“No one mining for gold near that track, I suppose?”
“Not that I knows of. Nearest shaft to old man Lang’s track would be three miles west. Coupler characters called German Charlie and Tiny Wilson working it.”
“How would they get on for water during winter? No creeks running, are there?” pressed Bony.
“Not this time of year. Ruddy torrents in the ‘wet’. Them fellers would get water in rock holes and the like.”
Bony shifted his weight from the donkey and stepped aside. “No one would sink a well on that track. How did old Lang do for water?”
“Rock holes.”
“I’ll see you before leaving this morning,” Bony said, and proceeded towards the post office. He heard ’Un call to the donkeys. So there was no prospector’s shaft, and no well sunk along that old donkey-wagon track at which Constable Stenhouse could have picked up whitish clay on the heels of his boots.
At the post office he found Dave Bundred, the postmaster, who took his poison from the rum bottle.
“Mornin’, Inspector! How’s things?”
“Could be a lot worse,” Bony admitted to this bald, red-nosed, round-shouldered postmaster, meteorologist, Justice of the Peace and Deputy Coroner. “I’m going out again to the scene of the shooting, and will probably call on the Wallaces. I could take their mail.”
“Sure. They’ll be pleased to get it.” Bundred turned to a side bench and proceeded to make up bundles of papers to add to letters and parcels. Bony wrote a telegram to his wife, saying he hoped to be returning almost at once, and knowing she would accept that with reservation.
“How long have you been at Agar’s?” he asked when Bundred dumped the assorted mail matter on the counter.
The watery, pale-blue eyes glinted with faint amusement.
“Thirteen years and a bit,” was the reply. “The bit’s all right: the years are superfluous. Could have got better offices down south, but I suppose it’s the blasted climate that gets you in. Wouldn’t be happy down in Perth even as the Postmaster-General. Hate Perth. Too hot in summer and too damned cold in winter.”
Bony smiled.
“The bottle ring’s grown somewhat since you first came to Agar’s?”
“Somewhat! Too true it has. My wife says I’ve added five thousand empties to that ring. Exaggerates terribly, she does … exceptin’ about those bottles. There’s another five thousand she knows nothing about. You married?”
“Alas!”
“Anyone sighted Jacky Musgrave yet?”
“No … not that I know.”
“Back home by this time,” predicted Bundred. “Them blacks can travel when they want to. Never took to Jacky Musgrave. Too secretive altogether. Stenhouse musta told him to put over that yarn about going south on patrol.”
“Most likely,” agreed Bony. “Stenhouse had only the one tracker, didn’t he?”
“Only Jacky. Wouldn’t be bothered with the locals. Reckon he thought the local blacks might tell something about him.”
“Much to tell, d’you think?”
The lids blinked down over the watery eyes.
“Might be. Stenhouse changed a lot after his wife died.” Bundred lit a cigarette. “Wasn’t a bad kind of bloke when he come here in the beginning. Got kind of sour about something. After his wife died he wasn’t worth knowing. All right to me. Had to be. Bit of mail for the Breens. You going out that way?”
Bony said he thought the Breens would be too far off the track, and the pale-blue eyes surveyed him with ill-concealed calculation.
“Think we could have a nip before you start?” suggested the postmaster.
“Not for me, thanks,” replied the reminiscent Bony. “I have a night out rarely, and haven’t recovered yet from that night with the Breens. They can certainly put it away.”
“You’re telling me. Jasper musta been off colour though, to have passed out like he did. Queer feller, Jasper. Some nights he can down whisky by the gallon. Other times a couple of noggins will rock him.” Bundred grinned rather than smiled, revealing teeth badly needing attention. “We had a session one time that lasted two days and three nights. That time Jasper passed out the second day, and they propped him against the bar wall, tied a bit of string to his beard, and jerked the string to make him nod every time his turn came round to shout.”
“Did they then insist on paying for the entire company?” asked the amused Bony.
“No, not that time. That musta been three years ago. Matter of fact it was just over three years. We were burying Mrs Stenhouse, and everyone came in for the funeral. Which reminds me, Inspector. You’ll find the Wallaces pretty bitter, but they’re good folk. The Breens are wild, as you saw for yourself. The Wallaces are more like us.”
Bony, loading his arms with mail and parcels, said:
“The cattle industry must have looked up.”
“Ezra is the brains out there. Got the idea that the war being over they’d have to organize themselves and make money instead of being satisfied with just enough for tucker and a booze up now and then.”
“H’m. Evidently done a good job.”
“Evidently,” Bundred agreed. “Told me he realized when he was at the war that Kimberley was grown up and ought to have things better than cheap rags to wear and tin pannikins to eat and drink out of. Fine gal, Kim. Lucky man who gets Kimberley Breen.”
“Anyone tried yet?”
“Jack Wallace might know. He’d have to get past Silas and Jasper, then Ezra. There’s only one bloke could manage to get past those three.”
Bony waited, and then fell for it.
“The President of Ireland. He’d have to be the President of Ireland to be good enough for Kimberley.”
“Out of the top drawer, eh?”
Bundred sighed.
“She’s got hair that glows like polished copper, and eyes that grow as big as pansies when she looks at you. She looked at me once. Came in for the mail, and afterwards I didn’t shave for a fortnight ’cos I couldn’t bear to look at myself.”
Chapter Ten
‘Tricky Characters’
BONY AND Constable Irwin were ten miles north of Agar’s Lagoon when they met the mechanic returning with Ramsay’s car.
“Oughter got back last night,” he told them. “Had two blowouts just before dark and camped.”
“Fixed the jeep?” Irwin asked.
“Yes. Put another steering-wheel on her.”
“What time did you part from Constable Clifford … yesterday?” Bony inquired, and the mechanic said that it had been about one o’clock.
Half an hour later Irwin pointed out the turn-off track negotiating Black Range to reach the Breen homestead, and twenty minutes later they came to the branch track to the Wallace homestead. At this point, the Wallace homestead was fifteen miles eastward from Black Range, and because Clifford might pass by on his way back to the settlement when they were visiting the Wallaces, Bony wrote a note and tied it to a stick he thrust into the ground.
The side track wound over low range hills and then followed a narrow and verdant valley where the going was much easier. The homestead could be seen from three miles away, white squares against the foot of a coffee-coloured mountain.
Eventually, dogs came to escort the utility to the main house with its several spindly windmills providing electric light and power. Aboriginal children stood at the entrance to a small shed, and a white man left two others who were helping him with a truck repair job. Then Bony was being introduced to Jack Wallace, a nuggetty man in his early thirties. Flat, slaty-eyes summed him up and a soft voice acknowledged the introduction. Irwin said:
“Did you hear about Stenhouse, Jack?”
“Yes. Heard about it in last night’s news. Had it coming to him. Had lunch yet?”
“Yes, thanks,” replied Irwin. Strolling to the house, Bony put a question:
“Sent all your fats to Wyndham this season, Mr Wallace?”
“Oh yes, Inspector. Dispatched t
he last mob a month ago.”
“D’you employ independent drovers?”
“Yes. This year we did.”
Mrs Wallace stood on the veranda, a small woman with grey hair and large brown eyes hiding nothing.
“Why, Constable Irwin!” she cried with evident pleasure. “How do you do!”
Stooping to take her hand he told her it was surely but yesterday and not three years, since they had last met. She smiled warmly at Bony, who expressed pleasure at the meeting and said they hadn’t forgotten to bring the mail.
“Come along and see Father,” she said, her voice bird-like in its clarity. “He’s on the other veranda, in the sunshine. Poor dear, he does suffer.”
The invalid was reclining in a long wicker-chair, a man having a pointed grey beard and alert grey eyes. His welcome to Irwin was genuine. With Bony he was more reserved, and apologized for not getting up.
“Under the circumstances,” Bony said, “I hate to touch on a subject I know will hurt you. We are looking into the death of Constable Stenhouse, and I am really regretful that we’re here on duty, as it were, in view of your warm welcome. That we do appreciate.”
“I’m sure no one here knows anything about it, Inspector,” the elder Wallace returned quickly. “We are not vengeful folk, so don’t think we are less pleased to see you. Candidly, we have no sorrow in our hearts that Stenhouse was killed, and we’re not so foolish as to condemn all policemen for the wrongs done our daughter by one. We shall be glad to help, if possible, to clear up the matter. That’s so, Jack?”
Jack Wallace agreed with obvious reluctance. Mrs Wallace said something about afternoon tea and withdrew a little hastily. A cow bellowed in the near distance and a lubra’s voice drifted round the corner of the house. Ignoring the implication behind the question directed to the son, Bony said suavely:
“We have to tackle these problems with detachment from personal opinions and feelings, Mr Wallace. A man has been murdered, and our task is to locate and apprehend the murderer. Very often our investigation is similar to a jigsaw puzzle, and we find one piece here and another somewhere else. Would you be kind enough to reply to a few questions?”
“As many as you ask, Inspector.”
“Thanks. I’ll be as brief as possible. Stenhouse was found dead in his jeep on the 17th. We know where he was up to the early morning of the 14th, and we are trying to ascertain what happened between those times. Did he call here?”
“No,” replied Wallace senior. “He wouldn’t come here.”
“Then let us go back to the 14th … yesterday week. What station work was going on that day?”
The old man looked at his son. Jack Wallace was cool and steady. He took time before answering.
“Nothing out of the way. A couple of the hands helped me repair the homestead stockyards.”
“The 15th?”
“Same thing, and the next day, too.”
“What of the following day, the 17th?”
“That day I took three of the men out on a truck to repair the windmill at Deep Well,” replied Jack Wallace. “Left about nine and got home about six in the evening. I can account for all my movements.”
“Naturally,” agreed Bony. “I’m really less interested in your personal movements during this period than by the station work in general as it concerns your men. No one of them reported having seen Jacky Musgrave, I suppose?”
Bony detected the relief this question gave to the elder Wallace.
“Been waiting for you to come round to the tracker,” he said. “He musta done it, and he’d take care not to be sighted, even by a station black. He’d be a stranger up in these parts, and our blacks wouldn’t have any truck with a wild Musgrave man.”
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t. This Deep Well … what direction does it lie from here?”
“East. Eleven miles east,” answered Jack Wallace.
“On that day, can you remember observing any smoke signals? I’d like you to be sure about this.”
“No, I didn’t notice any smokes. Might have been, of course. So used to seeing smokes that I wouldn’t take particular notice of them on any one day.”
The invalid picked one of a dozen rolled cigarettes from a small box, and they were made so perfectly that Bony was confident Mrs Wallace was the maker. The son applied the match, and the old man thanked him. The father was more perturbed by this visit than was the son, and Bony wondered to what extent the father could corroborate the son’s replies to the interrogation. In view of the invalid’s imprisonment, it might well be not at all, and, were that so, Jack Wallace could have been on the Wyndham road when he said he was repairing the stockyards.
“Blacks always sending up smoke signals,” the old man said. “Used to wonder what they did it for. More than once I tried to find out what they meant, but nary a black-fellow would explain. I can’t see any connexion between the shooting of Stenhouse and smoke signals. If it had been Jacky Musgrave who’d been shot, yes. All the tribes in the country would then work overtime sending up smokes. Anyway, our blacks had nothing to do with the shooting. As Jack said, they were all here in camp at the time it must have been done.”
“You won’t mind if I talk with them later?”
“Course not, Inspector. You’ll find ’em tame enough.”
The inevitable afternoon tea arrived on a tray carried by Mrs. Wallace, who wanted to know how Irwin’s wife and family were ‘coming along’. Bony caught her uneasy glances at her son, and his reading of them was that she, like her husband, was troubled about him. Not a big man, he could be ruthless, or Bony was a novice in estimating character.
Jack Wallace evinced no reluctance in taking Bony to the blacks’ camp, a line of tin-and-hessian humpies along the bank of a waterless creek. He called three men, and told Bony their names. That of an elderly, gaunt man was Lofty. The other two were youths, being known as Brownie and Mike.
“You bin see-up Jacky Musgrave?” asked Bony, easily and without authoritative tone.
A flicker deep in black eyes directed beyond the questioner. Low laughter as though the idea was even humorous. A faint hiss of held breathing from Brownie. That was all to indicate the curtain that fell between them and Bony. Knowing that one would have to reply, the elderly man did so.
“No. Jacky Musgrave no time come here.”
They were obviously nervous. All the camp would know that Constable Irwin was at the house, and without doubt Wallace would have passed on the news given by the radio that Stenhouse had been found shot dead and his tracker missing. Bony moved so that he could observe Jack Wallace as well, and when he asked his next question he was confident that from Deep Well they could have seen beyond Black Range the signals made by the blacks … those same signals noted by Sam Laidlaw.
“You bin go with Mr Wallace to Deep Well … fix windmill?”
This one was easy and brought eager affirmation.
“What them smokes bin tell you, eh? You know, wild black feller smokes?”
Puzzlement. Faint distress occasioned by such unfortunate ignorance. The scuffling of bare feet. Lofty, the spokesman appointed by age, said:
“Them wild-feller blacks. No know-um their smokes.”
Bony accepted defeat and turned away, Wallace stepping beside him. He walked twenty paces and abruptly spun about and went back to the three men.
“I bin tell you what them smokes say, eh?” he said, and they were caught in the web of his blazing eyes. “Them smokes bin tell-um Jack Musgrave he bin come horse-feller, eh?”
The strain snapped. The curtain was lifted. Heads were shaken, and feet scuffled. Lofty burst out with:
“No fear, boss. Them smokes bin tell-um policeman him bin shot.”
“And you no tell-um Mr Wallace?”
“Too right! Brownie, him bin tell-um Jack Boss when we bin fix-um mill.”
Bony nodded, turned away to Jack Wallace, who had been waiting for him. When walking to Irwin, who was talking with Mrs Wallace at the ut
ility, he said:
“So you knew of those smokes sent up by those western blacks?”
Wallace did not speak.
“Your men saw them when they were working with you at Deep Well. They told you what they meant.”
Wallace stopped and barred Bony’s progress. His face was wooden, and his slaty eyes were singularly void of expression.
“So what?” he asked softly. “You’ve come to the wrong place for help to find who killed Stenhouse.”
Chapter Eleven
Irresistible Forces
CONSTABLE CLIFFORD, with Irwin’s two trackers, was waiting in the jeep at the road junction. Young, dark, physically compact, he was the antithesis of the man who was thoroughly enjoying being Bony’s chauffeur. He spoke formally:
“As ordered, sir, I proceeded towards Wyndham after giving the boys every opportunity to back track the jeep and pick up Jacky Musgrave’s tracks. They could find nothing, and they’re both properly mystified.”
“Sidetracks?”
“Examined every one of them between here and forty miles off Wyndham. I went out to see Alverston, and he says he saw nothing of Stenhouse after seeing him at Agar’s. He met no one on the road excepting that party of photographers coming south.”
“Did he see the Breens?” pressed Bony. “Relax, man.”
“Thank you, sir. No, Alverston didn’t see the Breens. He worked it out that when he met the photographers, the Breens and their cattle hadn’t reached the Wyndham road, and probably had only that morning left their cutting-out camp. We discussed those smokes Sam Laidlaw saw, and because Alverston’s homestead is tucked hard against a mountain it wasn’t possible for anyone there to have seen them.”
To Irwin’s growing amazement, Bony persisted in this subject of smoke signals.
“Have you seen any smokes since leaving Agar’s?”
Clifford had seen smoke signals early that morning. He was then north of the battlemented terminus of Black Range, called McDonald’s Stand. These smokes were far to the west.
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