A Question of Magic
CLOSEYOUReyes, Alice, and try to decide if Mrs Marlo-Jones picked up that button to prevent anyone slipping on it, or if, like a person finding a ten-pound note, she determinedly secured it before it could be claimed.”
“She was standing just behind you and looking at the floor. Then she moved away and spoke to people before coming back to the same place. She picked up the button and, sort of carelessly, drifted over to the mantelshelf, where, after a bit of backing and filling, she dropped it in a bowl.”
“A piece of the puzzle. Let me picture it. The Professor and I were standing all the time. We were talking nonstop. People joined us but no one stayed, because the Professor was deeply interested in our conversation. When two people talk standing like that in a crowded room, they don’t occupy the same place all the time. I remember that button parting company with my trousers… at the back… and I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable.
“Mrs Marlo-Jones saw the button on the floor, and did not pick it up at the time, but wandered round before coming back to it. The Professor was facing me, and therefore saw his wife pick up something, watched her drop it into the bowl. He didn’t know it was a button, and he was driven to find out what his wife had dropped into the bowl.
“Why all that manoeuvring over a button? Why should Professor Marlo-Jones be so interested in an object picked up from the floor by his wife? Then the lubra takes up the tale, you watch. Did she see Mrs Marlo-Jones pick up the button, take it to the bowl and drop it there, or did Mrs Marlo-Jones tell her what she had found on the floor and what she had done with it? Silly questions, perhaps, but I’d like the answers.”
“I don’t get it,” Alice confessed. “Why are the answers wanted?”
“Last night someone entered my room, deposited five red-back spiders in my bed and stole all my cigarette-ends from the ashtray. The spiders were meant to put me in hospital for some considerable time, if not into a coffin. The theft of the cigarette-ends was for the same purpose as the theft of the button from the bowl. Button and ends came from me, are a part of me, are necessary objects required for the practice of pointing the bone.
“On one assignment I did have the bone pointed at me, and it was far from pleasant. Why point the bone now? You fell foul of Marcus Clark, or he fell foul of you, and subsequently I approached him in hospital… as a friend. Why point the bone at me for what you so thoughtlessly did to him? It doesn’t add up. Unless, of course, I am dangerous to those who stole the babies, or to those behind the killing of Mrs Rockcliff, or to those who stole the babiesand did the murder. I must be dangerous to that lubra and whoever stole my cigarette-ends. Which points to aborigines being mixed up in the baby-thefts and possibly the murder. Good! We have arrived.”
“Where?” asked Alice, thankful that they were nearing Essen’s home and carbonate of soda.
“The criminals are on the move; they cannot stay still.”
“And does the theft of that slab of rock come into it, too?”
“I think it does.”
“And this button business is a form of magic?”
“Something of that kind, Alice.”
“Something of the kind! It must be either magic or it isn’t.”
“Magic is dependent on a point of view. When a wild aborigine first hears a radio, he calls it magic. That which is not understood is called magic, an easy word saving us the bother of using our brains to understand how it is done.”
“I think I am going to have a headache,” Alice declared.
“Well, here we are within a few yards of Mrs Essen and the cloves. And the soda. You have done fine, and I am pleased. Later this evening, if you are well enough, come round to the Station for a further talk on the…er… plonk party.”
“All right, and thanks a lot for the antidote, Bony. It is one hell of a good lurk, I must say. And the sort of headache I was going to havewasn’t the sort you thought I was going to have and won’t have.”
“Quite so, Alice. Now I think I am going to have a headache.”
“See you after,” she cried, leaving the car, and as Robins made the turn she waved to him.
In the Station office, Sergeant Yoti looked him over, saying:
“What! No lurch?”
“I never lurch.”
“No dull, pounding headache?”
“No headache… yet. Your tracker and his people came here to Darling River, he says, about five years ago. I’d like you to enquire of the Menindee police if it is known why they left, and whatis their record.”
“I did so twelve months ago when we took young Wilmot on as tracker. Report then was clean.”
“Then you need not bother to seek another.”
“You seem a bit hostile.”
“I have arrived at the point in this investigation where it’s advisable to stir up an ants’ nest and watch what happens. But for the moment a cup of strong tea is essential, and I am going to make love to your wife.”
“Do. Don’t mind me. I’m only the husband.”
Yoti smiled. Bony came back from the door to give the crumb for which the Sergeant’s eyes implored.
“All my cases are at first like a brick wall presenting an unyielding front. I have to push here and prod somewhere else to find a weakness in the brickwork.” Again came Bony’s flashing smile. “More often than not it is inadvisable to make a direct attack, but to undermine the foundations, as it might be inadvisable for me to ask your wife point-blank for a cup of tea when she is cooking the dinner.”
“I don’t know,” Yoti admitted. “You may be right. The thing is, this investigation looks like giving. Is that what you are really saying?”
“It is, Sergeant. ’Bye for now.”
Bony found Mrs Yoti in the kitchen and, as he predicted, she was cooking the dinner. The kitchen was hot, and Mrs Yoti was hot, and no woman feels at top when she’s hot in a hot kitchen.
“Oh, there you are! How was the party?” she asked.
“Rather boring,” replied Bony, sitting on a chair at the table littered with pastry-making utensils. “I dislike sherry. Alice calls it plonk. Appropriate, I think. Could you give me a couple of aspirins?”
“Why, of course. Many there?”
“Crowded. TheBulfords, theDelphs, theNotts, theReynoldses, the novel-writing woman, and others. Two maids, one a lubra, served the drinks as fast as wanted, and most guests wanted fast. The Professor collared me for a session. Most interested in me as a specimen. His wife was, too. I lost a trouser button and gained a headache.”
Bony washed down the aspirin with a few sips of water. He stared at the teapot on the mantel over the hot stove, continued to stare that way until certain that Mrs Yoti was aware of the target. He sighed, set down the glass of water, and leaned back.
“You lost a what?” asked Mrs Yoti.
“A trouser button,” he answered, standing up. “Well, I mustn’t detain you. Thanks for the aspirin.” Smiling at her, he glanced again at the teapot, and proceeded to the door.
Mrs Yoti looked at the clock on the mantel, noted the teapot beside the clock.
“Would you like a cup of tea? I could make a pot before my pastry is due out of the oven.”
“That is just what I would like,” Bony said, returning to the table and sitting down again. “A strong cup of tea would fix this hangover. It’s very thoughtful of you. Howd’you like being married to a policeman?”
“Wouldn’t like not to be married to a policeman,” replied Mrs Yoti, pouring boiling water into the teapot. “My father was a policeman, my two brothers are policemen, and now my son is one.” The tea wasmade, the oven was opened and out came the pastry. It looked good, and Mrs Yoti laughingly asked what happened when the button came off his trousers.
“Mrs Marlo-Jones sneaked round the room to pick it up, and then sneaked over to the mantel and dropped it into a bowl. If you found a button at a party would you do that?”
“Not while my guests were present. Afterwards, of course. Good buttons are buttons these days. But that Mrs Marlo-Jones has a kink for buttons.”
“Indeed!” Bony sipped the strong tea with intense satisfaction.
“Daughter of a friend goes to High School, and once a week Mrs Marlo-Jones takes the botanyclass, or something like that. One day she was lecturing the class, and she was wearing a jacket suit. Shedived her hand into a side pocket for her handkerchief, and with it she pulled out about two dozen buttons. All kinds, too. The girls shrieked as they scrambled after them all over the floor.”
“And now she has added my button to her collection. I didn’t like to ask her for it.”
“No. You couldn’t very well do that,” agreed Mrs Yoti. “I’ll sew another on for you.”
“Thanks. I’m no good at it. Yes, I would like another cup. By the way, is your son a big man, bigger than his father?”
“Six feet four inches, forty-six or something round the chest, weighs sixteen stone. Why, his father’s a pigmy to our George.”
“I thought he might be, on coming across a pair of his slippers. Size nine foot?”
“Size nine. Takes almost a tin of polish every time he cleans his shoes.”
“Is there an old pair about anywhere? I’d like to borrow them.”
“Borrow them!” echoed Mrs Yoti.“George’s shoes! Whatever for?”
“Merely to make a wrong impression.”Mrs Yoti stared at Bony, and proceeded to nod slowly as though comprehension dawdled like a poodle off the lead. Bony was convinced it was still dawdling when he left for his room and the shower, but the number nines were in his hand and he wondered what it felt like to be an outsize man.
After dinner he found Alice and Essen sitting on his doorstep. Alice said she felt quite all right, and Essen complained that the stewedcloves was wasted effort at home, adding:
“Anyway, I’ll try a brew on top of the next Lodge night.”
Bony sat with them on the step.
“My mind has been reviewing Mr Cyril Martin. What do you think of him, Essen?”
“Don’t care for him. Nothing definite, of course.”
“What about his home life?”
“Good enough, I believe. The wife’s a semi-invalid. She never goes out anywhere. He does enough of that for both.”
“How does he stand financially, d’you know?”
“Couldn’t say. Seems to be well heeled. Buys a new car every second year.”
Bony musingly looked at Alice, and Alice tried to read his mind.
“How do you feel towards Mr Martin, Alice?”
“I know Martin’s type. The older they get the sexier they get. And most of it is in their dirty minds.”
“You think he’s a nasty man?” disarmingly askedBony, and Essen chuckled and drew to himself disapproval from Alice, who said:
“I’ll tell you what, and I’m serious. The more I see of those people, which includes this Mr Martin, the more I remember what you said about Satan Worshippers and such like. There’s something going on that I don’t cotton to. Give me the straight-outmetho drinkers and city crooks. They’re clean beside this plonk-drinking lot.”
“Now, now, Alice,” Bony reproved.“Let us stick to Mr Cyril Martin.”
“All right, we will,” Alice swiftly agreed. “There’s something at the back of my mind between it and him. I can’t dig it out, but I will.”
“Let me assist you,” Bony pleaded, and went on: “Does he remind you of the man who wears a size eight shoe, and who walks something like a sailor?”
“Why…” Alice stared. “Why, that’s it.”
“He comes closer to the man we imagine killed Mrs Rockcliff than anyone we have met in Mitford,” Bony said, dreamily. “But, Alice, I must earnestly warn you not to rush in where even Bony fears to tread. I understand, Essen, that Martin has two children, a boy and a girl.”
“Correct. Son would be about twenty-six or seven, and the girl is a couple of years younger. The son used to be in partnership with the old man, but three years ago there was a hell of a bust-up and he cleared off to Melbourne. The sister went with him.”
“The reason behind the bust-up?”
“Don’t know that one. Could be the father and son are too much alike to get along together.”
“Too much like physically or mentally?”
“Both. The son’s the dead spit of the old man. I did hear he set up an estate business in Croydon.”
“Might dig in behind this Mr Cyril Martin,” Alice said hopefully.
“I have already done so, Alice. The day before Mrs Rockcliff leased No 5 Elgin Street, Mr Martin cashed a personal cheque for fifty pounds. That was on October 11th. On the same date every month thereafter he cashed a personal cheque for fifty pounds. That is, to January 11th. He didn’t cash a cheque for that amount on February 11th
… four days after Mrs Rockcliff was murdered. You will both recall that Mrs Rockcliff paid her bills on the 12th of every month.”
“That sort of gives me ideas,” Alice said, eyes very hard, lines between the brows very deep.
“I took both of you into my confidence, not to provide you with ideas but to ease your minds of the depressing thought that I slumber too much. Could you find me a bike for tonight, Essen?”
“One on hand in the shed out back,” Essen replied.
“Too well known. Could you hire one?”
“Easy. Bike shop just down the street.”
“Is the tracker still on duty?”
“Went back to the Settlement an hour ago, according to the Sergeant.”
“Then hire a reliable bike and leave it here in this room.” Essen stood and waited for the reason behind the bicycle hiring. He received a reason. “I’m going out visiting.”
There was dismissal in Bony’s voice, and Essen grinned at Alice and departed.
“Feeling better?” Bony asked, rolling a cigarette.
“Much, thank you. Ready for work, too.”
“The work will come, Alice. I am going to begin tonight. Tomorrow you will begin to work, too. Meanwhile, I’d like you to run along to the Municipal Library and spend an hour or two of relaxation with the magazines in the Reading Room. There is the mystery of the theft of the aboriginal drawing to be cleared up, and then there is the matter of those ceilings being painted duck-egg blue.”
“What on earth…”
“This afternoon, when discussing thecicatrice patterns of the Worgia Nation with Professor Marlo-Jones, I overheard a man say that the renovations carried out at the Library last November cost much more than the Council had voted. Another man said he thought the work had been well done and was worth the additional cost. The first man then argued that the work need not have taken so long, causing the Library to be closed to the public for an entire week. I would like to know if the Library was closed to the public on November 29th.”
“Very well, I’ll find out. November 29th! That was the day the Bulford baby was stolen.”
“There is the coincidence.” Bony smoothly admitted.
Alice walked to the door, her shoulders expressive of irritation. She returned to the desk, glared at Bony, who sat smiling up at her.
“Am I your cobber or am I just a cog in your machine?” she asked. “What’s behind the Library ceilings and the Bulford baby? Oh, damn! I’m sorry, Bony.”
She had reached the door again when he called her back.
“As you are not a cog in my machine, Alice, you must come under the other heading. We’re doing splendidly, so let us concentrate on our respective jobs, that our joint efforts may achieve success.”
She nodded, bit her lip, and burst out with:
“All right by me, Bony. But what are you going to do with those enormous shoes and the bike Essen is bringing here?”
“I’m going to stir up an ants’ nest, Alice.”