The dead woman’s background was excellent. Bony studied a photograph of her, a Junoesque type of woman. She had lived a virtuous life in Broome, for that was on record, and there was nothing among her papers or within her home even to hint of anything to the contrary. To use current phraseology: why pick on her? That was the puzzler. Why pick on Mrs. Cotton? Excepting in her business, Mrs. Cotton had not been particularly interested in men. Mrs. Eltham was the kind of woman who does manage to get herself murdered. Where was the common denominator uniting these three women in the mind of a murderer? The victims of Jack the Ripper were all of one class. Landru chose his victims among women having property. With those two series of murders there was a common denominator.
Hearing Sawtell’s voice at the front, he gathered the letters and papers and thrust them into a drawer, and was standing on the cemented area between the rear of the house and an open-fronted wood-shed, when Sawtell appeared with Abie.
The sergeant joined Bony. The tracker, wearing his “uniform” of military greatcoat, stockman’s felt hat and military boots remained just off the path running past the house to the cemented area.
“This feller bin alonga street,” Abie said, pointing to the path. “He bin walk here,” and he pointed to the cement.
“Take him into the house,” Bony instructed, and Sawtell beckoned the tracker to the kitchen door and told him to: “Track ’em alonga house floor, Abie.”
Abie having entered, the sergeant said, softly:
“Won’t find much. Too many of us tramping through the place.”
“You never know,” murmured Bony. “These fellows can do extraordinary things. Hop in and put on the light. He might pinch the settee or something.”
Sawtell grunted and went inside. Bony stood at the edge of the cemented area and regarded the clothes line and wondered if Mrs. Overton, as those others, had lost a nightgown. He was hoping she had, for on that fact would rest the certainty that the murderer would steal a fourth nightgown before attempting his fourth murder.
The two men emerged from the house, and Abie said, again pointing to the path:
“That feller him bin in house. You bin in house. Mr. Knapp him bin in house. Mister Inspector Walters, him bin in house, too. Doctor bin in...”
“Old Bill, the mortician, and Ally, his offsider, they bin in house,” interrupted Sergeant Sawtell. “All right, Abie. You findum which way that feller go from here.”
Exhibiting importance in every movement, Abie proceeded along the path to the back gate, his pace a jog trot, the upper portion of his thick-set body angled forward, presenting a picture having much similarity with that of a hound held in leash. On reaching the gate, the two men were immediately behind him. Turning to them, the aborigine laughed. There was nothing to produce merriment: it was his reaction to his fancied position of importance in the eyes of big-feller policeman boss.
“That white feller who bin come in other gate and runabout house, he come along this gate. Him bin go...” white-feller words failed him, and he waved a hand towards the grass paddock. “Him bin go out there. P’haps him bin know-em Abie see which way, eh?”
“P’haps, Abie,” agreed Sawtell. “What about other feller, eh? Other feller bin no wear-um boots, eh?”
Abie was clearly startled. He laughed again and ran back beside the path to the low scrub. He was tremendously excited, but Bony was not deceived. Bony was evincing interest in the late Mrs. Overton’s distant clothes line when he heard Abie say:
“I no know-em that feller.”
“You never seen him track’s before?” demanded Sawtell.
“I no know-em.” Abie was decidedly dejected by the admission of failure. “Him bin China-feller, p’haps. P’haps him bin black feller camp in Chinatown.”
“All right, Abie,” Sawtell said, cheerfully. “You bin good tracker all right. You show-um good track that feller come along here and go in house, eh?”
Carrying his tin of fishing lines, Bony sauntered away towards the police station. At the end of the lane, he glanced back to find that the sergeant had disappeared, probably to secure the house. Abie was rolling a cigarette, his felt hat slightly tilted to one side like Sergeant Sawtell’s hat.
Half an hour later, Sawtell entered the police station office. The local Press correspondent had just left in a great hurry for the radio station. In one of the cells off the compound was lodged Ronald Locke.
“Let me see your casts, please,” Bony requested, and Sawtell produced them. “I’ll take a quick look at the impressions. Must memorise them.”
Walters called the sergeant to his desk, and Bony carried the casts out to the damp earth about a rose tree. He pressed the casts to the ground and stood back to see them. The print of the naked foot he would, of course, never forget and would recognise again. The other, the shoe-print, caused him to frown. It was not the print of the shoe which was worn down on the inner side of the heel, although it was the same size. It did happen to be a left print, but there was no circular indentation showing that to the sole of the shoe some object had been adhering. It was, in fact, an excellent print of Mr. Dickenson’s left shoe.
Chapter Fifteen
Abie’s Defection
BONY put the casts on Sawtell’s desk.
“Where’s Abie?” he asked.
“Dunno! Out in the yard, I suppose. You want him?”
“No.” Bony remained standing. “When you made those casts, you are sure that you took them from the prints pointed out by the tracker?”
“Positive. I got Abie to run a line round them with his finger.”
Bony turned away and sauntered through to the kitchen.
“You must be starving,” Mrs. Walters remarked, and Bony, wrenching his mind from Abie, smiled and said that he supposed he was. She busied herself preparing his breakfast, and he crossed to the doorway and stood looking out over the compound. Abie wasn’t in sight. Constable Clifford was locking the door of a cell, under an arm a pair of shoes. With a motion of his head, Bony invited the constable to join him.
“Are those Locke’s shoes?” he asked, and was told they were, and that Sawtell wished to compare an imprint from them with the casts he had made under Abie’s directions. “Let me see them.”
Bony examined them. They were size seven. Those shoes had not made the impressions of Sawtell’s casts, nor had they made the impressions from which Bony had made his casts. The casts were of a shoe size eight. Nevertheless, a man having a shoe size seven could wear a shoe size eight in which to conduct his murders.
“Thank you, Clifford. Tell the inspector that when convenient I’d like to have a word with you here.”
Clifford departed for the office and Bony sat down to breakfast. He said nothing to Mrs. Walters as she served him, and she could see that he ate automatically. She was washing the dishes when he rose from the table and carried the china to the washing bench. Picking up a drying cloth, he proceeded to dry the dishes as she washed them.
“What do you know about Mrs. Overton, her friends, her relations?” he asked.
“Not much, Bony. No one here knew her husband: he died before she came to Broome. She was making a trip round Australia and decided to live here permanently. I think there was a man in her life, somewhere.”
“Yes, he lives in Melbourne. His name is Bryant. You’ve never met him here?”
Mrs. Walters shook her head, and hoped that her guest would not drop her favourite china toast rack.
“Mrs. Overton was well liked in Broome,” she said. “Quite a friend of Mrs. Sayers. Worked hard with the Methodist Church and their Sunday School, and among the boys at the college. The young people all liked her. She had a way with children round about twelve and thirteen.”
“Did she entertain much?”
“Not a great deal. She didn’t drink, but she never outwardly disapproved of people who do. Although she never served liquor in her own house, she often attended parties where drinks were laid on.”
“The people
she invited to her house would be of the élite of Broome, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Is Arthur Flinn among the élite?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Walters frowned. “I was at one of Mrs. Overton’s afternoon teas when he appeared. I don’t think he was quite welcome. Just an impression, you know. I remember thinking that his effect on me was probably the same with Mrs. Overton. There are some men, Bony, who seem to want always to paw a woman. You know the type, perhaps.”
“Yes. Go on, please.”
Mrs. Walters laughed mirthlessly.
“Women are peculiar,” she averred. “They can’t stand some men even touching them, and they seem to like it from other men. One afternoon when the radio was playing a dance tune, Sergeant Sawtell was in here and he grabbed me in his arms and made me dance. Had it been Arthur Flinn, I’d have screamed.”
“Thank you. Let’s move away from the unpleasant Flinn. Now, can you tell me if Mrs. Overton employed domestic help?”
“I’m not sure about that. I’m inclined to think not.”
“Well, then, did she have a woman in to do her washing?” “I’m not sure about that, either. Mrs. Sayers would know.”
Bony was placing the dried dishes in the correct place in the kitchen cabinet when Clifford returned from the office.
“Cup of tea?” asked Bony, swinging round from the cabinet. The constable betrayed his astonishment and looked at Mrs. Walters, who said:
“Of course he’ll have a cup of tea. Anyone will have a cup of tea here at any time.”
Clifford appeared uneasy as Bony brought the cup and saucer and the milk from the safe. Being waited on by an inspector was a new experience.
“Was the arrest effected without incident?” Bony asked.
“Yes. I got hold of Locke and told him he was wanted, and that he’d better not raise any argument about it. Black Mark wanted to know why I was taking him ... when I had him in the jeep. They didn’t know about Mrs. Overton at Dampier’s Hotel.”
“What was Locke’s reaction?”
“He was quiet enough. Said it would catch up with him some time.”
“Meaning?”
The grey eyes in Clifford’s tanned face flickered.
“I don’t know. He could have referred to the breach of parole or to these murders. Full of conceit, and, I’d say, a born liar.”
“No one interrogated him yet?”
“No.”
“Where’s the tracker?”
“In his camp in the stables, I think.”
“Thanks, Clifford. When you go back to the office, mention to the sergeant that I’d like to be present when he does interrogate the prisoner.”
Bony left for the compound, and in the sunlight he took time to roll a cigarette. The stables then were to his right, the building erected long years before the coming of motor transport to the North-West. On the left were the nine cells. They could be counted easily enough. Each door was an iron grille from floor to roof.
Without haste or hint of purpose, Bony strolled to the stables. There was a chaff-room stacked with fodder: a saddlery room containing polished harness, and seven horse stalls. The stalls were vacant. Skirting the stalls, Bony came to a loose-box, and within the loose-box the tracker lay asleep on old blankets laid out on straw. Abie had removed his greatcoat and military boots.
Beyond the loose-box was a doorway in this end of the stables, and quietly Bony stepped past the sleeping aborigine and went out. He found a tap, and a tin dish on a wooden case, and about the case the water had moistened the ground, and the ground revealed the prints of Abie’s naked feet. They were identical with those on the paths skirting Mrs. Overton’s house. It was one of the strangest twists in an investigation Bony had ever encountered.
Bony went on to sit in the shade cast by the tree beneath which he had first seen Abie with a petrol-saturated rag about his head. What was that ebony-skinned gentleman up to? He had been following the man wearing the size eight shoes to the left sole of which was attached that circular object, the man who had, without the smallest doubt, entered Mrs. Overton’s house and strangled her. Proudly wearing boots all day, it seemed that Abie preferred to walk in naked feet by night.
That Abie had the ambition to become an aboriginal Holmes was a thought instantly to be discarded as fantastic. Whatever purpose Abie had had in trailing a murderer, it was much stronger than the ambition to become a great detective, because the time of the act was opposed to his racial instincts. Assessing Abie’s standing in relation to white civilisation, Bony placed him much nearer the wild blacks than those who have become famous in pulpit and art. The motive driving Abie out into the dark night must have been powerful, when instinctively he would cling to the protection of his camp. The danger from evil spirits to black-fellows who wander from the camp-fires at night had been instilled in Abie with his mother’s milk.
More extraordinary was Abie’s deliberate deceit when instead of pointing out the tracks left by the man who had murdered Mrs. Overton, he had drawn a mark round the track made by Mr. Dickenson, who had not walked through the laneway before parting with Bony in broad daylight. Abie would bear watching.
Sawtell and the constable appeared in the compound, and Bony went to meet them.
“Going to have a word or two with Locke,” announced the sergeant.
“All right. I’ll go with you,” Bony said.
When at the cell door, they could see the prisoner seated on the board bed. Clifford unlocked the door, and they passed in, the constable remaining outside. Sawtell gave the man his shoes. Locke thanked him, easily and without betraying emotion.
“I suppose you know why you’re here?” asked Sawtell.
“Oh, yes,” replied Locke, without looking up from lacing the shoes.
“What were you doing in town the night before last?” Bony questioned.
Having laced the shoes, Locke stood up. He was clean and neat. His eyes were light-grey and revealed nothing. Good-looking, the cleft chin and the sensuous mouth would certainly appeal to undiscerning women. Coolly, he asked Bony:
“What have you to do with me?”
“That’ll be all on that line, Locke,” snapped Sawtell roughly.
“All right! I was in town on the spree. What about it?”
“What were you doing in town on the night that Mrs. Eltham was murdered?” was Bony’s next question.
The light-grey eyes blinked back the flash of fear.
“I wasn’t in town that night.”
“But you were, Locke,” Bony insisted. “What did you do that night?”
“You’re not trying to frame me for that murder, are you?”
“What an idea!” exclaimed Bony, and Locke shouted angrily:
“Then what’s behind these questions? I didn’t throttle those women. All I did was to clear out of New South Wales instead of reporting every week.”
“Where were you on the night Mrs. Cotton was murdered?”
“In the bar. I was in the bar all evening drinking with the mob. The sergeant knows that. He checked up on me like on all the others.”
There was indignation on the man’s face and in his voice, and Bony was not happy about it. Abie had crossed the compound and was standing just beyond Constable Clifford.
“On the night before last, you were in town,” Bony said loudly. “Sometime during the night before last, a Mrs. Overton was strangled.”
The small effeminate mouth trembled. There was horror in the light-grey eyes, horror born of realisation that, having once escaped the hangman in New South Wales, there would be no escaping the hangman in Western Australia. No one in Australia, no one at all would ever believe that he who had strangled a girl in Sydney had not strangled three women in northern West Australia.
“I didn’t do it,” he said, his voice a whisper. Then in startling contra-distinction, he shouted: “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“Pipe down,” ordered Sawtell. “You’ll be treated fairly. We’l
l be taking you to Perth this evening on the plane.”
Bony left the cell, Clifford opening the door. Abie’s eyes were wide, and Bony tried to look into them and failed. The sergeant came out and, seeing the tracker, roughly asked him what the hell he was doing there, and to clear off and bring in a horse named Nancy and get on with his job of breaking her in. The aborigine shuffled away in his heavy boots, and Bony said to Clifford:
“See that Locke has cigarettes.”
He felt that he had made slight amends to the prisoner who had not been charged with murder, and yet was sure he would be. A man in white drill trousers and white sports shirt appeared.
“Anything fresh, Sergeant?” he asked Sawtell.
“No, only that the prisoner will be taken down to Perth on tonight’s plane.”
“Ah! Who’ll be his escort?”
“Clifford, I expect.”
“Thanks. My paper will appreciate that. Everything clinched, I suppose, about these murders?”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Sawtell.
“You know.” The stranger to Bony became persuasive. “Give us a break.”
The sergeant regarded the correspondent sternly. He said with significant deliberateness:
“Officially, I don’t know anything. We’re sending Locke to Perth for holding on the charge of breaking the terms of his parole.”
The correspondent was satisfied.
“Yes ... ah, yes. Yes, I understand,” he said, and believed that he did. Twenty minutes later the radio was flashing the news to Perth that a man had been arrested in connection with the Broome murders, and thirty minutes later Bony sat down with Mr. Dickenson on the bench in front of the Port Cuvier Hotel.
“Mr. Flinn inside?” he enquired.
The Widows of Broome Page 12