Читать книгу The Will of the Tribe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 6

The Brentners

The homestead was built on a slight rise southward of Deep Creek by some five hundred yards. It was a commodious building of variegated materials, having been begun as a four-room cottage and now comprising a dozen rooms under the one roof extending over the twelve-feet-wide verandas. Detached from the main building were the kitchen and the usual day-house constructed with buffalo grass, both being connected with the house by a covered way. A wire-netted fence created about these buildings a roomy compound, where grew bean trees and several flowering gums.

The trade shops, the store and the men’s quarters, the horse and cattle yards, and the motor shed were situated to the west of the compound, and were dominated by reservoir water tanks on a high platform.

On the east veranda this afternoon of 7 August were Rose Brentner and her two children, Rosie and Hilda, with Tessa, who had been adopted by the Brentners. All were dressed in white and each was a component of a perfect tropical picture in the cool and dry season of winter.

Rose Brentner was in her early thirties, athletic still, inclined to leanness. Her hair was brown with golden tints. Her eyes were brown and apt to open wide when intensely interested. She was a tall woman, and when she spoke her voice betrayed the preciseness of business training. Rosie, aged seven, had her colouring. Hilda was like her father, fair with hazel eyes having the innocence of a baby of two, and she five years old.

“I wish Mr Howard and Inspector Bonaparte would come,” Rosie said with some impatience. “When people are coming they ought to come at once. Is the Inspector the son of the Emperor of France?”

“I don’t think so,” replied her mother. “I hope not. We’re not prepared to receive royalty. Try to remember your dates.”

“Captain said that Mr Howard and Inspector Bonaparte drove to Lucifer’s Couch before lunch. He saw their dust,” volunteered Hilda, who was standing at the veranda screen. “I can see dust too.”

The elder child ran to join her and a moment later agreed that Constable Howard’s jeep was approaching. The Aboriginal girl joined the children. Not beautiful, she was pleasing to look at now she was seventeen years old and at her best. Civilization in the persons of the Brentners had given her body robustness and poise to stand with the children without conscious inferiority. Her voice was soft and without accent. Little Hilda took her hand excitedly and pointed at the rising brown dust gilded by the sun.

“It will be they,” Tessa said. “They’re on the track from the Crater. Look! There’s Captain on the tank stand, and he’s signalling, too. Shall I call Kurt?”

“Yes do, Tessa,” assented Rose. “We’ll have afternoon tea in the day-house. Will you see to it?”

Tessa hurried into the house, and Rose Brentner, with the girls, left to cross the compound to the gate fronting the Creek. There, her husband joined them, a large man and rugged and tough, fair hair already thinning, hazel eyes made small by the sun. Like the men who alighted from the jeep he wore khaki drill slacks and open-neck shirt.

No one appeared to notice the distant semicircle of Aborigines beyond the jeep, or the Aborigine who had been on the tank stand and now was waving to the crowd to stand clear. Rose and her husband smiled at Howard, and swiftly focused attention on the second man advancing towards them with smiling blue eyes. Howard said, “Inspector Bonaparte, Mr Brentner and Mrs Brentner.”

Rose Brentner received a slight shock. She had heard of this man, and he wasn’t anything like the mental build-up she had done when she heard he was coming. The only trace of his Aboriginal ancestry was his colouring, a shade darker than that of her husband’s weathered features. He appeared slight as he shook hands with the cattleman, but then most men did so when near him. Then he was bending over her proffered hand and smiling.

“You must be sick and tired of policemen, Mrs Brentner. I shall try hard not to be a nuisance.”

“You are very welcome, Inspector,” Rose heard herself say. “People like us naturally welcome everyone.” She glanced at her small daughters. “We have been a little impatient too.”

“Ah!” Bonaparte bent low to greet the girls. “You’ll be Rosie, and you will be Hilda. How-d’you-do? Mrs Leroy was telling me of you, and she sent her love to you.”

“Mrs Leroy spoils both of ’em,” interjected Brentner.

“I find that hard to believe,” countered Bonaparte. “No one could ever spoil these young ladies. Mrs Leroy told me they both know beautiful Aboriginal legends, and I hope to hear them sometime.”

“You will,” Brentner said positively. “Did I see Tessa with afternoon tea?”

The visitors could not have been more warmly welcomed had they been close relatives. They were conducted to the dayhouse which offered surprises by its roominess and furnishing. It was circular in shape and contained easy chairs, racks of books, a large dining-table, and several floor rugs. The young Aborigine turned from setting out the tea things, and her large black eyes slowly found Bonaparte after smiling at Constable Howard.

“So you are Tessa! I am happy to meet you, Tessa.”

“You are very kind, Inspector. How-do-you-do?”

“Well, now we’re all here and comfortable, what about a cup of tea?” suggested Brentner, winking at Hilda. “Our friends must be as famished as I am, what with all the work I’ve done today.”

“You’ve done nothing all day but read the pastoral journals,” accused his wife, and Brentner grinned and wanted to know if Inspector Bonaparte was married.

Tessa poured the tea, and the children gravely conveyed it to the guests and their parents.

“Would you all grant a favour?” Bonaparte asked, and waited for their assurance. “Actually it’s two favours. The first is that you try to forget I am a policeman. You could never forget that Constable Howard is one because he cannot help looking like one. The second favour is that you call me Bony. My wife does. My three sons do. I hope I can persuade you. I did persuade Mrs Leroy.”

A small hand was rested on his knee, and Hilda said, “Can we call you Bony too, Inspector Bonaparte?”

“Of course, Inspector Bonaparte is a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

Hilda gravely nodded agreement and joined her sister.

It was Kurt Brentner who suggested that the visitors might like to talk business and that his office would be relaxing. Bony expressed the hope that Mrs Brentner would join them later.

The office also provided a surprise, being a commodious room with two pairs of french windows. The radio transceiver, black-panelled with chromed fittings, first captured the attention. Apart from the roll-top American desk flanked by steel cabinets there was nothing of the office about this comfortably furnished apartment. Brentner invited his guests to sit and smoke and, having remarked that some cattlemen appeared to be most fortunate, Bony crossed to the french windows to gaze out over the desert to the gold brick lying on the horizon.

“Mrs Leroy told us Mrs Brentner named it Lucifer’s Couch,” he said, “so much more picturesque than the official Wolf Creek Meteor Crater. D’you mind if I close the windows?”

“Not at all. Chilly?”

“No. The veranda could be accommodating.” Having closed both pairs of windows, Bony accepted the easy chair drawn to the low occasional table, on which were cigarettes and tobacco. He was smiling when he said, “Cops and robbers, you know. Nasty suspicious policemen.”

“Stock in trade,” Brentner said good-humouredly.

“We were trained to be suspicious,” Bony said, laughing softly. “Before Mrs Brentner joins us, I would like to know something of this local scene and the people. I’ve glanced at the Police Summary of the crime at the Crater, but only glanced. I understand you have been in this part of the continent all your life. You would be au fait with the Aborigines, meaning as knowledgeable as most. Is there a legend about Lucifer’s Couch?”

“I haven’t heard of one,” replied Brentner. “Our Tessa could answer. She’s interested in legends.”

“I must ask her. By the way, do please treat our subject confidentially. We must start on the premise that the man found in the Crater could not possibly have got there without the knowledge of the Aborigines. I refer to the Aborigines here at Deep Creek, those at Beaudesert, the tribes either side of them, and the wild blacks down south on the desert. Do you agree?”

“Yes. But . . .”

“Pardon me. At this stage my mind is open. The murder could have been committed by the local Aborigines, the wild ones, or whites in this wide area. What I desire to pin down is this. The dead man could not have been put in the Crater without the knowledge of the Aborigines and, further, he could not, in the first instance, have entered this area of the Kimberleys in the north and desert in the south without it being a news item to all the tribes and sections. Do you agree?”

“As you put it, yes.”

“Then we have three suppositions. One, that the murder was done by the whites. Two, that it was done by the blacks. And three, that it was committed by the whites and the blacks in collusion. Thus white, black, black-white. Pity we cannot add yellow. I like my investigations most involved.”

“You have an involved one here,” Howard dryly observed.

“Mrs Leroy thinks that your Aborigines are allied with those at Beaudesert who are Kimberley blacks. How do your Aborigines get along with the wild men?”

“There’s been no real trouble for many years. The tribal grounds belonging to our people extend to about forty miles to the south, and include the Crater.”

“Tell me, do you think your Aborigines are assimilated with the whites as much as, say, the Beaudesert tribe?”

Brentner was positive when he answered in the negative.

“Forgive me for being boring. Can you say to whom your people are closer . . . the wild blacks or the Beaudesert blacks?”

“It’s hard to be sure about that. I’d say they were nearer to the desert blacks. And you’re not being boring.”

“Thank you. Tell me about Tessa, how you came to adopt her.”

“Well, my wife and I were sitting in the day-house one evening nine years ago, when a child ran in and threw herself at my wife’s feet, hugged her legs and begged to stay with us. She was to be married the next day tribal fashion to an Abo old enough to be her grandfather. The wife said I’d have to stop it. She was new up here and didn’t understand the problem. Not nearly like the kid did, and I did, too.

“Anyway, Rose took her off to the bathroom, scrubbed her down, put her in her own bed, locked the door and left me sitting up expecting trouble. Trouble didn’t come, and early the next morning, Rose still determined, I went to the camp and yabbered to Chief Gup-Gup and Poppa, the Medicine Man. The upshot was I bought the kid for a few plugs of tobacco and, finally, we adopted her. She’s turned out well, as no doubt you noticed.”

“I agree. How close is she to her people?”

“Goes along now and then to visit her mother and the others, that’s all. Lives with us, of course. She’s one of the family. Calls me Kurt and the wife Rose. Rose educated her to the point that we had ambition to send her down to a teachers’ college. She’s teaching our kids now. She turned out well, and we are both proud of our Tessa. Shows what can be done if you get ’em early, and get ’em away from their elders.”

“I think it shows, rather, what love can do. What of the man called Captain?”

“My own kids called him that,” Brentner explained. “Leroy managed the place before me, and he was married to a Salvation Army lass in Broome. You met her, of course. Tragedy she went blind. Anyway, she got the Abo children together and tried to give them something of Christianity. The lad we call Captain was fast at picking up ideas, but I think Mrs Leroy didn’t do much with the rest. She sent him to the padre at Derby who put him to school, and he got along real well until fifteen. Then he did what we all expected. He just turned up. Get him serious and he’ll talk better than me. His handwriting is something to admire. But, well you know how it is.”

“Please dig deeper.”

“When he came back he was a real mixed up kid, as they say,” proceeded the cattleman. “We’d been here only a few months, and Rose tried hard to get him to continue his schooling under her. But no, he couldn’t be assimilated like our Tessa. It was too late. He belonged to the camp and, as he is the son of Gup-Gup’s son, I’ve always thought they influenced him. But they didn’t get him back a hundred per cent.

“He got to like being with the cook, looking after the chooks, doing odd jobs without being asked. A few years after he came back from Derby I found him asleep in the saddlery shop, and he’d gone to sleep reading a book. We had a quiet talk, and the upshot of that was I let him have an out-house to himself. Rose got him books to read, and eventually he became a sort of overseer with the blacks. I want stockmen; he singles them out. He breaks in the horses. Comes running if Rose whistles. Eats most times with the cook. Plays tracking with my kids and tells ’em Abo legends, and is a damned good go-between with the tribe.”

“How old, d’you think?”

“About twenty-five.”

“A lubra?”

“Never took one that we know of.”

“Now for the cook. His name is . . .” Bony stopped and rose to his feet when Mrs Brentner entered, “Welcome to our little conference.”