Читать книгу Madman's Bend - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 9

One Frosty Night and Morning

Bony sat on the bench outside the back door and watched the sun go down in a clear, dustless sky, its rays coldly lemon. The kelpie dog lay under the bench beneath him, and the other, a border collie, lay on the ground a yard or so from him. The kookaburras departed to perch in the same gum tree and join in an evening chorus of gargantuan mirth on the high notes and sinister cackling on the low. And, when the fowls had ceased their quarrelling about who should roost with whom, the peaceful silence of the evening was itself a kind of lullaby.

It was quite dark when Bony heard a car coming down the river track. He wondered who it could be. He could not expect Constable Lucas, and traffic hereabouts was remarkable for its scarcity: not a vehicle had passed since the policeman had left. The dogs sat and listened, and the kelpie growled. Then to the right appeared a white glow, which grew like a searchlight and continued along the road, passing the house almost a mile to the west.

When the second car announced its coming to the dogs it was after nine o’clock. It turned off at the junction and aimed its headlights at the house. Both dogs stood, the smaller leaning stiffly against Bony’s leg. Bony patted him and ordered them to be quiet. The car stopped, the headlights were switched off, and Constable Lucas said, cheerfully, “I hope the kettle’s boiling. Why the blackout?”

“We were communing with the stars,” replied Bony, and led the way inside to light the lamps and then add fuel to the stove. The dogs stayed outside, as is customary at homesteads.

“Hard trip?” Bony asked.

“Fairish,” replied Lucas. “Had a blow-out that kept me, and the Super demanded details of this and that. How did you do?”

“Loafed, made pals with the dogs, was visited by the Mira overseer who brought my case, and fed the stock, which includes eight kookaburras. I have half a dozen nice chops I’ll grill for you. You’ll stay?”

“For the chops, yes. Then it’s on my way. I mentioned the door changes to the Super, and he seemed impressed. Did you come across the new one?”

“What did the Super say about them?” Bony asked. The table was covered by a cloth, and, having made tea, he laid a place for the constable. Lucas grinned, but his eyes remained serious.

“Said you are a known bloody bloodhound, Inspector. Said you could scent crime before it was committed, and that when you didn’t return with the doctor you had certainly sniffed it. And then what? Orders me to go back to my station and to accept any instructions you give. Oh, there’s something else. I am to tell you that he telegraphed for permission to hand the job to you, said permission being received at six-thirty pm.”

“Kind of him, but unnecessary. I gave myself permission.” Bony smiled, and his brilliant blue eyes beamed. Looking away from their magnetism, Lucas once again noted the dark face, the Nordic features, and for a moment fell beneath the spell this man of two races could exert. The aroma of grilling lamb chops sharpened his hunger, and over the teacup he asked again about the missing door. The slight incongruity of an inspector grilling chops for a constable, first-class, did not occur to him, but then the inspector was not in full uniform.

“The new door was burnt yesterday,” Bony said, and withdrew a wood sliver from the stove to light a cigarette.

“Ah! It was, eh? Where?”

“The site doesn’t matter. The fact is interesting. The old one was rehung after Mrs Lush was knocked about.”

“Then something happened to the new one.”

“Something happened to it, something which could not be repaired and the door repainted.”

“Funny. You make anything of it?” asked the policeman.

“Not much. The women could have locked Lush out before he went to town, or after he came back on foot from the mail-boxes. I can see him, angry at being refused money, going to the shed for his utility, bringing it back to the house and making another effort to extract a cheque from his wife. When he found the door locked against him he went to the woodheap for the old axe and smashed it in. And, such was his fury, attacked his wife.”

“It could have been that way. Being locked out boiled him over.”

“Then Mrs Lush persuaded the girl on her return home to remove the damaged door and destroy it to prevent talk should anyone call.”

Lucas agreed that that accounted for the change, but he might not have done so had he been told about the hole in the ceiling now in the shadow cast by the lampshade.

“What do you know about two men named Roberts?” asked Bony.

“The town butchers. They live a mile out of town on a smallholding property. I’ve never had trouble from them, although I’ve suspected they gamble. At home, of course. Cards, not two-up. As they own the property I can do nothing when they invite friends there for a game. Why? They interest you?”

“The girl said, remember, that Lush wanted three hundred pounds, that he was desperate for the money. Young Cosgrove told me that Lush’s credit at the hotel was restricted. He told me also that the Roberts men played it rough when a gambling debt was owed them. I am interested to learn why Lush needed all that money. You might make discreet inquiries. Is there a lawyer at White Bend?”

Lucas said there was not. Asked whether he happened to know who looked after Mrs Lush’s affairs, he said he didn’t know. While he ate, Bony questioned him about the Cosgroves and their men, and afterwards asked him to describe how Lush walked, going so far as to request a demonstration.

“I’ll have to try to pick up his tracks, which will be difficult, not having seen them,” he went on. “I am beginning to think that the theory of Lush going bush with a store of booze is no longer well founded. He was short of money, and his credit at the hotel was short, too. You might go into this credit angle. Again, he wasn’t in town long enough to indulge in a long bender and so leave on the verge of delirium tremens. I’ll tell you something to add spice to your inquiries. In the ceiling above us is a bullet hole, and in the corner there is the rifle from which the bullet was probably fired.”

The policeman’s fair eyebrows shot upward, and the operation of loading his pipe was halted.

“The hole in the ceiling was made recently, Lucas. The ceiling is of plaster and is stained with smoke, but the edges of the hole are plaster-white. Above it is a corresponding hole in the iron roof. Further, the rifle has been cleaned and oiled. And I haven’t found another of the same calibre. There’s a shotgun and a Winchester single-shot forty-four, and neither has received such care. Better take them with you. They may be needed.”

Lucas continued filling his pipe, and said nothing until he had applied a match and was smoking. Then he said, “It draws pictures, doesn’t it?”

“Dimly. However, it does shadow the girl’s story with doubt. As I may not be able to telephone the Super without being heard by someone at Mira, I’d like you to tell him that I am finding this business of great interest. Just that: no details. D’you know if young Cosgrove is in love with Jill Madden?”

“No, I don’t, Inspector. We haven’t been long enough at White Bend to hear much gossip.”

“We! Who is included? Your wife?”

“She knows everyone, and, as blotting-paper absorbs water, she absorbs the affairs of other people without giving up anything about us. Been useful more than once. I’ll get her to find out that one.”

“Do. Now for this flood. When d’you think it will reach this point?”

“It could be in a couple of days,” replied Lucas. “I’m told that following the head the body of water flows fast. I’ve never seen a real flood along this river, but they say it has widened out from its banks for twenty miles, and they told me only this evening that what’s coming is an old-man flood. You’ll have to watch it.”

“I shall retreat to Mira, or get away to White Bend ahead of it in the utility.”

“You could take the track out to the back of this property. There’s a well and hut bordering the outside road to Bourke and down to the Bend. But don’t delay after the flood head passes, because between here and that outside road there’s two creeks that will flood back quick and cut you off. This house will beat the flood rise, but I don’t suppose it has enough grub to keep you going for a month.”

“Well, you should be going now. If there is anything else I’ll contact you somehow.”

Having watched Lucas depart in his jeep, Bony called the dogs inside, and was amused when neither would obey. Being a little mystified by the broken line to Mira, he needed the dogs to give warning of anything that might eventuate, even the return of Lush; so he pulled them by their collars into the living-room and closed and locked the door.

Having been fussed over, they quickly forgot the taboo, and followed him about the house while he tested the front door and the windows. He drew an old rocking-chair to the stove and settled there to meditate and plan his future activities.

It was daybreak when he woke coldly stiff. He opened the door and the dogs ran out. Going to the woodheap for chips with which to fire the stove he saw two milking cows standing beside the milking-shed. Frost whitened the upper surfaces of the woodpile.

After two cups of tea and three cigarettes he milked the cows, took a cold shower of three seconds, and then cooked breakfast, at which he did not linger. He brought the step-ladder. He had found cartridges for the thirty-two, and with one of them he proved that the bullet fitted the hole in the ceiling. When he had returned the ladder and cleaned up, the old American clock registered the time as seven-twenty.

By half past seven he had run the utility into the shed and pocketed the ignition key; now he was relieved of responsibility for it as well as for the dogs. He had found a pair of Lush’s boots, and with these he made impressions on soft ground. In size they were a small seven. The impressions gave him very little; they only proved what the sole of each indicated—that Lush walked with the toes angled slightly inward, as many men do who have earned a living for long years in the saddle. Without the man in them the boots gave no significant leads to character.

After locking the house Bony walked between the twin wheel-marks of vehicles leading to the road and the mail-boxes. The sun, just risen, failed to penetrate the avenue of river gums, and this side was cold and still darkly green. The kookaburras continued to greet the new day with their mocking, and Bony wondered if they would call for dinner. A magpie, gleaming black and white, whirred after a slower-flying crow that cawed with annoyance, and a flock of red and grey galah parrots rose above the avenue to speak a language all their own.

All seemed right with this world. All was right with Inspector Bonaparte. How William Lush was faring was a subject for speculation.

If Lush had walked from his useless utility to the house that night he would have followed this track and not the river bank, which in several places was broken by water gutters deep enough to injure a man who fell into one. Lush would have kept on or close to his own motor track. Quite soon Bony realized that the ground so far did not favour a tracker, being composed of hard clay rubble extending to the junction with the main track. From this point, however, the surface, although harder, could be broken to whitest dust by motor wheels and the hooves of a horse.

There was no difficulty in finding the exact place in which the utility had been abandoned; dust-covered oil marks gave it. Extending outwards for several yards, and about the mail-boxes some ten feet from the edge of the cliff above the water-hole, the ground registered numerous prints of men and horses, now blurred and useless.

Recalling that during the night when Lush abandoned the utility the wind had been almost at gale force, and that the following day it had blown almost half a gale, Bony stood by one of the boxes and smoked a cigarette while he took in this scene which had not been imprinted on his mind when he saw it from Lucas’s jeep.

The river, after passing Madden’s homestead, came south-westward to this sharp major bend at which it was turned due east. One mile farther down could be seen the reservoir tanks and the roofs of the Mira homestead atop a similar cliff-like bank above a similar water-gouged, water-filled hole. In either direction the massive red-gums formed an avenue above the empty river course. Here only, and at Mira bend, was the avenue broken, permitting the easterly wind full freedom for a mile to attack the mail-boxes, and the westerly wind the same distance to strike at the Mira homestead.