Читать книгу The Will of the Tribe - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 7

The Honoured Guest

Rose Brentner’s business training had sharpened her perception of trifles, and she didn’t fail to note that Bony had conducted her to a chair to sit with her back to the strong light and that he faced the light. She wondered if this was due to purpose or to vanity. She noted, too, that his easy manner when in the day-house was replaced by restrained assertiveness, giving him a command of this conference which her husband and Constable Howard had already acknowledged. She had expected brashness, flamboyancy and, in the dayhouse, she had met charm and ease; now she felt strength and the poise given by experience.

As her husband told of their cook, Jim Scolloti, of his long service and his dependability, so long as he did not smell alcohol, she noted that Bony was missing nothing although his blue eyes were almost lazily directed beyond the windows.

“You have two white stockmen,” pressed Bony.

“Just the two,” replied the cattleman. “As the kids named Captain, they have named them Old Ted and Young Col. You’ll meet them at dinner. Old Ted is twenty-six, and Young Col is twenty. Both are a cut above the old time bush-rider, being college-educated. Old Ted has money of his own, having inherited from his parents, who were killed in a road accident. Young Col’s father owns farming properties down in the Riverina, wants him to manage one but, like old Ted, he won’t leave these parts. Col’s been with us four years; Old Ted seven.”

“And you have been here ten years, I understand, having taken over from Mr Leroy, who established the station eighteen years ago. There are your two white stockmen, your cook and yourself; four white men. Can you tell me just what your men did during six days prior to the discovery of the dead man in the Crater?”

Brentner made as though to get up, and was waved back.

“Wait, please. Be patient. The medical opinion is that the man was dead from three to six days. He was found three miles from this homestead, on the Deep Creek Pastoral Property and in this part of Australia three miles is reckoned as being just outside the back door.”

Brentner took from one of the steel cabinets a normal business diary. Flicking open the pages his fingers betrayed impatience, and, in speaking, he tried without success to control his voice.

“You want six days of work, Inspector. Well, here they are beginning at 21 April. That day Old Ted and four black stockmen from the local tribe were driving a mob of cattle to Beaudesert to be handed to a drover taking them to Derby. Young Col and one black stockman were looking over the grass country at Eddy’s Well. They were camped there. On this day, with Rose and the kids, I left at ten o’clock for Hall’s Creek.

“On 22 April we came back as far as Beaudesert where we stayed the night. Old Ted arrived there with the cattle and Young Col was still at Eddy’s Well. On the 23rd we got home about eleven in the morning and Old Ted returned from Beaudesert about four. Young Col was still away at Eddy’s. He returned the next day, the 24th, and this day I worked here in the office and Old Ted repaired saddlery. We had a spell on the 25th. On the 26th we prepared to leave for the muster, and on the 27th we left at seven in the morning. It was this day that the plane people saw the body. Enough?”

“During the period was there any unrest, any trouble with your Aborigines?”

“They were quiet as usual,” replied Brentner, sitting down again.

“Thank you. Now I’ll state my own position. I’ve been seconded by my Department to an instrumentality of the Federal Government to find answers to two questions. One question is how did the man found dead in the Crater penetrate this far into the Kimberley Region without having been reported by the station homesteads? And the other is what was he doing prior to his death? It is known who he was, and thus the answers to these questions are important to the Federal Instrumentality, which is not interested particularly in how he met his death.”

“Oh!” softly exclaimed Rose Brentner. “Who was he then?”

“It was the question I asked, and I was not informed, it being thought extraneous to the purpose of my investigation. However, the Western Australian Police Department sought, and was granted, my seconding to investigate the killing of this, even to me, unknown man. It would appear that I am to serve two masters.”

Rose Brentner watched the long brown fingers rolling a cigarette, and then she studied the dark brown face on which Aboriginal race moulding was absent. The face was neither round nor long. The nose was straight, the mouth flexible. The brows were not unlike a veranda to shadow the unusual blue eyes and, although the black hair was now greying at the temples, it was virile and well kept. Then he was looking at her and the features vanished before the power of the eyes.

“It is agreed, I believe, that anyone travelling through the Kimberleys is reported, when arriving at or passing through a station, over the radio network. Such a person is news for everyone here and, because of the great distances between the station homesteads, the constantly known whereabouts of the traveller is almost vital for his own safety.”

Bony now took Brentner into his confidence, and Howard leaned forward as though he thought he might miss something.

“Without doubt you are familiar with the geography of this north-west corner of Australia, but I will use the simile of the open fan to illustrate the circumstances about this case. We will place the handle of the opened fan at Lucifer’s Couch. Out along the left vane, or whatever it is, lie half a dozen homesteads on the track to Derby. Out along the centre are half a dozen homesteads, including the town of Hall’s Creek, on the track to Wyndham. And along the right vane other homesteads lie on the track to Darwin. The traveller enters these Kimberleys by one of those tracks, as there is no other. It is my opinion that the traveller could come here only across the desert to the south, from a point on its perimeter a thousand odd miles away.

“He couldn’t cross that desert without the wild Aborigines knowing all about him, any more than a traveller can cross the Kimberleys without the station Aborigines knowing all about his movements. You, Mr Brentner, and Constable Howard, will surely agree with me that the Aborigines still removed from long and close association with the whites also have a broadcasting system, developed through past centuries, and I think you will agree with me, too, that espionage organizations set up by outside governments are amateurish by comparison with the methods employed by these Australian Aborigines, who could make the cloak-and-dagger boys stand gaping at street corners.

“Forgive me for being repetitious. I shall be asking for your co-operation and should be grateful did I receive it. Your own Aborigines know who killed that man and who put him in the Crater. They might not have had anything to do with the crime, but their elders surely know the details. Thus we proceed without taking into our confidence any Aborigine, including Captain and Tessa. Will you think about it?”

Rose Brentner smiled and stood, saying, “Of course, Bony. Just look at the time! Dinner will be ready in an hour and I’ve to dress. Can we continue afterwards?”

“I may have to test your hospitality for several weeks, and we must not permit ourselves to be bored by any one subject.”

Bony was assured that no subject could be boring to people starved for outside contacts and was conducted to a pleasant room facing across the compound to the creek trees. Having been given the hint by Howard, he changed into more formal clothes and, on hearing a triangle beaten with a bar, made his way to the dining-room. Here he found his host and Howard, with two young men, gathered before a sideboard, and was offered beer or sherry.

A red-bearded, blue-eyed man was presented to him as Old Ted, and a boy looking no older than sixteen was presented as Young Col. Young Col’s hair was fair and over-long, and his hazel eyes glinted with mischief. Both spoke with polished accents.

“We have heard about you, Inspector,” Young Col said, raising his glass as though to toast. “Nothing to your discredit. Could I be wrong, Ted?”

“Not this time,” replied the bearded man and, raising his glass, added, “Here’s to the Guest of Honour. May his stay with us always be peaceful.”

“It always will, provided you call me Bony.”

“Delighted. What d’you reckon, Chief?” inquired the red man.

“Comes easy to the tongue,” agreed the cattleman.

Tessa came in, this time with the two children. Bony greeted them and smiled into their excited eyes. A tall thin man in chef’s livery appeared, carrying a large platter, and was followed by a young Aborigine woman, wearing cap and apron over a black dress, bearing another tray.

The room, the appointments, the company, Bony found most pleasing, and he quickly realized it was due to Rose Brentner’s long influence over this homestead. Her husband talked easily, the young men teased Howard, the children asked questions without seeming to intrude, and Tessa supervised their meal. He was promised introduction to a Mister Lamb, who was a pet sheep, to a Mrs Bluey, the mother of a litter of five pups, and to a pet kangaroo called Bob Menzies.

He met Mister Lamb the following morning when, after arranging with Howard about times he could be contacted by radio, and having watched the policeman’s jeep disappear beyond the creek crossing, he was made aware of this animal by being bunted gently against his leg. Little Hilda then informed him that Mister Lamb requested a cigarette, and she was enumerating Mister Lamb’s virtues and vices when she was called to the school-room by her mother.

Rose beckoned and Bony joined her on the veranda. She said, “Come along in for morning tea. I’m dying to gossip, and I want to know all about you. The men will be busy all morning, so I have my chance.”

“Everyone knows all about me,” he told her, lightly.

“I don’t. I’m an inquisitive woman. To us you are wonderfully unusual.”

“I am the most unusual man in Australia,” was the humorously expressed claim. He was laughing and she knew it was at himself. As he told her of his origins and the highlights of his career, victories over himself rather than over others, the sense of superiority which had been with her was expunged from her mind. She admitted she hadn’t been able to brew tea in a billy-can when she came to Deep Creek as a bride, and she spoke of the many amenities she had missed, and the blessings she had been given. Eventually he asked if he might talk shop, and to this she nodded.

“I’d like to go into your experiences on that day the plane people dropped the message,” he said. “It was a bad day, wasn’t it?”

“Everything went wrong from the moment I read the message.”

“So I’m given to understand. You couldn’t get the transceiver working, and yet Mr Leroy found no difficulty in opening up. There is the possibility that someone disconnected something to delay word getting to Howard, and then made the connexion just before Leroy got here. What do you think?”

“It was talked about, I know. But who would do that? No, what happened, I believe, is that Jim and I were so excited we couldn’t do the right things to make it work. Neither of us know much about it.”

“What of Captain and Tessa?” Bony pressed.

“You may count them out. They don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Well, whatever the cause, the delay occasioned by Scolloti having to go to Beaudesert to contact Howard measures almost one day. That one day might have been important. I don’t know.”

“But why should anyone have interfered with the transceiver?”

Bony shrugged faintly, saying, “Life would be easy if we had the answers to all the questions. When you and Scolloti went outside again everyone had vanished, save the children. Even Tessa had disappeared, and it wasn’t till after sundown that Tessa returned with Captain, or rather Captain came home bringing Tessa with him. Tessa had been crying and her dress was torn as though she had been forcibly brought home. The explanation given Howard was that the tribe had suddenly decided on a walkabout, which is quite normal, and that Tessa and Captain went off with the tribe. Again quite normal, both being members of it. Tell me, what was Tessa’s explanation to you?”

“That she ran away with the others and thought better of it after Captain made her come back.”

“Please!” The blue eyes had caught her and she couldn’t evade them. “Nine years ago a child sought your protection. She was never initiated; she was adopted by you. Today she is almost fully assimilated. Her dress sense is excellent, her poise very good. Her conversation is intelligent and lucid. And she would just run off with the tribe when told? Her explanation, please.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. When I taxed her about it, she wouldn’t say anything. Then she said she didn’t know why. Eventually she confessed that the lubras beckoned and she had felt something inside compelling her to run after them. I wonder! Kurt thinks it was the collective will of the tribe. Can you agree with that?”

“Certainly. But what prompted the will of the tribe to command your Tessa? You and the children were left utterly alone after the cook went off to report. You and the children went to the camp and found it completely deserted. On your return you cleaned your husband’s guns and decided to sleep in the store-room, as it seemed the strongest place. And then in the early evening Captain returned with Tessa, the girl crying and her dress torn. The picture is clear enough, but there’s something wrong with it.”