The Bachelors of Broken Hill

by Arthur Upfield

  “You know the windows.”

  “The window...”

  Jimmy’s voice trailed into the dull ringing of the telephone within the house. Crome had said the telephone was in the hall. Bony waited. The bell continued. Light appeared at the transom above the front door. The ringing bell stopped. Neither man spoke until the hall light went out. Jimmy waited a half minute before saying:

  “The window next the kitchen is easy. There’s another easy one on the other side of the house. That’s the one for me.”

  “Which one round the corner?”

  “Second.”

  “I’ll make for it. Give me a minute before you follow—in case anyone should follow me.”

  Jimmy counted the seconds before leaving the tree and proceeded by moving each foot low to the ground to feel for any obstruction. The clouds had switched off the stars, and it was a night such as Jimmy loved. Now, however, he wanted just a little starlight that he might be warned of the proximity of the man who had broken one glass knife and could have another he’d like to break. The distant street light beyond the front fence and the metallic glow of the mines in the eastern sector of the invisible sky provided no consolation. He was glad to reach the house corner and hug the wall till he came to the yielding obstruction which was Bonaparte.

  “What’s in here?” breathed Bony.

  “Lodding’s bedroom.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “Saw it before she pulled down the blind. More’n once, too. The room to the front is a lounge. Beyond that is the hall, and t’other side of the hall is another lounge—where Crome and Pavier quizzed the old girl, you’ll remember.”

  “All set, Jimmy. We’ll go in.”

  To Bony it appeared that the screwsman became part of the window. He heard no sound. Jimmy spoke:

  “She’s jake.”

  Bony felt the window. It was raised. Beyond he could feel a blind and lace curtains. He slid over the sill, stood within the room, waited. Jimmy entered. An alert dog might have heard them, but Bony doubted it.

  Jimmy rearranged the disturbed blind, intending to leave the window open—a way of retreat—but Bony pointed out that because Tuttaway probably would examine all windows he must not discover that one open.

  Jimmy had to admit admiration, and satisfaction, too, for and with his partner this night. Bony stood with him in the ink-black room, feeling the spirit of the place and what lay beyond it, sniffing the scents which can tell so much from so little.

  The air was stale, to be felt rather than smelled. There were two distinct odours. Naphthalene and the perfume of cosmetics, and there was something neither could determine, a musty smell of decay beaten back by the perfume and the naphthalene. Silence, a slumbering silence, was undisturbed by the noise of the far-away mines, which could not penetrate these old stone walls and expertly fitted window. There was no light until a dull opaque disc marked Bony’s heavily shrouded electric torch.

  The layers of the handkerchief were reduced until the disc emitted a short diaphanous beam without form. The beam moved. An easy-chair crouched like a petrified troglodyte to one side of a massive steel fireplace, blackly gleaming. A small table bearing an electric lamp and two books swung into being, and then the bed beside which stood the table, a three-quarter-size bed, made ready, as though for the woman who would never return.

  The dressing-table appointments were expensive and in excellent taste. The chest of drawers and the wardrobe were old-fashioned and of rosewood. The clothing within appeared to be beyond the reach of policewomen and the wives of police inspectors. There was nothing of value to Bony in this room save the pictures on the walls. There were five, and all were photographic enlargements of a woman in period costumes.

  “Passage outside this room?” Bony asked Jimmy, who had accompanied him on the tour of inspection.

  “Don’t know. To the front is the lounge room the Lodding woman used. To the back two more rooms. Blinds are always down. Must be empty.”

  “We’ll examine the lounge.”

  Jimmy’s slim hand closed about the door handle, slowly turned it. The door was locked. Steel glinted in the other hand, and steel teeth entered the lock. The door was opened without sound. The passage waited, darkly.

  Jimmy closed the door after them but did not re-lock it. Bony glided to the door of the lounge. It was locked. Again Jimmy turned a key and opened a door.

  Their feet sank into thick pile. The torch revealed the gleaming outlines of polished wood and the pattern of upholstery, the shapes of small tables, a writing-desk. Glass protecting a large bookcase behaved like mirrors. Jimmy crossed to the windows to make sure they were thoroughly masked.

  Yet another massive steel fireplace, the grate concealed by a low screen of floral design. Above the mantel stood the youthful Queen Victoria. She was like someone Bony knew but could not recall. The picture was in oils and unsigned. Against another wall stood either Empress Josephine or Madame de Pompadour, also in oils, and the face was like that of Queen Victoria, and yet different. The resemblance was in the eyes. Bony again looked upon Queen Victoria. It was the eyes. And at some time he had looked into those eyes. He was sure of it.

  The eyes, he felt, watched him as he moved the torch beam along the books in the glass case, as he examined the writing-desk, as he explored the contents of the camphorwood chest set between the two windows.

  Again he stood before Queen Victoria. There was something about her mouth too. Ah! The mouth resembled that of Mills’s drawing of the woman seen by Mrs Wallace. He leaned against the mantel, lowered the beam of his light, strove to remember, and the beam fell behind the fire screen to reveal the grate filled with coloured paper ribbons.

  Among the coloured paper something gleamed like gold.

  Bony removed the screen and the paper, disclosing a large tin. Jimmy held the torch, and when Bony lifted out the tin he saw it was fitted with a press-on lid. There was no label. The metal was quite clean.

  “Open it, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy removed the lid with his window-opener. The torch beam revealed its contents to be dark in colour, part powder, part lumpy.

  “Cocoa?” guessed Jimmy.

  “No, cyanide. Put the lid on.”

  “’Struth! ’Nough to kill an army.”

  The tin was put back among the paper and the fire screen replaced.

  “We’ll go through the other lounge on this floor,” Bony said, and they passed into the passage which immediately gave entry to the hall.

  Beyond the hall a second passage reflected light from the kitchen. It was sufficiently strong to reveal the carpet, the hatstand, a Jacobean chest, a wall mirror, a small table bearing a bowl of artificial flowers, and the front and lounge doors.

  Silently they crossed the hall, observing that where the staircase was flush with the wall it was blocked by a polished wood door. Four steps led to the door: noted by men who missed nothing. They stopped at the passage leading to the lighted kitchen. No sound came from the kitchen. No sound came from above. Bony estimated that from the hall to the kitchen was fifty feet, with one door to the right and two to the left.

  Where was Mrs Dalton?

  “Stay here,” he told Jimmy. “I’ll take a chance to see what is in the kitchen.”

  Jimmy waited, seeing Bony steal along the passage to pause outside the kitchen door, edge round the frame, and enter.

  The kitchen was roomy. The wood range was polished like ebony. The table was scrubbed white. The dresser was decorated with green-spotted china. The usual cupboard beside the range, filled with pots and pans. A tall cupboard contained brooms. The dresser was fitted with two drawers above a cupboard. One contained cutlery, table mats. The second drawer contained a meat saw, two butcher’s knives, and a butcher’s steel. The cupboard held two new buckets and six chaff bags. In another cupboard was a used bucket, floor polish, and mop heads.

  The meat saw was brand new. The butcher’s knives were new. The steel had never been used. They were se
t out as though displayed in the window of a hardware store.

  There was a scullery off the kitchen, but Bony could delay no longer and drifted back to Jimmy.

  Together they ‘went through’ the second lounge, furnished formally and without the intimate objects found in that other lounge once occupied by Muriel Lodding. Leaving this room, they re-crossed the hall and sat in the mouth of the passage leading to the bedrooms.

  “Just as well be comfortable while we wait,” Bony said. “Wish I could smoke. What do you think they would want with a butcher’s meat saw and knives?”

  “Well, a butcher wants ’em to cut up carcasses.” Jimmy was silent for many seconds before gripping Bony’s arm and asking:

  “Where was those things?”

  “In a drawer of the dresser, laid out as though ready for employment. Never been used yet. Clean—and sharp.”

  Silence again. Then Jimmy:

  “Can’t get that stink.”

  “I should know it.”

  Again silence—a long silence. A board creaked and both men were on their feet. Another board creaked. Someone was coming down the stairs. The hall light blinded them, and instinctively they withdrew farther into the passage.

  They heard the stair door open, and then they beheld Queen Elizabeth stepping down the hall—as though from a throne to forgive again her Essex. The years had ravaged her face, but the royal dignity was superb. She turned to the kitchen passage. In each hand she held a white Persian cat. She held them by their back legs. They made no protest. They were dead.

  She could have taken the cats no farther than the kitchen, for almost at once she returned and mounted the steps to the door, closed it. The lights went out. A board creaked. Then another.

  “Ninth and thirteenth treads, remember,” Bony murmured. “Them cats dead—or me?” Jimmy asked.

  Minutes passed—perhaps five—when again the first of two stair treads creaked.

  “Hell! She’s coming down again,” Jimmy hissed.

  The hall light flashed up. They heard the stair door open. They saw Marie Antoinette step down to the hall. She was magnificent. She carried in each hand a Persian cat, held them by the back legs. They were dead.

  Marie Antoinette disappeared kitchenwards, reappeared without the cats, went upstairs. The hall was blacked out. Jimmy moaned.

  “How many more?” he asked fiercely.

  “Queens or cats?” countered Bony.

  Prolonged silence, until Jimmy plaintively asked:

  “What is this joint?” No answer from Bony. “I’ll tell you, then. Lunatics’ Retreat, that’s what it is. Do we have to stay?”

  Further silence, this time terminated by knuckles upon wood. There was someone at the front door.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Henry and Dear Henrietta

  “BACK TO the bedroom,” ordered Bony. “Have both window and door open for a fast getaway.”

  The man on the porch—it could not possibly be a woman—again thudded a fist against the door, insistently, rudely. The sound was swallowed by the house, without echo, and in the ensuing silence the creak of the stair treads seemed almost as loud as the knocking. The hall light flashed up, and the stair door was opened.

  Descending to the hall came Mrs Dalton. She walked slowly, and with something of the sleepwalker, to the front door. Deep within the passage Bony heard her release the chain and turn the key. On again seeing her, she was backing to the centre of the hall, and there said harshly:

  “Come in.”

  The door was shut and the key turned. A clergyman appeared, a tall man and stooping, with white hair and ragged beard. The hands clasping the round clerical hat were large and capable.

  “Forgive me for calling at so late an hour,” he said mellifluously, as though the years of intoning Gregorian chants could not be put aside. The woman’s voice was icy.

  “So considerate of you to telephone. Having watched you last night, I expected you to enter by a window.”

  “It was my intention, but, Madame, I decided it would be undignified, and, ah, unoriginal, in view of my errand. I am happy to find you looking so well.”

  “I cannot compliment you on your role. The hair——”

  “Required only for street lights. Pardon me.”

  The beard vanished. The white hair became grey and short. The figure gained in stature, lost its frailty. A handkerchief appeared, to be used as though to wipe the face of perspiration. The mopping done, the face was that in the Tuttaway file. The man stood as though awaiting applause, and said when Mrs Dalton was silent:

  “Are you not going to invite me to your sitting-room? Perhaps a little refreshment? I am indeed your sorely tried brother.”

  “State your business and go.”

  “It demands time, dear Henrietta. One does not gulp good wine. Let us be comfortable, for there is much to discuss, to achieve the grand finale. Unless for the purpose of art, haste of movement and of speech, is unseemly. Therefore—lead on.”

  The same mocking voice. The insolent bow. The old stagey artificiality. The woman’s breast rose and fell as though she had held her breathing. Her expression was of resignation as with a slight shrug she turned to the stairs. Her back was to the visitor, her face cold, remote, triumphant.

  She went on and up, and Tuttaway followed, leaving the stair door open. Mrs Dalton told him to switch off the hall light and where to find the switch. Bony slipped into the darkened hall. He watched them mounting the stairs. Save for a room light, the upper floor was in darkness. Against this light, first one and then the other was sharply silhouetted. The carpeted landing muted their footsteps, and without sound they passed from Bony’s view. Then he heard their voices in the lighted room but could not distinguish the words.

  He went up the stairs, to stand on the landing and within the deep shadows. In the lighted room the two were seated either side of a low hexagonal table bearing a bronze Eros, a silver box of cigarettes, and ash trays. Tuttaway occupied a straight-backed chair. His hands were interlocked and resting on his crossed legs.

  Beyond Mrs Dalton was a settee, and on the settee lay an Elizabethan ruff, the gown worn by Marie Antoinette, and a navy-blue handbag having red drawstrings. To Tuttaway’s left was a fireplace, and on the hearth-rug lay five white cats.

  “After all these years, dear Henrietta, I am so glad to see you,” boomed the Great Scarsby. “So many gales have howled across the Atlantic since we parted; so much has passed into the silence of time.”

  “I am not glad to see you,” Mrs Dalton said tonelessly, and her following statement was made also without emotion. “I’ve disliked many men and hated but one. Such is my loathing and hatred of you that words to express it are not to be found in any language.”

  “Hatred is warmer than love, my sweet,” Tuttaway chided. “Hate does endure. Believe me, I know. And waiting stokes the fires of hate. I know that too. I have waited so long.

  “Since the moment I returned to the house in London and found you and dear Muriel absent, I have never doubted we would meet again. I was naturally grieved to discover you had deserted me, but heartbroken that Muriel had gone with you. You knew so well my hopes for her, my ambitions. Your plan was laid bare in that awful moment. You feigned illness when we were to embark for America, and you planned that Muriel should run away from me and slink back to London.”

  The man appeared about to weep.

  “All my affection for you, dear Henrietta, went for nothing, meant nothing to your callous heart. All my love for Muriel was scorned, mocked. That girl had great gifts, and despite her stubbornness I would have made her famous throughout the world. You were jealous. You stood between us. I took Muriel from the gutter to make her great, and you thought to hide her from me. How stupid! Of course you were always mad, and I should not have trusted you.”

  “It is you, Henry, who have always been mad.”

  “Poor Henrietta,” he drawled, his eyes like small agates. “The mad invariably consider themselve
s sane and all others mad. It is proof of your madness. When a child you were mad. Remember when you were in pigtails and I found you by the brook quite naked and with half a hundred worms in your hair? Had I not loved you, trusted you, protected you, you would have been certified like poor Hetty.”

  “I am not insane, Henry. I was born with a gift of humour. It was always you who couldn’t see a joke. See a joke! A calculating sadist is incapable of appreciating a joke. A sadist can only destroy and glory in destroying lovely things. You killed Muriel’s affection for you and in its place put fear. She was grateful to you for bringing her from that filthy tenement, for having her educated, for giving her ambition and dreams—and you killed her gratitude because you couldn’t possibly do else but kill it. She loved me, but you even killed that. And in the end you must kill her body.”

  “Dear, dear! How melodramatic we are! Surely you will not accuse your own dear brother of murdering your cats?”

  “Knowing you were going to enter this house, and with that foul purpose, I killed them that you should not torture them.”

  “With what did you put them to sleep?”

  “With a little something obtained from the wood merchant. An obliging man. There’s none left, so you won’t poison me.”

  The man chuckled sonorously. He smiled, and without apparently looking at what he did he took a cigarette from the box, balanced it at the edge of the table, tapped the free end, and it fluttered to his lips. A hand went to a waist coat pocket and came away with an ignited match.

  “Mad! Of course you’re mad, Henry. You raved even at Muriel. Slapping her face when she was tired. Tying her to a chair when she defied you, and making her watch you put her kitten into the stove and turn on the current, and laughing when she shrieked. You’ve always been mad: breaking little puppies’ legs to see them limp, tying cats together by the tails and putting them on a clothes line to watch them fight to death. You will not torture my cats.”