A Scar on Nature’s Handiwork
ON THE SEVENTH DAY of his “imprisonment,” Bony suggested to Sergeant Marshall that they visit the hut at Sandy Flat in which the body of George Kendall had been found. The suggestion was readily accepted by the sergeant, who had been tied more than he liked to his desk.
That Bony should wait seven days before indicating a desire to visit the scene of the crime he was in Merino to unravel was to Marshall peculiar, to say the least, but those seven days had not been spent merely in painting government property. There had been the prolonged study of large-scale maps of the district to imprint on Bony’s mind the situation and layout of every surrounding station property, every road and track, every water hole and well. There had been hours spent on Detective Sergeant Redman’s reports and on the statements he had gathered. And Bony had got to know nearly every man and many women who lived at Merino.
It was a little before eleven o’clock on the morning of December fifth that they left Merino in the sergeant’s car, in the boot of which Mrs Marshall had herself placed a hamper and a tea billy. Once clear of the town, Bony said to the sergeant, who was wearing flannels and an open-necked shirt:
“I am a great believer in intuition. For instance, intuition never fails to warn me when my eldest son is about to ask for financial accommodation.”
“Doing well?” inquired Marshall, now hopeful that following a period of “closeness” Bony would be confidential.
“Very well. I am, secretly, proud of him. For that reason, when intuition warns me that a loan is about to be requested, to avoid paining him by a refusal, I make excuses to rush away. What is your opinion of the Rev. Llewellyn James?”
“Not much.”
“Do you mean that the opinion is not much in length or of value, or that the opinion is not favourable?”
“Even now I can’t tell whether you are serious or pulling my leg. I don’t like the Rev. Llewellyn James.”
“Officially or privately?”
“Privately, of course. Why be legal this morning?”
“I am in the mood for exactitude,” Bony told him, although his voice indicated the opposite. “What is the general opinion of James held by the people?”
The sergeant did not at once answer this question.
“The best way to deal with the subject,” he began, “is to make a comparison with the previous parson. James has been here four years and a bit. He arrived eight months after the other man left. The previous man was very well liked. He was elderly and a really great man who inspired love as well as respect. You know what is wanted in a parson by bush folk. To get on well with bush people, a parson has to be a man’s man as well as a churchman. James may be a good churchman, but he’s not a man’s man.”
“You do not seem confident that he isor is not a good churchman?” pressed Bony.
“That’s so. I don’t go to church. My wife does, however, and she says that James is better than nominister at all, and also that what he lacks is compensated by his wife.”
“Oh!” Bony made no other comment for a period. Then he said lazily: “You would not have had time to spare, as the statistician of every government department, to study criminology. That is a study thought unsuitable for real policemen, and so no time is allowed for it. I used once to compile data on the physical features of murderers and near-such, when it was proved how remarkably highis the percentage of killers having light blue eyes. James, you will recall, has light blue eyes.”
“Eh!” exclaimed the startled sergeant.
“Don’t let it worry you. Millions of people having light blue eyes go through life without committing a murder. We must not allow our natural reactions to Mr James to cloud our common sense. I mentioned the matter only for interest value. So that is the cemetery! Well! Well! It tells us its own history.”
“What does it tell?”
“It is elementary, my dear Watson. In bygone years people hereabouts died and were taken to their rest over there. Thencame the motor car, to transport sick people swiftly to the hospital at the much larger town of Mildura. And so only very poor persons, and those who died suddenly or from accident, have been buried at Merino. Right?”
“Yes. Before Kendall was buried there the last was several years ago.”
“It is likely that another will be buried there shortly.”
“What!”
“Imagination, Marshall, just imagination. It runs away with me sometimes. Hullo! Here is the left-hand turning.”
Instead of taking the road turn to the north, Marshall stopped his car at a gate through which a lesser track continued eastward towards the Walls of China. They were now two miles out from Merino and three miles from the homestead of Wattle Creek Station along that north road. The great barrier of white sand dominated the scene far more powerfully than it dominated the township, rising several hundred feet in a series of whaleback ridges. The sparse scrub trees and blue bush and saltbush growing on red soil verged on the limits of vegetation.
Bony alighted and opened the gate in the five-wire fence, then stayed to regard the track beyond whilst the sergeant drove through. Not since the rain had a vehicle been driven down this track, the wheel ruts semi-filled with drift sand making progress slower for Marshall’s car.
“Those Jason men are singular in their individual ways, don’t you think?” remarked Bony.
“You’re telling me,” agreed the sergeant succinctly.
“Which of them is the boss? I went into the garage the other morning and was just in time to hear young Jasontell his father to ‘get to hell away from that’. Old Jason was standing by the engine of a truck. The engine was running and he was peering in at it under the raised bonnet. When the son shouted at him from a wall bench the father straightened up and moved away after switching off the engine. He said nothing; made no attempt even to remonstrate with his son for speaking as he did.”
“They’re a peculiar pair,” Marshall further agreed. “The son is the motor mechanic, and a good one too, and the old man does allwheelwrighting and coffin making. He’s a bit of a brick, in his way, for he takes a lot from the lad and seldom asserts himself. Pities him, I suppose, for his deformities, and the son resents it.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Bathurst, I think.”
“Redman doesn’t record their origin, although in his reports he is hostile to young Jason. There is a lot in origins, you know. The history of murders and lesser crimes doesn’t begin five minutes before they are committed. The origin of some murders began generations before the-er-blunt instrument was used.”
Now the country was swiftly changing. The trees were thinning out and the barley and spear grass were giving place to tussock grass, that wiry, seemingly indestructible grass growing in clumps in the drier, more inhospitable parts of the inland. The red sand was becoming heavier, and on the east side of every clump of tussock grass the sand was raised into a small mound. Quite abruptly the trees and bush shrubs ended in an irregular line, and the car passed out onto a half-mile-wide ribbon of plain land bordering the Walls of China. The red sand gave place to white sand, and now the tussock grass gave out. Nothing grew here on the white sand foundations of the Walls of China.
Ahead stood a corrugated iron hut, with, a hundred yards south of it, the windmill over the well and the iron reservoir tank perched on its high stand. The lines oftroughing radiating from it appeared like the fire-hardened hafts of aboriginal throwing spears, black on the white sand.
The door of the hut was in its east wall. Beyond it by a dozen yards was a construction of cane grass in which was kept the cool safe for the storage of meat. And beyond that, some three hundred yards away, was the base of the sand range.
Marshall halted his car between the hut and the meat house. The hut was the usual monstrosity of iron nailed to a wood frame. There was not even a window to it, an opening in its west wall being closed at this time by a trap on hinges.
“What a salubrious resort at which to spend the summer vacation,” observed Bony. “How one would enjoy the summer breezes, the rarefied air, the perfume of flowers, the song of birds. Don’t get out yet.”
“Quite enough, any way,” Marshall said, reaching for pipe and tobacco.
“Were it not for the blowflies and the crows somewhere up there on the Walls of China, there would be no sounds our human ear could register,” Bony noted, and become busy with tobacco and paper. “You wouldn’t think, would you, that in this place of spotless white-if we can disregard that hut-a man could meet with a violent end? Ah me, how truthfully it was written: ‘The evil men do lives after them.’ For years and years to come men will say: ‘A murder was committed here.’ They may even say: ‘Two murders were committed here.’ ”
Marshall had struck a match, had brought its flame against the tobacco in his pipe, but he did not draw upon it.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“What is what?” countered Bony mildly.
“What was that about two murders being done in this place?”
“Oh, I was just letting my imagination have a little freedom. But let us be serious. Take note, and profit by it, of the difference of my approach to the scene of a crime from that of your own and Redman’s. I sit back in the comfortable seat of this car and leisurely smoke a cigarette whilst observing the scene of a crime now several weeks old, and give my imagination a slack rein. What did you and Gleeson and Redman do? What was your approach?”
Marshall grunted.
“Go on, I’ll buy it,” he urged.
“Firstly, then, you and Gleeson arrived here in a car with such speed that the car probably skidded to a halt. You threw open the doors, leapt out, and rushed pell-mell into the hut to take a look-see at the body. Secondly, Redman and his colleagues arrived in manner similar but probably much faster. It is unlikely that they gave themselves time to open the car doors. It is likely that they fell out before the car was stopped, bounced on the white sand and, with the maintained velocity, shot into the hut to stare at the alleged bloodstains and make notes in small books. Ah… me! Why will men persist in thinking that accomplishment is regulated by muscular activity?”
“Search me,” responded Marshall, who knew that Bony’s picture was actually an exaggeration. He had got his pipe alight, and he half turned to look at his companion, to see the well-moulded nostrils of the slender nose appreciating the aroma of tobacco smoke.
“Listen, Marshall, for sometimes I talk downright common sense,” Bony went on. “That hut is not a house, or a flat, or an office. This Sandy Flat is not a city. Therefore an investigation of a crime committed here must be conducted on vastly different lines. Let us assume that at this very moment there is in that hut the body of a murdered man, and that we are about to investigate the circumstances under which he died, and, further, to establish who killed him.
“Now you and Redman-Gleeson might not because he is accustomed to bush work-would rush into that hut to note the position of the body and the interior generally, because the interior of that iron monstrosity is a room, or the scene of the crime. You would search for the weapon with which the deed had been done, and for clues which might identify the killer. Now wouldn’t you?”
Marshall nodded. Bony looked at him thoughtfully.
“But what do I do?” he asked blandly. “I leave the body to a uniformed constable, and the cause of death to the doctor and the coroner, and to the experts at headquarters I leave the fingerprints if any, the weapon if any, and objects more closely associated with the crime. In a city the scene of the crime is of paramount importance, for there the scene of a crime is confined to a room, an office, a flat, and, if on a street, to a space within a few feet of the body.
“Here in the bush the scene of a crime is extended far beyond its immediate locale. Someone has had to go to the scene of the crime in order to commit it, and, afterwards, to leave the scene of the crime. As the criminal does not grow wings, he needs must walk, and he does not walk about without leaving tracks of his passage for me to see. To the city detective his fingerprints: to Bony his footprints. So you will now understand how it is that I am much more interested in the ground outside a house or hut or camp than I am with the interior.
“Again assuming that there is a dead body in that hut, what do we note about its exterior?” Bony continued. “We see that Redman’s photographer made quite a good negative of the hut with the door closed, precisely as we see it today. I am almost sure that photographing the hut with the door shut was a fluke, and a very lucky one, too. Anyway, the picture shows that now blurred mark on the door which you and I see from this distance. By the way, what do you make of that chalk mark?”
“Don’t know,” responded Marshall, to add: “Looks something like a game played by Florence and her mother called noughts and crosses, doesn’t it?”
“I agree, Marshall. I suppose that the perspicacious Redman calculated that the dead man occupied his spare hours playing the game of noughts and crosses with himself. It was a probable assumption which he adopted on the grounds that the dead man was mentally deficient to live in a place like this. So that once more is stressed the absurdity of sending a city-bred man to investigate a bush crime, for Redman would not know that there are men who find contentment in living here. Redman makes no mention of that game of noughts and crosses in his reports. To him the game meant nothing, but to me it shrieks to high heaven the intelligence that George Kendall was brought to that hut a dead man.”
Marshall sighed audibly. He was beginning to find this passive attitude a little boring.
“Patience! Patience!”Bony cried. “What else do we see?”
“Sand. Ruddy sand. And the hamper and tea billy are in the back of the car.”
“Cannot you see certain marks on the ground?” urged Bony. “You will remember that it rained heavily that afternoon when Edward Bennett was buried. That was six days ago. It rained so heavily that the natural water holes were filled with water, and, consequently, no animals have since come to drink at these troughs. Neither was there cause for anyone to come here from the station homestead to make sure that the troughs were being supplied with water. Since the rain fell the wind has blown at a velocity exceeding ten miles an hour on only two days, the last being yesterday. The rain and wind wiped clean this page of the Book of the Bush for such as me to read.
“Observe… again. On this clean page of the Book of the Bush are printed the boot prints of a man. He did not arrive here by the road we came by. He came from the north, skirting the sand range. We may assume (a) that he came from Wattle Creek homestead and (b) that he was bushman enough to travel across country and (c) that he knew the position of this hut and well. Is that clear to you?”
The frowning sergeant did not reply.
“The man reached the hut along its north wall, and he came to the door and went inside. He went inside, I repeat, and he closed the door and he has not come out.”
“Then he must be still in there?” asserted Marshall.
“Naturally. The tracks proved that he arrived and went in. There are no tracks to prove that he has come out.”
“Well, what’s it all mean? You seem to know.”
“Let us get out of the car.”
On alighting from the car, Bony stood beside its rear mudguard and invited Marshall to join him. The sergeant’s interest was kindled.
“You see,” Bony continued, melodramatically waving his hands, “you see a work of wondrous artistic beauty, a work revealing the ultimate in balance and mathematical exactitude. There the perfect beauty of line etching the Walls of China against the sky, and all about us the same beauty of line in the miniature waves of the sand ripples. To the undiscerning eye, inall this vast picture presented to our eyes today, there are no straight lines save those made by man when he erected that hut, the tank stand and the mill and the lines oftroughing. Even that natural gutter over there which carried water the other day down from the higher land is not straight for even an inch. It would seem that the Master Potter is incapable of moulding a straight line. Satan’s hell is probably built on straight lines-the flames even having no curves in them. Do you see the spent match which I flicked away a moment ago?”
“Yes.”
“Look at the ground immediately to the left of the match. What do you see?”
“Nothing. The ground is smooth.”
“I can see straight lines immediately to the left of the match, and also beyond the match and this side of the match. I am confident that when we approach the door of the hut we shall see straight lines also imprinted on the nice, clean, and apparently smooth sand. Come with me to the match, and with it I will trace the straight lines for you to see more clearly.”
Bony squatted beside the match and the sergeant bent down beside him. With the point of the match Bony indicated lines so finely drawn that even then Marshall found difficulty in following them. When they stood up Marshall waited for his superior in bushcraft as well as in rank to speak.
“There are no straight lines in nature,” Bony repeated. “Therefore those straight lines were made by a man. A man walks direct from Wattle Creek Station to that hut, goes inside and then comes out again, shuts the door, and walks backwards away from it, at the same time carefully wiping out his boot prints with the aid of lengths of sacking strips tied to the end of a stick. Why he left like that, why he was so anxious to prevent others seeing that he had left, is a problem which can wait awhile. We can, meanwhile, read it in another way. The man from Wattle Creek went into the hut and has not come out. A second man came and went, and flailed out his tracks from the sand in order to prevent others from knowing that he had visited the place. Being human, he could not do other than make straight lines with his flail. I am almost sure that there were two men, and that one of them is still inside the hut.”
“Well, let’s go and find out,” pressed the sergeant.
“Slowly! Slowly!” murmuredBony, and Marshall noted that when he walked towards the closed door of the hut he walked on the toes of his feet and his hands were clenched tightly. They halted two yards from the door.
“Again I offer thanks to that police photographer for unwittingly introducing me to a nice meaty case,” Bony said softly. “The man who so carefully flailed out his boot prints was most careful not to tread on the tracks made by the man who is still inside. Look! He reached the hut at its south-east corner, or left by it, and he did not put foot on the low doorstep, as the man did who is still inside. When you open the door, sergeant, you are going to receive a surprise.”
Sergeant Marshall was now standing stiffly erect. His face was a mask in which his eyes were unwinking orbs. He said, ice in his voice:
“I think I can smell the surprise.”
“I have done so for the last half hour. Will you open the door, or shall I?”
“Me… I’m no chicken,” growled Marshall.
“One moment. The door handle. It may possibly have retained the fingerprints of the man with the flail.”
“Of course,” snapped Marshall. “I’m a fool.”
He whipped a handkerchief from a pocket, wrapped it about the brass handle, and with a firm grip turned it and flung inward the door.
Their gaze became riveted for an instant on a pair of old boots suspended about twelve inches from the floor. Then, slowly, their gaze rose upward, up the trousered legs, up the old blue shirt, up to the awful face of the man hanging from a crossbeam.
A great swarm of blowflies came out through the open doorway to break the silence with hateful buzzing.
“Do you know him?” Bony asked with apparent calmness.
“No. Never seen him before. What do you think-suicide or murder?”
“I give murder first preference because of the man with the flail. He was probably here when that poor wretch arrived. I would that the interior was much larger, but we must go inside.”
The interior measurements of the hut were ten feet by ten feet. More swiftly than he had moved for some time, Bony stepped by the suspended corpse and reached the far side, where he quickly raised the trap-door opening which served as a window.
“Ah, the obvious story is as follows,” he said. “The man entered the hut. Then he tossed his swag on to the bunk and removed from it the two leather straps. Having done that, he dragged the table almost beneath the crossbeams, climbed up on it, joined the two straps together after making a noose with the end of one passed through its own buckle, fastened the end of the other to the beam and slipped the noose over his head and about his neck, and then stepped off the table. But why, if he arrived with the intention of committing suicide, did he close the door? And if he had no intention of suiciding when he arrived, why did he not visit the well for water? For he did not possess a water bag.”
“You think he was hanged, then?” Marshall asked.
“I think he was hanged. You had better go back for Dr Scott and Gleeson. Phew! Let’s get out.”
Having hastily closed the trap window, they went outside and closed the door.
“What about making arrangements for having the body removed to the morgue?” Marshall suggested. “TheJasons can do that.”
“Wait! Er -no. Not a word about this affair to anyone in Merino, not even to Gleeson and the doctor until you have left with them. And also, not a word to a living soul, now or in the future, about that game of noughts and crosses on the door, and about the blemish of straight lines on Nature’s handiwork. They shall remain two little secrets to be shared only by you and me.”