Bony and the Mouse

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Melody Sam’s stomach apparently thrived on two benders a year, and in between he never drank anything but strong tea. On the occasion of Bony’s visit, convalescence did not extend beyond three days, following which he attended to normal business, and when asked to join in a round, poured himself a nip from a whisky bottle filled with tea of the correct deceptive colour.

  Bony did duty behind the bar counter longer than could be expected of a detective-inspector, but he really enjoyed the work, and it did bring him into friendly contact with nearly everyone at Daybreak. There was the council staff, a lanky, tired, ever-thirsty man named Bert Ellis. He comprised the staff of the Town Council, Melody Sam being the Town Council, plus the Town Engineer, Town Clerk, etc., etc. Then there was Leslie Thurley. Justice of the Peace, etc., etc., in addition to being the postmaster. He was ageing sixty, and his weak blue eyes peered from behind very strong lenses. His hardest cross was his wife. Fred Joyce, the butcher, was middle-aged, large and inclined to flabbiness. He had the face of an Irish tenor, and lost much through the absence of a brogue. There were many lesser lights illumining Daybreak society, and the dryblowers living at Dryblowers Flat had all been poured into the same mould.

  The topics of conversation ranged from Constable Harmon’s grey gelding to the current world tour now being enjoyed by the current State Premier and his wife and secretary, etc., etc. In between expressions of hope for the horse and damnation of the Premier, the subjects of local murders, gold and tin, and Tony Carr were decidedly popular.

  On the day Joy Elder was permitted by Sister Jenks to return to her father’s abode at Dryblowers Flat, Bony was given the opportunity of talking with Tony in less dramatic circumstances than on the first occasion. He had been exercising the gelding, and seeing young Car, herding three beasts into the butcher’s slaughter-yard, he tethered the horse to a post at Sam’s Find, and sat in the shadow of the old poppet head, aware that the cattle would not be killed until sundown.

  It was mid-afternoon in early April, when the sun is hot on face and arms, and the flies still a nuisance, to be kept at bay with a sprig of bush. The slopes of Bulow’s Range were ablaze with fields of mica specks reflecting the sunlight, and away to the west the mulga forest was a vast area of jade-green pile with never a moth blemish. The track passing Sam’s Find sloped gently to skirt the butcher’s yards and flow on down to the distant settlement of Dryblowers Flat, shaded by the sandalwoods of gleaming light-green in a world of salmon-pink, russet-brown, and spinifex silver-grey. Now and then the easterly wind from the great Interior desert lands brought with it the magically blended perfume of the Fleeting Moment, and the Ageless Past.

  As Tony Carr rode towards Sam’s Find, Bony watched, and read the picture of a city youth not yet fully initiated. The hack he rode was old and lazy. The boy wore the bushman’s clothes of tight trousers tucked into short leggings. He wore spurs, but wasn’t game to use them. He carried a stock-whip, and had practised with it when driving the cattle, but had never hit a beast, and made a poor showing with its green silk cracker. There was the promise of the man. The sun and the wind had wiped clean from his face the pasty overlay of the city.

  “Day, Nat!” he greeted Bony, and attempted to squat on his spurred heels, surrendered to inexperience, and finally sat on the ground, drawing his knees to his chin and moodily gazing into space.

  “Day, Tony. You killing tonight?”

  “Two beasts and six hoggets. How’s the gelding shaping?”

  “Coming along well.”

  Constable Harmon’s horse whinnied to Tony’s ageing mare, and stamped its impatience on being also neck-roped to a post.

  “Not the outlaw everyone made out,” Bony drawled. “Very few of ’em are.”

  “Could be more human outlaws than horses,” sneered the boy.

  “Could be! There are, Tony. What’s worrying you?”

  “Nothing. When you leave here, where’ll you make for?”

  “Haven’t decided. Why?”

  “Oh, nothin’. Look, why don’t they give a feller a chance? I was over at Dryblowers after the cattle, and I met old Peter Gunther and his mate dryblowin’, and I just said ‘Good-day’, and Peter hollers out telling me to get to hell away from Dryblowers Flat. I ain’t got smallpox, have I?”

  “Not smallpox, Tony; a record.”

  “Yair, a record, and no one’s ever goin’ to forget it. Chipped by ole Harmon about finding Joy Elder, like I had half killed her, and was gonna to if you hadn’t come by. Most of ’em blamin’ me for the murders around here. A bit ago, I was out on the road to Lav and I came on old MacBride the parson stuck up with his car. He’d gone specking for gold, and somehow he had lost the ignition key, and when I crossed the wires for him in a couple of seconds and started the engine, he said I ought to give over starting cars like a young criminal pinching one. And after I’d saved him a four-mile walk!”

  “As you resent the minister’s comment, Tony, you should give up your criminal habits.”

  The boy turned over on his side, the better to glare upward at Bony.

  “I ain’t done nothin’ since I been here in Daybreak. Not a bloody thing,” he exploded. “I like this place. I like some of the people. The boss treats me fair enough, and there’s plenty to keep goin’ with. The flamin’ blacks are more friendly. They don’t tell me to get away from ’em, and they don’t look at me like I done them murders.”

  “Your boss is sponsor for you, isn’t he?” questioned Bony.

  “Yair. He’s all right. Old Melody’s fair enough too. They was gonna arrest me for the murders, but he stopped ’em. Said he’d pawn his pub and hire the best fronts in Australia to defend me if they did.”

  “Oh! Why were they going to arrest you?” asked the surprised Bony, for this was a news item for him.

  “Well, the day Mrs Lorelli was killed ... you heard about that, I suppose?” Bony nodded. “Well, her old man was in town that day. He’d sold some hides to the boss and went on the booze with the dough. I didn’t know about this at the time ’cos I was away down south bringing home a mob of steers the boss had bought off Wintarrie. I got to Lorelli’s place just before sundown, and I was dry, as I’d forgot to fill me waterbag. So I went to their house tank and got a drink of water, and then went on after the cattle and got ’em to the town common gate just before dark.”

  “You didn’t see Mrs Lorelli?”

  “Yes, I did. They got a bit of a garden out there, and she was doing something in it, and just waved, and I waved back, as I couldn’t leave the cattle too long.”

  “Then, when her husband reached home about nine o’clock, he found her in the kitchen choked to death?”

  “Yair. But I didn’t do it. Harmon’s tracker said so ... when old Melody yelled at him. The tracker said a bloke wearin’ sandshoes went there and done the job after I was there.”

  “You never wear sandshoes?”

  “No.”

  “Some do in Daybreak, I suppose?”

  “Them that plays tennis.

  “The store sells tennis shoes?”

  “Expect so. They sells most things.”

  “How did you come to injure your right leg?” The boy’s hazel eyes were hard with abrupt suspicion, and he said:

  “What d’you know about me leg?”

  “You walk with a slight limp, Tony.”

  “Well, I fell off a roof one night and sort of tore something. Why?”

  “That was, when? Before you came to Daybreak?”

  Tony grinned. “Yair. I was getting outer school. I fell off the roof instead of twisting over properly to drop from the guttering.”

  “Then there was a boy killed about here, wasn’t there? Going home to Dryblowers on his bike one night and was stopped by the feller wearing sandshoes.”

  “Tom Moss, that was. Worked at the garage. Worked late that night on a rush job with a truck. No one said I did that, but a lot of ’em thought I did. Why would I? You tell me. He was in me hair, but not that crook tha
t I’d bump him.”

  “Mrs Lorelli wasn’t killed for gain, either, was she?”

  “No, don’t think so.”

  “What about the lubra, Mary, who worked for Mrs MacBride and the minister?” prompted Bony with seeming indifference. Carr did not respond at once.

  “She got hers in the middle of the night right outside the Manse gate. Got woodened with something wot wasn’t a bike chain.”

  “How well did you know her? Was she young or old?”

  “Youngish, I s’pose. About as old as Janet Elder. Hi! what’s the idea? How much did I know her? Think I was runnin’ around with her?”

  Anger flared in the hazel eyes, fierce and eruptive. He swung his body over, raised himself to his knees and glared at Bony.

  “Go easy,” urged Bony. “I was only trying to get a picture of her. Why the fire? Go easy, Tony. Anyone would think I was accusing you of murdering her.”

  “Well, I don’t know nothin’. Let’s talk about something else.”

  It was the time to dig, and Bony said:

  “Then tell me why you entered Sister Jenks’s house that night Joy Elder was in the hospital ward.”

  “I didn’t....” On his knees, Carr moved close to the questioner. “How did you know?” he asked, his eyes blank of expression.

  “Your tracks outside the back door are how I know. The door was bolted on the inside. You managed to draw the bolt from the outside. Then when you were in the house something happened to make you fade quick, and you didn’t have time, or forgot, to shut the door.”

  “Yair. I’m slippin’, Nat. I forgot to shut that flamin’ door.”

  “Why did you go in at that time of night?”

  “Just wanted to see how the girl was.”

  “Couldn’t you have knocked at the front door earlier and asked Sister Jenks?”

  “No. I asked her ’fore dinner, and she said sort of snappy that Joy was as good as could be expected. I don’t hear no more. The boss told me next day she was doing all right. Anyhow, what were you doing at the back door?”

  “Sister Jenks didn’t want to make a song and dance about the door being open after she had locked it the night before, and so asked me what I thought.”

  “And you told her it was me?”

  “Be your age, Tony.”

  It was like watching the moon come from behind a cloud. The scowl gradually waned, and the smile which followed was halted by reluctant belief.

  “You didn’t say? True?”

  “Why should I? You didn’t do any harm. Very silly, though. Sister could have caught you.”

  “Not me. I know me way around.”

  Bony watched the boy, who was now sitting again with his knees drawn to his chin, and staring at that horizon no higher than his boot-tops.

  “Joy has a sister called Janet, hasn’t she? Good sports?”

  “None of ’em’s good sports to me, Nat. Got a record, I have. They’re frightened of me, and old MacBride made ’em scared, see? Won’t even speak. At least not before that time I found Joy with a crook foot. After that, this morning it was, Janet did give a ‘thank you’, and she did tell me Joy was gettin’ better fast.”

  “Seems to me you’ve been kicked around.”

  “I can take it. And I can dish it out, too.”

  “Forget it, Tony. How do you get along with the blacks? Someone told me you go away with them sometimes, hunting and all that.”

  “That’s right. Lot of ’em are decent blokes in their own way. I met up with a coupla young fellers soon after I came here. Just about speak our lingo, though they was pretty wild, and carried spears and come straight from the desert. They come up to me and started pawing me around, so I dropped one and started in on the other. Then some more came, and there was a proper blue. After that things was OK and we was all good cobbers.”

  “And you went camping with them?”

  “When I put it on the boss.”

  “Oh, why put it on the boss?”

  “Look, the boss is all right. So’s his missus. He gives me a fair go and I give him one. He’s my sponsor, see? So I don’t stick him up. I ask if I can go camping with the blacks and he says why not. Do me good, get me used to the bush. Old MacBride went and yelled to the policeman about it, and what d’you think? Harmon says if it’s right with me boss it’ll be right with him. Only time Harmon played ball with anyone in his life.”

  Bony could detect the rebellion waning from the boy, and in its place, enthusiasm.

  “Been away lots of times,” Tony went on. “You know, only for a couple of nights and not far away. Went huntin’ with ’em, helped to fox a ’roo or two, and then took ’em back to the blacks’ camp to eat. Good, too. Bit of a song and dance round the fire. Then a wrestle with some of ’em, and lying out lookin’ up at the stars and sleepin’ good till morning. And j’you know what, Nat? I got on good-ho with the lot of ’em. The boss said I would if I didn’t muck about after the lubras ... didn’t even look at ’em sideways. And that’s how it is. Leave the skirts alone, and they’re all good mates.

  “I know how to dig for honey-ants, Nat,” continued Tony, momentarily released from inhibitions. “Ever had a feed of ducks plastered with clay and buried in fire ashes so’s they cook in their feathers? Look, them blacks can tell you anything. They see a track and say what bloke made it, and how long back he made it. And all them things.”

  “They can be good friends, Tony. That was why the tracker said it wasn’t you who went out to Lorelli’s place and murdered his wife.”

  “Yair, about it, Nat. Them blacks are good coves.”

  Chapter Seven

  Digging for Nuggets

  FOOT-TRACKING is an art, and not, therefore, regarded by the courts as is the exact science of finger-printing. The wild aborigines have given examples of extraordinary proficiency, and for them foot-tracking is, indeed, an exact science.

  Every morning Bony strolled along Main Street’s sidewalks. He observed countless imprints made by boots and even sandshoes and bare feet. Following a person, and therefore establishing that that person made a particular set of foot-tracks, he memorised them and stored them in his mental card index, and if subsequently he came across the same tracks, he knew who made them.

  He knew, too, when they were made, and so came to the knowledge that the town undertaker often visited a widow, who was a dressmaker, between the hours of nine and eleven in the evening. This, of course, was none of his business.

  Patiently he sought for the tracks of the man who wore a size eight sandshoe when he committed two murders. That man could be wearing riding-boots, dancing-pumps, or sandals, and as he would walk the same, he would reveal the same peculiarities as when wearing sandshoes. His stride would be the same, the manner of his limp would be the same, and the way in which he placed his feet in juxtaposition with a central line would be the same.

  At the end of a week Bony had not seen this man’s tracks on Main Street, and now thought it probable that he lived at Dryblowers Flat or at one of the cattle stations on the road to Laverton. He did refresh his memory by studying the imprints made by Constable Harmon’s set of plaster casts, much to the satisfaction of the policeman. He found on the sidewalks foot-tracks much like them, and those of Tony Carr came very close.

  He was completely confident that one day he would see the tracks he sought, and find the man who made them. Success is an edifice built on Patience.

  He called on Sister Jenks one morning at the close of her surgery hour, and for excuse suggested a bottle of coloured water for a slight tummy ailment.

  “H’m! Tummy pains, Bony. Well now, a nice draught of salts is an excellent remedy,” she said brightly, and he had to explain that the ‘medicine’ was intended as eyewash for the curious.

  “So that’s it, Bony. All you’ve come for is a gossip about the neighbours. Well, which one is it this time? Seriously, though, are you growing any warmer?”

  “I could be sitting on an iceberg. Nothing pairs, nothi
ng matches, nothing falls down and nothing builds up. There is a seemingly weak point I want to test. I keep returning, because there is nothing else to return to, to the poor reports on tracks which expert trackers could be expected to have made much more extensive. I’ve been thinking, as indeed have others, that our murderer chose to commit his killings when the tribe was away from Daybreak, hoping that the delay by having to bring in outside trackers would frustrate the police. There is a possible other reason he had for choosing his timing. Shall we discuss the MacBrides and their aborigine domestic?”

  “Anything you like, Bony. You’re anxious because there might be another murder, aren’t you?”

  “Were it not for that possibility, I could regard myself as being on holiday. Yes, I am anxious. Because I haven’t forced action, I haven’t yet met the MacBrides. Be my magnifying-glass. The parson ... could he have had an affair with the dead girl?

  “Of course not, Bony. What an idea!”

  “It has been known to happen,” murmured Bony, evincing slight embarrassment. “I understand that the girl worked for the MacBrides for periods of weeks, and for similar periods lived with her people. Correct?”

  “Yes.” Sister Jenks puckered her forehead in protest. “But I don’t think the MacBrides could be called her employers in the real sense. Mrs MacBride provided Mary with good clothes, and when she went anywhere in the car, she took Mary with her.”

  “Well then, did Mary have any boy friends ... black or white?”

  “I don’t think so. She had girl friends. I’ve seen her with some of the girls from Dryblowers Flat ... white girls ... the two Elder girls, as well as others.”

  “The Elder girls, what are they morally, do you think?”

  Sister Jenks laughed impishly.

  “You know, Bony, I do believe you don’t like asking about girls’ morals, or even a parson’s morals. Don’t mind me. I’ve never heard anything against the morals of the Elder girls, and I would have, had either given cause for gossip. They’re as wild as brumbies. The other girls down there are, too. They go hunting with the aborigine girls, and I know that Mary used sometimes to be of the party.”