FinalizingA Case
“SO YOU see, John, your Burracoppin case was after all very simple and very sordid, requiring only one qualification in the personality of the investigator to achieve success.”
Bony was smiling into the alert military type of face of John Muir while he and the detective-sergeant lounged in the shade of a big salmon gum on the side of theGoomarin Road a mile out of Merredin. A week had passed, and the magistrate at Perth had remanded Mick Landon for trial on the capital charge.
“What is that necessary qualification? How did you know that George Loftus’s body was in the haystack? How did Jelly happen to become mixed up in the affair?”
With a face indicative of extreme pain Bony sighed. With slow significance he said:
“The qualification necessary in such a case is one which I possess to an acute degree and which in you, so far, I find lacking. You and our two chiefs are all lacking in patience. It is probable that you will eventually rise to the Western Australian Commissionership because you have organizing ability and an excellent address, but you will never make an outstanding detective. Colonel Spender is an excellent head of a police department, but he would be unequal to solving the mystery of a lost collar stud. In many respects Colonel Spender and you are akin.”
“Don’t rub it in too hard,” Muir urged with heightened colour. “You have answered my first question in a most offensive way; now please answer the remaining two.”
“Very well. How did I know that Loftus was buried in the haystack? Remember this significant point. It is undoubted that my investigations would have been greatly delayed if at Burracoppin I had announced myself as Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. To have done so would have caused everyone to shrink into their little shells, as the customers at the hotel did when you appeared that evening. As a detective you are too distinguished. And your picture has appeared too often in the press.
“If Landon had known what I was he never would have invited me to examine the Loftus homestead the Sunday following the dance at the Jilbadgie Hall. He took me for precisely what I was supposed to be, and during my investigation of the homestead he became nervous only when we halted at the south end of the haystack. He thought then that the prowler of the night before suspected his secret and had been probing into it, and he simply had to know the truth about it. I pointed out tracks of the prowler which were not there, but I was interested less in deceiving him than in the abnormal number of blowflies buzzing and crawling deep in the hay.
“At this time I strongly suspected that Loftus had been murdered, for you will remember that I had evidence, which afterwards became definite proof, that Landon had recently slept in Mrs Loftus’s bed and that Mrs Loftus had settled a garage account with new treasury notes of the same serial as that to which belonged the notes paid by the bank to her husband.
“The blowflies in the hay recalled the incident of Hurley’s dog which, when with me one day, caught several rabbits. One of these dead rabbits I kicked into a posthole, and, filling in the hole, I rammed down the earth. Yet days afterwards the blowflies smelled the dead rabbit fifteen inches below the surface of the ground. It is the keen-scented blowfly that will hang Mick Landon.
“At the time George Loftus reached home from Perth, Landon, acting on his instructions, had started to cart hay to build the stack.
“He had laid the foundations of the stack, which that night was some three feet high. He was an alert young man, clever, as his social activities in Burracoppin proved, and his idea of burying the corpse near one end of the haystack, and proceeding to build overit, was original, you must admit.
“However, it does seem impossible for a murderer not to make at least one foolish mistake. The very act of homicide provides a shock sufficient to upset the balance, temporarily, of the human mind. Immediately the crime is committed the one thought excluding all others is how to hide the evidence of the crime. Having killed Loftus, the body had to be concealed somehow, anyhow. Like the man who realizes he is bushed, the murderer cannot sit down and calmly reason. Even though Landon had the cold Mrs Loftus at his back, he could not perceive that if the body was not buried deep below the ground surface the blowflies would be attracted. He reasoned that if the body was buried beneath tons of hay it would be out of sight, and, secondly, the hay in the stack, settling downwards, would become pressed into a solid mass around and above the corpse. He was fearful that if he buried the body the fresh-turned earth would attract attention, as it has done in many cases.
“The idea of burying a body deep in a haystack is good, but to conceal a body effectually he should have burrowed down through the foundations of the stack and dug a grave in the earth. With the stack above the grave the blowflies would not have been attracted, and the stack eventually could have been sold or cut into chaff. All that was lacking, John, was calmness at a critical moment, and, fortunately for humanity, the necessary calmness of mind is, usually, impossible in a murderer.
“Landon having broken down and confessed everything, we know that he and his paramour were in George Loftus’s bed when the returning farmer knocked at the door. According to Landon, he only desired the woman for her sex attraction, but she was madly infatuated with him. A few minutes before Loftus knocked, the restless dogs had awakened them, and during those minutes when they sleepily debated why the dogs barked they did not hear a car pass along the main road. Therefore, when Loftus did demand admittance, they could have inferred that he walked home, that he had not driven his own car or had been brought home in any other.
“It does appear, and, having studied Mrs Loftus, it is more than credible, that what followed was a re-enactment of Macbeth. The woman urged; the man resisted the suggestion. But the woman’s personality was the stronger, and the man obeyed her will. When she had lit the lamp in the kitchen Landon took a position where he would be behind the door when Mrs Loftus opened it. George Loftus stepped inside and Landon shot him through the head.
“They stripped the body. Landon dealt with it, and Mrs Loftus dealt with the clothes and articles they contained, cutting off the buttons, and, with the cigar case, silver match-box, watch and chain, buried them under the hearth in the japanned box. The collar pin, found among the notes in the woman’s mattress, and which Wallace swears Loftus was wearing when they returned from Perth, is, perhaps, the most damning evidence against them after the proof that the bullet found in the dead man’s skull was fired by the revolver I picked up near the road crossing the old York Road, and which Landon admits is his.
“And now, John, for your last question. Mr Jelly’s part in the mystery concerning the disappearance of George Loftus is easily explained. He thought, as many people did, that the police had given up or deferred their inquiries. Believing that Loftus had not voluntarily disappeared, being suspicious that Mrs Loftus and Landon were lovers, he determined to do a little investigating himself. The first time he visited the homestead he was shot, and had, himself, to disappear till the slight wound he had received had healed sufficiently to enable him to conceal it. The second time he went to the farm he arrived after his daughter and myself, taking advantage of the farmers’ meeting as I did; and, not being satisfied with feeding the dogs and thrashing one, he regrettably poisoned them. I do not agree with that act. The poor dogs were only loyal to their master. That is all, John. Even had Landon not confessed, you would have had more than enough evidence with which to hang him.”
“Jelly must be an amateur detective,” Muir said in his rapid manner.“Strange bird, Jelly! Did you know- But when are you going back to Brisbane? Old Spender will be almost a lunatic by this time.”
“Colonel Spender is a man of quick temper. He will not live as long as I will. The burning of life is hastened by violent emotion. I shall return to Queensland when I have finished a little private work totally unconnected with the police.” Bony rose to his feet, and then added, when they began thetownward walk: “This case should help you, John. Take all the credit you can. Never fail to blow your own trumpet, for worldly success depends upon one’s ability to do that. Think of our alleged statesman: how they gab, gab, gab aboutthemselves . Great fellows! Blue blood in them, John. Copy them, and you willrise high. Fail to do so, and you will remain hidden as are the scientific researchers-as I am.”
John Muir gripped Bony affectionately by the arm, saying:
“Bony, old man, thanks very much! You’re a damned decent sort.”
With well-controlled gravity Bony said, in order to hide how much he was touched by the other’s act and words:
“When you are Commissioner you will give me far less worry regarding your career than you now do as a detective. The quicker I push you into the gilded chair, the sooner my worry will be removed.”
Several days passed before Bony received the long-expected summons from the Merredin postmaster. In that official’s office he was shown a telegram addressed to “Jelly-South Burracoppin.” The message read: “Come Adelaide.” On the reverse side of the form were written in a scrawl the words: “Sunflower Jelly-South Burracoppin.”
“The clerk who received this telegram this morning remembered your previous inquiry and took special note of the sender,” the official explained. “I am, therefore, able to tell you that the sender is a Mrs Chandler, who lives at 18 Mark Street, of this town.
“I am very much obliged to you,” Bony said earnestly. “Do you know anything about this Mrs Chandler?”
“Next to nothing. She is, however, Mrs Westbury’s sister.”
“Indeed! Well, I’ll go along and interview her. Again, I thank you very much. Good-bye!”
The woman who answered his knock on the door of 18 Mark Street was matronly and pleasant.
“Madam, you dispatched this morning a telegram to a Mr Jelly, of South Burracoppin,” Bony stated sternly.
At once Mrs Chandler froze.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I am a detective employed by the Telegraph Department,” he lied. “I am looking into the matter of a false declaration made on the back of a telegraph form. The counter clerk-”
“I can say nothing about it,” the woman cut in. “You had better see my brother-in-law, Sergeant Westbury, at the police station.”
“Oh! Thank you. I will call on the sergeant,” Bony said less frigidly, and, after raising his hat politely, walked off to the police station, hoping against hope that his long-growing suspicions about Mr Jelly were not proved truth and fact by the genial sergeant.
“Good day, sir!” exclaimed Sergeant Westbury, heaving himself to his feet when Bony entered the station office. The Burracoppin case being finalized, Westbury could find no further excuse for not paying due respect to his superior in rank. “Sit down, sir. Glad to see you-glad to see you, sir.”
“Can you tell me, sergeant,” Bony began when he was making a cigarette, “can you tell me why your sister-in-law sent a telegram to Mr Jelly, of South Burracoppin, this morning, in which she said: ‘Come Adelaide’?”
“Eh! Well, yes, I can-I can.” Sergeant Westbury became red of face and neck. “Mr Muir could have told you.”
“Not wishing to put such a question to Muir, I refrained. I would not have put it to you, only I am pressed for time and must take the shortest cut, via yourself.”
Sergeant Westbury came round his desk, drew close to Bony, stooped, and whispered into his ear.
“So that’s it,” Bony said softly. “I have been afraid it was. If I hadn’t been so overruled by vanity when detailing my investigations to Muir, I would have sought his assistance. What you tell me explains Mr Jelly’s morbid interest in criminology, and the roundabout way arranged for those telegrams to be sent him, and the success with which his extraordinary business was kept secret.” Standing up, he held out his hand, adding: “I shall be leaving for Brisbane bytonight’s express. Good-bye, sergeant! I have been much pleased with your valuable collaboration, and I have remembered you in my report.”
“The pleasure is mine, sir-mine, sir-mine, sir,” stuttered the delighted Westbury.
Slowly Bony sauntered to the Merredin Hospital.
Eric Hurley had given his blood to his sweetheart and now was recuperating in the Merredin Hotel as the guest of Mr Jelly. This afternoon Bony found Lucy much brighter and stronger in her bed in an isolated corner of a veranda ward of the hospital. When he had taken the chair at the head of the bed he looked down to find her regarding him shyly.
“I am afraid that being kind to me has delayed you returning to your home,” she said. “Sunflower was here this morning, and she brought the table centre I wished to give to your wife. It was fortunate that I finished it before-before-”
When she hesitated to refer to that night of terror Bony said swiftly:
“You are kindness itself. I shall never forget you or Sunflower. Sunflower promises to write to me sometimes. She is coming with your father and Eric at five o’clock. They are bringing afternoon tea, and I have induced the sister to lend us her teapot and permit us to boil water. We will have a kind of family tea, because I leave for Brisbane tonight on the express. As your father has business in Adelaide, we will travel together as far as that city.”
“Has-has he had another telegram?”
“Yes, but you need not worry about it,” he assured her with much earnestness. “As I promised you, I have found out what is his business, and it is really nothing of which he might be ashamed, although its nature is highly secretive. I am going to ask you to refrain from asking me questions about it, to be satisfied with what I tell you, and to believe me when I repeat that Mr Jelly is doing nothing of which he might be ashamed. Excepting the State of Queensland, your father’s extensive knowledge of criminology is constantly in demand by the law officers of the Australian States; if Mr Jelly ever had to come to Queensland on his particular business, I should have known what I know about him today.”
“You make me so happy,” she cried softly. “I have been so afraid. I shall not now mind his going away. If he had only told me, it would not have been so bad.”
“Well, as he promised me, he is going to give it up. When he returns from Adelaide he will be called to Perth, and after that he will go away no more. He has given me his word: he will keep it.” Bony broke off to laugh. “You know,” he continued, “you know, it is always wise to counter an attack with an attack. Your father sternly demanded what I meant by taking you to the Loftus homestead. Instead of expressing my real and honestly heartfelt regret, I counter-attacked by pointing out to him that he was not following his duty as a father by sneaking off now and then without telling you why he went away and where he went to. I reminded him of his promise to me; I told him that his goings on were disgraceful, and finally I told him that if he did not give you and Sunflower more attention that he would hear further from me.”
Lucy sighed. Her eyes were very bright.
“I am glad there is no need to worry any more,” she murmured.
“There is none whatever. I solved another little mystery this morning. I found out that your father and Eric have just paid the deposit on that vacant farm south of your own home. Eric must be leaving the Rabbit Department. I remember the farm they have bought. There is a very nice little house on it, isn’t there?”
“Oh, Bony! True?” sheasked, the fingers of one hand now at her lips.
He nodded. “And I’ve another piece of information,” he said.
“What is that?”
“Sunflower says that she will never marry anyone because she cannot marry me,” Bony explained gravely, and then laughed in his low, attractive manner. The expected visitors appeared at the farther end of the ward. Quickly Bony leaned over the patient. He said:
“Don’t tell them that we know about that farm deal, will you?”
Again Lucy sighed, her soul strangely at peace.
Bony’s twinkling eyes beamed upon Mr Jelly advancing towards them. The cigar-shaped figure and the halo of grey hair above the farmer’s ears made of him a picture of benevolence. Hurley smiled and nodded at Bony before falling on his knees beside the bed. Little Sunflower drew close to Bony, took one of his brown hands, and squeezed it.