“Before Christmas ... in November, I think it was.”
“At the two meetings of these men, did they appear friendly?”
“Yes, in an off-hand way. I’d say they were acquaintances rather than friends. They were quite pleasant to each other.”
Bony rose, and Opal Jane smilingly rose with him.
“Have you done with me, Inspector? So soon?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Bony blandly told her. “It was good of you to receive us so early. I’ve been surreptitiously admiring that painting and the bookcase, which is quite a treasure.”
“I’m glad you like my bits, Inspector. My father was an alcoholic and my mother died from cocaine. The home ... you can imagine. What life withheld from the child, the woman has squeezed from it.”
In the hall, Bony remarked:
“Your passion for opals is something I can understand. Pearls! Do you like pearls?”
Opal Jane smiled most sweetly.
“I never refuse pearls, Inspector. Sawyer and White have a lovely string at five hundred guineas ... if you happen to be interested. And I’ll promise to keep them for a little while. You see, I prefer opals, knowing something about them. Pearls I always sell for cash.”
The sergeant opened the front door, and still Bony lingered.
“D’you know if Thomas Baker had a second Christian name?”
“I never heard of it.”
“Or a pet name ... a nickname?”
“No. He was always Tom to me.”
Thank you.” Bony smiled and reached the doorstep. “Favour me by pronouncing the letter T, will you?”
Opal Jane obliged.
“Now the letter B.”
Again the woman complied and again Bony blandly smiled and wished her goodbye.
In the police car which was taking them to Coogee, he asked:
“Did you note any similarity in the pronunciation of the letters T and B?”
“Yes, faintly, I think,” replied the sergeant.
They left the car at a huge block of flats, and the sergeant rang the bell of Number 46. A young woman appeared in déshabillé and escorted by the aroma of frying sausages. Her brown eyes lit with interest in Bony, and hardened at the sight of the sergeant, whose civilian clothes were no disguise.
“What is it?” she demanded, briskly.
“Are you Jean Stebbings?” asked Bony.
“I am. What d’you want?”
“We are police officers, Miss Stebbings. Will you invite us inside? I want to ask a few questions.”
“All right! Come in. In there, please. I’ll turn off the gas.”
They found themselves in a tiny sitting room, and when the girl entered she had attended to her hair and face. The shrewd sergeant assessed her correctly. Bony persuaded her to be seated, saying:
“You know a man named Eldred Wessex, do you not?”
Yes,” she replied, barely above a whisper, to add, fiercely: “Go on. Tell me. I like it quick.”
“When did you last see him?”
“See him! Why, weeks ago. What’s happened to him?”
“Nothing that I’m aware of. What is he to you?”
The girl fought and temporarily conquered her anxiety, Bony patiently waiting. Her clasped hands stilled their agitation, and he noted the wedding ring. She lifted her head, as though with pride, and a blush stirred under her skin.
“Eldred is ... was ... my man. We’re going to be married some day.” The fears returned. “Where is he? Why don’t you tell me where he is?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Would I be asking you?”
“Dick Lake doesn’t know, either.”
“So he told me. Before he walked off a cliff. I seen that in the papers.”
“What made you write to Dick about Eldred?” pressed Bony.
“Dick was his friend. Eldred came from Split Point. They were in the war together. But you know all that. You know more, too. What’s happened to Eldred? Go on, tell me.”
“I know neither where he is nor what’s happened to him, if anything,” Bony said, quietly. “I am seeking your aid to locate him.”
“All right! Then what’s he done?”
“Other people as well as you are anxious to know where Eldred Wessex is,” Bony continued, quietly. “It’s my job to trace missing persons. Dozens of people are reported missing every year. Many fade away purposely. What work did Wessex do here in Sydney?”
“Something to do with Security Service, so he told me. Said it suited him because he felt so restless after the army life. But ... I wrote to Security Service, and they sent a man here to tell me they didn’t know anything about him.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Just a year.”
“Did he have any friends in Sydney?”
“Not that I know.”
“Acquaintances then?”
“A few, yes.”
“Was this man one of them?” Bony softly asked.
The girl accepted the picture, glanced at it, dropped it to the floor. She startled even the stolid sergeant.
“He didn’t! He didn’t! He didn’t do it!” she cried, shrilly.
“What on earth are you talking about, Miss Stebbings?” asked Bony, and she answered accusingly:
“That’s the man in the bath. That’s the man they found murdered in the Lighthouse. Eldred never did that, I tell you. He never went back to Split Point. Dick Lake told me. Kept on telling me Eldred never went home.”
“You recognize this man, though, the man found in the Lighthouse?”
“Yes. No, I don’t. I’ve never seen him.”
The tortured face was defiant, and Bony guessed at the battle being fought by this woman to remove the load of suspicion from her mind, a battle which had been proceeding since Eldred Wessex left her. Gently, he said:
“Would it be better for you to know the truth about Eldred? To know why he went away, why he hasn’t written, instead of going on from day to day worrying yourself sick about him?”
The woman’s face was like a vase suddenly overtaken by centuries of time. She broke into a storm of weeping, burying her face in a handkerchief, both hands to the handkerchief. The wedding ring was too large. It swivelled round her finger. It wasn’t a wedding ring.
“Let us try to unearth the truth, Miss Stebbings,” Bony urged. “Not to know will always be worse than knowing. Who was the man murdered in the Lighthouse?”
“Eldred called him Tommy,” moaned the girl. “He came here once with Eldred. Eldred said he was in Security Service, too. Then he called in the afternoon of the day Eldred went away. He came asking for Eldred, and I said he was out. He didn’t come again after that.”
“What was the date?”
The watchful detective sergeant noticed the iron in Bony’s voice, and wondered at the placidity of expression as they waited through another outburst of grief. Bony produced a second picture.
“Is this your Eldred?”
She dabbed at her eyes. Bony looked at the ring. She gazed at the picture of Wessex shown to Opal Jane, and slowly nodded. Bony passed the picture to the detective sergeant and waited for the girl to regain something of composure. It was the sergeant who asked the next question:
“D’you know a man called Waghorn?”
“No. Only heard about him. Never seen him. Never want to.”
“Wessex say anything about Waghorn?”
“Never.”
“When did Eldred leave you ... the date ... Miss Stebbings?” proceeded Bony.
“On my birthday. It was my birthday. Eldred left home after breakfast saying he would be bringing me a string of pearls. He never did. He never came back.”
“What is your birth date?”
“February 26th.”
Bony stood up to leave. Bending over the girl, he patted her shoulder.
“We’ll find your man, Miss Stebbings. Did he give you that ring?”
“No. He let me wear it until he could
give me a wedding ring.”
Chapter Twenty
Swapping Clues
AT FIVE MINUTES after four o’clock Bony arrived at the Melbourne airport: at five minutes to five he was seated opposite the officer in charge of Military Records. On the desk was an opened file.
“Wessex, Eldred,” murmured the officer, and detailed the unit, rank, number, dates of enlistment and discharge. “Seems to have been troublesome, Inspector.”
“I thought it probable. Serious trouble?” prompted Bony.
“Disorderly conduct. Ah, striking a superior officer. A charge of theft from a forward canteen. Found not guilty by court-martial. Received a hundred days for grievously injuring a comrade in a mix-up at Port Moresby. Was recommended for the Military Medal at that time, and the recommendation withdrawn. Was returned to Australia to serve that sentence. Seems to have been no damn good.”
“But was recommended for the MM.”
“Sometimes goes that way, Inspector. Some men never make soldiers but are excellent fighters.”
“H’m! Revealing. This man Wessex served with a friend of his named Dick Lake. Could I ask you for Lake’s record?”
“Certainly. I’ll send for it.” A bell button was pressed and the order given to a clerk. “Lake! Haven’t I read his name in the paper recently? Ah, yes. I recall it. Down at Split Point, wasn’t it? Lovely place. Spent a holiday there a year or two ago. Thanks, Simms.”
The clerk again withdrew and the officer opened the file on Dick Lake.
“Lake, Richard. Fairly clean record. A number of small offences such as being AWOL, slovenly on parade, disobeying an order. All offences committed in the training camp. Ah ... thought to be associated with Eldred Wessex on the canteen charge. Didn’t stop him from gaining a decoration, though. DCM.”
“Distinguished Conduct Medal!”
“An award well worth having.” The officer chuckled. “Court-martialled for refusing to accept promotion. I know the type. If I had a division of men like that, there’s no war I wouldn’t win.”
On leaving Military Records, Bony hailed a taxi, and at the third hotel at which he called he obtained a room. The price rocked him, but then Bolt would have to pass payment. He descended to the dining room wearing his best suit, was welcomed by the Head Waiter with unusual effusiveness and conducted to a table for two as far as possible from the band. He was studying the menu when Superintendent Bolt dropped like a stone from the ceiling into the opposite chair.
“Been getting around, eh?” Bolt said, small brown eyes boring like gimlets. “Clear soup for me, and Sole Marnier followed by wine trifle and black coffee with a brandy.”
“Off the diet?” calmly inquired Bony.
“Don’t believe in starving the old body. Get much from Sydney?”
Bony sighed.
“And they promised not to press-agent me,” he complained.
“They didn’t. You were picked up coming off the plane, tracked to Military Records, then via the Australia, Menzies, and so to this pub. I then contacted the manager, who’s a pal of mine. Elementary, Bony my boy, elementary. I’ll be waiting for you to give when the coffee and brandy arrive.”
“A spot of trading, Super? The brandy might give us the confidence to swap clues. As you will be paying for the brandy, see to it that it’s the best.”
“And me saving up for a new car. What a hope! Call on Opal Jane?”
“I thought we were to wait for the coffee. Yes, I did.”
“Opinion?”
“A lovely lady,” replied Bony, and Bolt searched and found no subtlety.
“Wish I had her dough,” he said. “Wish I wasn’t so ruddy fat.”
“Sydney has her well taped,” Bony said. “The list of her gentlemen friends would astonish you. Know a man named Waghorn?”
The small brown eyes appeared to pivot round to search the card index in the domed head.
“No, can’t say that I do. Where does he fit in?”
“Waghorn is a small-time crook operating in Sydney. Suspected of being mixed up with smuggling. I’d rather like to talk to him about the weather.”
“Yeah, stormy weather,” Bolt said, and chuckled. “This Waghorn character do the Lighthouse killing?”
“He may be able to tell us something about it, Super. Perhaps you would assist me by having him brought in.”
“Anything you want, Bony, anything. My Commish is becoming annoyed at our failure to come up with results. You ask Sydney to pick him up?”
“No. I left that to you. Detective Sergeant Eulo knows the man well. Your opposite number in Sydney agreed not to divulge my operations in Sydney, but I told him you would become interested in Waghorn.”
Superintendent Bolt patted the marble dome rising from the fringe of grey hair about his ears. It could have been done to shoo a fly, but there were no flies.
“Want this Waghorn brought to Melbourne?” he asked.
“Yes. If he is still in New South Wales. I think it likely, however, that he’s in Victoria. Of course, he may be in South Australia, or down at the South Pole. I want him.”
“You’ll have him boots and all. Still interested in that signet ring?”
Without the slightest pause, Bony replied, casually:
“Yes. It might give something fresh about Thomas Baker. Did you find the jeweller?”
“Lives down at Point Lonsdale. Retired in ’42 from the business he had at Colac. His assistant bought the business. Says he remembers making the mistake about the solder, but can’t say who bought the ring. Said his late boss might have some record of it, and gave us his address. Info, only came in a minute before I left the office this evening.”
“Have you done anything further about it?”
“No. Thought you might want to interview that jeweller.”
“I do.” Bony smiled his thanks. “There are three rings exactly alike. The one found in the murdered man’s overcoat. Another on the finger of a champion axeman, the third on the finger of a woman in Sydney. There is a fourth ring, I think, although I haven’t yet come across it.”
Bolt was generous enough to smile his thanks. He chanced a question:
“Found out what the letters B B mean?”
“Oh, yes. Some time ago. Bully Buccaneers.”
“Enlightening.”
“Ship steward Thomas Baker ordered his suit with the Adelaide tailor, and paid cash there and then. The tailor thought he said B. Baker when recording his name. Actually, he must have said T. Baker.”
“Nice point.”
“Had the transaction been such that the suit was to be paid for on delivery, the tailor would have been more alert. The Bully Buccaneers were a crew of pirates who sailed the Caribbean and captured treasure ships conveying as passengers ladies old and bent who possessed much gold and many fine jewels. As I mentioned, I have located three of these Bully Buccaneers.”
The Chief of the Victoria CIB grinned, for his eyes threatened to shrivel the soul of Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Your lucidity continues to claim my admiration. Our friend in the preserving tank ... he’s being decently buried tomorrow ... was a reincarnation of Captain Morgan. So what?”
“He wasn’t a member of the pirate crew. What happened was that a member of the pirate crew removed the watch from the dead man’s wrist and put it in a pocket of the raincoat. The ring on his own finger was broken and slipped off. One can imagine the haste in which the body was stripped.”
“Another nice point, Bony. I suppose you wouldn’t care to add a few supplementary remarks?”
“I fear I am not yet in that happy position,” Bony said, blandly. “Should the jeweller I interview tomorrow be able to remember to whom he sold those signet rings engraved with the letters B B, I will have advanced another step. When you pick up Waghorn, I may advance a further step.”
Bolt frowned, heaved a silent sigh.
“As muddy as all that, eh? That feller, Lake, who fell over the cliff. Have anything to do with the murde
r, or was he bumped off?”
“Lake could have been walking in his sleep,” Bony said, without smiling.
“Bad habit. Lots of murders committed by fellers walking in their sleep.”
Bolt betrayed impatience only in the manner in which he struck a match to his cigar. It says much for Bony that the vast man’s confidence grew rather than diminished, and much for Bolt that Bony implicitly trusted him not to make moves beyond those agreed to.
“That gun Staley sent us certainly fired the fatal bullet,” Bolt contributed. “Has Lake’s fingerprints on it. I didn’t have Staley tell us where you found that weapon.”
“Among Lake’s effects. Any other prints beside his?”
Bolt stared. He pursed his lips and emitted a thin stream of smoke.
“No. Did you expect others?”
“Yes and no. Had there been prints additional to those of Lake, my reasoning would have been faulty.”
“Lake, then, was the murderer?”
“I don’t know ... yet. Greed and loyalty, bitterness and love, viciousness and altruism, are some of the ingredients of this mystery.
“High up in the face of the cliff at Split Point is a cave, discovered years ago by small boys. It is so difficult to approach that none but those boys ever knew of it until I found it. It was in the cave that I discovered the murdered man’s clothes and suitcase. It was whilst coming up from it to the cliff top that I was hit with a stone. When he fell, Lake was going down the face of the cliff to find out if I had removed the clothes, and if not, to transfer them elsewhere. He made the attempt in the middle of the night, when it was raining torrents, when the wind blew a gale.
“I like to think, Super, that Dick Lake died in the attempt to removed evidence which would condemn a pal, not himself. He was one of those three boys I mentioned. The others were in it, too: a Fred Ayling and an Eldred Wessex. Eldred Wessex is known in Sydney as Waghorn. We want him to give an account of his movements on and about the date of the Lighthouse killing. He went out of circulation two days before Baker was shot. He and Baker were acquaintances at least.”
“Do we grill this Waghorn when we net him?” asked Bolt.
“I would prefer to do that as I hold several threads.”
The New Shoe Page 15