Bony and the White Savage

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Lew moved slightly against Bony, and Bony, glancing at him, saw temptation on his face to go forward and try to pacify the girl he had known from her infancy, possibly as he had often done. He placed a restraining hand on Lew’s arm, and when Lew looked at him he shook his head.

  Sadie’s abandonment to grief continued for some time, until it was spent in exhaustion. She lay there a little longer, then rose to her feet and took the beret from the altar. They watched her kneel and scoop a hole in the sand. The beret she placed in the hole. Hesitantly it seemed. She was undecided even to the last whether to inter the beret. Her hands drew the sand over it, covered it, and then, with frantic haste smoothed the place and the marks her body had made.

  There followed another period when she stood back from the sand-patch, again in the pose of meditation, and at the close of this phase she stepped quickly to one side, approached the rock at the end, passed behind it to blow out the candles. That done, she came back to the closet.

  Sand grains fell from her hair, and she shook her head and freed the hair to cascade again down her back. The make-up was ruined, her face a travesty. The frock was undamaged, and this added to the travesty. She was panting. Her wide mouth was open, and from her eyes tears ran down to furrow the sand caked there by previous tears.

  With no regard for the dress, she almost tore it from her and tossed it into the chest. The slip followed, and then the red shoes and the stockings. She did her hair in the usual style, dressed, put the toilet things in the sack, dragged the oilskin into place, and crushed the sou’wester upon her head. The lid of the chest fell with a loud thud. The darkness rushed about her when she extinguished the lamp. The torch-beam accompanied her to the entrance and into the storm raging without.

  Bony counted twenty before, with his own torch to guide him, he ran to the entrance and peered round the rock angle to the ledge. The wind striking the cliff-faces was an upward blast. The sea pounded the rocks below in ceaseless cacophony. The torchlight was continuous, and then flickered when the girl’s coat beat about her legs. He watched her climb to the top, and was conscious of Lew’s closeness to him, while all the aroused sympathy for Sadie Stark’s grief slowly ebbed, slowly dried into sand, leaving him cold and desolate of emotion.

  “We’ll brew a billy of tea,” he told Lew. “There’s a job we have to do. Get the primus going: I’ll fill the billy.”

  They relit the pressure lamp and Lew attacked the stove while Bony found no difficulty in filling the can at a rock gutter outside. Lew pumped the stove, and had to be told to stop else it might blow up. While they waited for the water to come to the boil, he asked:

  “What she bury that beret for?”

  “I don’t think I know, Lew.”

  The aborigine’s expression was almost comical in its bedevilment.

  “What goes, Nat? What goes? Gettin’ up in that new dress? Coming down here a night like tonight. Crying like she done, and tossing sand all over herself.” Almost pleadingly, he added: “You tell me, eh?”

  “We’ll soon find out, Lew. Finish your tea.”

  Afterwards, Bony procured the old shovel and one of the harpoons and Lew accompanied him to the altar. Bony prodded the harpoon into the sand before it, until he found the beret by its resistance. With the shovel he removed the sand and lifted it out and put it back on the altar. Lew grunted and watched him push the harpoon down deeper, and still deeper, until it was stopped by resistance not of the sand. Looking again at Lew, he said:

  “Those candlesticks she brought here belong to old Jeff. Missed ’em the other day and went crook, saying Luke took them. Could be that Sadie planted other things from old Jeff down here. We’ll soon find out. Put a match to those candles. Give us more light.”

  “Too right, Nat,” agreed poor Lew.

  Bony began digging methodically and without haste, and when he had sunk a large excavation of some three feet, he dug more quickly and more horizontally. Soon, thereafter, the edge of the shovel met yielding resistance, and with it Bony scraped slightly to reveal a white blanket. Still more carefully he removed further sand from it, the while Lew stooped above him eager to see what would be disclosed.

  Bony tossed aside the shovel and knelt to one side of the blanket. By touch he found the hem and lifted it and gently drew it down. There was revealed a large brown and white shell.

  “Hold it, Lew,” he cried, and removed the shell.

  There was uncovered the face of a man. Over the eyes were small shells of delicate white. The face was large, the skin was yellow-green. Near the summit of the lofty forehead there was a hole edged with black.

  Bony whipped back the blanket to reveal the torso covered with a white shirt stained by two small discs of black-dried blood, one under the heart, the other at the right shoulder.

  A strangling gurgle broke from Lew. Bony heard him gasp in air.

  “Who is he, Lew?” he demanded, looking up into the glaring black eyes. “Tell me who he is. I must know.”

  The aborigine shrank away, yet was unable to remove his gaze from the dead man. He seemed about to collapse through being unable to draw air into his lungs. Then it came:

  “Marvin! Marvin! The Kedic! Arr ... The Kedic Feller.”

  Then Lew sprawled flat in his spring away from the horror. Scrambling to his feet he rushed for the entrance. Bony raced after him, ran through the passage calling on him to stop. On the ledge beyond he was forced to stop himself. He shouted along the ledge, and the blast drove his voice back into his mouth. Once only he heard the cry, thin and distant:

  “Kedic, Kedic Feller.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Helping Out

  HE WAS SORRY for Lew, and being sorry was a help in his own need. Standing there with the wind flaying his light clothes and biting with cold into the back of his head and neck, he pressed his face to the rock and waited for the trembling to subside.

  It was one of his few weaknesses, this terrible fear of the dead. It was not unlike an un-nameable and un-imagined thing clinging to the very core of his being as a sucker-fish to the skin of a shark, a something which had affixed itself to him before birth, a thing which had existed from the dawn of Man and slunk through a thousand generations to make craven such as he.

  The moment the harpoon met yielding obstruction he knew what lay beneath, knew the purpose of the powerful perfume of boronia, but Lew had no suspicion of what that blanket would disclose when pulled aside. Poor Lew! It was a wicked act doing that to him, but none the less it had to be done, the corpse had to be identified after the passage of many days.

  Poor old Lew! Just an unoffending elderly man bridging the last of the primitive generations of his race when the first of the new and educated ones, and which, when it passed on, would take with it all the wisdom and the knowledge gained and handed down from man to man squatting over little fires and telling tales of what his eyes had seen. Bony doubted whether in the complete darkness of this night, the aborigine would have made the cliff top.

  When the shock subsided, the demands of his long and distinguished career clamoured for attention to the current problems, and now the old pride became a spur to do those tasks he had to do, and the dark shadow of his aboriginal ancestors was pushed aside by the inrush of the white man’s logic.

  Again in the cavern, he strode to the grave, knelt and replaced the shell over the awful face, and deliberately restraining threatening frenzy, filled in the hole and smoothed the surface. Then blowing out the candles, he sat on the chest and fought again for composure, and even now could not wholly succeed, and blamed the boronia. He washed his hands in kerosene, dried them in the sand, and took the billycan to the water-gutter and, again battling with the cold south wind, felt himself cleansed.

  It was when sipping the hot tea and smoking a cigarette that the facts of yet another triumph came to light his mind. He had been given an assignment and he had completed it. He had been asked to find Marvin Rhudder, and he had found him. And once again he could mee
t his colleagues and square his shoulders. Again he had flirted with failure and had tossed the bitch aside like an old rag.

  Well, the news would make the upper Brass happy, and the victims, either dead, or in a lunatic asylum, were avenged. All would say good riddance to the monster, and then to spoil so tidy an end would demand to know who had been the Sir Galahad. Who had killed poor Marvin Rhudder? Who had pumped three bullets into him to make sure he would stay dead? Who had prevented another rendezvous with another victim?

  He, Bony, would have to carry on, would have to begin a new investigation and, when he found the blackguard who had foully murdered poor Marvin Rhudder, he could present a double triumph to the many who were envious of his unbroken record.

  “Oh! I thought I’d left the light on.”

  Sadie Stark stood at the inner end of the long entrance. Water streamed from her coat and sou’wester. The rain had washed her face and the wind had massaged it to bring up the vivid colour. Bony stood:

  “Hullo, Sadie! Come along in and have a mug of tea. You look wet, and must feel cold and tired. Let me help you with your coat.”

  Her eyes were wide and steady upon him. Momentarily they gazed at the altar, and she must have seen the beret left on it.

  She let him take the oilskin and the sou’wester which he placed on a rocky spur, and at his invitation she sat on the chest and accepted the mug of tea to which he added sugar, without asking. Wisely, he was patient with her.

  He brought the water-tin, now empty, and sat on that before her. He rolled a cigarette, offered it to her and she declined. The colour was gone from her face now, and her lips, at first compressed, now softened and began faintly to tremble.

  “How long have you been here, Nat?” she asked, the shock of finding him yet upon her.

  “For some time, Sadie. Why did you come back? On a night like this, too?”

  “I can see you found the beret. I came back to bury something else with it.”

  “Did you, indeed! Must be important. Anyway, let it wait. I’ll go for more water, and we’ll boil the billy again.”

  Almost casually he picked up the can and sauntered to the entrance. He passed into the storm and groped his way to the gushing water-gutter, where he filled the billy, and took it back. He half expected to find her with the automatic taken from the chest, the cartridges from which were in his pocket. The behaviour pattern would set his own. Sadie Stark was still seated on the chest, her head low and her gaze fixed upon her feet.

  “Does the sea ever come high enough to wash into this cavern?” he asked, as he pumped the primus.

  “It must have done at one time. Long ago. Before we found this cavern. It’s coming high now and we’ll have to wait till past high tide before we can get back to the cliff. I only just made it.”

  “It can’t be far off daylight. Where’s your torch?”

  “I slipped outside and dropped it. It fell down the rocks.”

  “Eat a biscuit or two.” She accepted, and then looked up at him, and when she spoke her voice was low and sad.

  “Who are you, Nat? What are you?”

  “I’m only a policeman, Sadie. And Nat is as good as another name. What did you want to bury with the beret?”

  “An old album. It doesn’t matter now. Did you watch when I was being very dramatic and silly?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t turn my eyes away. My job is to find Marvin Rhudder, and when I came here and saw his beret on the rock there, I was sure he’d been here. Of course, I knew you’d been here, often. Then I found what could well be his pistol in the chest. Is it?”

  Sadie nodded, raised the mug to her lips and looked unwaveringly over it at him.

  “Yes, he forgot to take it away with him. Like the beret.”

  Bony nodded as though he understood and accepted this simple statement.

  “I remember you telling me in confidence that Marvin came home, and his parents had to call for Luke to come down and get rid of him. It was the morning we caught the kingfish, the morning the sneaker very nearly caught me. You know, sometimes I think you delayed to warn me so that the sneaker would get me. Why?”

  The girl’s eyes opened with astonishment, and colour mounted in her face.

  “Waited to warn you, that you would be drowned? Oh, Nat, you can’t think that of me. I was at fault, terribly so. But I didn’t fail deliberately. I ... You see, I couldn’t get Marvin out of my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”

  “I am very glad to hear that Sadie. I didn’t like thinking ill of you, and you must forgive me for doing so. Tell me, on the day we fished, did you know that Marvin was dead?”

  The lamp suspended above and behind her shed its glare full upon him, and, instead of replying, Sadie continued to regard him as she might regard a rare shell to be added to her collection. She almost came to studying him; careful to note the black straight hair greying at the temples, the straight thin nose and the mobile lips above the strong chin. Then she looked long and hard at his forehead, and the frontal bone which did not shadow the blue eyes beneath. Her gaze encountered his, and she could observe nothing in his eyes save kindliness, and what seemed to be pleading.

  “Yes,” she whispered, nodding. “Yes, I knew he was dead that day. It’s why I forgot you and the sneaker.”

  “Who killed him? Luke?”

  “No. I killed him.”

  The admission was made with such frankness and lack of emotion that Bony was halted in his mental tracks, and took time off to roll a cigarette. Requiring additional time, he strolled to the entrance and smoked the cigarette without noticing that the roof of the world was turning grey. On going in he found Sadie as he had left her, and again sitting on the water-tin, he said:

  “This is most serious. You realize it, I suppose?”

  She nodded.

  “Was it you who buried him?”

  She caught her breath and expelled it in a long drawn-out sigh. Raising her head to look again directly at him, he saw on her face the mysterious, wistful, haunting, smile, and at first it made him feel rising indignation, and then looking deeply into her unmasked eyes he understood that this expression was a front, merely a front to conceal a dictated retirement to isolation, giving the only sanctuary from fear and hurt.

  “Don’t answer that question yet,” he told her. “Let me tell you something. I’m a detective-inspector. I told you I’ve a wife and three sons. I’ve apprehended many criminals. I came to the Inlet to apprehend Marvin Rhudder. I’ve been told often that I am a sentimental ass, for more than once I have ended a case feeling deep sympathy for the man or the woman I’ve had to arrest.

  “Now I have to arrest you for the murder of Marvin Rhudder. I have to warn you that anything you say henceforth I may take down in writing and use it against you. I don’t want to do either the one or the other, but we are both subject to the Law. Now: did you bury him?”

  “Yes. Oh, Nat!” She had to fight to maintain control. “Yes, I buried him. I put him in the grave over there. I washed the blood from his face and covered his eyes with small shells and his face with a large one. I buried the beret because it was his, and I came back to bury the album because everything in it belongs to him. There were other things of his in a suitcase, and I planted that in a hollow tree I intended one day to set fire to.”

  “Why did you put the suitcase in the hollow tree?”

  “He lived in a hut near a paperbark swamp because there was water there, and no one ever went there excepting to muster the cattle. When Luke came down he tried to get him to go away, telling him he’d broken his father’s heart and was breaking his mother’s heart by hiding on their land. I was taking food to him, and when he said he was on the run because he’d broken bond, I was against sending him away. You see, I still loved him. It didn’t seem to make any difference what he’d done to Rose Jukes, to those other women and the man who went mad, and the little children: it didn’t make any difference what he’d done to old Jeff and his mother and to me. He came
back older in looks and yet as splendid as when he went away.

  “The day before he went away there was a cricket match in Timbertown, and we all went to it, and afterwards in the garden he told me he loved me so much, and we would marry immediately he was ordained. And when he came back, after all the terrible years, I forgot everything he’d done, and went on loving him.

  “And so I took food to him, and a few books, cooked meals there at the hut. Luke told him to get to hell off the place, and I told him behind Luke’s back to stay on and we’d find a good cave where he’d be safe. He stayed, and then one day the Senior came to say the police in South Australia were wanting him for murder. Luke and I went that night and told him the Senior had been and why. He told Marvin that if he didn’t clear out he would tell the Senior where he was. Marvin flew into one of his rages and Luke knocked him down, and took me back home.

  “I pleaded with Luke to give him one more chance to go, before telling the Senior. Luke gave me money and I took what I had, and some his mother gave too. I went to Marvin to tell him it was his last chance. There he was lying on the floor of the hut, his face like paper, shaking all over, even his teeth chattering. And what was the matter with him was fright, fright of being hanged for murder.

  “I couldn’t send him away, Nat. How could I? I brought him here, and afterwards took him food and water. He felt safe here, because no one knew about it excepting us Rhudders and Ted Jukes, and Ted was dead. After a little while Marvin got better, and then he remembered his suitcase; it wasn’t there. He said it could only be back at the hut, and I agreed to fetch it after dark, because if I met Matt or Karl they’d want to know what I was doing with it.

  “And then after what happened that day, the same day, I felt I couldn’t bring it here. I felt ... So I took it to the hollow tree and dropped it in there. I thought I was careful with it too. I sponged the case inside and out with a wet rag, and I carried it by a rag round the handle.”