According toThe Book?
NOman rises to the position of chief of a criminal investigation branch of a State Police Department merely for the manner in which he combs his hair. Superintendent Boase had well earned his promotion. Adept in dealing with the criminal mind, as well as minds not so tabulated, he was now at some disadvantage by never having met a Mr. Luton. He began correctly, continued easily, never suspecting that Bony was right under his feet.
“I’ve come down from Adelaide, Mr. Luton, about a matter you could say is no damn business of mine,” he said. “I’m referring to the recent visit of Inspector Bonaparte, who has been a personal friend of mine for several years.”
Boase expected Mr. Luton to spring to defence by silently waiting for more, but Mr. Luton’s eyes smiled.
“Bonaparte’s an old friend of mine, too.” He chuckled. “My father was a doer. He used to tell me: ‘UsLutonsdon’t discuss our friends with the police, ’coswe never know what our friends have been up to the night before.’ ”
Having a sense of humour, Boase didn’t find it hard to laugh.
“I’m sure our mutual friend Bonaparte hasn’t been up to anything illegal,” he assured Mr. Luton, and asked the sergeant to pass the scones. “Matter of fact, he called on me yesterday on his way east to Melbourne and Brisbane. Spoke warmly of you, and about his few days’ fishing down here. I don’t know what’s behind the sudden recall to Brisbane, but he hinted at a spot of trouble. You know how it is with us policemen. One in trouble: all others help out. Did you happen to invite him down to stay?”
“Yes. About fourteen years ago.”
“He just turned up? You didn’t actually expect him?”
“I did and I didn’t. He wroteaskin ’ how the fish were running, and I wrote back that a couple of million were in the riverwaitin ’ to be hooked. As for him being in a spot of trouble, don’t youworry. Inspector Bonaparte came out of the Back Country, like me, and we don’t pull our forelocks to any jumped-up boss. He didn’t go back to Brisbane because his boss ordered him to. He went back to find out what it was all about, to tell his boss to mind his blood pressure, and come back here to finish off his fishing.”
“I know how he felt about it, Mr. Luton. We all have a job to hold down, and he has a wife and several fine boys to think of.”
“His wife came out of the Back Country, too,” Mr. Luton countered, the smile again in his eyes. “Likely enough, she’d kick his backside if he pulled his forelock on her behalf. And his boys would hold him while she did it. Us people from the Back Country can always look after ourselves. How long have you been in Australia?”
Superintendent Boase was secretly jolted by this question, but he claimed Australian origin. The old man pressed home the attack, deceptively mild of face and voice.
“Then you ought to know, Mr. Boase, that trouble to Bonaparte is like a lovely colleen to an Irishman. My mother came out of County Clare when theywaschasin ’ English landlords into the Atlantic. So you get two of a kind.”
Boase politely agreed with Mr. Luton, beginning to realise that he wasn’t going to arrive very fast on an easy over-drive. The old man sat regally upright in his chair at the table, his expression being of bland benignity. He came again.
“Did you happen to mention to Bonaparte that theory of yours about Ben Wickham dying of something other than alcohol?”
“I have an idea that Constable Gibley did,” replied Mr. Luton.
“Did he now?” Boase was rocked by this falsehood for which the Recording Angel placed a mark against Bony’s name. “What did Bonaparte think of it?”
“Said he thought it was good enough to have his scribe put it into a book what’s to be called ‘Kidding the Bloody Police’.”
“Didhe, indeed!”
Boase searched for, and failed to see, the slightest trace of mockery in the hazel eyes or in the vibrant voice. Mr. Luton continued, furthering the impression that he accepted these visitors with natural bonhomie:
“My father used to say: ‘If you can’t get a man to bite on sugar, try a lemon. If he bites on either, he’s unreliable.’ There’s Dr. Maltby. Knows everything-perhaps. Don’t like me. So I tried him with the sugar of this yarn about different effects of the hoo-jahs, and there’s no need to offer him a lemon. I tried Gibley, and he didn’t get to the lemon, either. Bonaparte didn’t even take the sugar. I’d have been surprised if he had.”
“Don’t you know it’s wrong to make such a statement to a policeman?” asked Boase, abruptly severe.
“I know this much, Mr. Boase. When a statement like that is made just after a man dies, it’s wrong for a quack to sign a death certificate before opening him up, and more wrong for the police to allow the body to be cremated.”
Boase frowned, and Mr. Luton knew he had him, and inwardly was jumping with glee.
“That, of course, was Bonaparte’s views, eh?”
“Tramp on it, it’s mine!” Mr. Luton roared with such vehemence that the two men were stunned. “Like all the city la-de-dahs, you think us Outbackers are a lot of morons. You think we’re all comics what the papers draw. Look, my old man couldn’t read nor write, but he could make better whisky out of spuds than ever came out of Scotland. Another cup of tea? Plenty in the pot.”
This sting without a tail nettled Superintendent Boase. He shifted gears back to low.
“I understand that Bonaparte called on the Commonwealth Bank in Cowdry. D’youknow why?”
“Yes. Didn’t the manager tell you?”
“I haven’t gone into it that far. Why did Bonaparte go there?”
“Because I asked him. We walked to Cowdry one day as he wanted a hair-cut. On the way, I asked him if he’d call at the Commonwealth and find out if old Ben had left his will there. That’s all.”
“Why are you interested in Wickham’s will?”
“I’m interested to the tune of twenty thousand quid. Ben told me he had put it in. No will-I don’t get the twenty thousand. No will’s been found yet.”
“Lucky man, if it is found,” observed the Mount Gambier sergeant. “What I could do! I’d retire to this river and buy a rip-snorter of a cabin cruiser and a cosy house. Was Bonaparte in a good mood when he left?”
“Yes and no,” replied Mr. Luton. “He was annoyed because you sent Gibley to tell him to go home. Said it was no ruddy business for the South Aus. Police. Said he’d speak his mind to his own high-up-ers, and wished he had memorised my bullocky language. I didn’t blame him. This is a free country, or was before Federation.”
‘High-up-ers!’‘Morons!’‘Forelock!’Boase thought he could trace friend Bonaparte all round Australia on those words. His mind was now easy. There could be nothing in this ancient’s idea that Wickham had been poisoned, too little anyway, to send Bony on the warpath. Good job that. Anything of that kind made public, there would be a hundred or so ‘Please explains why permission for cremation.’ Damn Wickham. He’d been a continuous source of annoyance to official Australia. To Luton he said:
“Bonaparteget any fish?”
“Eight or nine kingies,” replied the old man. “That’s what made him wild. Having a good time down here, and they couldn’t let him alone for five minutes, but had to send for him. I told him: ‘Don’t you take it, Bony.’ What do they expect? Expect a man to chase murderers in his sleep?”
“Perhaps…”
“You running a racket down here?” blasted Mr. Luton. “Don’t think it likely, though. But someone could berunnin ’ one, and got frightened ’costhey thought Bony might find out. Or did they want him to round up them bodgie-widgies? Anyhow, there’s one man left in this country who can milk a goat, and that they’re going to find out when Bony gets home.”
“Good luck to him,” said the Mount Gambier man, “and, by the way, my wife and kids really would appreciate that fish.”
“They shall have it, Sergeant. I’ll go get it.”
The old man padded away to the outside meat-house. Sergeant Maskell observed, thoughtfully:
“Doesn’t sound as though Inspector Bonaparte said anything to him about his nosing around in Cowdry. Think the yarn about going to the bank for the will was true?”
“Could be,” slowly admitted Boase. “Bonaparte would do anything. Slippery devil, but I like him. What’s your opinion of Gibley?”
“Good enough policeman. Knows the book. But I still don’t get that bank angle. We ask the manager why he rang Gibley immediately Bonaparte left him, why he asked Gibley to look him over. The manager fidgets, and asks us to tell him why he shouldn’t be suspicious of a man with a name like that claiming to be a police inspector.”
“Seemed on edge because we’d looked in,” agreed Boase. “I’ve a pretty good ear for clocks.”
“Meaning, Super?”
“Meaning that whena man don’t tick properly, I know it.”
The slop-slop ofslippered feet told Bony that Mr. Luton was returning with the fish. He heard Sergeant Maskell warmly thanking their host for the gift, and a minute later the sound of their departing car reached him, whereupon Mr. Luton closed and locked the front door. Bony crossed to the brandy steps, to hear Mr. Luton whisper through the auger-holes:
“They’re gone. You hear ’em?”
“Every word, Mr. Luton.”
“How did I go?”
“Magnificently,” replied Bony.
“You want anything?”
“No. I’ll come up for dinner after dark, if that will suit you.”
“Do me. I’ll be on the watch, and have dinner ready by half-past six.”
Bony descended the brandy steps and perched on the rum cases against the bar counter. Absently he rolled a cigarette and smoked, going over every word Boase had said, seeking beyond the words. He knew Boase was curious as to why he had come to Cowdry. Boase had not found out why he had called at the bank, because the manager wouldn’t tell, and had invented an explanation for calling Gibley. The suspicion that the telegram despatched by the manager, that day he had called at the bank, concernedhimself became a conviction. Only through that bank manager had his superiors known he was at Cowdry.
The wording of the telegram of recall was not in character with those who sent it, and to arrive at this knowledge one had to go back to their actions in the past.
First: Bony had been promoted to Detective-Inspector because of special abilities, and for special investigations. He was not to be employed on city crimes, where, obviously, his talents would be wasted. He was to be employed on special assignments in the Outback and outer urban areas. And his services were to be available to other Australian States should they be asked for. That was the original intention when the appointment was granted, and it remained so, with only an occasional exception.
The appointment was made some twenty years before by the Chief Commissioner of the Queensland Police Department, when Bony was a young man recently graduated from a training depot, and with a reputation which began some considerable time before he entered the depot.
At the time, the Chief Commissioner, Colonel Spendor, was himself a new broom. A strict disciplinarian, he was given to choleric ranting and abuse of his officers and his secretary. Yet all his threats were merely blah, and all his decisions were just, and all his officers and the secretary remained through the years his most loyal junior colleagues.
Of them, Bony was the most difficult. These are not the times when a police officer can be a Javert. If he does not apprehend a criminal within what is assumed to be a reasonable period, he may be put to another investigation and another officer assigned to his unfinished labours. Or he may be taken off his investigation, which is left in cold storage.
What to do, therefore, with a born Javert? What to do with a responsible senior officer who, when once put on a trail begun by a killer, will not leave it when a Chief of theC.I. B. orders him back, and when he is so instructed by the Chief Commissioner himself?
In the Army, a court-martial. In the Civil Service, a cupboard job where the delinquent can rust in his own stupidity. But not with Colonel Spendor.
Second: there was almost a routine in these recalls sent to Inspector Bonaparte. An order to return to headquarters issued by theC.I. B. failing, a direct order from Colonel Spendor would be despatched. This also failing, Colonel Spendor would rant and rave, and send yet another telegram giving a date when pay would cease if, etc., etc. This, too, being ignored, the final telegram would sack Bony from the Police Department.
Thus the routine. Silly in itself, as no police officer may be sacked unless on the advice of the Police Disciplinary Board, directed by the Chief Secretary.
At the conclusion of every such routine, Bonaparte would report to his immediate superior, and would be ‘carpeted’ before Colonel Spendor. Colonel Spendor would go through his act, unique in itself, and venomously pardon him, after being informed that the culprit had successfully concluded the investigation to which he had been assigned, invariably a homicide, and usually one on which other officers had fallen flat on their faces.
How can you sack a man who never fails to bring home the pork?
Those earlier orders were off the record.
Only this last recall order was according to the book. But why the haste to have himleave his ‘spot of fishing’?
Why was action taken to prevent him from yet again thumbing his nose at the ‘higher-ups’?