He decided to reverse his approach to Peter Petersen, and he strode to the office and phoned Lucas. Having said where Petersen was to be found, he asked the policeman if he could go there.
“Yes, the track’s above flood level,” replied Lucas. “Doesn’t touch the river anywhere. I could go out this morning.”
“I need to know when Petersen left the Mira shed, and the exact route he took almost step by step. I want to know who he met, if anyone, and if he passed the utility, and the time. He owns a thirty-two revolver, and he told Vosper he had had no cartridges for it for over a year. Take the revolver, fire bullets from it and send them to Ballistics by the best route open to you. Meanwhile don’t charge him with possession. Tell him so. Use him gently. It could pay.”
“All right, I’ll go to it,” replied Lucas. “I was coming to checking the Vospers’ selection. There’s two others for your list, or rather a correction. I reported yesterday that Champion and Miner Smith were seen fishing two miles above Murrimundi homestead. I’ve learned subsequently that they were camped in the hut at the Murrimundi wool-scour plant on the night in question.”
“Wait, please,” Bony snapped, and referred to his map. On the line again, he asked, “Where is the man Smith now?”
“Here in town, or was an hour ago.”
“Good! Question him before going to Vospers’. Who else was camped at that scour? Who did he see that day? Be crafty, Lucas. Much could depend on his information.”
“I get it, Bony. I’ll ring you back.”
Bony stepped to the veranda and sat on an old chair, from which vantage he could see the levee beyond the pumpingplant, see it extending past the men’s quarters. The bulldozer was pushing earth against the levee, and men with shovels were tossing it to the top, where other men were spreading and tramping it hard.
Mrs Cosgrove came up the steps, and he offered the chair to her.
“I saw you sitting here, Bony, and I wish to tell you I was talking with Superintendent Macey. Just gossiping, you know. He asked if you had made any progress. Have you?”
“The progress made is about the distance between the point where a jumping ant takes off and the point of its landing.” He smiled a trifle grimly. “I assume that Macey told you that my superiors are becoming impatient.”
“He implied it, and he seemed resigned about it.”
“I am being tempted by this river to be impatient, too, Mrs Cosgrove. It has driven me from the scene of the crime. It has frustrated me in several ways. However, the man wanted could be working on that levee this morning.”
“Oh! If he is, you will be arresting him?”
“Not till the flood recedes and leaves Mira safe. You’ll want his labour, I’m sure.”
“Of course we shall. Mac sent Ray off to bring in the outside men. We’ll need every man possible.”
“Then you may count on me, although my hands are very soft. Ah! I’m expecting a call.”
It was Lucas reporting.
“Smith says he and Champion were camped at the scour the day before Lush vanished, the day he did vanish and the following day. He gave me no reason to doubt that during their stay they saw no one. In case you don’t know, the place is inside a bend and almost a mile off the road. Any good?”
“Offers a lead, Lucas. Thanks. Now for Petersen, please.”
Mrs Cosgrove smiled when he joined her to sit on the floor of the veranda and employ his fingers with tobacco and paper.
“So you’ve been offered a lead?” she said.
“Eavesdropper,” he said with a smile.
“Shameless, Bony. You know, I think women would be better detectives than men. They are more unscrupulous.”
“Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed. “I would be unemployed.”
“Well, come along in for morning tea, and we can argue the pros and cons. Yes! When I came out from England I disapproved strongly of this incessant tea-drinking, but I became another slave to it. Some Americans visited us and were horrified by the cups of tea we drank throughout the day. My husband teasingly told them we were out of coffee, and they told us we were savages. We didn’t even provide drinking water on the table. That was my husband’s fault. Water! A man wasn’t a sheep or a horse, he said.”
“They, and you when you first came, must have found our Australian ways often disconcerting,” Bony commented. “Still, we have our good points. We never run, but always arrive.”
Jill Madden was in the breakfast-room, and she poured the tea. This morning she was almost vivacious.
“I saw you coming, and brought the smoko as Emma is busy,” she said. “I’ve been down to the river. It looks ... it looks grand, I think. I wonder if it’ll enter home.”
“It’s never done so before,” Mrs Cosgrove said, and to Bony it appeared of no importance to Jill if it did. He opened the subject of Petersen.
“Poor old chap, he often worked here,” said Mrs Cosgrove. “Hearing his blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil reminded me of home when I stayed with relatives in a small Sussex village. I haven’t seen him for months.”
“He’s working for the Vospers,” Bony said. Mrs Cosgrove raised her brows. “I’ve been using your telephone when you were not sitting on the veranda.”
“Mercy! The mind never sleeps!”
“I’ve learned that he has a daughter who is very ill, and needs money. Has he a daughter?”
“Of course. She and her husband were once employed here.”
“Can you remember when you last saw him, Jill?”
“He hasn’t come to our place for months,” she replied.
“Can you tell me what kind of a man he is? Manner, not appearance?”
“Oh, Petersen’s harmless. Always polite. Always grateful for what Mother gave him.”
“Is he a suspect, Bony?” asked Mrs Cosgrove. Bony smiled mysteriously. “You policemen! I suppose it’s the way you are trained.”
“We were taught very early to impress people with knowing far more than we do. All great men conceal ignorance beneath an easy smile. And now, if you will permit, I’d like to look at the river and meditate.”
“And I have letters to write,” his hostess declared. “Ray will be taking the mail down to Murrimundi this afternoon.”
“Then I will write to my wife. She worries if I don’t report regularly.”
Bony wrote:
Sweetheart!
As always you are seldom excluded from my thoughts, and should I be unable to write for a few weeks be assured it will be due to the Darling, which is flowing strongly, and will soon become a giant. The Darling River is not always a darling. As at present it is a ponderous Goliath, and this giant is the thing with which I am in conflict. Hitherto the opposing force has been human in weaknesses which, with the aid of time, I have been able to overcome.
Now time has deserted me, and the river has submerged the infinite pieces of the story I began to read and could not progress beyond the second chapter. It promised to be a most interesting story, too. It began with a bullet through a door, the door broken by an axe, and the axe lying on the ground outside. The character thought to be the axe-wielder was known to be a violent man, much disliked by everybody, and the circumstances seemed to indicate temporary retirement into the bush with a supply of liquor. Then the wife he had attacked died, and it became a case of homicide. Efforts by others to find him matched my own frustration when tracking him. Then he turned up dead in the rising river with a bullet hole in his head, and this bullet was subsequently proved not to have been fired through the door.
By now you will be exasperated, not because you are minus our inherited attribute of patience, but with me for teasing your curiosity, which we also inherited.
Dear Marie, be not concerned about me. This homestead is commodious and occupies the centre of a luscious garden. The owner is a Mrs Cosgrove, an English woman of education and some charm, and of discernment concerning me. Her son, Ray, is very like our little Ed, who would be a year or two older. He is in
love with the daughter of the dead woman, and I wish we had a daughter like her.
However, we must both continue to be grateful for our children. When Little Ed chooses to marry, I could retire and we could build a house on this beautiful river, and go on walkabouts, and recall all the struggles and all the little triumphs we have shared since that time I pinched your bottom until you said yes to the missioner who married us. I can hear you giggle when you read this, but you were then too frightened to giggle. Admit it.
I shall be sending you messages through the Superintendent at Bourke, and if they are stiff in substance read my continuing love between the lines, between the words, and between every letter. You have been a sailor’s wife for forty years, and to you I owe all that I have become.
Au revoir, Sweetheart,
Your devoted Bony.
Chapter Twenty-five
Mrs Cosgrove Is Baffled
WHEN Ray Cosgrove returned with the additional men, others filled up the last road-cut in the levee. These three stockmen were happy men, for they had been living lonely lives and they entered now a period of community life well worth the physical labour they were called to. They were unmercifully chaffed for having been brought off their horses to manhandle a shovel.
Bony borrowed a horse and rode with Ray down to the point opposite the Murrimundi homestead. Here both banks were high and the river raced with urgent speed. Ray fired the rifle he had brought to attract the attention of the homestead. A man appeared from among the cluster of date-palms shielding the house, and they could hear him shouting, although they were unable to distinguish the words. Another man joined him, and together they came to a high gum from which cables stretched to the one under which Bony and Ray waited.
The first man climbed a ladder with the blue mail-bag. He disappeared among the branches, and a moment later the second man began to turn a wheel and the first appeared sitting on a sling and being drawn across the river.
Having descended to be greeted by Ray and introduced to Bony, his first question was, “How’s your flood coming?”
“Pretty good, John. How’s yours?” replied Ray.
“Getting lusty.” He was perhaps thirty. The sun had so weathered his face that his complexion was darker than Bony’s. “Going to be a beaut this time. You’re working on your levee, I bet.”
“Working! We’re slaving on her. You’re lucky.”
“Who have you got in off the track?” asked the other, and Ray listed them. “You have some help, then. Lucas has been asking about what no-hopers we have. None at the moment, and don’t need ’em.”
“Do many of them make camp at your old wool-scouring site?” Bony asked, and was told the place wasn’t favoured, being off a direct line from one station kitchen to another.
“The last fellers to camp there were Miner Smith, and Champion, who you got now at Mira.”
“Smith says they were camped at the scour the day before Lush disappeared, the same day and day after. Have you any reason to doubt that?”
“Can’t say I have. Any reason for Smith to lie about it?”
“He says, further, that during their stay they saw no other swagmen. I am now testing that. How far east from the opposite bank is the track on that side?”
“A couple of miles. You came down on it. I’ll tell you what. I think the boss sent two men with a dray to get something at the scour that day Lush left his utility. I could find out from them who was there: if Smith is telling lies or not.”
“How fortunate! Do so, please. How soon can you let me have the information?”
“About fifteen minutes after I take your mail to the office. Well, see you later. Give my compliments to Jill, Ray, and tell her we’re sorry about her mother, and hope like hell that the feller who bashed her will soon be caught.”
Winking at Bony, he climbed the ladder and soon was being drawn back over the river.
“What does he do?” Bony asked.
“Keeps the books. Runs the store. Murrimundi’s six times larger than Mira, but it has a lot of useless land. You ever done accounting? I tried, but couldn’t stand it.”
The youthful book-keeper appeared and eventually crossed again.
“I saw those fellers,” he said. “They say they were loading with old iron about three in the afternoon when Champion and Miner Smith came from fishing in a hole up river. It was the day Lush left his utility. Our fellers both say they saw no other swagmen and no signs of any others being there. I asked if they had gone into the old hut, and one said he had, and even Smith and his mate hadn’t actually camped in it. So Smith must be speaking the truth.”
“Thank you very much,” Bony said warmly. “Good of you to co-operate. It was just a little point I wanted to clear up.”
“No trouble, Inspector. Any time. Now I’ll get back as the boss is in the office, and we all know what bosses are.”
Riding again, Bony was less depressed than he had been when writing to Marie, who, also being of the two races, was so close to him. When they were half-way home Ray asked whether he was getting places, and Bony gave him the same mysterious smile he had given Mrs Cosgrove.
Coming down-river they had crossed one of several shallow creeks which now, on the return to Mira, was running water from the river. The detour they were forced to take added several miles to the journey.
“Our place’ll be surrounded by morning,” Ray predicted. “There’s a creek that’s running uphill. It’ll fill a depression four miles across before the water will run out again into the river. The old Dad used to talk about it. Looks as though the river will reach the office veranda, and a couple of million ducks will be swimming in through the door.”
“It was like that when the Paroo came down in flood. I was there,” Bony said.
The sun was setting beyond the Mira mail-box when they arrived at the office with the inward mail, and the sky promised windless days and cold nights. Bony was glad of the fire in MacCurdle’s private room, and this evening he did not refuse the proffered drink.
“How are the men going, Mac?” asked Ray.
“Very well, I think, but not good enough for your mother.” The manager looked over the match held above his pipe. “Times have changed, even here in Australia. No one works as hard and for as little as our grandfathers did. The way to handle a man in this situation isn’t to tut-tut when he leans on a shovel to wait until the first critical moment and then raise his bonus. He’ll work harder than his grandfather if he’s paid high enough.”
“I agree, Mac, but mother is mother. What about chaining her to a wall so she can’t go out with the men?”
“’Tis not a moment for facetiousness,” the Scotsman said, and Bony stepped into the breach.
“Permit me to approach Mrs Cosgrove. Now that could be Lucas wanting me.”
Ray, who took the call, said it was, and Lucas made his report.
“I talked to Petersen, Bony, and took the revolver from him. He made no fuss about it. It wasn’t loaded, and I searched him and went through his swag for cartridges and found none. I asked why he carried the weapon, and he said just to frighten anyone, like a young feller who bailed him up a few years ago and robbed him. I told him he could have the gun back after I’d poured lead into the muzzle, and he said it wasn’t any good anyway. It isn’t either. The trigger mechanism’s ruined. Seems he only carried it to frighten off attack.
“Well, he slept that night by the fire outside the Mira shed,” Lucas went on. “He was anxious to start work at the Vospers’ place and was on the move before sun-up. He saw no one about the homestead, but did see a man known as Bullocky Alec filling a bucket at the waterhole below The Brothers’ camp. He crossed the river and instead of following the bank made direct for the mail-boxes through Madman’s Bend.
“He was well into the bend when the sole of one of his old sandshoes came off, and he stopped to sew it on again with packing-needle and twine. He said he’d nearly finished the shoe when he heard a shot from the direction of the boxes.
I went into this shot business, and he said it sounded like a twenty-two rifle, but admitted that the wind was rising and could have reduced the effect.
“When I got down to distance and time, he came out with the information that while on the job he thought he might as well attend to the other shoe, which was also in bad shape. He thinks he was about half-way through the bend when he heard the shot, that the second shoe occupied him half an hour, and it would be about half an hour to come out of the bend at the utility.”
“Did you test him on the likelihood of the shot having been fired at Madden’s homestead?” asked Bony.
“Yes, and he seemed certain it came from the boxes. He put the time as seven-thirty. The wind strength would have prevented anyone at Mira hearing the report, and the noise in the trees at Madden’s place would prevent anyone there from hearing it.”
“Seems logical, Lucas. Continue with Petersen.”
“According to Petersen there was no one in or near the ute. He didn’t know who owned it, and said he wasn’t interested. He cut across country to pick up the track from Madden’s to Vospers’, boiled his billy at a well called Blackman, and reached Vospers’ in time to be given lunch.”
“Better obtain instructions from the Super about the disposal of the weapon, Lucas,” Bony said. “And you might be able to fire it by thumbing the hammer. If so, get specimens of bullets, and hold them for checking. Thanks a lot. Oh, and check on the man called Bullocky Alec. It might not have been him Petersen thinks he saw.”
It was as Cosgrove predicted, for the following morning the water surrounded the homestead. During the night the river had risen five feet and now the trees bordering Madman’s Bend appeared to be absurdly stunted, and ashamed of it.
Bony accompanied MacCurdle, who drove a jeep to inspect the work done on the levee. He stared at the reddish water covering the flats behind the protected area. The track to the back end of the run, the one by which he and Ray had gone for the mail, and the road to Bourke, on this side, were all submerged; the nearest pieces of dry land were the isolated salmon pink sand-dunes marking the verge of the higher plain country.
Madman’s Bend Page 17