Читать книгу Murder Must Wait - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 11

A Drink for Alice

The car slipped through a wide avenue of date palms which laid bars of black shadow across the road so that it was like traversing a tiger’s back, and ultimately the palms gave place to ancient red gums framing the River Hotel. The green roof and the cream-painted front, the wide verandas festooned with passion fruit vines, and the shining spaces of the broad river beyond combined to welcome with cool relaxation.

The driver said he would like to take the opportunity for a word with a pal in the public bar, which, of course, suited Bony and his lady friend. They mounted the few steps to the front entrance, and Alice paused to note with disapproval the several prams and pushers parked in an alcove where they certainly wouldn’t cause an obstruction. Bony waited whilst she peeped at the infants, and could not evade the glint in her eyes when they entered the building. In the lounge the mothers were joined in a school for inebriates.

“Same old tale,” Alice remarked, sipping ice-cold lager. “Eleven women drinking their heads off, and nine kids parked outside because it’s against the law to bring them into a pub. I’d make it illegal to leave babies outside a place like this.”

“It’s shady and cool on the veranda,” murmured Bony, rolling a cigarette. “So open, too. So safe ... perhaps.”

“Tell me about the baby stolen from here,” Alice pleaded. “It’s why I asked you to bring me.”

“I read your mind, Alice, and I agreed to your wish because you have earned a drink.” Bony gallantly applied a match to her cigarette. “It was on the afternoon of December 27th, a Mrs Ecks brought her new baby here and left it out there on the veranda.

“When she arrived, there were already two prams on the veranda. It was then about a quarter past four. At twenty minutes to five, or thereabouts, another woman arrived, leaving her child outside to make the fourth. This woman said she remembered seeing Mrs Ecks’s baby in the pram.