Murder Must Wait b-17

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Oh yes, Inspector. She used to meet the man twice a week. But this time he couldn’t have been at the house where they met, and she came home and he was waiting to kill her.”

  “Why didn’t you report all that… to me?”

  “Tell you about it? How could I? There was the other thing… the babies.”

  “And knowing this man was a murderer, yet you did nothing about it?” pressed Bony.

  “Yes. You see…” She looked helplessly at her husband, and he took over.

  “Mr Martin knew all about Nonning’s experiments, for he and theDelphs have been friends for years,” explained the Professor. “However, he took no active part in our little schemes, and it was from theDelphs that he learned the details of our plan covering the Rockcliff child, for we didn’t take him into our confidence that much. If, after the murder, our attitude to him had altered, he would have guessed we knew who did it. And to cover up that crime he might have killed us, too. I had better narrate the story, don’t you think?”

  Bony inclined his head in assent, and the Professor asked if he might smoke. His cigarette lit, he settled himself comfortably, cleared his throat from long habit in the lecture room, and only once glanced at the stenographer.

  “The germ of the, ah, plot, was born last August when we were spending the evening with Dr and Mrs Delph. Staying with theDelphs were Mrs Delph’s brother, Dr Nonning and his wife.

  “The conversation that evening turned on a visit paid by Dr Nonning to our local Museum. He saw the drawing, and asked Mr Oats, the curator, what the picture portrayed, but Mr Oats, only recently having taken over, just happened not to know it. So I related the legend, and Nonning was greatly impressed. Subsequently he was inspired to formulate a plan to help certain of his patients.

  “Among his patients were several women of a peculiarly neurotic type. I cannot employ Nonning’s phraseology and, in fact, have little sympathy with these new sciences, but it appears that in women there is a sickness of the mind caused by inability to bear children and aggravated by a hunger for them and by an obsession that they are the object of universal contempt. And Nonning evolved the notion that if such a woman could be made to believe she received a child as the legend describes she would recover her mental, spiritual and physical health.

  “You will agree that receiving a child in this, shall we say, spiritual way would give these women psychological balance, deep and complete; far greater than selecting a child from an orphanage as one would choose an appealing object.

  “Nonning came again to Mitford in September, when Mrs Delph’s child was born, and he told us that his sister didn’t want the child and that he had a patient who would greatly benefit if a child was introduced to her in accordance with the legend. We then decided to stage the legend, with the assistance of several of the aborigines at the Settlement, and also planned the abduction, as Mrs Delph would not dream of the public ever knowing she didn’t want her baby. We arranged with the aborigines to…”

  “Pardon, Professor, but I know all about that arrangement for the aborigines to take over and care for the baby, and to act the part of the Beings in the legend,” Bony interrupted.

  “Oh, you do, do you, Inspector?”

  “Yes, I saw you both at the show last night. I was in the gods, up in the tree. Tell me, how did you work the abduction?”

  “It was quite easy. We bought a pram identically the same as the one bought by theDelphs and, with the co-operation of MrsDelph, we duplicated the child’s clothes and the fly-net. The girl was sent to the frock shop with the pram. We knew she would have to leave it outside when calling for the parcel. Our lubra maid wheeled the second pram beside the other one, paused there for a moment or two, and then walked away with the pram holding the baby. She continued to wheel the pram to the lower end of the boulevard, where an aborigine waited with his truck. A lubra on the truck took over the child, and the pram was ultimately taken to the middle of the river and sunk with heavy stones. There was no hitch.”

  “And then you gained possession of the Bulford baby with the co-operation of Mr Bulford,” Bony interposed. “One of you took position behind the fence separating the bank from the disused premises, and another rang the bell and took the child from Mr Bulford, who was waiting to pass it.”

  “You are a very clever man,” remarked Mrs Marlo-Jones. “I’m sure Mr Bulford didn’t tell you.”

  “That is so,” admitted Bony, to add, being unable to resist: “Mr Bulford committed suicide because he realised I am a very clever man. Mrs Bulford didn’t co-operate, I take it?”

  “No, that woman wouldn’t co-operate in anything or with anyone. She couldn’t be trusted,” replied Mrs Marlo-Jones. “But she was glad the baby disappeared; the fool thought everyone was laughing at her, and the way she treated her poor husband was shameful. We were all glad, too. The babies were taken from homes where they were a nuisance, unwanted, and were given to women who were figuratively dying for want of one.”

  “And after the Bulford baby was given to Nonning’s selected patient, more babies were wanted and you turned to stealing them?” Bony pressed.

  “Yes, we turned to real theft,” continued the Professor, quite cheerfully. “We knew theEckses, husband and wife, and knew the latter often went to the River Hotel. The child didn’t receive proper attention from such a drink-swilling mother, and Dr Nonning was most anxious for another infant for a really desperate patient. It was all very easy. So, too, was the theft of Mrs Coutts’s child. Mrs Coutts was a worse offender against a helpless baby than Mrs Ecks. All she thinks about is dreaming of becoming a great author.”

  “And that Mrs Rockcliff was the worst of the lot,” added Mrs Marlo-Jones. “Cyril Martin didn’t know we knew all about her and him. And how she visited him at a cottage he had down the river a bit, leaving the baby alone in the house for hours. That was why we took her baby. We’ve done nothing morally wrong, Inspector. All we did was to transfer unwanted children to people who wanted them and would give them wise attention and affection. Besides, these four women who were given our babies recovered from their illness and are now happy and well. Dr Nonning is delighted with his successes, as well he should be. And the other sick woman will recover, too.”

  “What of the mothers who lost their babies: Mrs Coutts, Mrs Ecks, and Mrs Rockcliff, had she lived?”

  “Pooh! Inspector!” exclaimed the indignant Mrs Marlo-Jones. “To those women a baby was like an attack of sandy blight… an irritant. That was why we selected their babies for Dr Nonning’s patients.”

  “What was the reason you selected male children? Was it because the aborigines declined to, ah, officiate over a female child?”

  “Precisely. Female children are quite unimportant.”

  “Tell me, what did you do to prevent Mrs Coutts’s baby from crying when you stole it from its cot?”

  “Nothing. We knew that Mrs Coutts’s baby seldom cried. But it did. It cried after I had put him in the suitcase and was out in the street. It was very awkward, but fortunately there was a thunderstorm and people were hurrying for shelter.”

  “Go back to Mrs Ecks’s baby.”

  “I took a bottle. He was ready for it and gave no trouble.”

  “Cow’s milk?”

  “Oh yes.” Mrs Marlo-Jones smiled. “We agreed it wouldn’t do for us to purchase a preparatory food which might have been traced back to us.”

  Bony pondered, and they watched him like children who, having finished their lessons, hope to be released from school. To them, stealing five babies for the purpose which they freely avowed was much less reprehensible than stealing the rock drawing from the Municipal Library, and even this relic was merely ‘borrowed’ and was to be replaced. The problem they presented was unique.

  “I am going to permit you to return to your home,” he told them. “You will, of course, not attempt to leave Mitford until a higher authority decides what is to be done. You have no children?”

  “No,” replied the Prof
essor, in manner revealing so much.

  “H’m! Mrs Marlo-Jones… when under the bed, which Cyril Martin did you see stooping over the body?”

  “Why, the father, of course. He’s been carrying on with Mrs Rockcliff since before Christmas. Could have been before then. That was when we found out about him and her.”

  Bony glanced at Yoti and Essen, and their slow nods affirmatively answered his unspoken question: ‘I tracked the right one, didn’t I?’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  ‘What’s The Legend?’

  “SOTHATcompletes a very strange case,” Bony said when the Professor and his wife, having signed their statements, were released. “Mrs Marlo-Jones is unclassifiable to the layman. As for the Professor, he is out of this world. He did not learn to adventure until six months ago, and I think his most absorbing anthropological study has been his own wife.

  “Now having interviewed Dr Nonning, we can understand how those two were so easily dominated by him. Nonning belongs to the class of ruthless scientist who spares neither himself nor others in the furtherance of his work. Delph is Nonning’s antithesis, satisfied withhimself and life in general, happy to ramble around on his cases, wanting only peace at home and relaxation. In vulgar parlance, his wife wore the trousers, and because she wanted their baby to be passed to another woman, he agreed… for peace’ sake… fatal error… the first step taken down the grade. And how like Dr Delph was John Bulford.”

  Pensively Bony rolled a cigarette and Yoti felt urged to make the effort himself, so badly was it done by the long dark fingers. The Sergeant was tired. Essen felt his mind so crowded that it would be hard work to arrange all the oddments. Alice looked at Bony with eyes soft with unmaidenly adoration, and she was about to ask a question when he continued speaking.

  “Mrs Delph didn’t want the world to know about her baby, and Dr Delph found comfort in the idea behind the legend and agreed to the abduction and Nonning’s experiment. Now observe. The abduction was to be carried out, and the legend staged, by two people the least capable, one would think, of ever becoming successful criminals. The very simplicity of their plan to take the baby off Main Street assured its success. Then the mother’s pretence of grief was good enough to deceive men who talked to her about it: good enough to deceive men, but not good enough to deceive a woman… you, Alice.

  “The plan to abduct the Bulford baby was also a gem of simplicity, having, of course, the co-operation of the father. The moral weakness of the father spoiled that case for the abductors. His first statement covering his actions during the period in which the child was taken wasn’t strong enough to withstand my attack, and his second attempt fell down because he forgot that the Library was closed that day for renovations. What really upset Bulford was the murder of MrsRockcliff. He thought, without doubt, that she was murdered by the very people to whom he had passed his own child, despite the denial made to him by Mrs Marlo-Jones. And when he committed suicide Mrs Delph realised that the crisis for her was near.

  “The successful abduction of theEckses ’ baby required the degree of luck which no experienced criminal would have accepted in his calculations. That same degree of luck entered the abduction of theCouttses ’ baby, and both these cases provide proof that to achieve success in crime the best course to adopt is to commit the crime in broad daylight, and with as many people as possible in the vicinity. That and the ability to behave normally under abnormal conditions.

  “Each child in turn was whisked to the Aboriginal Settlement, where it was cared for in the secret camp under the very noses of the Beamers. When the time came to enact the legend, the aborigines were sent away on walkabout by wily old Chief Wilmot, not because his people were to be kept in ignorance, but because when they were on walkabout Mr Beamer and his wife were able to catch up on the clerical work and so would remain long at their desks.

  “We can clearly see Professor Marlo-Jones taking his long walks late at night when it is cool and meditation is a tonic. We see him by merest chance watching the Estate Agent entering a house down the river, a house which the Professor knows is not his home. The light is switched on in the front rooms, and a little later a mysterious woman arrives and is admitted. The Professor stands by and observes them leave separately at two in the morning.

  “Thus the spice of adventure which drew both the Professor and his wife to investigate, to use the wife’s words just now, these goings-on. They see Mrs Rockcliff passing their house to and from Main Street. They know when Mrs Rockcliff enters the hospital, and when she leaves with her baby. They know its sex. They have known for a long time Mr Cyril Martin’s domestic background.

  “It appears that Martin met Mrs Rockcliff in Adelaide, where she went under the name of Jean Quayle. Further, it appears that Jean Quayle wasn’t easy to snare, and she brought Martin to the point of proposing marriage. When she found she was going to bear his child, she pressed for advancement of the marriage date, and Martin slipped the cable. Or thought he did. He had mentioned his business, but not his place of business, and the Register of Estate Agents told her where he lived.

  “Thus she arrived at Mitford and put the screws on a hard bargain. He was to pay her fifty pounds a month in cash and every monthwas to pay into an Adelaide bank a further fifty pounds. He was to find her a house and pay for the furnishings. Because this was so favourable to her, she took steps to erase her former identity, and to keep secret her association with him.

  “Martin, however, found paying out a hundred a month most irksome. He knew the night when Mrs Marlo-Jones would steal Mrs Rockcliff’s baby. He knew all the details from Mrs Delph without Mrs Delph realising the significance of the information. He knew that Mrs Marlo-Jones would gain entry to the house by means of a strip of celluloid to force the front-door spring lock.

  “He knew even the time Mrs Marlo-Jones was to take the baby, or thought he did, because Mrs Marlo-Jones was delayed an hour. When he entered the house via the scullery window, he expected the child to have been taken. Being the agent for the owner he was familiar with the interior of the house, knew from Mrs Rockcliff where the baby was left, and so went direct to the front bedroom. He was no sooner there than he heard Mrs Rockcliff come in and, so he tells us, had no time to be sure the cot was empty. Thus he rid himself of an incubus by making it appear that the abductors of the baby had murdered the woman who found them stealing her child.

  “The deed done, he left at once, not knowing that the child was still in its cot and Mrs Marlo-Jones under the bed. Believing that he had successfully saddled the baby-thieves with murder, he was able to stay still after the deed.

  “The Marlo-Joneses were unable to stay still. Horrified by the murder, they had to know what was being done about it. They put Clark to shadowing Alice, and Wilmot thought he kept me under observation. Stealing the rock drawing was the height of foolishness. They hoped I would not associate the theft with the abductions; they thought I would not find out what the drawing meant. They feared that if I saw the drawing I would quickly associate the legend with their activities.

  “When Mr Oats supplied me with a sketch of the drawing made from memory, I was relieved of my worst fears of the fate of those infants. The placing of red-back spiders in my bed, I am glad to say, was the act of Marcus Clark and his pals, and not of the Marlo-Joneses. They didn’t fear me nearly as much as did the aborigines, who took independent action.

  “That about covers the twin investigations. My chief concern was the fate of the babies, as I have so often asserted, and we must all rejoice to know where they are and that they are being well cared for. Their respective parents will be told where they are to be found.”

  “Now, please, tell us the legend,” Alice pleaded.

  “The legend!”Bony smiled at her provocatively. “It happened a long, long time ago in the Days of the Alchuringa, when the world was young and waiting for the aborigines to come and take possession of it. In those far-away days the world was peopled by all kinds of monsters, and one day
there came wading through the seas a strange beingwho was half-bird half-man. Its name is Altjerra, the Creator of All Things.

  “On coming to dry land, Altjerra was very tired because he carried on his shoulder a huge sack filled with spirit babies with which to people the world. He sought for a resting place in the shade and found such a place at the foot of a great baobab tree. When he awoke he was very hungry, and he saw in the tree a poor old kookaburra, which he caught and ate. Whereupon the tree began to cry, saying: ‘You’ve killed my only friend, and now I am so lonely without him.’

  “That made Altjerra very sad for the baobab tree, so he opened his great sack and took out many spirit babies, which ran to the tree and hid in its trunk. Leaving the now happy old tree, Altjerra travelled on across Australia, and wherever he came to an ancient tree, or a heap of Devil’s Marbles, or a hill having a strange shape, he dropped spirit babies from his sack, and the spirit babies ran to hide away in those unusual sanctuaries.

  “After a long time hiding in the baobab tree, the spirit babies got tired of being so imprisoned. Of themselves they could not leave the sanctuary and roam the wide world, and no matter how much the baobab whispered patience with it leaves, the spirit children became sad and stillmore sad.

  “Then one day there came another Being, this time an aboriginal lubra. She was both tired and sorrowful, tired because her husband had chased her away from camp, and sorrowful because the cause of it all was her failure to give him a son. So she laid herself down in the shadow of the baobab tree and cried herself to sleep. And then a spirit baby more venturesome than the others crept out from the tree and hid himself in the lubra’s body and eventually was born a human child. So ever afterward when a lubra wanted a baby, she would leave the tribe and lie down and sleep beside an object said to shelter spirit children, and her wish would always come true.”

  The ensuing silence was broken by Alice, who said:

  “That is a beautiful story, Bony.”