Death of a Swagman

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “He complained often about his heart.”

  “What was the medical verdict about that, do you know?”

  “I never heard that he consulted a doctor.”

  “Any vices?”

  “If he had he kept them mighty secret.” Lawton-Stanley was about to say something further but desisted. Bony waited. Then he prompted his host, and the bush evangelist said: “James is just naturally a vampire man.”

  “Oh, indeed! Interesting! Does he crawl out of his coffin after sundown to...?”

  “You know what I mean, Bony. You know as well as I do that there are men and women, and they are not rare, either, who exist on the spiritual strength of others. That type invariably marries the gentle, forbearing, and retiring partner. They maintain the domination. The victims become so dominated that they dare not even try to flutter to maintain independence of soul. The dominant partner is invariably an invalid whose aches and pains are all that matters in the home. They must ever come first. They must be waited on hand and foot. They must be served by submissive victims. Read The Barretts of Wimpole Street.”

  “I have done so, but I know your vampire people without having read that book. Lots of men have been hanged and imprisoned for life for having murdered their vampire wives. Quite decent and respectable men, too. I am glad, Padre, that we agree that James is just a vampire man. That is a good name, too, although there is another which would the better fit Mr Llewellyn James. I won’t use it ... in your presence. Did you know his family?”

  “Yes,” admitted Lawton-Stanley.

  “Any insanity?”

  “Yes. The mother’s brother was a certified lunatic.”

  Bony rubbed his hands, saying:

  “Ah ... hum! You know, I always have had the idea that the murderer in these parts is not quite normal.”

  “Is any murderer normal?”

  “Normal!” Bony echoed. “Of course they are normal. They are just as normal as the petty thief. It is only now and then that one comes across the abnormal. In this case of mine there is a strong suspicion of abnormality, resting on the cunning with which the crimes have been committed and the apparent absence of motive.”

  “Why do you suspect James?” asked Lawton-Stanley.

  “I didn’t say that I suspected him.”

  “No. But you do. Come, tell your old pal.”

  Bony smiled.

  “None of your vampiring with me, now,” he implored. “Promise not to tell?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Cross your fingers and promise properly,” Bony commanded, and chuckled when the evangelist gravely obeyed. “You don’t look like Rose Marie, Padre, but that is her definition of a promise, signed, sealed, and delivered. I understand from Mrs James, and others, that the parson suffers from a weak heart, so that he has to be careful not to exert himself. Under no circumstances may he chop a little wood or do a little digging in the garden. He also suffers from a debilitated brain, to the extent that he cannot concentrate sufficiently to prepare a sermon. But, Padre, he can ride a horse at such a pace as to drench it with perspiration and to wind it, and he can concentrate sufficiently to read light literature, such as A Flirt in Florence. Ever read that novel?”

  “I never read any novels.”

  “Oh, come now! You mustn’t be so wowserish, Padre! A nice tale of juicy doings in Florence would so improve your mind. No, James doesn’t square with life. You don’t like James, and I’m blessed if I do either. But we must not permit our prejudices to cloud our judgment. Now I’ll be off. There is a lot of work in front of me. I’ll leave the cups and things to you. Never forget that you crossed your fingers. Thank you so much for the tea.”

  “You haven’t told me yet why you suspect the fellow,” objected Lawton-Stanley.

  “Oh, I have,” Bony countered smilingly. “See you again shortly. And look here—if you could persuade Mr Llewellyn James to take a little morning exercise with the gloves, please, Padre, please plant a good ’un on his nose for me.”

  Full daylight greeted the detective when he emerged from the evangelist’s truck, his expression of lightness changed to one of stern concentration. It was still too early for even the early risers to be about the street.

  On leaving the truck, he walked along the sidewalk towards the police station, and, as was his habit, his eyes mechanically registered the prints of human feet upon the ground. The street at this end was not swept clean by the shop people and the sand lay fairly thick.

  He was not positively sure of the fact, but the ground all round the truck was covered with the faint remnants of so many tracks as to lead him to believe that the bush evangelist had held a service the previous evening. The truck was parked several yards westward of the garage, and when Bony came into the wind shelter provided by the garage he found the tracks on the sidewalk much clearer. He recognized the tracks of young Jason going in and out, and he recalled that that young man was to supply the evangelist with additional electric power. Passing along the street were the tracks made by Mrs Marshall and Rose Marie, who at a later hour were followed by Constable Gleeson. They were a few of the tracks he recognized. Then, when he drew opposite the gate giving entry to Mr Jason’s private residence he saw that Mr Jason himself had stepped off the roadway and had crossed all the other tracks to reach his house. Adjacent to the police station fence the wind had smoothed away all impressions made upon the ground the previous night.

  On passing the police station, Bony crossed the street and slowly walked back to the hotel, rounded that building to reach the back of it, and then skirted the rear of the hotel, another building, the rear of Mr Fanning’s shop and house, and so reached the butcher’s stables within the yard.

  The two horses came trotting towards him, whinnying a request for chaff, and he went through the wire fence and made friends with them, murmuring in a language which they appeared to understand. He gave especial attention to the horse with the white blaze on its forehead, and noted the imprint on the ground made by each of its hoofs.

  Approximately in the centre of the yard stood the ramshackle stables, and after him entered the horses, looking for breakfast. He found chaff in an inner compartment and fed a little of it to them. And then he examined two saddles placed on pegs driven into a roof support.

  The saddle carried by the horse owned by James was easily marked by the colour of the hairs upon its felt saddlecloth. The stirrup irons were crossed over the saddle, which could have been done when the saddle was placed on its peg. But likely enough the hooded man, who last had used that saddle, had ridden without using the stirrups, for into them he could not thrust his hessian-covered feet. That would account for his poor riding when attempting to shoot Bony, which had given the detective hope that he could be outwitted, as, in fact, he had been.

  On leaving the stables. Bony walked to the gate in the yard fence. This gate was opposite the wooden door in the corrugated iron fence at the rear of the butcher’s premises. Here the tracks made by the parson’s horse when led into the enclosure an hour or two previously were almost obliterated by the wind. The depressions were more than half filled in, and there was no possibility of the wind having spared those extremely faint depressions left by hessian-covered human feet.

  He crossed the sandy ground to the door in the butcher’s rear fence, where in this shelter he saw the tracks of boots made by a man entering those premises. They were still fairly clear-cut, but the man who made them had not come from the horse yard but from the rear yard of the hotel.

  On either side of the butcher’s premises was a vacant allotment, unfenced and eaten bare of vegetation by the town goats. They were merely bare, sandy patches of ground open wide to the wind that by now would have smoothed out any tracks made by human footwear.

  Bony returned to the horse-yard gate and there leaned against one of the posts whilst rolling a cigarette. Assuming that it had been the parson who had visited the mill at Sandy Flat and had ridden back at top speed to get away from his tracker,
as well as to reach his home before the day broke, he would be anxious to reach the hard roadway of the street, where he could walk without leaving tracks after removing the hessian from his feet. To accomplish this, he needs must cross from the horse-yard gate to one of those empty allotments, cross that to the sidewalk, and cross the sidewalk to reach the macadamized road.

  Still assuming that it was James, the parson would cross the allotment on the east side of the butcher’s premises, which would be the side nearest the parsonage. Bony endeavoured to project himself into the mind of the Rev. Llewellyn James.

  On leaving the gate, he crossed to the allotment eastward of Mr Fanning’s house and shop. He passed over the length of that allotment, and so came to the sidewalk bordering the road. The surface of the sidewalk here was covered with a thin layer of sand.

  Opposite the centre of the allotment frontage grew one of the street-bordering pepper-trees. It was a fine specimen which would certainly give a black shadow on a moonlit night. There, beneath this leafy tree, seated on the curb, the hooded man might well have removed the hessian from about his feet, and then have gone on to his home in day shoes, or even with his feet bare.

  The rising sun was gilding the summit of the Walls of China when Bony came to lean against that pepper-tree, as though he had done little else all his life but lean against something. The wind had smoothed all tracks from the thin covering of sand upon the sidewalk. It had piled into little mounds in the dry gutter sand which had been carried across the road, and here and there in the gutter were little piles of the dead needle-pointed leaves of many pepper-trees.

  Two such piles of leaves were not so symmetrical as those created by the wind. They were flattened and spread out. Bony went down on hands and knees to bring his eyes closer to those two piles of leaves separated by about ten inches of fine sand. With a twig he teased the massed leaves farther apart and found three strands of jute fibres. He found more. Two yards farther down the gutter he found a strip of hessian measuring approximately one inch in width and ten inches in length.

  He sat on the curb with this strip of hessian stretched between the forefinger and thumb of each hand. The sun was now peeping above the Walls of China, and its rays came along the street, striking upon his hands and the hessian strip held taut.

  The material was not clean. There was in it a stiffening substance, and there was on its surface and within the folds of the edges many brown hairs. Bony sniffed at the material. He smelled the sweat of a horse. The brown hairs were similar to those of the horse owned by the Rev. James.

  So there, where those two small wind-created heaps of dead leaves had been depressed, was where the hooded man had sat with his heels resting upon them whilst he removed the hessian from his feet. He had then stood up and walked along the macadamized roadway, leaving in the moonlit night that strip of hessian, sweat-stiffened and impregnated with the hairs of the animal he had ridden.

  Rising to his feet, he walked slowly down the street at the edge of the sidewalk. His eagle gaze scrutinized the surface of the sidewalk on his right and the gutter on his left. He found nothing. He went on past the entrance to the parsonage, past the entrance to the parsonage garage, on and past the church. He retraced his steps. For a moment he halted at the driveway, and for another he loitered outside the parsonage gate. Beyond that gate he saw the imprints of tennis shoes on the sheltered path. Between the gate and the roadway the sidewalk was blown clear of sand, and its hard surface registered no imprints. The tennis shoes had been worn by the minister, and the imprints might have been one hour or ten hours old.

  The wind’s velocity was increasing with the rising of the sun, as Bony sauntered back up the street. A town dog came out of a gate to wrinkle its nose at him in friendly fashion, and to it Bony said:

  “We don’t mind how hard the wind blows. It has done all it could to frustrate me. Now you had better go home again, because I am going to call on Sergeant Marshall.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Another Murder?

  AT HALF-PAST SIX the clock on the table at the sergeant’s bedside began its uproar, and a large red hand automatically reached for it and snapped off the ringing. For a few minutes the sergeant lay fighting sleep and uttering a series of moans and grunts meant to inform his wife of the martyrdom imposed upon him by the necessity of rising to light the kitchen fire so that he might have the smallest kettle boiling for tea when she appeared in the kitchen. Then, without bothering to slip on a dressing gown, he rolled out of bed and thudded in bare feet along the passage. Inside the kitchen doorway he halted abruptly.

  “Well, I’m—”

  “Don’t say it,” Bony pleaded, a hand raised towards Marshall. “If you say it, it will cost you a shilling. I am collecting for Lawton-Stanley. I’ve had my breakfast and the water is boiling for your early cup of tea.”

  Marshall surveyed the table. Used eating utensils were pushed back to become a border to notebooks and a writing pad and pencils. It was obvious that Bony had occupied the kitchen for some time, and here he was now as well groomed as ever.

  “Never heard you come in. Never heard a sound,” Marshall said.

  “I can be silent when I want to,” stated Bony airily. “I borrowed your razor and a comb and towel. Now I’ll make the tea, and you can take a cup in to your wife. I’ve had breakfast, and before yours is ready I can tell you a thing or two which will interest you. There is a deal of work ahead for both of us.”

  “Yep! Looks like it, too,” Marshall averred, and watched Bony brew tea in the proper manner. “Thought I locked the doors and the windows out here.”

  “You did, but I unlocked the scullery window. Count twenty, and then I’ll pour tea. Hand me that tray.”

  “What for?”

  “That on it you might carry a cup of tea to your wife without shaking half of it into the saucer. Let me see. Ah, yes, I remember. In this tin. A biscuit on a plate to accompany the tea.”

  “You aim to give her breakfast in bed?” demanded Marshall.

  “No. Only morning tea. Sometimes, when I am home, which is seldom, I prepare morning tea for my wife, so you see I know it’s done ... like this.”

  The tea and biscuits on the tray were presented to the astonished sergeant. He said:

  “D’you know what my missus will say when she sees this?”

  “‘Thank you, dear’?”

  “She’s going to say,” Marshall said grimly, “‘You must be sickening for something. Where’s the pain?’”

  “Don’t believe anything of the kind. Now get going. I’ll load another tray which we can take to the office.”

  Evidently not feeling very happy about it, Marshall departed, and when he returned he muttered:

  “She said—she said, ‘Give my thanks to Bony.’ Seems to have guessed you were here.”

  “Well, well. Let it be a lesson to you. Now to your office.”

  Marshall glanced down at his pyjama-covered stomach and grinned. He tried to walk with dignity, failed, and ambled heavily after Bony, who carried the tray. He closed the office door and Bony poured tea, then sat in the official chair and gathered together the notebooks and papers he had brought from the kitchen. The sergeant sat down on the visitor’s chair and sipped his tea whilst watching this most extraordinary man manufacture his extraordinary cigarettes. And then Bony was regarding him seriously, and he could see on Bony’s face the evidence of fatigue.

  “We progress, Sergeant,” Bony said, as though occupancy of the official chair had removed the previous bonhomie. “Events during the last few hours have established that the killer of Kendall and that swagman lives here in Merino. I told you, didn’t I, that Providence is always kind to detectives?”

  He related all that had occurred from the moment he had arrived at the hut at Sandy Flat to the finding of the strip of hessian in the Merino gutter, and Sergeant Marshall became so engrossed that when the story was finished the tea in his cup was cold.

  “I must get back to Sandy Flat
as soon as possible,” Bony went on. “The wind would have smoothed away all tracks before daybreak, but that reservoir tank and mill might provide a clue as to what the fellow was doing there. Before I left town I thought of calling on Mr James. Then I thought of asking you to do so. Finally I decided to go slow with Mr James. We can’t afford to make a mistake with a parson. They can muster a lot of influence and kick up a deal of fuss should a poor detective make a mistake concerning them. If James is actually our man, and I am by no means certain that he is, we musn’t jump on him till we are all set. And so far, we are not properly set to do any jumping on anyone.”

  “Did that chap look anything like the parson in build and gait?” Marshall asked.

  “We can’t rely on the manner of his walk. Remember he was wearing swathes of hessian about his feet and would then walk not unlike a man wearing snowshoes. In build he was similar to James. That is all I can say. His clothes were much more loose-fitting than those normally worn by the minister.”

  Marshall pursed his lips. He said:

  “I suppose a parson is as likely a killer as a butcher or a bricklayer?”

  “Quite. Criminal history contains many. In this particular case, however, we are in danger of allowing our personal antipathy to cloud judgment. Our greatest difficulty is the absence of motive behind the killing of Kendall, and if the murder of the swagman was not the result of attempted blackmail, then we do not know the motive for that killing, either. It doesn’t follow because we know of no motive that there was no motive.

  “Because we don’t know the motive, we can assume that there was none, and on this assumption we may further assume that the killer is insane. Only an insane person would kill without a motive ... or for the sheer lust of killing, which is in itself a motive.

  “You should read ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, a poem written by Shakespeare. Old Shakespeare was a good criminologist. In that poem he describes the growth of an idea of the crime in the criminal’s mind before the crime was committed. Very often the crime of murder is the effect of thought extended over a lengthy period. In other words, the actual act of the crime is the effect of long and careful planning, following an idea which has become an obsession.