, having to be removed from the subject of clothes and fashions. “Heavy things that couldn’t be knocked over and cause a fire. Wait a minute! One of them they used as a doorstop. Jeff must be getting touchy.”

  “Anyway, he’s missed them, and it was the basis of his being difficult, as Mrs Rhudder told you. How did he get along with Luke, d’you know?”

  “Never much, Nat. In the beginning it was always Marvin with them both. Luke probably resented having to take second place, but he was always friends with Marvin. When he went away to Perth he was sort of off the scene, and what love they had had for Marvin was given to Mark, who stayed and worked. We don’t know what they’d have done without Mark.”

  “And Sadie?”

  “Well, Sadie’s always been an outdoor girl. She does as much almost as a hired hand, what with doctoring the cattle and looking after the calves, and the sheep.”

  “A reserved type, Mark,” mused Bony, braking sharply to avoid a wallaby which flashed across the road. “Says little but thinks a lot. Is he interested in girls, love affairs, usual interests of his age group?”

  “I did hear he’s interested in a girl in Manjimup, but how serious no one seems to know. As you said, he’s the quiet type. Never says much, and when he asks a question you feel you’re being caught out in a lie. It was all so different in the old days.”

  “You mean years ago?”

  “I mean before Marvin almost murdered our Rose.” Emma gently touched Bony’s hand on the wheel. “You’ve been nice and thoughtful about that, Nat. But when you have to talk about that time, just do it without thinking to hurt. We’ve lived so close to it, Matt and me, and talking about it often, brings it out like, and wouldn’t do us any harm. Why, Matt’s become a different man since you came.”

  “Less bitter?”

  “No, not less bitter. Less bottled up. Not anywhere near as touchy.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Let’s go back to Luke. Shortly after Marvin returned home they sent for Luke to handle him.” Emma exclaimed, and swiftly Bony stopped the question, saying: “That wallaby told me about it when he jumped across the road. When I said they sent for Luke, I’m not including old Jeff, because I believe that the ‘they’ kept it from him. The reason for my subtle questions, Emma, is that I want the answer to a climactic one which is: When old Jeff was poking about the outhouses very early yesterday morning, and had a rifle with him, was he looking for the candlesticks because he thought Luke had taken them back to Perth or because he thought they had been given to Marvin to illuminate his dark hideaway, strongly suspecting that Marvin had come home and he was being kept in ignorance of it?”

  “I hardly know how to answer, Nat,” Emma replied after much pondering. “Matt would answer that better than me.”

  “There are questions which a woman can answer much more logically than a man,” Bony said. “And, too, I can stop you asking me more and more questions, when Matt would brood when rebuffed. So we don’t mention this little conversation to him, do we?”

  “Not if you want it like that.”

  “Good! Afterwards, after it’s all over and done with, then we need withhold nothing from him. Now what of my question? I’ll put it to you again.”

  Again Emma took time to think, before saying:

  “Old Jeff is very possessive, especially of his treasures. The candlesticks were old, and heavy, and in my opinion good enough only for door-stops. Jeff might think different. I don’t know if they’d be worth anything. They could be, and Luke could have taken them. He and his wife aren’t well off. You said Jeff had a rifle. No, I don’t think he’d be looking for Marvin so much as for his treasures.”

  Following another pause, Emma said:

  “We knew a man years ago who had a silly sort of wife. She’d get out of bed in the night and go and stand in the creek and threaten to drown herself. In the end the husband got tired of it, and one night when he found her in the creek with water to her knees, he told her to get on with the drowning, and went back to bed, and in ten m
inutes she was back in bed, too. And never did it again. Old Jeff’s been threatening to shoot Marvin for years and years, and I’m quite sure he never would. It’s the deep thinkers who threaten this and that, and never do it.”

  Bony laughed, and said:

  “You’re something of a deep thinker yourself, Emma. Where did you study your psychology?”

  “Study it! Why nowhere. Oh, I see what you mean, Nat. Read it all in Karl’s blood-and-gutzers. I’ve read hundreds to him. The woman in the creek, though, was real.”

  The Jukes’s mail-box nailed to a jarrah-tree showed in their lights, and Bony slowed to take the turn-off, and parked his car for the night outside the gate in the picket-fence. Matt had been told by the dogs of their coming, and had coffee made. Emma related all her discoveries in Timbertown and Matt could make nothing of it, and said so, and why all her excitement! However, the fact that Sadie had paid for her purchases instead of having the articles debited to the Rhudder account did make him think.

  Afterwards, Bony asked to look into their family album, and again he handled it with obvious care. Turning over the pages, glancing at this and that picture, he came close to the end of the record when he stopped to study a particular group. The picture presented, from the left, Marvin, Sadie, Rose and Ted Jukes. The two boys were in cricket flannels and wearing caps having club colours. Marvin had pads on and was negligently holding a bat, as though ready to be called to the wicket. Sadie and Rose wore summer frocks, and that worn by Sadie was white with polka dots and a frilly skirt, the polka dots coming out black.

  It was a happy picture, a record of a happy group. Ted Jukes was laughing and holding his right hand in a gesture of pretended mockery, and remembering what Emma had said, without diffidence he placed the album before Matt.

  “Do you remember when that was taken?” he asked.

  Matt looked at the picture and unhesitatingly replied.

  “Yes. It was taken on Marvin’s last holidays from College. It was at the match with Timbertown. Ted knocked up forty-one that time, and beat Marvin who only scored ten. For once our Ted did better than Marvin.”

  Emma, unable to restrain her curiosity, left her chair and looked over Matt’s shoulder. A faint gasp left her, and Matt asked what was wrong.

  “I remember now,” she said, looking at Bony, admiringly. “I can see all of them as they were that day. Sadie was wearing a white dress with red polka dots. It must be just over fourteen years now. And the dress she got today would be just like the dress she wore then. What on earth is the girl about?”

  Matt’s strong and stubby ringers were threatening the edge of the thick page, and gently Bony drew the album from him, closed it and gave it back to Emma, who returned it to the desk drawer. On coming back to the table, she found her husband staring up at the lamp without seeing it, and Bony slowly rolling a cigarette.

  An absurd cliché knocked and knocked against his mind like a bird wanting to enter a room. The plot thickens, the plot thickens. To stop it rather than develop an argument, he said:

  “With her mother she goes to Timbertown, ostensibly to purchase a house-gown, which she does. While her mother is visiting a friend she makes a number of purchases for herself which she pays for with cash instead of having the goods put on the Rhudder account. On leaving the store, the items bought for you, Emma, the house-gown and a few oddments in the basket she put into the car, and the white dress and shoes go into the boot. On getting home the mother takes the shopping-basket to the house, and Sadie leaves the dress and the shoes in the boot. Half an hour later they are still in the boot. Sadie didn’t hurry back from the house to get them.

  “Question. Did she purchase the dress and the shoes and gloves without her mother knowing anything of it? Question. Did she make the purchases to present to a young girl-friend, as she told the sales girl, or did she buy them for herself? If for herself, why? Question. What the devil is it all about?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The First Break

  AFTER BREAKFAST the next morning Bony drove to the ridge with bread and meat and additional supplies. The morning was overcast, the sun coming through the high cloud as a disc of dull white, too anaemic to burn the haze from the sky. The wind came from the east, dry and hot and weak.

  Fred was on duty with the glasses, and just below him Lew lay on his back with his hat covering his eyes. Constable Breckoff, wearing blue pyjamas, staggered from the tent blinking sleep from his eyes and looking guilty. The guilt was vanquished by eagerness. He said with undisguised enthusiasm:

  “Doings last night, Nat. Things are looking up. Hey, Lew! Come on down and put this stuff away. Lew’ll fix it, Nat. Come on up to the ridge. Something to show you.”

  Without bothering with boots or slippers, Breckoff climbed the slope ahead of Bony, and when with Fred, the constable said:

  “Take a sight from this stick to that one there, and I’ll tell you. I was on the job. It was a dark night, no moon. I could see as usual the Leeuwin Light doing its work. I saw the lights of a liner coming from Albany way, and just before she got off the Inlet entrance, someone in those tea-trees used a torch. Take a sighting. I jammed those sticks in to make the position sure.”

  Bony brought the two sticks into line with his eyes, and he found himself concentrating on the place where Matt and he had talked and the unknown man had tried to overhear their conversation. That was at the top of the rough way up from behind Australia’s Front Door.

  Turning over from lying on his chest, he sat up and automatically produced cigarette papers and tobacco.

  “What time?” he asked, interest well suppressed.

  “Two-nineteen. First the light came obliquely in flashes as though just to show the way. Then it came direct to me, being brighter than a star. After that it didn’t show again. Someone came up from the beach there, I’ll bet on it.”

  “Must be optimistic, having won two bob yesterday,” Bony said, lighting the cigarette and carefully prodding the burned match into the sandy soil. “The person could have been coming out of a tea-tree clump or from the far side of one. Anyway, you saw the torch beam when still able to see the ship’s lights?”

  “Correct.”

  “You did not subsequently see a ship passing the other way?”

  “No. There was only the one ship. Besides, her lights were less bright than the torch when aimed straight this way.”

  Satisfied, Bony permitted interest in his voice.

  “You have maintained a night-watch since being here?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s why you found me in the bunk.”

  “I shall remember you in my report. After I left yesterday, did Sadie return to their car for a parcel, anything?”

  “No. She came out of the house by the back at six-thirty-five and went across to the yards where there were some calves. Then she went to an outhouse, and back again to the calves with what looked like a small tin.”

  “Giving a calf a drench, most like,” interposed Fred.

  “After that she was in the garden with Mrs Rhudder until it got too dark for us to make out anything. Even the moon didn’t help,” concluded Breckoff, and smothered a yawn.

  “You go back to bed, Tom, otherwise you’ll be no good tonight, and you seem to be pretty good at night. Away you go. By the way, on the car seat are some letters for you.”

  “Thanks, Ins ... Nat. I can do with a slumber.” The dark eyes in the square face became appealing. “Are we getting warm, d’you think?”

  “There’s a promise of a roasting in the near future,” and with that Constable Tom Breckoff went down in pyjamas and bare feet to sleep with the ease of the strong.

  With the glasses, Bony carefully surveyed the panoramic scene. A ship four miles and more at sea could be watched passing at night. If nearer, then only when passing off the sand-bar of the Inlet. Ted’s rock was hidden by the dunes, and Australia’s Front Door by the tea-tree, although the latter rock was immediately opposite the ridge, and the other, with th
e homestead, far to the left.

  The solution of one problem had brought another. From the ridge, no one could arrive at or leave, or move about the homestead without being observed, but once beyond the dunes or the cliff trees observation was no longer possible. The solution of the second problem was to mount a watch amid the tea-tree from the edge of which the beaches below were in clear view, but a watcher there would be limited in action by not knowing who might come along the cliff from the homestead. To warn a watcher stationed there from this ridge with a white cloth would mean the signal being observed also by anyone at the homestead.

  “Fred,” Bony said to the young aborigine, “you went to school, didn’t you?” The black eyes lit with pride, and the perfect teeth were revealed by the thick lips parted in the smile.

  “Too right! I got my Leaving Certificate at home.”

  “Then tell me this. If I were camped over in the cliff scrub, and didn’t want to come out because they’d see me at the homestead, how could you tell me someone was coming my way from the house?”

  “Put up a smoke?”

  “No smoke, remember.”

  “Have a horse handy and ride like hell to tell you.”

  Bony shook his head, saying there would not be time for that.

  “Well, you wouldn’t hear if I yelled, and if I waved something them at the homestead would see me doing it. What d’you reckon?”

  “Don’t ask me, Fred. You went to school. It was you who won the Leaving Certificate.”

  Fred laughed outright, saying:

  “It’s like those sums we had to do. If a bloke ran round the world at ten miles an hour, how long would it take him to recover his breath. The old man would know, betcher. He’s coming up now.”

  When Lew reached them he was breathing hard enough to have run a hundred yards, and Bony would have given him time to rest. His son, however, put the problem to him at full speed, and then said:

  “Here’s me backing you for a straight win, and you don’t even get a place. I’m over in that scrub, see? You’re here and there’s Marvin coming up from the sand-bar. I can’t see him. You can. How d’you tell me? Go on, Pop, use your nut.”