Account Rendered
NOTSINCEthe Fruit Pickers’ Riot had the Mitford Police Station been so busy.
Showered, dressed and breakfasted, Bony sat at the Sergeant’s desk with Policewoman Alice McGorr on his right and a shorthand writer over in the corner. Yoti wandered in and out like the office boy fearful of the sack, and First Constable Essen acted as Master of Ceremonies.
Mr Robert Marsh, night-club proprietor and sportsman, was brought in and invited to be seated. He was now less agitated, having received a favourable medical report on his wife and, moreover, had had the opportunity to review his position. Bony said:
“Now, Mr Marsh, be advised and tell me all about it… from the beginning to the moment you expected to find a stolen baby with your wife in the heart of an ancient tree. From information already in my possession, I incline to the belief that you have been actuated less by criminal intent than by your wife’s state of mind. Whatd’youthink about that?”
Mr Marsh agreed with the analysis, and he had already decided to get out from under. His story was clear and to the point, and when the stenographer had typed the statement and it was read to him, he signed almost eagerly.
Marsh having been returned to the lock-up, Dr Nonning was presented by Essen and invited to be seated. Nonning was much more difficult. He continued to be stubborn even after the gist of the statement signed by Marsh was given. It was the reminder that a murder had been committed when the child intended for Mrs Marsh was stolen which loosened his tongue.
The Master of Ceremonies returned him to the lock-up and produced Dr Delph. Dr Delph was given a resume of the statements made by Marsh and Nonning, and he was more amenable to reason. By the time his statement had been typed and signed, Bony was thinking of morning tea.
Again in the yard between the Station and the residence, Bony asked the Sergeant for the envelope he had placed in the dash-box the previous afternoon. Yoti produced it from a pocket of his tunic, and having examined it Bony gave it back, saying:
“Yesterday afternoon I said that this envelope contained the name of the murderer of Mrs Rockcliff, although the evidence against him was inconclusive. Now being able to locate the remaining four babies, I can finalise the murder of Mrs Rockcliff by pointing him out to you for arrest. Essen!”
“Sir!”
“Take two constables and proceed by car to invite Mr Cyril Martin and Mr Cyril Martin, Junior, to call on me. With these two men, stop the car outside this yard entrance. Have them escorted to the side door of the Station, the two men to walk together, a constable either side of them. You will not enter the yard until I signal. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Essen called Robins and two constables, and they drove from the yard and up Main Street.
“Now, Yoti, a rake and a broom, please. Quickly.”The Sergeant brought the implements. “As I rake, smooth with the broom. Order your men to keep out those reporters.”
The surface of the yard was of sand compressed by boots and car tyres, and Bony proceeded to rake the ground in a wide swathe from the gateway to the rear door of the Station. As he raked, the Sergeant smoothed with the broom, producing a fine tilth. Both men were heated when the work was done, but Yoti was given no time to idle.
“Plaster of Paris, water and the trowel, please. Hurry.”
So the stage was set for the actors to strut. Bony stood just within the gateway, Yoti and Alice admired the flowers in the tiny garden in front of the residence, the Sergeant having with him a tin of ‘superphosphate’ and a trowel.
Essen drove up. The constables alighted, then two civilians. The elder Martin nodded to Bony; the younger stared moodily. They were marshalled together and, with a constable either side of them, walked into the yard.
Moving across the prepared surface, the party left four distinct sets of shoe-prints, the two civilians of the same height, the same build, the same manner of walking, the same Christian name. And one of them was the murderer of Mrs Rockcliff.
Bony followed the four lines of prints, slightly crouching. Then swiftly he drew an arrow indicating a print made by the right-hand Martin, and Yoti immediately filled the print with sloppy plaster. Another arrow indicated a second chosen print made by the right-hand Martin, and then Bony signalled to Essen to join him, at the same moment calling:
“Constables! Just a moment!”
The party halted, each man in his tracks. To the right-hand Martin, Bony said:
“I charge you with the murder of Mrs Pearl Rockcliff on the night of February 7th. Take him, Essen.”
“Come on, Mr Martin, Senior,” Essen said, with immense satisfaction.
For an hour before lunch the Sergeant’s office was the scene of much activity following the arrival of a large car manned by police who brought in Chief Wilmot, his son and the lubra, the old watch-mender, and Mr Beamer who came to see fair play. Instead of sullen silence, they surrendered to Bony’s quiet assurance that after confession they would be returned to the Settlement. Mr Beamer, anxious for them, witnessed the statements they made, and at the State’s expense they were returned to the Settlement.
At two o’clock Professor and Mrs Marlo-Jones were presented to Bony in the Sergeant’s office. They were a strange pair: the man regal and dynamic, the woman nondescript and yet vital. There was fire in her small brown eyes, and the wide mouth was truculent.
“Now,” she exclaimed, “now we may be able to make sense of all this extraordinary police behaviour. Please explain, Inspector… if you are an Inspector.”
“Don’t be so vitriolic, dear,” boomed the Professor. “Inspector Bonaparte is but doing his duty, and you will remember that I advised against taking the rock drawing.”
“I know,” agreed the woman. “Still…”
“We intend to restore the drawing, Inspector,” asserted the Professor. “Merely a stupid prank, that’s all.” He chuckled. “We are quite ready to accept punishment for borrowing our neighbour’s goods, you see.”
“But why, Professor?”Bony mildly asked. “You told me when I was your guest that you couldn’t decipher the meaning intended by the aboriginal artist. Or did you steal it because you didn’t want me to see it, because you knew that if I saw it I might know the legend portrayed by the artist?”
“Oh no, it wasn’t that,” said Mrs Marlo-Jones.
“And then I would know the inspiration behind your plan to steal babies?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs Marlo-Jones.
“Ah!” breathed Professor Marlo-Jones.
“I am glad you accept the idea,” murmured Bony. “I suggest that you tell me all about it, from the beginning and including the murder of Mrs Rockcliff that night that you, Mrs Marlo-Jones, entered her house and stole her baby.”
“Me?” snorted Mrs Marlo-Jones. “I didn’t murder the woman.”
“You were under the bed.”
“Under the bed! Henry, you’re a traitor. You told this man what I told you.”
“I did not, dear,” boomed the Professor. “How did you find out that my wife was under the bed, Inspector?”
“As a famous fictional detective used to say: ‘Elementary, my dear Professor.’When your wife crept under Mrs Rockcliff’s bed she was wearing gloves, the identical gloves she is now wearing. One of the glove fingers has been mended. You see the darn, both of you? On the floor about and under the bed the imprint of that mended glove was left on the linoleum. It was also left on the Library window, proving that Mrs Marlo-Jones was engaged in the theft of the rock drawing. You see how difficult it is to make real crime pay.”
“I didn’t murder the woman,” Mrs Marlo-Jones loudly insisted.
“Tell me, who did?”
“Yes, dear, do tell,” urged the Professor. “I’d hate to see you hanged for it.”
Mrs Marlo-Jones shrugged despairingly, as a queen deserted by all her courtiers.
“I was under the bed, as you said, Inspector. I had to get under it because I didn’t know anyone was inside the house until I heard him knock something over. He came into the bedroom, in the dark, and then I heard the front door being opened. I knew it was Mrs Rockcliff by her shoes on the floor covering in the hall, and I couldn’t understand why she’d come back so early. She came into the bedroom and switched on the light, and then I heard the blow and saw her body fall to the floor. And then I saw the man stoop over her, and I knew him. I saw his face distinctly.”
“You knew where Mrs Rockcliff had gone that evening?”
“Oh yes, Inspector. She used to meet the man twice a week. But this time he couldn’t have been at the house where they met, and she came home and he was waiting to kill her.”
“Why didn’t you report all that… to me?”
“Tell you about it? How could I? There was the other thing… the babies.”
“And knowing this man was a murderer, yet you did nothing about it?” pressed Bony.
“Yes. You see…” She looked helplessly at her husband, and he took over.
“Mr Martin knew all about Nonning’s experiments, for he and theDelphs have been friends for years,” explained the Professor. “However, he took no active part in our little schemes, and it was from theDelphs that he learned the details of our plan covering the Rockcliff child, for we didn’t take him into our confidence that much. If, after the murder, our attitude to him had altered, he would have guessed we knew who did it. And to cover up that crime he might have killed us, too. I had better narrate the story, don’t you think?”
Bony inclined his head in assent, and the Professor asked if he might smoke. His cigarette lit, he settled himself comfortably, cleared his throat from long habit in the lecture room, and only once glanced at the stenographer.
“The germ of the, ah, plot, was born last August when we were spending the evening with Dr and Mrs Delph. Staying with theDelphs were Mrs Delph’s brother, Dr Nonning and his wife.
“The conversation that evening turned on a visit paid by Dr Nonning to our local Museum. He saw the drawing, and asked Mr Oats, the curator, what the picture portrayed, but Mr Oats, only recently having taken over, just happened not to know it. So I related the legend, and Nonning was greatly impressed. Subsequently he was inspired to formulate a plan to help certain of his patients.
“Among his patients were several women of a peculiarly neurotic type. I cannot employ Nonning’s phraseology and, in fact, have little sympathy with these new sciences, but it appears that in women there is a sickness of the mind caused by inability to bear children and aggravated by a hunger for them and by an obsession that they are the object of universal contempt. And Nonning evolved the notion that if such a woman could be made to believe she received a child as the legend describes she would recover her mental, spiritual and physical health.
“You will agree that receiving a child in this, shall we say, spiritual way would give these women psychological balance, deep and complete; far greater than selecting a child from an orphanage as one would choose an appealing object.
“Nonning came again to Mitford in September, when Mrs Delph’s child was born, and he told us that his sister didn’t want the child and that he had a patient who would greatly benefit if a child was introduced to her in accordance with the legend. We then decided to stage the legend, with the assistance of several of the aborigines at the Settlement, and also planned the abduction, as Mrs Delph would not dream of the public ever knowing she didn’t want her baby. We arranged with the aborigines to…”
“Pardon, Professor, but I know all about that arrangement for the aborigines to take over and care for the baby, and to act the part of the Beings in the legend,” Bony interrupted.
“Oh, you do, do you, Inspector?”
“Yes, I saw you both at the show last night. I was in the gods, up in the tree. Tell me, how did you work the abduction?”
“It was quite easy. We bought a pram identically the same as the one bought by theDelphs and, with the co-operation of MrsDelph, we duplicated the child’s clothes and the fly-net. The girl was sent to the frock shop with the pram. We knew she would have to leave it outside when calling for the parcel. Our lubra maid wheeled the second pram beside the other one, paused there for a moment or two, and then walked away with the pram holding the baby. She continued to wheel the pram to the lower end of the boulevard, where an aborigine waited with his truck. A lubra on the truck took over the child, and the pram was ultimately taken to the middle of the river and sunk with heavy stones. There was no hitch.”
“And then you gained possession of the Bulford baby with the co-operation of Mr Bulford,” Bony interposed. “One of you took position behind the fence separating the bank from the disused premises, and another rang the bell and took the child from Mr Bulford, who was waiting to pass it.”
“You are a very clever man,” remarked Mrs Marlo-Jones. “I’m sure Mr Bulford didn’t tell you.”
“That is so,” admitted Bony, to add, being unable to resist: “Mr Bulford committed suicide because he realised I am a very clever man. Mrs Bulford didn’t co-operate, I take it?”
“No, that woman wouldn’t co-operate in anything or with anyone. She couldn’t be trusted,” replied Mrs Marlo-Jones. “But she was glad the baby disappeared; the fool thought everyone was laughing at her, and the way she treated her poor husband was shameful. We were all glad, too. The babies were taken from homes where they were a nuisance, unwanted, and were given to women who were figuratively dying for want of one.”
“And after the Bulford baby was given to Nonning’s selected patient, more babies were wanted and you turned to stealing them?” Bony pressed.
“Yes, we turned to real theft,” continued the Professor, quite cheerfully. “We knew theEckses, husband and wife, and knew the latter often went to the River Hotel. The child didn’t receive proper attention from such a drink-swilling mother, and Dr Nonning was most anxious for another infant for a really desperate patient. It was all very easy. So, too, was the theft of Mrs Coutts’s child. Mrs Coutts was a worse offender against a helpless baby than Mrs Ecks. All she thinks about is dreaming of becoming a great author.”
“And that Mrs Rockcliff was the worst of the lot,” added Mrs Marlo-Jones. “Cyril Martin didn’t know we knew all about her and him. And how she visited him at a cottage he had down the river a bit, leaving the baby alone in the house for hours. That was why we took her baby. We’ve done nothing morally wrong, Inspector. All we did was to transfer unwanted children to people who wanted them and would give them wise attention and affection. Besides, these four women who were given our babies recovered from their illness and are now happy and well. Dr Nonning is delighted with his successes, as well he should be. And the other sick woman will recover, too.”
“What of the mothers who lost their babies: Mrs Coutts, Mrs Ecks, and Mrs Rockcliff, had she lived?”
“Pooh! Inspector!” exclaimed the indignant Mrs Marlo-Jones. “To those women a baby was like an attack of sandy blight… an irritant. That was why we selected their babies for Dr Nonning’s patients.”
“What was the reason you selected male children? Was it because the aborigines declined to, ah, officiate over a female child?”
“Precisely. Female children are quite unimportant.”
“Tell me, what did you do to prevent Mrs Coutts’s baby from crying when you stole it from its cot?”
“Nothing. We knew that Mrs Coutts’s baby seldom cried. But it did. It cried after I had put him in the suitcase and was out in the street. It was very awkward, but fortunately there was a thunderstorm and people were hurrying for shelter.”
“Go back to Mrs Ecks’s baby.”
“I took a bottle. He was ready for it and gave no trouble.”
“Cow’s milk?”
“Oh yes.” Mrs Marlo-Jones smiled. “We agreed it wouldn’t do for us to purchase a preparatory food which might have been traced back to us.”
Bony pondered, and they watched him like children who, having finished their lessons, hope to be released from school. To them, stealing five babies for the purpose which they freely avowed was much less reprehensible than stealing the rock drawing from the Municipal Library, and even this relic was merely ‘borrowed’ and was to be replaced. The problem they presented was unique.
“I am going to permit you to return to your home,” he told them. “You will, of course, not attempt to leave Mitford until a higher authority decides what is to be done. You have no children?”
“No,” replied the Professor, in manner revealing so much.
“H’m! Mrs Marlo-Jones… when under the bed, which Cyril Martin did you see stooping over the body?”
“Why, the father, of course. He’s been carrying on with Mrs Rockcliff since before Christmas. Could have been before then. That was when we found out about him and her.”
Bony glanced at Yoti and Essen, and their slow nods affirmatively answered his unspoken question: ‘I tracked the right one, didn’t I?’