“Never trust the river,” he said. “We crossed over a good two hours before she came down. Were you lookin’ for Lush, too?”
“Trying to pick up his tracks. No go.”
“They reckon he fell into the hole by the boxes. Good job if he did.”
“Why so?” asked Bony, sitting on a vacant case and rolling a cigarette. They eyed his clothes, his shoes. A large, greying man replied for Mick.
“A flash, mean cove, Lush. A worker come up to be a squatter. Them sort are worse than the real squatters what will give a swagman a go. The Cosgroves’ll hand out a bit of tucker, but the likes of Lush wouldn’t give away the smell of an oil-rag. Won’t be no loss if he got himself drowned.”
For a little while they discussed William Lush’s shortcomings, and from the general conversation Bony learned that the missing man came from Cunnamulla, just over the border in Queensland.
“How long ago would that be?” he asked, and was told away back in ’fifty-five, an additional item of information being added by a man with stiffly upright white hair and clipped white moustache: “Lush’s father was the publican at the Black Cockatoo. Old Lush took a dose of cyanide in ’fifty-seven, so someone told me. Could have been that young Bill tickled the till too much. He managed a selection for his old man after he left school.”
Bony did not divert the conversation from pubs and publicans, which engrossed the company for twenty minutes, but when he stood to leave a man asked what job he had on Mira.
“I’m staying on holiday,” he replied, and laughed. “Already been asked if I could use a shovel or a bulldozer. Could have to use one or other at that, by all accounts of the coming flood.”
“Might want us to work?” a little runt of a man asked in broad West Country accent.
“Too right, Jacko. You better get going,” he was advised, amid general laughter.
Bony was hoping to withdraw without disclosing his occupation—not that it was important—but Mick the Warder tackled him.
“What d’you do for a crust?”
“I’m a Queensland detective inspector,” he replied. “As I told you, on holiday.”
The gathering froze into silent stares, and the silence was broken by the rotund mate of Dead March Harry.
“Look us over, Inspector. See our crimes on every dial. Look at poor Old Jacko. Got a record as long as your arm. Look at me. Bumped off more blokes than you got fingers to your hands. Anyway, you did us a good turn yesterday.”
“I don’t agree. I would have gone after your mate if you hadn’t turned up, knowing about the flood. Well, see you all some time.”
“You will. Better stay here and work, if we have to, than get caught some place without nothing to eat and smoke.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bony Charms Mrs Cosgrove
FOR AN hour Bony rubber-necked the servicing of the machinery, and when the morning smoko gong was sounded he accompanied Vickory.
“At the shearing-shed camp I found eight men. Some time later would you see if the three camped on the other side of the river are among them?” he requested.
“Yes, they’re there,” Vickory said. “I looked the lot over first thing.”
“I suppose all the swagmen and others on the river will now be congregating at safe station homesteads?”
“All barring the hundred per cent ratbags. They’ll manage on bardee grubs and goannas and things.”
“Men like Dead March Harry?”
“Oh, he’s not nutty all the time. His mate looks after him. They work on Mira now and then. Harry was a big-gun shearer with the blades, and then with the machines before the war. Quite a handy man on the place, but too unreliable unless watched. Which is why Mick the Warder has to be employed with him. There’s no knowing when he’ll go into his Dead March act.”
“Then Mira will have a labour pool?”
Vickory smiled a little sourly, saying, “That’s so.”
“Could you supply me with the names they answer to?”
The overseer gave the names, which Bony noted on the back of a letter. Later Bony saw the overseer proceed to a small cottage where clothes hung on a line, and, some of the items being feminine, he guessed that Vickory lived there with his wife. He was sure of it when a small child came round the house to meet Vickory and be taken up.
The office being open, Bony entered and found Mrs Cosgrove working on a typewriter; he would have withdrawn had she not called to him to stay.
“You have been to see the river, I suppose. Looks nasty, doesn’t it? Glad you came. I’ve been wanting to talk with you.”
She was wearing a gingham house frock, and now her eyes were a darker grey than when he had seen them in the drawing-room the previous evening. Her voice was harder, too.
“Firstly, what can we do for you to make you comfortable?”
“Nothing whatsoever. Your hospitality is perfect. However, there is something you might be able to do for me. Off the outside office—I assume this is the inner one—I observed another, a small room. Might I use that? You see, I may have to interview men and obtain statements from them.”
“Oh, certainly, Inspector. It would be more convenient for everyone than having them in the house. It’s furnished. In fact, Mr MacCurdle uses it for relaxation.”
“Thank you. I’ll try to avoid inconveniencing Mr Mac-Curdle.”
Mrs Cosgrove smiled, and for the first time Bony saw a woman rather than one wearing a male mask. He found himself being studied, and Mrs Cosgrove, realizing what she was doing, bit her under-lip and hastened to explain.
“I’m being rude, Inspector. Forgive me. You see, Superintendent Macey and his wife have been close friends of mine for several years. We gossiped about you the other day. He told me of your remarkable career, and I’ve been finding it difficult to associate one of your abilities with you in person. My understanding, through plays and novels, of police inspectors has been to build them into a class widely apart from ordinary men. There I go again. Making another faux pas,”
“But you don’t, I assure you. Police inspectors are a class apart from ordinary men. I know. I’ve associated with them for several decades. They know everything. They command expert organizations. And often they fail. It happens, because I make no claim, that I am an ordinary man, and nothing like an inspector in a police force. You should hear what my Chief Commissioner says about me as a policeman.”
Mrs Cosgrove rather liked the beaming smile; the reserve with which she had met him, and which had continued till then, melted away. His eyes opened, and she was caught in the net which had ensnared so many. It was only for a moment, and she was unsure that she had felt what she thought she had experienced.
“I can recall the early period of my career,” he was saying, “when I was very conceited and given to boasting. Then I came to understand that one’s attributes are not things one has manufactured oneself, but inherited gifts. I inherited certain gifts from my father, and also I’ve inherited gifts from my mother and her race. Now inspectors are what we may call lop-sided. What attributes they possess have been handed down to them by only one race. Thus, by comparison with me, they are placed at a great disadvantage.”
“Inspector Bonaparte, you are making fun of me.”
“I may be exaggerating just a little, but I am not making fun,” he said, laughter about his mobile mouth. “Now where is this tête à tête taking us? Did we not begin by discussing police inspectors? Yes, we did, I remember. Let us be frank. You are mystified by my official rank, and I believe you would in future find no difficulty in clarifying your foggy picture of your guest could you keep in mind what I’ve said about inspectors and forget I am one. All my friends call me Bony. Could we not be friends?”
Mrs Cosgrove burst into laughter, and Bony said as though pained, “Now you are making fun of me.”
“But I’m not. I am only beginning to understand what Tom Macey said of you. Yes, we are going to be friends. But please don’t expect me to understand you all at once. This so
unds like Ray and Mac returning, and it’s time for morning tea.”
Over the teacups and buttered scones Ray and the manager gave Mrs Cosgrove their report on the levee, enumerating points at which work should begin; she produced a sheet on which she had typed the river heights at numerous points upstream during the major flood of 1925, and, against these figures, river levels she had obtained that morning. Her son and MacCurdle examined the data, and the younger man agreed with the manager when he said that the present threat might not be as great as it had been in that far past year.
“What you think could be so,” she said briskly. “My husband told me that the greatest danger from the river was at the section opposite the reach to the mail-boxes, because if the wind blows a gale from the west it creates waves to pound against the levee as well as to raise the mean height of the water.”
The subject occupied them for some time; when they had finished Bony asked Raymond Cosgrove to accompany him to his ‘office’.
“Your mother has kindly granted me the use of this room, Ray,” he explained after closing the door. “There are matters I want to clarify, and I am sure you can assist me. We’ll do it by question and answer, and put the result into a form of statement.”
“Go ahead, old pard.” Cosgrove smiled, then frowned. “But are you still keeping dark what Jill said about shooting through the door, and her burning it?”
“Certainly. I trust you haven’t mentioned it to anyone? Actually you should not have been present. I permitted it because I felt that you thought a great deal of Jill.”
“I do, too. All right, let me help as much as I can.”
“Give the average number of trips, say, covering this month, you made to the mail-box.”
It pleased Bony that Cosgrove was cautious, for it proved his earnestness.
“Six days a week: I’d say I took the mail four days a week. Old Mac likes the walk now and then.”
“Thank you. Now relax and cast your mind back to the trip you made when you discovered Lush’s utility. What time was it when you left here?”
“For the downward mail it’s never later than a quarter past eleven. That gives spare time to meet the mail.”
“That morning you would pass along the garden fence, cross the billabong and so gain the river bank and follow that? Right?” Raymond nodded. “Other than men working normally, did you see anyone, meet anyone?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anything unusual?”
“No, I can’t say that I did.”
“So, having come opposite the boxes, you went down the easier slope to the sand spit, skirted the waterhole and climbed up the opposite bank. You then saw the utility?”
“I saw it before I made the crossing.”
“On reaching the boxes, just what did you do?”
“I remember standing at the box and looking round for Lush. There was no sign of him, and I thought he must have run out of juice and walked on home. Only half a mile or less. Then I remembered it was gone half past eleven, and reckoned he must be suffering from a bender, or was too damn tired to bring petrol to get the ute home. That made me check the dash gauge by switching the ignition. The tank was empty.”
“Did you think to look about for tracks?”
“What d’you think? There’s the ute and there’s Lush’s home. Anyway, it was a windy day, and the ground there is of fine tilth, easily blown off by the wind. No, I never thought to track.”
“You said, I think, that the headlights were not on. What did you do after checking the petrol tank? Think hard.”
“Well, I saw the beer carton on the seat, and I reached in to see what it contained, and there was nothing. That surprised me somewhat because it wouldn’t have been there unless it had contained bottles. Then I argued that Lush had transferred the bottles to a sack he’d probably have in the back to save his trousers if he had to make a wheel change, and it would be easier carrying the bottles home in a bag than in the carton. I was certain this was what he’d done because the passenger door wasn’t shut.”
“The door nearest the empty carton?”
“That’s it, Bony.” After further urging Cosgrove said, “When young Tolley came with the mail car I gave him our bag and took over the inward one. To save him getting out, he asked me to get the Madden bag, and I went there and found the box empty. Tolley had passengers, and he and I talked about the ute, and about Lush having gone home and stayed there.”
“Did the driver mention having met a car or truck before arriving at the boxes that morning?”
“No. Why?”
“On present knowledge you were the first person to see the utility after Lush abandoned it. That was at eleven-forty, or forty-five. Quite late in the day.”
“I see the drift, Inspector. But there could have been a car or something which came south before I got to the boxes and met the mail car.”
“I have considered the possibility,” Bony gravely admitted.
“I am interested in what became of six bottles of beer and three bottles of whisky known to have been in the carton when Lush left White Bend. Let us now examine your theory of what happened to Lush, expressed that morning you came to Mrs Madden’s house and found me there. You said you thought that Lush had fallen over the cliff. Subsequently, Vickory told me he thought Lush had lost his temper with the utility, pulled a leg off the mail-box and attacked the vehicle. The leg broke and he rushed for another, missed the box in the dark and so ran over the cliff. Had you mentioned your theory to Vickory?”
“Yes, the same day.”
“Didn’t you see that one of the box legs was missing?”
“No. I was too interested in the ute.”
“Didn’t you notice a piece of the box leg lying on the front guard?”
“I don’t remember seeing it. If I did it had no significance for me.”
“What d’you think of Vickory’s theory?”
“It could have happened, but we know it didn’t happen when the ute blew out on him, but could have when he went back to it with petrol.”
Bony paused in the interrogation while he rolled a cigarette. Then he said, “I would be inclined to agree with Vickory were it not impossible for Lush to take petrol to the utility in his pocket. He must have taken petrol in a can, and the can would have been with or near the abandoned vehicle. It wasn’t.”
Chapter Fourteen
Facts Are Lacking
WHEN BONY again saw the river he could not tell by how much it had risen since early that morning. It bore much less flotsam, however, and the boiling action over the great hole at this Mira bend was much reduced. Its speed was about the same, but, as he had been informed, it would gradually become slower as the lakes and billabongs and creeks lower down filled, and the general course would be broadened at places for miles.
Sitting on the levee, he watched the Gutter of Australia in process of becoming unrecognizable as a river. He noticed how at the edge of the bank above the bend the current tended to flow in reverse to the main stream and, watching a piece of wood, saw that the reverse current there was distinctly strong. Ray Cosgrove had not been wrong in saying that against a fast river it wasn’t hard to row a boat upstream to the mail-boxes by keeping close to the bank.
A beautiful river, Bony thought. A unique river indeed. A river with a personality that captivated men like Dead March Harry and his friend Mick the Warder, and those others camped at the shearing-shed. A kindly river, offering so much in wood for the camp fire, in shade from the sun, in fish for the hungry. The ugly bend country was at odds with it, outside the pale marked by the avenue of stately and ancient redgums nearly two thousand miles in length.
A tractor engine roared in the direction of the machinery shed, and Bony remembered that he was supposed to be working and not mooning and crooning over the Darling River. The wind was lower today, and its subdued singing in the trees was the lullaby accompanying an action scene of nature which had strange effects. Bony wanted to lie full length in
a boat and go drifting on and on watching the trees flow by.
Sauntering on the top of the levee, he skirted the shallow billabong and so came to the gate at the lower end of the garden. Here he found thriving citrus trees and rows of grapevines, and in a canegrass summer house he found Jill Madden with her sewing-basket.
“May I sit with you?” he asked, and she regarded him solemnly with her large black eyes until her mouth broke into a hesitant smile.
“Mrs Cosgrove said this is her ‘thinking house’, and that I could come here when I wanted to think and be quiet.”
“In that case I won’t disturb you,” he said, and made to withdraw.
“Oh, don’t go, Inspector. I didn’t mean that.”
“Thank you, Jill. Meditation is always helpful, but you should not have much to meditate upon. Your mother’s tragedy is yours, of course. But you’re a young woman, and all life is before you. Life is a journey, don’t you think? We set out, and eventually we arrive at the end of it: some sooner than others. And on the journey we meet other travellers and have our little adventures, and difficulties and triumphs. Have you decided what you are going to do—which road to take from the junction you have come to?”
The girl shook her head and bent her face over the material on which she was working. She said, “I’ve been living with Lush for years and years. Not really for years, though. Only two, since Father died. But it seems years and years, and living with Father was in a life before. I was sixteen when Father died, and I had to come home from school. I was nearing eighteen when Mother married Lush. As Mrs Cosgrove said, I’ve never had any playtime. Father was going to send me on a trip round the world, and instead I came home and milked the cows and tended the sheep and helped at the shearing. No, I haven’t decided what I am going to do.”
The girl was wearing a pretty blue frock, and while rolling a cigarette Bony recalled her as he had first seen her: in rough trousers and riding-boots and a faded blouse. She was speaking like a woman much older, but then two years with Lush would age any woman.
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