Читать книгу Bony and the Black Virgin - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 6
ОглавлениеSergeant Mawby Takes Command
Man and dog slept undisturbed, and at break of day John Downer built a fire on the open fireplace in front of the shed, and went back to the tree for the dog and his bedding.
The emaciated animal lay on a bag in the warmth of the fire, which halted for a while the strengthening light of the new day. The old man sipped tea and smoked his pipe while standing and facing outward over the desolate scene to-be. The crows were already cawing.
John Downer was the lease-holder of a hundred and fifty thousand acres of land; a pastoralist, a man of substance—what was left of substance after three years of drought. Sixty years in the past he had entered the ring of life as horse tailer in a droving outfit, and now he was still ahead on points, although the growing daylight would reveal the latest reverses.
Away back in 1930 he had been the Fort Deakin overseer, living at L’Albert with his wife and young Eric. In that year he had been successful with the Western Lands Board in gaining the grant of this hundred and fifty thousand acres resumed from the leasehold of Fort Deakin, which his wife had named Lake Jane because then the lake was full of water. He had built the homestead, made and lost money, had been able to send Eric to a public school in Melbourne.
Eric had done so well, too. He had just gained entry to the University to study for a medical degree when his mother died, and in spite of opposition, he had returned home.
John Downer, king of all he could survey, and more, a kingdom of barely less than two hundred and fifty square miles, yet a mere back paddock compared with the great Fort Deakin, which still boasted three-quarters of a million acres. Not quite five feet five inches in his high-heeled boots, his body still hard and rounded, he didn’t need glasses to survey his kingdom, and not yet had he to be fitted with dentures. People thought he was nearing sixty, but he knew he was seventy-four.
The casualties! A mulga splinter and tetanus had taken his wife five years before this day, and Nature’s withholding of rain had reduced his sheep to a little below a thousand when he and Eric had gone to town for the Annual Bender.
A Kingdom! It needs a stout heart to be king of such.
He had given the dog a mash of meat extract and tinned meat, and had breakfasted on tinned meat and bread, with further pannikins of tea, when Midnight Long arrived in his utility. Long was sparse and tough, fifty and grey. The sobriquet had been bestowed for his habit of returning to his river homestead from an inspection of his run and the sheep long after midnight.
“They want you in at Lake Jane, John,” he said, cutting chips for his pipe, and waiting for the old man to load his dog and himself on to the seat beside him. “Eric’s busy with Mawby. Things looks pretty bad out here, eh?”
“Could be worse, I suppose,” offered John, settling into the utility. “Could be seven hundred sheep left today. Oughtn’t to have gone to Mindee on the Annual this year.”
“Would have made no difference had you stayed around ... as far as the sheep’s concerned. You could have done nothing more than Brandt did while he worked here. I assume he did his job. Always found him dependable.”
“Seems to have done it to the time he mur ... the time of the murder.”
“Bad show, John. Don’t make head or tail of it. I took a look-see at the dead man, and I’ve never seen him alive. Eric says neither you nor he has, and both Mawby and Constable Sefton have never seen him in Mindee. Now what did Brandt ... but we’ll save it. The police will be asking the questions. You know about the river flooding down?”
“Heard in Mindee.”
“Biggest river since ’27, so they say. Could bring water down the Backwash and fill your Lake Jane.”
“So!” mocked Downer. “Reminds me of the mariners’ saying: ‘Water, water everywhere. And not a blade of grass to eat.’ We don’t want water trickling over the ground; we want it falling from the blasted sky in floods.”
“It’ll come from that way, too, as you rightly know. Must come.”
“It’s a point,” agreed the old man, stroking the head of the heeler resting on a thigh. “You all get here this morning?”
“Yes. Mawby and Sefton came to my place late last night, bringing a tracker. The doctor and a police photographer flew out from the Hill this morning. I brought a couple of abos from L’Albert. Looks as though you’ll save the heeler. Pity about the kelpies. Not like Brandt to leave ’em all tied up like that. Must have thought they’d follow him, and give him away some place.”
Midnight Long braked the utility to a halt before the front steps, and Eric came down from the veranda to meet them.
“Mawby says we may have our own house back,” he said, faintly bitter. “He and Sefton are about with the others, and the L’Albert aborigines are burying the dead man away back from the shearing-shed. I objected to having him planted in our cemetery, and when I told Mawby to take the body back to Mindee, he didn’t seem to like it.”
“Couldn’t expect him to,” remarked Midnight Long dryly.
“Perhaps not,” agreed Eric. “Anyway, come on up. Bit early for lunch, but I have a meal ready.”
Soon after they reached the living-room, Mawby and his colleagues came in by the rear door. Besides the sergeant, there was a young-looking man, obviously the doctor because he didn’t look like a policeman and carried a brown bag; a man who did look like one and who carried a camera; and Constable Sefton, tall, large and mulga-like in outward toughness. The introductions having been made, and hosts and guests seated, Sergeant Mawby took command.
“Nice being here,” he said, his brown eyes beaming at the Downers. “Pity about this murder, though. Sort of spoils the day. Ah! Cup of tea! I’ll be asking for half a dozen.”
“The feller was killed, then?” asked John.
“Doctor Truscott, here, says he was hit with a blunt instrument, as the saying goes; both heavy and blunt. About twenty hits. And no one seems to know who he is. You never saw him before?”
“Not to my knowledge,” replied John.
“Must have drifted down from the north. We don’t know him in Mindee. What time did you get home yesterday?”
“I told you that,” interposed Eric, and blandly Sergeant Mawby pointed out that he was putting the question to his father.
“About five-ish, I think,” answered Downer patiently. “Bit hazy about the time. I was sufferin’, as you’ll understand.”
“Don’t we all!” agreed Mawby, smiling broadly. “Anyway, it isn’t important. What we would like to nail, though, is the time that that feller was killed. Doctor Truscott thinks it was about a week. “Nothing alive about the place, except the crows?”
“Only the heeler. We saved him.”
“Oh! There was a live dog, then? Chained to his kennel like the others?”
“That’s so. He was all in. Must have been there a week.”
“Ah! Now that’s what I call co-operation. Could you be a little more definite, doctor?”
“An autopsy would have assisted us....”
“Now, doctor, you would not have wanted that feller on the plane with you, and I didn’t want him with me all the way to Mindee.” Mawby lit his pipe. “Well, Constable Cliff has his pictures. You can sign the death certificate, and Mr. Long, being a Justice, can sign for the burial. Before we leave, I’ll get you Downers to make a statement of what you found here, and we’ll have the abos put their prints to a joint statement of their work this morning.”
“There will be an inquest?” murmured Midnight Long.
“Of course, sir. Now there is a little matter I’d like to mention.” The sergeant produced a spill of paper, and, pushing back the tablecloth, carefully unrolled the paper to disclose a lock of hair. “This hair was found clutched in the dead man’s hand, and it would appear to have been pulled from the head of his killer. According to Doctor Truscott, the first blow to his head mightn’t have caused instant death, so we may assume from the hair that there was a struggle, and the disarray in this room indicates that the struggle took place here. Constable Sefton, describe Carl Brandt.”
“Age about forty-five. Weight about a hundred and forty. Fair hair tinged with grey at the temples. Blue eyes. Long face. Has a slightly foreign accent.”
“So you see, gentlemen, this hair didn’t come from the head of Carl Brandt.”
John Downer, sitting next to the sergeant, leaned sideways to look more closely at the lock of hair.
“That hair wasn’t pulled from anyone’s head,” he said sharply. “It’s been cut off, either with a sharp knife or scissors.”
“Just so, John, just so,” agreed Sergeant Mawby.
