The Hidden Woman
ON THIS Sunday afternoon Bony walked with Wally Sloan to the man-made crater top of the broken hill and looked down upon the city courting the fabulous line of lode fashioned by chance to the shape of a giant boomerang. The sun was yellow in a cadmium sky, and beyond the jumble of the tree-denuded Barrier Range the celestial dome imprisoned ghostly clouds.
They sat on a pile of hardwood, and Sloan, having regained his wind was inclined to talk, and because he wanted to rest his mind from its many problems Bony was satisfied to let him talk about Broken Hill. At their feet, beyond the narrow flat, ran the centre of the city-Argent Street-and away to the southward the populous suburb of South Broken Hill sprawled like a great mass of conglomerate upon the vast plain stretching away to the Murray River.
Sloan related the story of how the original syndicate raised new money by creating fourteen equal shares, and how a game of euchre decided the sale of one of these shares for? 120. Had this share remained intact, within six years it would have been worth? 1,250,000.
“That’s money,” Sloan said. “You didn’t want faith, and you didn’t want vision. All you had to have was luck-just to hold on to something you thought worthless. Now look at her. She isn’t big, but she’s got the doings, that little city of ours. The state and federal governments draw twelve million quid a year out of her, and still she has to have everything of the best from beer to refrigerators.
“She’s a healthy city, too, a long way different to the times when the smelters were here. Men used to be walking home, or going to work, and drop in their tracks in a kind of fit, and when it rained good and heavy and made the street gutters run, the poisons from the mines killed cats and dogs by the dozens.”
“It’s evident that you like Broken Hill,” commented Bony.
“No place better. I’ve done well.”
Wally Sloan was free, in the company of a man he liked, and the ‘sir’ was therefore absent. A funny little man, Bony thought, and yet in his way a great man.
“You never married?” Bony asked, and the question brought a dry chuckle.
“No. Think Ioughta be?”
“You’re not old and beefy like those others, Sloan. You’re safe enough, I think.”
“You getting any warmer?” asked Sloan.
“I’m not saying. Your Mrs Wallace said that the woman sitting next to her was got up to look half her age, and she walked upright. She was not the woman thought to have been the customer in Goldspink’s shop when he was poisoned, but she carried the same handbag. It is Mrs Wallace’s opinion, and I am strongly inclined to rely on the opinion of a woman like Mrs Wallace, that the woman who sat next to her was a spinster, and yet in her handbag was a baby’s dummy, or comforter. What do you think about that?”
Sloan refrained from answering so long that eventually Bony looked directly at him.
“I don’t know,” Sloan said. “I don’t understand women, and I’ve never met a man who did. When the Lord banished Adam and Eve from Eden, He put a gulf between men and women that’s never been bridged and never will be. I know this, though, that liquor makes men and women more human, makes ’emdrop their guard. And I know this, too, that there are men and women who never drink because they’re afraid of other people seeing just what they are in heart and mind. That party sitting next to Mrs Wallace drank ginger ale that afternoon because she wanted all her wits about her to poison old Gromberg, not because she never drank anything stronger. The baby’s dummy stumps me.”
Sloan stared down at Argent Street, and then he said:
“If Mrs Wallace said the party was a spinster, then she was. I’ve known Mrs Wallace-let me think-perhaps eleven or twelve years. She worked in the bar with me, in other pubs, too, and when you work in bars for that long you get to know men and women from the feet up. I’ve nothing against a man, or a woman, who doesn’t drink, but I never trust anyone who doesn’t drink, or smoke, or swear, or lose the old temper. Perhaps the woman with the dummy in her handbag keeps it to pretend she has a baby, and the thought of what she missed is driving her to murder.”
“Perhaps that’s how it is,” Bony said, standing up. “We’ll go down to Argent Street for a cup of tea, and then I’ll see what’s turned up at the office.”
They found a cafe open for business, and eventually parted in the street, Bony walking to Headquarters and finding it wearing its Sunday aspect. The public offices were closed, and he entered by a side door. The interior was quiet, but men were working-tough, pan-faced men with hard eyes.
Crome reported that Abbot had located a lounge habitue who remembered the woman with the blue handbag. The description given by this woman tallied with that detailed by Mrs Wallace to Bony.
Inspector Hobson reported that he had carpeted the uniformed policeman who had been on duty near the Western Mail Hotel the previous afternoon and had been called by the head barman. This man had not seen the woman carrying the handbag which had been imprinted on his mind by Bony’s pictures.
There was a conference in Bony’s office that night, Hobson and Pavier, Crome and Abbot being present. There was no formality. The night was hot and Crome and Hobson discarded their coats, and everyone smoked. Suggestions were offered, thrashed out, discarded.
Pavier voiced what Crome and Abbot were thinking:
“We might get somewhere if we knew all that’s in Bonaparte’s mind.”
“You would find only confusion,” Bony told them. “I can see nothing clearly. We can be confident that a woman is responsible for thesecyanidings. The progress made regarding the woman in Goldspink’s shop has been nullified by the description of the woman suspected of having poisoned Gromberg’s beer. The handbag is the only common link. The woman who poisoned Goldspink’s tea isn’t the same as she who poisoned Gromberg-unless she is a master of disguise.
“There is another point. I cannot say with any degree of confidence that the poisoner selects her victims after a study of them based on acquaintance, or that she merely carries the poison wherever she goes and drops a pinch in a drink to be taken by a victim met by chance. I am not going to put forward a theory which isn’t founded on reasonable assumption. I have in mind several theories, one of which may produce an important lead, but as yet they are too nebulous to call for united action.
“As you know, in another office Artist Mills is working to give us pictures of the woman in the hotel lounge, Mrs Wallace and that woman interviewed by Abbot being with him to direct his efforts. In the morning we’ll have every man look at those new pictures before going on duty, and we’ll compare the two sets for something in common to give a distinctive feature.
“I suggest that Abbot be placed in charge of what we’ll call the Gallery. We’ll have the two sets of pictures displayed and all those people who came in contact with the originals taken to the Gallery, and so cross-check. Something may come from that, and meanwhile every man must be doubly alerted to look for any woman bearing any resemblance to the woman in either set of pictures.”
It was after ten o’clock when word came that Mills had completed his pictures, and they trooped along to the general Detective Office to see them. Mrs Wallace enthusiastically claimed that they were ‘pretty good’, and the second woman said that the dress and the hat and handbag were almost exact.
The women and Mills were thanked by Superintendent Pavier, urged to remain silent, and sent home in a police car. Pavier and Hobson and Crome then went home, leaving Abbot, who was the officer on duty that night, and Bony, who wandered back to his office. He had been there less than half an hour when a constable appeared, to say that Luke Pavier wanted to see him.
Bony assented. He was feeling tired and balked, and yet tensed because the greater the difficulties, the more did an investigation captivate him. Although he had pictured Time as a Thing compressing death between forefinger and thumb, Time had other guises much less horrific, and one was theRevealer of Secrets.
Luke came in, youthful and cheerful, a tonic. Without invitation he drew a chair to the desk and sat down.
“Evening, Mr Friend. How’s the mighty brain?”
“Ageing, Luke.”
“Needing a squirt of optimism, eh? Thought so. The old man’s not too cheerful these days, and he’s a good barometer. Nothing come out of that conference of top-graders?”
“Conference, Luke?”
“That’s what I said. When the top-graders emerge all together to go home, they’ve been talking. When they bid each other good night as though they’re suffering from indigestion, the conference was abortive. Deductive reasoning, my dear Mr Friend.”
“You should have been a detective,” Bony said pleasantly.
“Not as interesting as my game. By the way, remember my Mr Makepiece, the butcher? Surprised that Gromberg copped it and not he. Weren’t you?”
“No. Your friend lacks one essential for amurderee.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s too fastidious in eating and drinking. What are you putting into your paper tomorrow?”
“ ‘We regret to announce the death by cyanide poisoning of Mr Hans Gromberg, the noted metallurgist. The late gent was born in Kiel, Germany, and came to Australia at the age of twenty-one. He was well known for his work among sick children during the twenty-three years he resided in Broken Hill. A bachelor, Mr Gromberg was fifty-nine years old and liked his mushrooms and his beer. We understand that the police are making inquiries.’ Now when are you going to let me see those drawings done by friend Mills?”
“Drawings, Luke? ‘Oh, Grandmamma, what long ears you have!’ ”
“ ‘Oh, Grandmamma, what sharp teeth you have,’ the little lady in red also exclaimed. What about those pictures? When are you going to decide that I may be able to help you along?”
“When I’ve decided that I can trust you.”
“You can begin now, Mr Friend. Thesecyanidings have passed beyond a joke between the old man and Crome on the one side and me on the other. Deep under, I’ve got a lot of time for the old man. He’s nearing the retiring age, and it might be that he’ll retire with his reputation all smeared over by Stillman and other rats. I can’t afford to be the son of a man with a ruined reputation.”
The sophistication was so obviously spurious that Bony wanted to smile.
“Let us make a pact,” he said. “You to print only what I agree to. I to accept your co-operation and avail myself of your experience and knowledge of local conditions. And you to be present at the arrest and then be free to publish what you wish.”
“I’ll sign.”
“Come with me.”
Luke followed Bony to the detectives’ common-room, a place of desks and records and pictures of criminals. On one wall were the five water-colours done by David Mills. Bony sat on a desk, and Luke went forward to study the pictures. He was there for what appeared to be a long time, and on rejoining Bony he said:
“Somewhere, sometimes, I’ve seen the woman in the blue and white dress and the white hat.”
“The face or the dress?”
“Face.”
“Remember ever having seen the handbag?”
Pavier went back to the pictures and returned, shaking his head.
“The face is like someone I know, but I can’t place her. I will. What’s her name?”
“She hasn’t a name. Mills painted her from a description given him by two women who were in the lounge when Gromberg died. The three other pictures were done by Mills from the very few details given by Mary Isaacs of the customer she was serving when Goldspink died.”
“Those three don’t help. Same handbag, though?”
“Same handbag. Come back to the office.” When behind his desk, Bony said: “If you can recall anyone who looks like Mills’s women, let me know. Mills told me, or rather his girl friend did, that he has appeared at local concerts as a lightning cartoonist. Perhaps the woman you are trying to remember has engaged in amateur theatricals. Come in and look at those pictures when you wish. I’ll see to it that you’ll have no difficulty.”
“Thanks. Whatd’you think? Woman on border line of insanity?”
“As the motive for these murders is not to be found among those prompting ninety-nine murders in every hundred, yes. Ever readMacbeth or seen the play?”
“Both. I’m interested in the theatre. Have you read Professor J. I. M. Stewart’s book, Character and Motive in Shakespeare?”
“No,” admitted Bony.
“The professor says, and I quote: ‘The evil which may rise up in a man’s imagination may sweep him on to crime, particularly if, like Macbeth, he is imaginative without the release of being creative.’ ”
“That,” Bony said, “is the word picture of the woman I seek. Thank you, Luke. I seek a motive within a motive, however. I am sure that the motive prompting these poisonings is hatred of someone each victim represents, not hatred of the victims. It is a chain of cause and effect, the ultimate effect being the death of men having nothing whatsoever to do with the original cause.”
The quiet building appeared to come to life, and on Bony’s ceasing to speak, Luke dried up. It was after eleven at night on that one day of the week when Headquarters permitted itself to doze, and now men were tramping corridors with decided urgency in their footsteps.
“Something doing,” Luke said very softly, and the muscular tautness was evident.
From the rear of the building came the crash of a motor engine and, following the initial power surge, its quiet purring. They could follow the sound of the machine making for the street.
“Fire, perhaps,” murmured Bony, watching Luke.
“Perhaps another killing,” said Luke. “Soundspromisin ’, anyway. See you some more, Mr Friend.”
He vanished beyond the open doorway, and his steps could be heard as he ran along the corridors to the public offices and the constable on night duty at the telephone switch. Bony waited five minutes before engaging Switch.
“Inspector Bonaparte. What’s the hullabaloo about?”
“Don’t rightly know, sir,” came the reply. “A mine-worker returning home on account of sickness tripped over the body of a woman at the foot of a mullock dump. He reported the matter to a patrol officer, who telephoned here. I put him through to Senior Detective Abbot, who’s on night duty, sir.”
Bony hung up, hoping it was not another cyaniding, and proceeding to note lines of thought emerging from the conference earlier in the evening.
It was after one o’clock when he put down his pen and locked away his papers, and he was rolling a cigarette when he heard the corridors again resounding with heavy feet. Crome burst in on him, his face wind-whipped, his hair all awry.
“Guess who we’ve got in the morgue with old Gromberg!” he said.
“I’m a poor guesser,” Bony told him.
“None other than our own dear Policewoman Lodding.”