Seated on the floor with his back to the wall, Harte paused to roll a cigarette, and Bony prompted him, the others apparently conceding his superior knowledge and experience.
“When he shot Mrs Bell,” resumed the ageless man, “Yorky knew the country was wide open to him. He knew just where all the abos were ... fifty miles something up north. He knows them abos pretty well, knows how their minds work, and the reason why he didn’t shoot the kid was stronger than the reason why he ought to have shot her, to give him the best chance of getting clear out of this country. As I said, he knows the blacks better than any of us. He knows that once they’re put to his tracks, even if them tracks is bits of dust in the air, they’ll catch up with him. If they wants to, that is. He knows that if he kills the kid they’ll want to; if he don’t, they won’t. That was his cards.”
“The aborigines thought much of Linda?” pressed Bony.
“They surely did. Like everyone else. One time we was playin’ poker over in the quarters, and I drew a Queen of Hearts and snaffled the jackpot, and I said without thinking: ‘That’s my Linda for you, fellers. The Queen of Hearts.’ And that’s what she was around these parts.”
“The aborigines, however, did try to track Yorky,” Wootton reminded him, and Bony was delighted at the course his conference was taking.
“Too right,” agreed Harte, who then had to go to the doorway for another spit. “What happened? They’re up on the Neales, half-starved, livin’ on goannas and flies. They get brought back, and they’re given lashings of beef and flour and tobacco to start ’em off right. Instead of huntin’ a perenti or another feller’s gin, they’re set to huntin’ Yorky.
“But do they hunt for Yorky? I got me doubts, and I got ’em because they knew he got aces. ‘Good ole Yorky,’ they’d say. ‘We’ll look around, sort of, and feed up on the boss’s beef, an’ smoke the boss’s baccy.’ But they didn’t just look around, as you said, Mr Wootton. They set to work all right, but not because they hate Yorky for killing Mrs Bell. They set to work like bloodhounds to make sure Yorky hadn’t killed Linda and planted her body somewhere, and when they reasoned that Yorky hadn’t been that ruddy stupid, that he’d got clear away with the kid, they sort of got tired and gradually eased up till they quit. That’s why I say Ole Fren Yorky knew when he collared Linda that he held all the aces.”
“And he will continue to hold them while he keeps Linda Bell alive?” encouraged Bony.
“That’s so. While he’s got Linda with him, it’s Yorky’s game.”
“And you still don’t think that the blacks know where he is?” drawled lanky Eric Maundy.
“No, I don’t think they do, Eric. To find that out would mean work, and they’d be satisfied to know that little Linda was safe enough. They’d say Yorky and the kid was around somewhere, that Yorky would come out of smoke when it suited him, and meanwhile Charlie will be chasing Meena, and Canute will scratch his neck ’cos he’s too old to take her even though she was promised to him when she was born. You gotta know them abos, Eric”
“Reckon you know ’em?” jibed the young man named Harry Lawton.
“If you think you know ’em better, put up a better yarn,” advised Arnold with asperity.
“If we accept your idea,” Bony contributed, “where is Yorky obtaining food for himself and the child?”
“At his camps,” replied Harte. “Perhaps you don’t know that when Yorky left here for a bender, he had a job riding the boundary fence.”
“That’s so,” added Wootton. “The boundary fence is some hundred and fifty miles round the station, bar where it cuts into the Lake. Yorky rode it with camels. He had a camp every twenty miles, with water at every second camp.”
“And them camps were stocked with tucker,” inserted Harte. “You know, flour and tea and sugar kept in tins and tinned dog and fish if he was stuck. I asked him once about the abos getting down on his tucker and tobacco, and he laughed and said they wouldn’t steal from him.”
Bony studied the wall map of Mount Eden Station. To Wootton he said:
“Mark the camps, please, and mark additionally those camps where the water is.” To Harte he said: “What’s outside the boundary fence?”
“Nothing. Open country, excepting down south and southeast.”
“Wild aborigines?”
Harte shook his head, saying:
“Not till you get up about the Simpson Desert, and they ain’t as wild as they used to be.”
“The country ... dry all the way up north and west?”
“Same as around here. Haven’t had no rain for months, and that fell at the wrong time. Still, there’s water if you know where to find it. Water holes up on the Neales. Water under the Lake mud, if you can stomach it.”
“H’m! We seem to be going somewhere.” Bony looked at each in turn. “I want you to mark on this map where each of you went that day Mrs Bell was shot, and note also the time when you were farthest from the homestead. That is, as close as possible. A blue pencil, Mr Wootton, please.”
They did as requested. Then Bony said:
“I understand that you four men have been in this part of Australia for many years, much longer than Mr Wootton. You have been most co-operative, and I ask you to continue so. It is good to know that you believe Linda is still alive, and that rescuing her must take priority. I would not have expected such full co-operation, were it not for the possibility of recovering the child.
“You will see clearly that the actual rescue could well be attended by grave danger to her from the man who abducted her. To save himself he might kill her. It is of vital importance to know exactly the kind of man he is, or was, before he shot Mrs Bell. First, let us try to understand why he shot Mrs Bell. Had he ever expressed dislike of her?”
“Not that I ever heard,” replied Arnold. “He was one of them inoffensive poor bastards. Never hardly spoke unless spoken to. You had to get him alone, and sort of talk soft to him, before he’d open up. He’d talk fast enough to Linda, and the black kids.”
“When drunk or recovering from a bout, did he think of women, talk about them?”
“No.”
“Did Mrs Bell ever express dislike of him, ever strongly criticise him?”
“Just the opposite. Mrs Bell sort of liked him, I think. Patched his shirts more than once.”
“After he’d washed ’em,” chuckled young Harry Lawton. “She’d do that for any of us.”
“You’re too flash to have old shirts to be patched,” drawled Eric.
“She never objected to Linda talking to Yorky?”
“Don’t think. Had no reason to. He was harmless enough.”
“Yorky must have gone wonky to have shot her,” insisted Eric.
“All right! Then let us get down to his association with the aborigines,” pressed Bony. “You have said he was close to them. In what way? Did he live secretly with a lubra?”
Harry Lawton broke into laughter, and was silenced by the glare in Arnold’s grey eyes. It was Harte who replied.
“Look, Inspector. Yorky was older than me. Not much, but still he was so. I remember Yorky coming into this country about thirty-five years back. Not much to look at but real rough: always small and a bit wispy, if you know what I mean. And I can’t say he’d had much education, less, sort of, than Meena and Charlie and the other abos who went down to Mission School for a spell.
“Yorky could read the papers, follow the races and all that. But he got to know more about the ants and things than ever I wanted to, and he got to know the ways of camels when he was frightened of horses. I don’t think he was more taken up with women than most of us. Camped for a night or two with one down at Loaders Springs. You know the sort. Some say that there was times when he camped with Sarah, and I have heard that there was times when he had a young lubra with him on the boundary fence. A long time ago, though.”
Harte went again to the door to spit.
“But this is what I am trying to get out. Yorky was more interested
in watching ants and birds than he was in talking about cattle and horses like the rest of us. He’d get the black kids to take him out and show him things. All the kids took to him, and they run like hell from me. Gradually he got in with the blacks. And I’m sure it wasn’t to get at the lubras. He was sort of interested in them like he was in the ants. He’d give them things. Fork out tobacco, buy a dress or some such.”
“I once told him he oughta write a book about ’em,” interrupted Harry Lawton. “He knows more about ’em than the perfessors and them sort of blokes.”
“He could have done, too, if he’d had any education,” agreed Harte. “Well, that’s how it is with Ole Fren Yorky. You heard how he got the name?”
“Yes. And what you have said supports what I already know of him,” replied Bony, and bending over the desk he jotted a note on a slip of paper. “It does seem that Yorky must have lost his balance through the booze to have shot Mrs Bell. Could you say he tended to be mentally childish?”
“No,” said Arnold with conviction. “Yet he wasn’t ... I don’t know how to put it. He reminds me of a nephew of mine down in Adelaide. Used to moon about when other kids were playing or larking. Got so when he grew older that he went around dreaming. But he had brains. Ended by being a first class commercial artist with a publishing firm in Sydney. No, Yorky was never wonky. The way he plays poker proves that.”
“He had what I’d call low cunning,” commented Lawton. “You could never tell what cards he held.”
“So that all of you actually find it hard to believe that Ole Fren Yorky did shoot Mrs Bell?” asked Bony.
“That’s about it,” agreed Arnold, and the others nodded agreement. “There’s times when I won’t believe it.”
“You are sure those were his tracks you picked out?”
“Too right! Couldn’t mistake ’em,” replied Harte.
Bony presented his note to Arnold, and said:
“When I locate Yorky, we shall know all about it. The motive will be interesting; the way of his escape will be interesting too.”
Arnold nodded to Harte, and they left the office. The others watched them leave, knowing they did so at the behest of Bony’s note. Wootton cleared his throat preparatory to saying something, and was stopped by a screech from without.
Struggling figures appeared in the doorway, and the men brought in a furious lubra.
Chapter Six
The Art of Reasoning
“LEMME GO, you Arnold Bray. Lemme go, I say,” shouted Sarah, and, having inserted the large woman into the office, Arnold and Harte freed her arms and blocked the doorway. Either Sarah was in excellent form, or the struggle hadn’t lasted long, but she now stood with fists balled into her hips, a glare in her eyes, and requiring only a broomstick or a rolling-pin to ape her white counterpart.
“She was round at the back wall with her ear to a crack,” announced Arnold. “Just listening in.”
“I was only sittin’ in the shade outside that hot ole kitchen,” shouted Sarah, and Wootton would have spoken had not Bony said, placatingly:
“Well, there’s no harm in that, Sarah. It’s deep shade here, and you are entitled to it. Still, there’s house shade outside the kitchen door, and I saw only an hour ago a nice chair. You go there and sit in that easy chair, or even better, what about morning tea?” Again Wootton attempted to speak, but Bony waved him to silence. The lubra’s black eyes encountered the blue eyes of the slim Napoleon Bonaparte, blue eyes hinting at laughter, friendliness, and abruptly she smiled:
“Mornin’ tea! Crikey! I forgot about it. That Meena! She should of told me.”
Nodding to Bony, she turned about, scowled at the men and went out like a cork down a drain.
“Well, what d’you make of that?” demanded Wootton, his face flushed. “Eavesdropping for sure. You should have made her tell us why she was doing that, Inspector!”
“You cannot make those people do anything they don’t wish to do,” Bony said, coldly. “That she was listening is a point, but only that. We have to remember that she and Yorky were friends, and that she must be interested in his fate, as we are. I think you men may leave. Perhaps this afternoon or this evening we could get together again and talk. All right with you?”
They assented: then as they were about to go, young Lawton asked:
“Mind telling why you wanted us to mark that map with where we were that day Mrs Bell was murdered?”
“Not at all. It was mere police routine. You see, any one of you four men could have returned after Mr Wootton left that day, then shot Mrs Bell and taken the child away and killed her. Even you, Mr Wootton, could have done just that.”
“But what about Yorky? Yorky was known to come here that morning,” pressed Lawton, and the others nodded quick agreement.
“As I told you, it is merely police routine to establish the whereabouts of everyone at the assumed time the crime was committed. In fact I think Constable Pierce asked for that information, and that it is recorded in his report.”
“He did make a song and dance about it,” admitted young Lawton. “Looks like we’re all sort of suspect, don’t it?”
“Pierce acted rightly,” patiently continued Bony. “Look at it this way. Not one of you is supported by a witness as to what you did between the time you left the homestead and the time you returned. No one saw Yorky at the blacks’ camp other than Mr Wootton. To be sure, Bill Harte found Yorky’s tracks back of the meat-house, and showed them to Arnold Bray, who agreed they were his. To be sure, Yorky’s tracks were found at the homestead gate. Pierce took plaster casts of those tracks. Before Yorky is put on trial, if he is, the casts must prove that he actually made those tracks, that he was, in fact, at this homestead on that morning. A good policeman, and Pierce is a good policeman, leaves nothing to chance.”
“Fair enough,” supported Wootton. “All right, you men can take the day off, and if you think of anything, I’m sure the Inspector will be happy to talk it over.”
They were drifting across the square to the quarters when the morning tea gong was beaten, and they about-turned and went back to the meal annexe. Tea and buttered scones were served by Meena to Bony and his host on the house veranda, and when she had withdrawn, Bony questioned about her.
He learned that a religious body conducted a Mission Church and school a few miles out from Loaders Springs. Aborigines, both adults and children, were warmly welcomed. A large number of children chose to live at the Mission, chose to because there was no compulsion. They were taught the elementary subjects—drawing and painting, basketwork, needlework, woodwork, and in return assisted the pastor and his wife with the stock and the garden.
“I visited the place one afternoon,” Wootton said. “Surprised me, the work the children were doing in class. And how they sang, too! I had only just come here, was still raw to the country, and I asked the pastor what happened to the children when they left. He said: ‘Oh, the lads become stockmen, and the girls do domestic service round about. That’s when it suits them. We do our best, as we hope you can see, but after they leave us, the old ones get them back.’”
“I can understand that,” Bony agreed with the pastor. “Meena, though, seems to be an excellent maid.”
“I think so. Yes, she’s good in a house. But then neither she nor Sarah will stay here overnight, and there’s no telling that they’ll turn up in the morning, or go off with the others on a walkabout. That girl can sew and mend as good as Mrs Bell could. And Charlie—you saw him this morning—is a damn fine wood carver.”
Wootton stretched his thin, short legs and lit his pipe.
“You ought to see the dolls he carved for little Linda Bell. One is the dead spit of Ole Fren Yorky, and there’s another you’d say was my image. The one supposed to be Mrs Bell isn’t so good, but another one, of Meena, to my mind, is the best of the lot. We’ll go and see them if you like. They’re over in the playhouse.”
“Yes, I’d like to see them. I understand that the men built the
playhouse. Which reminds me: did Linda spend much of her days there?”
“A good deal, Inspector,” replied the cattleman reflectively. “You know, you can’t wonder that we worshipped that child. Every Sunday afternoon she’d invite us all there for tea. Had her own tea set and her mother filled the teapot. I went sometimes. She’d have her visitors squatting on the floor, and she’d hand down her small cups and saucers and plates of scones and cake; and the men would talk to her with exaggerated politeness, and she would be the little lady.” Wootton sighed. “Only that last day I was commissioned to buy a box of chocolates and special handkerchiefs for her.”
A few minutes later they left the house for the canegrass playhouse. It was noticeable how the thick walls shut out the noises of the crows, the windmill raising water, and the soft hissing of the gusty wind over the ground. Standing within the entrance, Bony surveyed the interior, noting the cut-down furniture, and the fact that objects were not positioned as described by Constable Pierce. Almost at once Wootton exclaimed:
“Why, two of the dolls have gone! They were set up on the shelf bench. And those presents. The comb and the box of handkerchiefs have gone too. Now, what the hell!”
“When did you last see them?” asked Bony.
“Oh, about a fortnight back. The men wanted to tidy up the place, having the idea of making it nice for Linda’s return. I obtained permission from Pierce, and they went to work. Swept the floor, cleaned the window, put the dolls side by side on the bench, and the presents on the bench, too. I’ll call them.”
Bony Buys a Woman Page 4