Читать книгу The Will of the Tribe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 5

Lucifer’s Couch

Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte gazed upon Lucifer’s Couch and marvelled.

The Stranger must have been of considerable size to have made such a mark on this land of lemon-tinted sand and red-gold rock. He arrived, it is recalled by people who lived at Hall’s Creek, late in December 1905, to dig a pit several hundred feet deep and one mile in circumference, and to raise about it a rampart of rock and rubble some hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Such was the impact, the shock upthrust three observable rings of rock-rubble; the inner half a mile from the pit, the middle about three-quarters of a mile, and the outer a full mile from the centre.

It was no glancing blow but a direct fall, for the wall about the pit is perfectly circular and, save at one place, uniform in height and width at the summit. The occasional heavy monsoon rain and the high winds of spring and autumn have removed from the rubble the earth which originally cemented the hard micaceous sandstone forming the wall, producing a polished monument as conceived by a Pharaoh’s architect and built by a Pharaoh’s slave labour. Inside the wall the earth and sand of the floor of the pit now slope gently to the central soak-hole, about which grow several desert hardwoods.

“A hundred feet above the plain, Howard, and from two to three hundred feet down to that soak,” observed Inspector Bonaparte. “Give me the history.”

First Constable Howard, tough and seemingly as polished by the sun and the wind as the wall on which they were sitting, complied, “The meteor fell in 1905, and the people who saw it fall won’t take it from a couple of geologists that it fell three hundred years ago. The people at Hall’s Creek watched the flaming mass and heard the detonation. They were only sixty-five miles distant.

“In those days this country wasn’t taken up by cattlemen, the outlet for Hall’s Creek being at Wyndham on the north coast. No one travelled down this way to investigate. When Beaudesert was taken up their stockmen never troubled to climb up here, for from any point the place looks like a low flat-topped stony hill. This crater was actually discovered as late as 1947 by a party of oil prospectors who happened to fly over it.

“After the discovery,” Howard proceeded, “barely a dozen stockmen came here, but in 1948 members of an expedition sent by the Australian Geographic Society photographed and reported on it.¹ Later another party came, following the truck tracks of the first.

“Now we come to the present year; again a plane chanced to fly over, on 27 April, and the people aboard saw in the pit what they thought was a body. It was a body right enough, white man dead several days. How he had got there, who he was, no one could tell. He was without swag, water-bag, any equipment. His clothes were soiled and damaged, and his boots needed repair.

“You know, of course, that no one gets around in this country without being reported on the radio network. No matter if he’s a touring politician or a prospector, a stranger is news, an item of gossip for all the station homesteads to talk about. We’re three hundred miles from Derby on the west; Wyndham on the north is two hundred miles, and it’s something like five hundred miles from Darwin. Inside those points there are many homesteads and more Aboriginal tribes, and no one, black or white, ever reported the dead man.”

“The nearer homesteads, Deep Creek and Beaudesert,” suggested Bonaparte, “people at one or the other could have been concerned with the death of this man.”

“Must have been,” agreed the policeman. “But these homesteads are both comparatively close and no stranger could have got to them without being reported as having passed through homesteads beyond them. You can see Deep Creek Homestead. The track down from the Hall’s Creek-Derby road through Beaudesert doesn’t go beyond. Beyond is desert for a thousand miles and more, and the people in this desert are a hundred per cent wild Abos. We haven’t been able to track the dead man from any point, let alone identify him. The only theory, and that isn’t really a theory, is that he fell from a plane, but he didn’t because nothing is broken bar his skull.”

Bonaparte stood to gaze over the surrounding desert, facing north. He could see the inner and middle rock rings and the demarcation of the limit of country burned to ash by the heat of the Stranger. Beyond that line the scrub trees were older and beyond them grew the ancient gums bordering Deep Creek. The Creek trees appeared to be the hem of the multi-coloured rug of the Kimberley Ranges with their flat-summit red residuals, razor-edged green escarpments, and deep black gullies.

Three miles to the west could be seen the homestead of Deep Creek cattle station, and even casual examination of a map would show the officially named Wolf Creek Meteor Crater to be situated at the northern edge of the great inland desert of Western Australia.

“The trees on the plain aren’t any older than those down at the soakage,” Constable Howard was saying, “proving, I’d say, that the meteor fell less than sixty years ago, not three hundred.”

To the east as well as towards the west, the feet of the mountains rested upon the flat base of the desert, at this time of day looking darkly forbidding in comparison with the airy brilliance of the plain stretching southward beyond the edge of the world. Bonaparte sat again and worked on another cigarette. He said, “Bring the history of this place up to date, continuing as from the discovery of the body down there. I’ve read the Case Summary but I’d like to hear it from you.”

“The body was seen by members of the Mineral Survey party on 27 April. Early this day the manager of Deep Creek and his stockmen left on a muster down south. At the homestead normal routine work went on: lubras doing the household wash, an Aborigine called Captain breaking in a horse, the manager’s wife doing her usual chores, and their two little girls being given their lessons by an educated Aboriginal lass called Tessa.

“The plane party dropped a note shortly after ten that morning. The note said, ‘Believe there is a man hurt or dead in the Crater. Think you should investigate.’ The homestead cook, a white man named Jim Scolloti, and the Abo called Captain came here in the cook’s old utility.” Howard pointed out the clearly defined track winding from the Crater towards the distant homestead. “That track was first made by the cook’s utility, and then used by the traffic during the subsequent investigation.

“Now, when the two of them got back to the homestead, Mrs Brentner, the manager’s wife, tried to work the transceiver. Neither she nor the cook knew much about it, and they couldn’t get it to work. So Scolloti drove the twenty-seven miles to Beaudesert, where they raised Base, and Base contacted me. I left at once, arriving at the homestead pretty late as the track . . . but you know the track we came over today.

“When I got to Beaudesert with my two trackers, Mrs Leroy said her husband had the Deep Creek transceiver working, and had told her that all the blacks had cleared out on walkabout after hearing about the body down there. Even the breaker, Captain, and the young lubra called Tessa, cleared out too. But they had come back when I got to Deep Creek.

“It was then close to dark, and I wasn’t going to muck up tracks about this place by wandering around in the night. Soon after break of day, with Leroy and the trackers, I came here and we all went down to the body. The tracks made by the cook and the Abo horse-breaker were clear enough, but even my trackers couldn’t locate the tracks of any other person, not even the tracks of the dead man. If the dead man walked to where his body was found he must have left his tracks. If he was carried there, the man or men who carried him must have left tracks. But, as I said, the only tracks down there were those made by the cook and the Abo. I had the trackers skirt the entire outside of the wall and they couldn’t pick up tracks. And both of them are good, too.”

Constable Howard interrupted his narrative to light a cigarette, and proceeded, “My junior got here with Dr Reedy in the afternoon. Doc Reedy examined the body. It was badly mauled by the birds, but he’s stuck to his opinion, made at the time, that the feller had been dead three days at shortest, and six at longest. Due to the complete absence of humidity, parts of the body not attacked by the birds told Doc the man had once had smallpox and, as one hand had been protected, we managed to obtain a clear set of prints. Also we took the set of dentures. Age of man about forty-five. Height five feet eleven. Boot size eight. Hat size seven and three-quarters. Weight about twelve stone. Clothes similar to those worn by the average bushman.

“The Inspector and the Derby doctor arrived the next day, and the two doctors agreed on Doc Reedy’s first opinion. There wasn’t anything more to do with the body save take it to Hall’s Creek and have it buried. The Coroner found that the man had been murdered by a blunt instrument, applied to the back of the skull with considerable force.”

“Let’s go down to the place marked X,” decided Bonaparte.

As they descended, as the wall of the rim heightened above them, the immensity of this crater became more and more impressive and, when they stood on the sandy loam of the floor, it was easy to visualize how the rising tiers of an arena must have appeared to the anguished eyes of the victims of the Roman Games. The sun gilded the vast rampart of rocks. The slight wind outside didn’t penetrate. The temperature was at least ten degrees higher than outside and, on a summer day, might well be fifty degrees hotter. Howard led the way to the spot still marked by four wood pegs.

“It was lying on its back,” he said, “one arm out from the shoulder, the other doubled under the buttocks. The legs were straight but raised slightly at the knees. The doctors thought it possible that rigor mortis had already set in when the body was dumped. They were positive it was dumped, in other words, carried here.”

“And no tracks, inside or outside the Crater, you said.”

“Not a skerrick of a track.”

“The Aborigines are past masters at erasing tracks and very good indeed at avoiding leaving tracks,” Bonaparte said unnecessarily, while standing at the edge of the soak-hole partially masked by several desert scrub trees. It was fifteen feet across, and about eight feet deep, and there were the bones of more than one kangaroo that had been bogged in the mud. Now it was hard.

“The body was first seen on 27 April,” Bony remarked. “It is now 7 August. That’s roughly fourteen weeks. The tracks down here are well preserved by the encircling wall. When was the search for evidence abandoned?”

“On the 18th of May,” replied Howard, “there was a sort of grand final. Brentner and his men returned with cattle on 12 May, and they joined with the trackers and Captain and the Deep Creek blacks who came from walkabout a couple of days before. We almost tore the ruddy wall down that day.”

They climbed the wall, often having to use their hands, so steep is it, and again relaxed on the summit.

“Did your trackers say what they thought of the affair?” asked Bonaparte.

“No. I got the idea that they were uneasy about it all. But then the blacks are always uneasy over anything they don’t understand.”

“What’s your opinion, a black or a white killing?”

“I couldn’t vote for one or the other. I’ll vote for the blacks being concerned somewhere along the line. There’s two sections of Aborigines. The wild blokes down south, and the semi-civilized fellers like these at Deep Creek and at Beaudesert. I’m not a Kimberleys man like the Sergeant at Wyndham. He reckons it was wild blacks who did the killing, and that the tame blacks would just go dumb about it.”

“And they can be dumb, too, Howard. We may leave it that way, and get along to Deep Creek. The Brentners are said to be sociable people. I may have to test it for a month or more. What’s Brentner’s history?”

“Came up the rough way. According to the Wyndham Sergeant, Brentner started as a stockman, then became a drover, and then owned his own drovers’ outfit. Had all the north of Australia to play around in. He never concerned us, and always seemed to co-operate. He was mixed up in a civil action now and then over cattle: his employers and other owners, that sort of thing. Then he got the job managing Deep Creek, and he went down to Perth and married a big business man’s secretary. They chortled when he brought her up here, but they don’t chortle now. Marriage fixed Kurt Brentner. It fixes most of us, I’d say.”

“It does have a calming influence,” Bonaparte said, laughing. “I believe I shall have a pleasant time here, almost a holiday. A little anthropological work to maintain interest in spare moments. In the report to your Inspector tell him that. Inspectors love to be told something or other. It calms them, don’t you think?”

“Take an axe to calm my Inspector.” Then Howard remembered and added, “Sorry, I forgot you’re a bit above a constable, sir.”

“Well, keep on forgetting it, and the sir. Any questions?”

“I’d like to ask one. I’ve had the feeling that the murder of this unknown man was a little outside the ordinary. Now, after all these weeks, you are assigned to it. Is he important?”

“To a few people he is most important. I stress the present tense. It’s why I’m here.”