Another Murder?
AT HALF-PAST SIX the clock on the table at the sergeant’s bedside began its uproar, and a large red hand automatically reached for it and snapped off the ringing. For a few minutes the sergeantlay fighting sleep and uttering a series of moans and grunts meant to inform his wife of the martyrdom imposed upon him by the necessity of rising to light the kitchen fire so that he might have the smallest kettle boiling for tea when she appeared in the kitchen. Then, without bothering to slip on a dressing gown, he rolled out of bed and thudded in bare feet along the passage. Inside the kitchen doorway he halted abruptly.
“Well, I’m-”
“Don’t say it,” Bony pleaded, a hand raised towards Marshall. “If you say it, it will cost you a shilling. I am collecting for Lawton-Stanley. I’ve had my breakfast and the water is boiling for your early cup of tea.”
Marshall surveyed the table. Used eating utensils were pushed back to become a border to notebooks and a writing pad and pencils. It was obvious that Bony had occupied the kitchen for some time, and here he was now as well groomed as ever.
“Never heard you come in. Never heard a sound,” Marshall said.
“I can be silent when I want to,” stated Bony airily. “I borrowed your razor and a comb and towel. Now I’ll make the tea, and you can take a cup in to your wife. I’ve had breakfast, and before yours is ready I can tell you a thing or two which will interest you. There is a deal of work ahead for both of us.”
“Yep! Looks like it, too,” Marshall averred, and watched Bony brew tea in the proper manner.“Thought I locked the doors and the windows out here.”
“You did, but I unlocked the scullery window. Count twenty, and then I’ll pour tea. Hand me that tray.”
“What for?”
“That on it you might carry a cup of tea to your wife without shaking half of it into the saucer. Let me see. Ah, yes, I remember. In this tin. A biscuit on a plate to accompany the tea.”
“You aim to give her breakfast in bed?” demanded Marshall.
“No. Only morning tea. Sometimes, when I am home, which is seldom, I prepare morning tea for my wife, so you see I know it’s done… like this.”
The tea and biscuits on the tray were presented to the astonished sergeant. He said:
“D’youknowwhat my missus will say when she sees this?”
“ ‘Thankyou, dear’?”
“She’s going to say,” Marshall said grimly,“ ‘You must be sickening for something. Where’s the pain?’ ”
“Don’t believe anything of the kind. Now get going. I’ll load another tray which we can take to the office.”
Evidently not feeling very happy about it, Marshall departed, and when he returned he muttered:
“She said-she said, ‘Give my thanks to Bony.’ Seems to have guessed you were here.”
“Well, well. Let it be a lesson to you. Now to your office.”
Marshall glanced down at his pyjama-covered stomach and grinned. He tried to walk with dignity, failed, and ambled heavily after Bony, who carried the tray. He closed the office door and Bony poured tea, then sat in the official chair and gathered together the notebooks and papers he had brought from the kitchen. The sergeant sat down on the visitor’s chair and sipped his tea whilst watching this most extraordinary man manufacture his extraordinary cigarettes. And then Bony was regarding him seriously, and he could see on Bony’s face the evidence of fatigue.
“We progress, Sergeant,” Bony said, as though occupancy of the official chair had removed the previousbonhomie. “Events during the last few hours have established that the killer of Kendall and that swagman lives here in Merino. I told you, didn’t I, that Providence is always kind to detectives?”
He related all that had occurred from the moment he had arrived at the hut at Sandy Flat to the finding of the strip of hessian in the Merino gutter, and Sergeant Marshall became so engrossed that when the story was finished the tea in his cup was cold.
“I must get back to Sandy Flat as soon as possible,” Bony went on. “The wind would have smoothed away all tracks before daybreak, but that reservoir tank and mill might provide a clue as to what the fellow was doing there. Before I left town I thought of calling on Mr James. Then I thought of asking you to do so. Finally I decided to go slow with Mr James. We can’t afford to make a mistake with a parson. They can muster a lot of influence and kick up a deal of fuss should a poor detective make a mistake concerning them. If James is actually our man, and I am by no means certain that he is, wemusn’t jump on him till we are all set. And so far, we are not properly set to do any jumping on anyone.”
“Did that chap look anything like the parson in build and gait?” Marshall asked.
“We can’t rely on the manner of his walk. Remember he was wearing swathes of hessian about his feet and would then walk not unlike a man wearing snowshoes. In build he was similar to James. That is all I can say. His clothes were much more loose-fitting than those normally worn by the minister.”
Marshall pursed his lips. He said:
“I suppose a parson is as likely a killer as a butcher or a bricklayer?”
“Quite. Criminal history contains many. In this particular case, however, we are in danger of allowing our personal antipathy to cloud judgment. Our greatest difficulty is the absence of motive behind the killing of Kendall, and if the murder of the swagman was not the result of attempted blackmail, then we do not know the motive for that killing, either. It doesn’t follow because we know of no motive that there was no motive.
“Because we don’t know the motive, we can assume that there was none, and on this assumption we may further assume that the killer is insane. Only an insane person would kill without a motive… or for the sheer lust of killing, which is in itself a motive.
“You should read ‘The Rape ofLucrece ’, a poem written by Shakespeare. Old Shakespeare was a good criminologist. In that poem he describes the growth of an idea of the crime in the criminal’s mind before the crime was committed. Very often the crime of murder is the effect of thought extended over a lengthy period. In other words, the actual act of the crime is the effect of long and careful planning, following an idea which has become an obsession.
“If we assume that Kendall’s death was due to insane blood lust, we may be sure that the satiation of that lust was not accomplished on the spur of the moment. We may assume that, even were we ignorant of what we do know of the murderer’s efforts to escape detection.
“There is in this district no one sufficiently insane to kill without a motive. However, there may be one or even two people in this small community sufficiently insane to kill from the motive of satiating the blood lust. And, believe me, Marshall, the lust to kill is in itself a terrible thing. It is more terrible than killing for revenge or for gain, for it makes of a man a human tiger, a ravening human tiger whose thirst for blood is never quenched.
“This type of killer is invariably super-cunning, and also invariably super-vain. His vanity is enormous, so much so that when he is brought to trial he craves to read the newspaper reports and to wallow in the temporary fame he has achieved. Do you think the Rev. Mr James is a super-vain man?”
“No. He has never struck me that way,” Marshall replied.
“Mr James is a loafer, and he is cunning enough to be a quite successful vampire man,” Bony continued. “He is a supercilious and intelligent man, and I should say that his mental make-up comprises twenty per cent cunning, thirty per cent sheer stupidity, thirty per cent tiredness, and but twenty per cent vanity. If we assume that the murder of Kendall was the result of the lust to kill, we must go cold on the idea that James is the killer, despite all the circumstances against him.
“There is also further evidence tending to remove James from the suspicion of having killed Kendall. We have through theeffluxion of time made a great advance on Redman’s investigation. We know that the man who killed Kendall was not one of Kendall’s class, working all over the state and seldom remaining in any particular place for long. Kendall’s murderer never left this district, because he was here when the swagman was killed, and he was here last night.
“He lives here in Merino. It might be, of course, that the killing had its genesis many years ago in some other place, and that after years of separation killer and victim happened to come together again here in Merino. If we accept that hypothesis, our friend James is ruled out still further. Kendall, remember, was a bushman and James was a city man. Kendall was just a rough, roaming man; James is the son of a minister of religion, and his life has been lived in the religious confines of home, church, and college.
“It is possible, of course, that Kendall accidentally discovered a criminal weakness in James, or another here in Merino, and attempted blackmail, and was murdered because of it.”
“That seems likely, come to think of it,” Marshall put in.
“Yes, I agree. But I warn you again not to allow your imagination to be fed by personal dislike. There is something else in this investigation which has inserted itself into my mind even against a degree of mental resistance. That thing is… windmills. You are justified in wanting to ask what windmills have to do with this killing of Kendall. It is what I would like to know.
“Kendall was killed on a night when the moon was at full and when the wind was blowing at an estimated velocity of twelve miles an hour. Last night the moon was at full and the wind blew. There was no wind that night the swagman was killed, and we must not forget that the time of that death was dictated by the swagman himself.”
“The moon at full may have an effect upon insane persons, but I think we can rule this out of ourprobings, although we must keep in view the fact that the light of the moon might be the factor behind these murders.
“Why did the fellow with sacking about his feet and a hood over his head ride to within a few miles of Sandy Flat, tether his horse and walk to the windmill, release the mill to the wind, climb up the ladder to the floor of the reservoir tank, stay there for at least forty minutes, and then come down to the ground and brake off the mill, and finally set off back to his horse? When we can answer those questions we shall know the motive for the murders.”
Marshall poured himself a second cup of tea. It was almost cold. He heard Bony say softly:
“Windmills! Windmills have an important place in this puzzle, but where they fit in beats me so far. Er -I think I shall have to do something which is distasteful to me. It is not the first time in my career that passion for investigating crime has warred with my instincts as a gentleman-the meaning of the word ‘gentleman’ being in its widest sense. Were it not for the fact that our killer might kill again before we can unearth him, I would not even contemplate doing this thing which I find distasteful.
“Well, now, here it is. There is here in Merino a person who could tell us something about windmills, or, for us, could add a significant something to this subject of windmills. That person, however, is under a bond of silence. With her fingers crossed she promised someone not to tell something about windmills. At the time I took but little notice of it, but it has grown to importance since last night.”
Sergeant Marshall sat bolt upright.
“You are not referring to our Florence, are you?” he demanded.
Through a haze of tobacco smoke Bony regarded the sergeant.
“I happened to tell Rose Marie that Lawton-Stanley’s father was a maker of windmills in Brisbane,” he explained slowly. “She was keenly looking forward to meeting Miss Leylan’s fiance, and she became upset by the thought that Lawton-Stanley would want to sell his father’s windmills in Merino. When I pressed her to tell me why she was afraid of such a thing as that, she told me that she had promised not to tell-with her fingers crossed.”
“Oh, that be blowed!” exploded Marshall. “I’ll soon get that out of her.”
“One moment, Marshall. That might seem an easy road, but it is one which I will not take until every other avenue is explored. Rose Marie is a sweet child, and when she makes a promise she stands by it if the promise is made when her fingers are crossed. Neither you nor I are going to force her to break that promise because there are all too few people in the world today who place any value whatsoever on their given word.”
“But, as you just mentioned, another poor devil might well be murdered if we don’t nail the killer pretty soon,” objected the sergeant.
“Nevertheless,” Bony persisted, “we will allow ourselves to persuade her to tell us what she knows by putting to her such questions, and in such a manner, that she will not know she is telling us what she promised with her fingers crossed not to tell. I think I can manage to do that. She is your daughter but she is not to be forced to break a promise so solemnly made. I hope that you agree with me?”
Marshall nodded, and his affirmative reply was spoken softly:
“She’s a great kid,” he said, and in his mind ran another thought: “And you’re a fine man.” Bony was saying:
“It is a little early, even now, to wake Rose Marie, but I should get back to Sandy Flat. I’d like to talk to her before I leave. You go and ask her to come here to me. Tell her that Bony wants to see her. And you stay out and get dressed. You’re a disgrace, in pyjamas at seven-thirty in the morning.”
Marshall heaved himself to his bare feet and passed out of the office to pad along the passage to the rear of the house. Bony swung round in his chair. Through the window he could see the front fence, the pepper-trees, and a portion of the roof of the butcher’s shop all painted with the light of the risen sun. As though in the background of his mind, he heard Marshall padding about somewhere in the rear of the house. He heard Mrs Marshall’s voice raised in surprise. Then he heard her husband’s voice outside the station house, shouting the name “Florence”.
Several minutes passed, and then he heard Marshall’s heavy feet again in the house, and his voice loud, in keeping with the raised voice of his wife. The big man came running along the passage and entered the office as though he sprang across the threshold. He strode to the table desk and, glaring down at Bony, shouted:
“She’s gone. Our Florence has vanished. She knew too much about windmills, and that killing swine has taken her. Her bed’s cold. She’s been gone for hours.”