Murder Must Wait b-17

by Arthur W. Upfield

“Did you do any good last night?”

  “Oh, yes,” airily replied Bony. “I found another Moses in the bulrushes.”

  “What… You found…” Alice’s face lost its official woodenness, became swiftly eager. “Not a… a…”

  “The admissions you drag from me, Alice! Nothing more. Now be off and let me change. Report at eight tonight.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  White Trail or Black?

  SHAVED, SHOWERED and dressed, Bony sat at his desk and read his inward mail delivered by plane that morning. The first opened was in his wife’s handwriting, and most of what she wrote dealt with the hypothetical case of a woman who bore a child long after she had given up the idea. There was nothing of the jargon of psychology, but profound knowledge of feminine complexes expressed in simple and therefore powerful phrases. Bony’s old friend, the Chief of the Victoria CIB, enclosed a note when forwarding a Research Report concerning people named Nonning and Martin; and there was an official communication from Superintendent Canno which, in civil service confines, is called a ‘Please explain’.

  The explanation required concerned the entire lack of progress reports.

  When Sergeant Yoti looked in from the open door, Bony was sitting upright in the chair, his hands relaxed upon the opened mail, and his eyes closed. At first he thought Bony to be overcome by fatigue occasioned by being at work all night, and then changed the thought for another on studying Bony’s attitude.

  He went in and Bony opened his eyes.

  “Good day, Sergeant?”

  “H’m! Thought you were asleep. Doing a spot of thinking?”

  “Yes, I was teasing a problem.” Yoti sat down and began loading his pipe. “What does one do when situated precisely midway between two impulses, equally compelling?”

  “Poor old Bulford knew the answer to that one,” replied Yoti. “And he’s being buried tomorrow.”

  “Inquest over?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “Who was there beside the officials?”

  “Mrs Bulford, the teller and the ledger-keeper and the bank inspector. The Press, of course, nine city reporters as well as the locals.”

  “None of the Bulford friends?”

  “No. Excepting Dr Nott, Mrs Marlo-Jones and Mrs Coutts.”

  “Clear verdict, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Unsound mind. Probably caused by loss of the baby. The bank inspector found everything in scrupulous order.”

  “Poor fellow.”

  Pensively, Bony stared at the opened mail, and Yoti smoked abstractedly, until under pressure of silence he said:

  “I did come to call you to lunch.”

  “Then we must obey. But first, did your tracker report for duty this morning?”

  “Haven’t seen him about, but then I’ve been at Court most of the morning.”

  “Make sure whether he came or not, and I’ll entertain your wife.”

  At lunch, Yoti said that Fred Wilmot was not on the job, and then referred to Bony’s problem. Mrs Yoti glanced at her husband, and he frowned warningly, for Bony was again pensive, an unusual mood at table, and they talked of other matters of no consequence until Bony said:

  “Because I cannot be at two places at once Iam feeling distinctly thwarted. Faced with the twin trails of White and Black, and free to choose, I would choose the White. However, being sentimental, and because I cannot call on anyone of equality with me in bushcraft and knowledge of the aborigines, I have to choose the Black.”

  “Enlightening, isn’t he?” Yoti put to his wife.

  “Could you let me have a bottle of strong coffee without milk or sugar, and sandwiches for two meals, Mrs Yoti?”

  “Of course. And cake?”

  “No cake. Too hot for sugar. But do you happen to have an empty sugar sack I could use as a tucker bag?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’ll call at the kitchen door for the coffee and sandwiches in the bag at ten to three. Thank you, Mrs Yoti. Now, Sergeant. Could you take me for a ride of some four miles, starting at three this afternoon?”

  Yoti was exceedingly busy but could not resist plunging a finger into this pie.

  “You will find me waiting in your car at three o’clock. Both of you I thank for co-operation. Now I must write instructions.”

  Bony having left them, the woman looked at her husband. The Sergeant said:

  “Worrying like hell.”

  “But not about himself,” argued Mrs Yoti.

  “Howd’you know that?”

  “Because I do.”

  “Damnation! Ask a woman why and all she says is ‘because’. Lemme get back to my office.”

  Yoti relented, affectionately kissed his wife’s ear and departed. At work, constantly he watched the clock on the wall, and when it was three he stumped out to the public office and told the duty constable he would be away perhaps for an hour, or maybe a week.

  The yard and the driveway between Station and residence pulsated with heat. There was no one about. Crossing to the garage, he opened the doors and went in. He saw no one in the car. He climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine, was backing the car out to the yard, when a voice said:

  “Take the Ivanhoe track.”

  Yoti waggled his rear mirror, and still could see no one. Leaning back over the seat, he then saw Bony crouched on the floor.

  “Hiding from the goblins?” he asked.

  “I wish to leave town unnoticed. Tell me when we’re clear.”

  Yoti drove down the almost deserted Main Street, turned right to the boulevard, travelled to its ornamental extremity and finally angled north between the drowsing orchards and vineyards. Where the track rose to the red soil plains which had so entranced Alice, Bony was given the ‘all clear’ and he clambered over to sit beside the Sergeant.

  “I’m leaving in the dash-box these three envelopes,” he said, with something of urgency in his pleasing voice. “Those addressed to Alice McGorr and Essencontain specific instructions. The third envelope is addressed to you and marked not to be opened until six o’clock tomorrow evening, and then only if I should not claim it before that time. Clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “If I should meet the misfortune between now and six tomorrow, my investigation of the Rockcliff murder would be lost to the Department, and so I have outlined the work done and this should be ample for you to proceed against the woman’s murderer.”

  “Are you telling me that the name of the murderer is in that envelope?” Yoti asked.

  “Yes, although the evidence is not yet conclusive. I must again emphasise that the arrest of the murderer is of less importance than the solution of these baby abductions.”

  “I shan’t forget that. The killer and the kids are the Black and White trails you spoke of, I take it?”

  “No. The White indicates one place and the Black another, and obviously I cannot attend both places at the one time. Therefore, because the safety of a baby must take priority, I have no choice.”

  “You located one of those babies?” Yoti shouted.

  “I have reason to hope so.”

  “Haw! And there’s me and old Canno thinking you been up the same street as all those other CID nitwits. What have I got to do tonight? Sit and chew me fingernails?”

  “Yes. You may have your turn tomorrow… after six o’clock. I’ll leave you in the middle of this clump of she-oaks ahead. Don’t stop. Slow down enough for me to jump out, then drive on for another mile before turning back. Anyone seeing you turn will concentrate on the car, not on these she-oaks… and me.”

  Bony slipped on the sheepskin overshoes and tied them to his ankles. Taking up the sugar bag containing his meagre rations, he opened the door, and as the car rolled between the she-oaks, he jumped to the ground. Yoti drove on for another mile, where he turned on a hard claypan. By then Bony was under an old-man saltbush half a mile from theshe-oaks, and before the car dwindled to a black dot-head of a long shaft of rising dust, he was high
in a tree and employing powerful binoculars.

  At the end of five minutes, he was sure that, other than Yoti in his car, nothing moved on that landscape. Animals, both wild and domesticated, would be hugging the shade and waiting for the sun to go down before leaving to graze or make for the man-made water supplies. Man’s actions could be different. Other circumstances could drive a man into the searing sunlight as he was then being driven.

  But nothing betrayed movement, animal or human, and Bony went to ground and arranged his tucker bag across his shoulders like a rucksack, slung his glasses like a punter, patted the automatic in its holster under his arm-pit. He was approximately two miles north of the Settlement.

  There was plenty of cover… patches of saltbush, clumps of trees, dry watercourses. Canny white scouts can put up a good show… against other white scouts. When opposed to aborigines, however, there is no show. The Australian bush north of the Murray looks to be splendid scouting country to anyone not conversant with its trickery. You think you are walking uphill when the ground is table-flat. You see a shallow creek, and the water does run uphill. You’d bet on it, and lose. You think a sand-dune is ten miles away and it isn’t even one mile distant. You know that a tree clump is only a couple of hundred yards to the left and you would walk an hour before gaining its shade. And should you think you can escape the aborigines hunting for you, just think again. The mirage you can see spreads over the horizon like vast inland seas; the mirage you cannot see makes a giant gum of ablue-bush, and a patch of red pig-weed a hundred-foot-high sand-dune. You’d never see the wild aborigines deep in the mirage because they know how to make a mirage cover them.

  From trees, from dune summits, from behind old-man saltbush, Bony looked for dust spurts, for smoke spirals, and he maintained watch on the eagles and the crows, and his ears reported the moods of cockatoos and galahs.

  Finally, heated to the point of exhaustion, wet with perspiration, and slightly groggy on legs unaccustomed to such prolonged exertion, he lay behind a lantana bush and peered between its thin cord-like stems to see water, and beyond the water the green branches masking the small tent. The lubra was preparing food for the baby.

  Being thus assured that the baby was still at this secret camp, Bony retreated to a tree growing on high ground, and he hadn’t to go far up into that tree before gaining a position from which he commanded all approaches to the camp.

  On his perch high above the ground, he sipped the tepid coffee and ate sparingly of Mrs Yoti’s sandwiches. A rabbit couldn’t enter that camp without being noted, and as the Ruler of this World reluctantly moved down the western arc of the sky, his nerves were tautened by the waiting upon events, and his mind became increasingly anxious by the shadow of doubt cast upon that old reliable-Intuition.

  A rabbit ventured from its burrow to run swiftly to the creek and drink, and this seemed to be a call to the birds. The blue wrens and the lovebirds poured into the sky, and the eagles dropped lower to earth. The galahs and cockatoos appeared in flocks to take their evening drink. And from behind the nearest tree to the camp stepped Tracker Fred Wilmot.

  He must have called, for the lubra came from the tent and joined him at the lazy fire. Bony could see their white teeth when they laughed and joked, and when Fred poked the lubra in the ribs and she playfully slapped his face. That they were lovers was plain enough; that they were newly weds was proven by the ready acceptance of the woman’s orders.

  Fred filled a billycan from the creek and placed it on the fire. He accompanied the lubra to the tent, where she handed to him a tin bath and a blanket and supervised the spreading of the blanket and the placing of the bath. He was then ordered to bring water from the creek for the bath, and add warm water from the billycan over the fire.

  The lubra carried a bundle and knelt on the blanket, and the man stood near, watching the woman unfolding the bundle. She looked up at him and laughed, and then from the wrappings she lifted the naked child.

  A burnished shaft of sunlight fell upon the group. The chocolate skin of the man and the woman gleamed in that golden shaft, and, between them, the white skin of the tiny infant.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  TheSower

  THROUGHTHEbinoculars Bony observed the lubra bathing and dressing the infant in garments taken from the suitcase and wrapping about it a large white shawl. The man sat on his heels watching the operation and sometimes laughing at the lubra, and, when all was done, the bath was returned to the tent and they sat with the baby between them.

  Bony could see the flash of their teeth when they teased and laughed, and his own eyes shone like sapphires. He was feeling elation stronger than satisfaction engendered by prognostications proved to be correct, for now the curtain was about to rise on a drama first created in the womb of Time, and the child was prepared and waiting to play its part.

  The shadows had further lengthened by twenty minutes when from the trees masking the creek to Bony’s left appeared a buckboard drawn by two horses and driven by white-haired Chief Wilmot. The elderly aborigine appeared to be in no haste, and of this the horses seemed to be aware, as the turnout leisurely continued along Bony’s side of the creek until stopped opposite the secret camp.

  Tracker Fred Wilmot took up the suitcase and the blanket and led the way across the shallow water, the lubra following with the child. He held the baby whilst she climbed to the body of the vehicle and settled herself with her back to the high driving seat. She reclaimed the baby, and the suitcase and the blanket were stowed on what looked like firewood.

  All these preparations for a journey were accomplished without the excitement normal to aborigines. There was no shouting, no flurry, proving that the purpose of the journey was not associated with an ordinary walkabout. Further, wily old Wilmot had left the Settlement via the river road bridge, then followed the course of the creek where the creek trees were between himself and the Reverend Mr Beamer. Hence no shouting at the horses, and no shouting when near the secret camp.

  Fred Wilmot having joined his father on the driving seat, the Chief urged the horses into action with his whip, and they were heading towards Bony’s tree. That tree was a shield for Bony as he raced away across open country to gain cover in a clump of needlewoods, there to wait for the buckboard to appear and confirm the driver’s course. Thus from cover to cover he kept ahead of the travellers, who, he was convinced, had one of but two destinations in mind, and he was gratified that the speed of this ‘FlightInto Egypt’ was only slightly higher than that of the original exodus.

  Going ahead of the travellers gave him all the advantages. The general direction being north-westerly, the men on the driving seat of the buckboard were facing the westering sun, where the sharp-eyed lubra sitting with her back to the driving seat would encounter no such hindrance to her watch for possible pursuit.

  When a mile from the creek, the driver became less cautious, shouting when laying his whip to the horses, and doing both from habit rather than to increase progress, and this the animals understood, for their spasmodic trotting quickly relapsed to an indolent walk. Thus Bony on foot was not extended, his only concern on leaving each successive cover was being sure no one waited ahead of him.

  Eventually he crossed the track to Ivanhoe not far from the she-oaks where Yoti had dropped him, proceeding then to the cover of an old-man saltbush. If the aborigines on reaching that track drove towards Ivanhoe, their destination would bethose Devil’s Marbles recently visited by Alice McGorr and himself. Should they continue across the track, then their journey’s end would be the Ancient Tree dead centre of the wide depression.

  TheWilmots were not interested in the Ivanhoe Track.

  Now assured, Bony sped westward, in an hour coming to the rim of what in the long ago had been a large lake, roughly circular and two miles across. For a minute he scanned the entire rim, and for another made certain that no one was camped under or in the vicinity of the Tree. Between it and the rim there wasn’t cover enough for a cow to hide her calf
. When theWilmots reached the rim, Bony was concealed in the Tree and so watched the vehicle advancing across the depression, the dust from wheels and hooves rising to float above it like a veil of spun gold.

  The sun was setting when Chief Wilmot shouted at the horses to stop, when they would have stopped anyway at the merest pressure on the reins. They parked a hundred yards south of the Tree, the men jumping to the ground, stretching bodies and kicking dust with their boots as though they had been on their way for twenty-four hours.

  Action normal. No unusual excitement. No hint of urgency. Obviously plenty of time in hand.

  The lubra handed the baby down to her husband of one month. She passed to Chief Wilmot a large tucker box, a four-gallon tin of water, the suitcase, the blanket, and finally tossed off the load of firewood. On gaining ground, she demanded the baby and young Wilmot laughingly refused, turning his back to her and telling her to make a fire. She pleaded but failed, and in good humour gathered brushwood and started the camp fire.

  Meanwhile, Chief Wilmot drove on for a further fifty yards, where he unharnessed the horses and freed them in hobbles to find sustenance on the herbal rubbish.

  There were thus several abnormalities, for Bony all establishing the importance of the great tree in which he lay hidden. It was unusual for the camp fire to be lit so far from the tree which offered companionable shelter. It was unusual to park the vehicle so far from the fire. And the manner in which the baby was fussed over by both the lubra and her husband would have been abnormal even had the baby been their own.

  The heated Earth took the Sun. The wind dropped to a faintly cooling southerly, and the smoke of the fire was barely visible. Silence came to the aborigines, and over them and Bony flowed music made by the bells suspended from the necks of the horses.

  Young Wilmot crossed to the buckboard and returned with a filled sugar bag, the contents obviously not sugar. And Chief Wilmot removed his shirt and boots, revealing the cicatrices on chest and back, cut with flint and kept open to heal with mud, done to him at his initiation.