The Widows of Broome

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “What time do you wish to leave?” he asked.

  Bony turned to Mr. Dickenson, and the old man raised his white brows and considered.

  “Perhaps at eleven,” he said, tentatively, and Bony agreed.

  “Very well. I arrive at eleven,” predicted Johnno. “You pay now, eh? Yes, three pounds. No worry then going home about money. You enjoy yourselves. Money is hell. You sing and you laugh, and you leave everything to Johnno. And if you are a bit too, too merry, Johnno will put you to bed when you arrive.”

  “Fair enough, Johnno,” Bony said, chuckling, and from the veranda he turned and watched the car disappear into the scrub beyond the pall of red dust.

  The top-most branches of the creek gums were bedecked with rubies by the setting sun, and the remaining branches of a tall dead tree were outlined in white by cockatoos preparing to roost for the night. As this land is north of Capricorn, the twilight is ever short, and Bony wanted to view the hotel yard before the light failed. He made the universal excuse, and Mr. Dickenson led the way through the building to the rear door.

  It was a spacious yard of plain red earth enclosed with a paling fence. Along one side was the narrow building devoted to single bedrooms and invariably occupied by male guests. At the far end stood the garages and stables, whilst a divisional fence marked off a large plot of lawn bordering the creek along the third side. The yard was scrupulously tidy, and the entire establishment was indicative of good management.

  Swept of all litter though it was, the tracker would have had an easy task to indicate to his white superiors the footprints of Mrs. Cotton’s murderer had the man who had found her and all those in the hotel who had trooped out at his alarm not smothered them with their boots. On recrossing the yard, Bony found himself familiar with the scene from the sketch-plan prepared by Sergeant Sawtell.

  Here was the “Spot Marked X”, to reach which Mrs. Cotton must have come from one of two doors at the rear of the house. Her bedroom faced the lawn beyond the division fence, and midway in that fence was a small wicket gate on which was the word “Private”. She could have walked through that gate, or her body could have been carried through it by her murderer. If the latter, then why? If she had been killed in her room, then why was her body brought out to the yard and left there some time before eleven-thirty? The theory that she had walked in her sleep was the only reasonable explanation.

  No footprints left in the yard by the murderer, and no finger-prints of a man in her bedroom. Sawtell had been able to prove that. A half-caste girl was taking washing from the line beyond the division fence, and she was laughingly beseeching a small aboriginal boy not to turn the tap from which water would flow through a hose to the sprinkler. An aborigine trundled a barrow loaded with wood from the stack across the yard to the kitchen door, and he shouted to the girl to hurry with the clothes, and laughed at Bony as though it were a fine joke for the imp to play.

  There were only five men lounging in the main bar. Two oil-lamps suspended from the ceiling had recently been lit, their wicks not yet turned up. Behind the bar stood a giant screen composed of large pearl shells from which all the dross had been removed and the screen itself fashioned into the likeness of an oyster shell. Spaced between the bottles on the shelves were polished tortoise-shells, and framed pictures of luggers. In the angle stood a potted palm growing from the terrible teeth of a tiger shark resting on a small occasional table. The entire front of the bar could be raised on hinges, but tonight was bolted down to the main struts.

  “What’s it to be?” asked Mr. Dickenson, his poise sure in the possession of Bony’s “loan”. They breasted the bar. A young man came from the five men at the far end, and he appeared uncertain until he caught sight of the pound note the old man put down on the counter.

  “How’s things, Pop?” he enquired cheerfully after scrutinising Bony.

  “My name is Dickenson, young man,” returned Mr. Dickenson in the tone of one accustomed to authority. “Had I begotten sons, they would have been respectful to their elders.”

  “Suits me, if that’s how you feel about it,” countered the barman with no change of countenance. “Thought you didn’t get your quarterly interest until the thirtieth.”

  Mr. Dickenson flushed, and Bony softly interposed.

  “Wonder where I’ve seen you before. Could have been in Sydney.”

  The barman shook his head.

  “Never been in Sydney. Don’t recall having met you. What’s your name?”

  “Knapp. What’s yours?”

  “Blake.”

  The barman left them to attend to the other customers, and as Bony made some remark to his companion in vice, his mind was busy with its card index system.

  “He’s a swifty,” said Mr. Dickenson.

  “Face is familiar. Been here long?”

  “First time I’ve seen him behind the bar. He came in from the cattle country up north. Thanks, I will have another.”

  Bony nodded to the barman, who drifted back to them, pouring the drinks better than a novice. He said:

  “Might have seen me out in the Territory sometime.”

  “Likely enough,” agreed Bony. “I’ve been around.”

  “In for a spell?”

  Interest in the question was not evident in the light-grey eyes, and Bony almost succeeded in turning up the card in his mental index. He said casually “Just travelling,” and escaped explanation by the entry of two men into the bar.

  “Not very busy tonight,” he observed to Mr. Dickenson.

  “Not so far. Early yet. I’ve seen two hundred men drinking here, and ten people serving ’em as fast as they could. Great pub. Wish I had it.”

  “Who does own it?”

  Over the rim of his glass, Mr. Dickenson regarded Bony with a singular expression.

  “The late Mrs. Cotton’s estate owns the property,” he said. “You’ve heard of Black Mark, I’ll warrant. He’s the present licensee. Black Mark’s an out-and-out sinner, and out-and-out sinners don’t strangle people. They knock heads off when they’re in a rage, but they never close wind-pipes on a dark night. The feller who strangled Mrs. Cotton was no out-and-out sinner ... in the day-time.”

  “H’m. Seems sound psychology,” agreed Bony.

  “It is. Mrs. Cotton was a fine woman, and her husband was a fine man. Pity the police didn’t catch her murderer. The other one didn’t matter so much, but she was entitled to her life.”

  “What’s your personal opinion of the murderer’s race?” asked Bony. “White or black?”

  “White, for sure. I know nothing of the inside of these matters.” The old man regarded Bony steadily. “The Asiatic does run amok with a kris. He does slip a knife into you for some reason or other. He’ll even strangle ... but with a cord ... and for a reason. The police know more about these Broome murders than I do.”

  Mr. Dickenson drank his whisky, dabbed his lips with a tattered but clean silk handkerchief and called the barman. His nose appeared now somewhat less frost-bitten, and his eyes were decidedly brighter. Time passed pleasantly. The bar remained almost empty, and the barman was having an easy evening. His card would come up eventually. Mr. Dickenson said, conversationally:

  “I believe I saw the man who murdered Mrs. Eltham.”

  “Indeed!” Bony’s reaction was not unlike that of a cat on sighting a bird. The barman served the drinks, talking the while to a man about a herd of cattle on the move to the Wyndham Meatworks. When he had again left them Bony waited before being impelled to say: “You actually saw him?”

  “Yes. Not that night he strangled Mrs. Eltham. Another night. I mention it because through you I might assist the inspector.” Mr. Dickenson solemnly studied the magnificent shell screen. “I’m careful to avoid connection with trouble. You would not mention my name?”

  “No, certainly not.” Bony made a swift decision. “I’ll return your confidence. My business in Broome is to reveal the murderer of these two women.”

  “The thought did
occur to me. I like paying my debts. I owe a debt to Inspector Walters, and another to you, sir. What I am going to tell you, you understand, is from one friend to another. I am a peaceful man.”

  “The children, when they greet you, support that claim.”

  “I thank you. The night I believe I saw the man who killed Mrs. Eltham was last Tuesday week. I was then suffering from lack of funds, and also my heart was behaving badly. Angina pectoris, my doctor says. I find relief in whisky, but at this time I was out of funds. I’m afraid I am not like the squirrels who gather in summer the food to sustain them through the winter.”

  Bony nodded politely, and Mr. Dickenson lit a cigar and with the other end smoothed into place the beard about his mouth. Humour was faintly betrayed by his eyes when he continued:

  “Throughout my winters, when I am bereft of the wherewithal to ease a painful heart, I am compelled to have recourse to a practice which is really abhorrent to me. I have found that ten drops of battery acid in a small tumbler of water is efficacious, but this method of relief is restricted by suspicious people, with whom Broome is overcrowded. Anyway, I recalled that Mrs. Eltham possessed a car, and that the car was still within the garage at the rear of her house.

  “Having been on the premises but not, of course, inside the house, at the time of the murder ... with many other rubbernecks ... I had noted that the padlock securing the garage door was a common one, and I gambled on possessing a key which fitted. Accordingly, when the Perth detectives left Broome, I sneaked into the yard from the rear at about three in the morning. It was very dark, as a sea mist was thick over the town. I had filled a small bottle with the battery acid, and was congratulating myself on having obtained sufficient to last me a whole week, when I fancied I heard movement inside the house. You see, I had re-locked the garage door, and was passing along the path at the side of the house on my way to the front street. I was wearing rubber-soled canvas shoes for the occasion. And so, I sat me down with my back to the veranda base and waited to see who would come out, either by the back or the front door.”

  Mr. Dickenson ceased speaking while the barman refilled the glasses. The hair at the back of Bony’s head was stiff. Here, possibly, was the flaw in the picture for which he so patiently sought.

  “All I could make out of the man who left by the kitchen door and passed me by within a yard was the blurred outline of his figure against the sky. If my old eyes weren’t sharp, I wouldn’t have seen even that. Although I was squatting down, and the fellow passed so close, I’m sure he was a big man. He was wearing a felt hat, like a stockman’s. I saw one arm, and it seemed abnormally long. And that was all I did see.”

  “How did he walk?” asked Bony.

  “That I couldn’t see. As I said, I was sitting down like Brer Rabbit, and the night was dark.”

  “D’you think he was carrying anything ... large?”

  “I didn’t get that impression. He wasn’t a Comic Cuts burglar getting away with the swag, leastways, I don’t think so. He locked the kitchen door after him, because I went to find out. D’you know what I think?”

  “Tell me.”

  “If he wasn’t the murderer who returned for something he had forgotten, then he was one of the woman’s friends who went in to take some small thing which might prove his visits to the house.”

  “That was the night following the departure of the detectives?”

  “That was the night.”

  Despite examination of Mr. Dickenson, nothing further was brought out. Having given his information, the old man determinedly evaded adding to it. He drank like the gentleman he surely was, but his capacity astonished Bony.

  The evening mellowed, and Bony’s guest was in the mood to discuss the people of Broome in general, with additional biographical details of certain personalities. Time passed so swiftly that Bony was astonished when Johnno appeared.

  “I arrive, eh!” he exclaimed. “Yes, one drink for me. Then we depart. Yes, plis. Brandy, Dick.”

  Mr. Dickenson was tired, and Johnno assisted him down the veranda steps to the door. The night was black and white with no mezzotint. One could have read a newspaper in the moonlight, and be completely concealed in the shadows. Bony slid in beside the old man, and Johnno, loudly braying with the hooter, departed at top speed.

  The homeward journey was fast. Mr. Dickenson was not nervous. He sang a little. He quoted poetry. Abruptly, he drew Bony’s head to his mouth and whispered:

  “I might know that feller again. As he passed me, I could hear his teeth clicking as though he were in mortal fright.”

  Bony was about to press a question when Johnno turned back to shout something of the evening, and the car went into a bad sand skid. It almost collided with a tree and almost turned over. Mr. Dickenson chuckled, and Johnno laughed but thereafter gave his attention to his driving. Eventually, he was instructed to put the old man down at the post office, where Bony also alighted and dismissed Johnno with a handsome tip.

  Mr. Dickenson insisted on shaking hands before parting from Bony, and Bony sauntered to the police station, where he found Inspector Walters in the kitchen, in his dressing-gown and reading a novel.

  “Well, you drunkard,” he greeted Bony.

  “I found your derelict quite good company,” Bony said, so happily that Walters was suspicious. “Brought home a little memento of the evening.”

  “A glass! We’ve plenty,” objected Walters.

  “But a special glass. Before my last drink, I wiped off all the finger-prints. When the filled glass was handed to me by the barman, I picked it up by the base to empty it, and I’ve held the glass by the base all the way back, despite an ugly skid.”

  “That barman important ... Black Mark?”

  “It wasn’t Black Mark. Black Mark didn’t appear. The fellow’s name is Richard Blake. I’ll send his prints to my department. Sawtell can take them.” From his hip pocket Bony extracted a bottle of beer, and without comment the inspector left his chair for glasses and bread and cheese.

  Chapter Eight

  A Puzzle in Silk

  THE house occupied by the late Mrs. Eltham was a typical Broome bungalow, set well back from the road and partially concealed by ornamental trees. The cement drive ran directly past the house to the garage at the rear, and from it a cement path paralleled the house front, skirted its far side and joined the cemented yard between house and garage. Off the yard was a small grass plot on which was erected a rotary clothes hoist.

  The storm shutters enclosing the encircling veranda being bolted down, the house presented a windowless aspect and was without individuality. It was owned by someone in Perth, and was still under police control. According to Inspector Walters, no one had entered it after the homicide men had returned to Headquarters.

  Arriving at the rear door, Bony opened the case he had brought and tested the handle for finger-prints. The door handle was clean of any prints. With the key obtained from Walters he opened the door and tested the inside handle. It, too, was clean. Had substantiation been necessary of Mr. Dickenson’s statement concerning the man he had seen leaving the house, it was provided by the clean door handles, which should have produced fingerprints of the last investigator who locked the door.

  Elated by the probability that it had been the murderer who had returned to the scene of his crime, Bony stepped into the house and sought the light switch, the storm shutters making the interior almost dark. Closing the door, he sat on a kitchen chair and rolled a cigarette whilst noting everything within visual limits.

  Like many of these tropical bungalows, the house proper was devoted to bedrooms, the encircling veranda space being used for general living purposes. The storm shutters having been down for many days, the air smelled slightly musty, and yet within the mustiness was the fragrance of perfume.

  This part of the veranda was obviously used as a kitchen and dining-room. It was clean and tidy. There was not much furniture, but it retained evidence of having been well kept. On the wash-bench w
ere the utensils used by Mrs. Eltham at supper that last night of her life. The floor was covered with apple-green linoleum neither new nor yet worn.

  Before moving on, Bony knelt on the linoleum and brought his eyes close to its surface. He could see his own shoe tracks, but none other, and with a finger-point he established the film of dust which had settled after the visit of the unknown man. The same degree of dust was on the wash-bench and the furniture.

  Passing on round the corner of the house to the next veranda section, Bony located the light switch and found himself in the lounge. Small, soft rugs graced the floor. Glass-fronted cases were filled with expensive books. Two sea-scapes in oils rested on easels and seemed to be reasonably well executed. Both pictures bore the initials of the dead woman. The magazines on a small occasional table, the conch shells used as ash-trays, pieces of costly china and crystal, and the curtains and lamp-shades bespoke the tastes of a cultured woman having money to indulge them.

  Confident that none had seen him enter the house, and that the lights could not be noted from either the front street or the rear laneway, Bony again sat down and made another cigarette. He was prepared to conduct a long and unhurried investigation of this dwelling, for the man who had spent some time here after the police had finally gone must have left something of himself or some evidence explaining the reason for his visit. Discovery of the motive for that nocturnal visit might well lead to the motive for the murder of Mrs. Eltham. It might lead even to the identity of the murderer.

  With all their training and their scientific aids the homicide experts had failed to prove the identity of the murderer or even put forward a likely motive for the crime. On what rested that double failure? The astuteness of the murderer in small degree, and the type of community in which he lived in large degree. The mental lethargy of people all familiar with each other prevented them from noticing the unusual, and thus provided the cloak of secrecy for a killer who planned all his moves.

  The problem was to discover the motive having a common denominator covering the murder of two women dissimilar in morality, circumstance and background. The victims were alike only in being widows. Several motives could be assumed for the murder of one, or that of the other, but there was no motive to be applied to both crimes.