A Drink for Alice
THECARslipped through a wide avenue of date palms which laid bars of black shadow across the road so that it was like traversing a tiger’s back, and ultimately the palms gave place to ancient red gums framing the River Hotel. The green roof and the cream-painted front, the wide verandas festooned with passion fruit vines, and the shining spaces of the broad river beyond combined to welcome with cool relaxation.
The driver said he would like to take the opportunity for a word with a pal in the public bar, which, of course, suited Bony and his lady friend. They mounted the few steps to the front entrance, and Alice paused to note with disapproval the several prams and pushers parked in an alcove where they certainly wouldn’t cause an obstruction. Bony waited whilst she peeped at the infants, and could not evade the glint in her eyes when they entered the building. In the lounge the mothers were joined in a school for inebriates.
“Same old tale,” Alice remarked, sipping ice-cold lager. “Eleven women drinking their headsoff, and nine kids parked outside because it’s against the law to bring them into a pub. I’d make it illegal to leave babies outside a place like this.”
“It’s shady and cool on the veranda,” murmured Bony, rolling a cigarette.“So open, too. So safe… perhaps.”
“Tell me about the baby stolen from here,” Alice pleaded. “It’s why I asked you to bring me.”
“I read your mind, Alice, and I agreed to your wish because you have earned a drink.” Bony gallantly applied a match to her cigarette. “It was on the afternoon of December27th, a Mrs Ecks brought her new baby here and left it out there on the veranda.
“When she arrived, there were already two prams on the veranda. It was then about a quarter past four. At twenty minutes to five, or thereabouts, another woman arrived, leaving her child outside to make the fourth. This woman said she remembered seeing Mrs Ecks’s baby in the pram.
“Mrs Ecks says she was the first to leave at five-twenty-five, so that it was between four-forty and five-twenty-five when the child was stolen. Mrs Ecks states that she had three gin squashes, but the steward amends that by adding another four. Anyway, Mrs Ecks, according to several women present who knew her, left this lounge moderately sober. She withdrew her infant’s vehicle from the rank, bumped it gently down the steps, and set off home to cook her husband’s dinner. On the way she met a friend she hadn’t seen for a long time and who wanted to see the new baby. It was then that Mrs Ecks found the pram empty.”
“Seven gins… stinko… no wonder,” Alice almost hissed.
“Mrs Ecks acted automatically on leaving the hotel. She was sufficiently sober to avoid taking another woman’s pram, but sufficiently hazy not to make sure that her baby was all right for the journey home.”
“Must have been slick to pinch a baby off the veranda here, unless, being the day after Boxing Day, the public had run out of money and trade was slack.”
“Trade wasn’t slack. The licensee says they were very busy.”
“And no one reported having seen anyone interfering with the prams?”
“No one has done so.”
“The husband put her into hospital, didn’t he?”
“Mr Ecks is a fruit-packer. He said he lost his temper because he had long disapproved of his wife going to the hotel every Friday afternoon. Personally, I do not approve of a husband hitting his wife with a chair.”
“No? I do,” Alice said severely. “What happened to poor Mr Ecks?”
“In view of the circumstances, the magistrates let him off with a fine.”
Alice stubbed her cigarette and glared across the large room at the women who were seated at the far side. She said:
“A doctor’s wife, a banker’s wife, a fruit-packer’s wife, and a supposed widow. What about the last one, mother number four?”
“She is the wife of the Town Engineer.”
“Oh!” Alice pondered and Bony asked the steward for refills. The steward having obliged, Alice said:
“That banker’s wife keeps him screwed down.”
“She looks hard,” Bony agreed.
“Too right, she does. I… I hope you don’t mind.”
“What?”
“Being too free with you, an inspector. Throwing my weight around, aren’t I?”
“No. Should you do so you will recall HumptyDumpty. You were going to say?”
“About Mrs Bulford. I can see how it is with her. Two boys away at boarding-school… youngest not less than ten. Then the baby comes… late in life. It isn’t decent. It interferes with the social jag, the plonk parties. It’s beginning to add up, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” smiled Bony.
“Of course, and don’t tease.”
“Very well. How does it add up?”
“Well, Baby Number One vanishes from a pram in Main Street. Mother’s a social drone. Couldn’t be bothered with a baby. Interfered with her figure and her plonk parties. Baby Number Two is pinched from a bank. Mother has it late in life. Thinks people are sniggering at her, and again it interferes with the plonk parties. Baby Number Three taken from pram outside this hotel. Mother thinks more of gin and gossip than her baby. All thisadds up: plonk plus plonk plus gin totals-neglect.”
“And Mrs Rockcliff?”
“Mrs Rockcliff doesn’t drink, but she left her baby alone at night when she went out. Neglect caused by something we have to nail. What about the Town Engineer’s baby? What happened there?”
“His wife says her baby was taken from its cot on the front veranda when she was busy in the house.” Bony regarded Alice with impish interest. “There may be no booze there, Alice. No neglect.”
“We don’t know yet. When do we get into that case?”
“Tomorrow.”
“We’ll get neglect there again, I’ll bet on it.”
“And if we do?”
“The grand total will be neglect. Someone prefers neglected babies.”
“Someone certainly chooses male infants. All the vanished babies were boys.”
“That could add up to another sum.”
“Perhaps it could,” agreed Bony. “You have a ‘penchant’ for mathematics. Another drink?”
“No, thanks, Bony. Two drinks a year is my limit. I have my career to think of.”
“A fine career, too,” he said, but she would not agree. Regarding him steadily with faintly wistful eyes, she confessed:
“My career isn’t the Police Department. My career is making Superintendent Bolt pleased that he helped theMcGorrs. I’m telling you that because you’re a friend of his. D’youknow that my father was a ‘can opener’?”
Bony inclined his head.
“My dad never got a fair go. A can found opened, and they rushed for Pat McGorr. More than once he did time when he was cold.” The soft brown eyes lit momentarily the smile about the tragic mouth. “Mother never blamed the police, and I didn’t either, because Pat McGorr was the greatest can opener of the century, and every time the police got him cold made up for times they didn’t get him. Mother was the wife of Pat McGorr, and I was his daughter, and Sergeant Bolt was Sergeant Bolt, now Superintendent. You understand?”
“Swift and complete understanding is natural to me, Alice.”
“Then you won’t find it difficult to forgive me when I show off like just now, will you? Only Superintendent Bolt and his wife have been kind, truly kind to me, so when I meet kindness it sort of goes to my head. And that’s not the beer talking.”
She rose from her chair and Bony accompanied her across the lounge to the door. As they passed down the steps to the waiting taxi neither spoke, and silently Bony held the door open for her. Only when the taxi was speeding back to Main Street and the Police Station did he ask encouragingly:
“What did you think of Mr Bulford?”
“A worm, Bony. The wife boosted him up to his present position, and she never lets him forget it. She’ll grow worse and worse as the hairs grow on her lip. Could be that the worm will turn and bump her off and sink the bits in the river. It’s deep enough.”
“He doesn’t look the type,” objected Bony.
“Type enough to Crippenise* her.” * Hawley HarveyCrippen b. 11/9/1862 usually known as Dr. Crippen, was hanged inPentonville Prison, London, England, on 23/11/1910, for the murder of his wife, Cora HenriettaCrippen.
“Did you notice his eyes?”persisted Bony.
“Looked tired to me. Working too hard to provide the social background of this Mitford Hole in the Wall. Have you worked out how the thief got into the bank?”
“I am beginning to formulate ideas.”
“I’d like to go over the building by myself and without interference,” she went on. “Perhaps the baby wasn’t stolen after all. Perhaps the husband got so sick of hearing his wife moaning about having it that he strangled it and buried the body in the back yard.”
After this observation Alice became pensive, and Bony made no effort to rouse her. His emotions were mixed. He was pleased that she had not noticed the shutters fall before Bulford’s eyes when he mentioned Mrs Rockcliff, and he was feeling distinctly entertained by the company of Policewoman Alice McGorr.
The Celestial Furnace was still blasting when they left the taxi at the Police Station and walked into the driveway separating the offices and the police residence, and leading to the rear area off which were the cells, the stables, now used as a garage, and the outbuildings. Essen met them, saying he was going home for dinner, and Bony suggested to Alice that she accompany Essen in his car and go to bed early after what must have been a trying day.
“Tired of me, eh?” she asked.
Nodding, he opened the car door for her, and said:
“We must not overwork Alice, Essen. You understand?” Essen grinned broadly, let out the clutch, and Alice McGorr departed with a picture of a smiling dark face and laughing blue eyes.
From watching the car reach the street, Bony turned about, intending to enter the police residence by the rear door, and so came face to face with a young aborigine wheeling a barrow.
“Hullo! Who are you?” he asked.
The aborigine lowered the barrow handles and straightened to examine this stranger so elegantly dressed and so well spoken. He took his time in answering, first producing a half cigarette from the pocket of his shirt and a wax match from a trouser pocket. Having lit his cigarette, he said:
“My name’s Fred Wilmot. What’s yours?”
“Napoleon Bonaparte. What are you doing here?”
“I’m the tracker, the car washer, and the wood chopper. What are you doing here?”
The black eyes were insolent, the full mouth pouted with subdued anger. Black eyes encountering blue eyes began to falter and finally looked down at the barrow, anywhere to avoid those blue eyes. He was a well-conditioned man in his early twenties, handsome by aboriginal standards. The open neck of the blue shirt revealed the cicatrices of the full initiated male, a fact arousing interest in Bony, whosaid:
“I am a detective-inspector, Fred Wilmot… in other words, a big-feller policeman. Where’s your camp?”
No answer. The voice which had been purely accented drew ice from thin air.
“Where is your camp?”
“Up the river.”
“How far?”
“Three miles and a bit.”
“Which side?”
“This side.”
“You stay here at night or go back to camp?”
“Go back. I got a bike.”
“And how long have you been working for Sergeant Yoti?”
“This time since last Tuesday. Time before about three months. I beenaway for a spell.”
“Oh! How many people in your camp?”
Black eyes now lifted to encounter blue eyes, and the blue eyes were no longer extraordinarily large and menacing.
“Round about seventy to eighty,” replied Fred. “It’s a Mission Station. The minister is Mr Beamer, Methodist.”
“I’ve heard of him,” purred Bony, and produced his case containing tailor-mades. Fred accepted a smoke, and the ice began to melt, but still he tried to avoid as much as possible the blue eyes. He began to lift the barrow handles when Bony’s next question stopped him.
“How long have you been at the Mission?”
“ ’Boutfive years. The Ole Man’s there and the rest of us. We’re Darling Riverabos, from up Menindee way. You been to Menindee?”
“Several times. I knew old Pluto.”
“He’s dead. Died long time ago.”
“So I heard. Well, I see you have a job to do before sundown. You can carry on.”
Black eyes were swiftly shuttered, and Bony felt amusement that the little lesson in discipline wasn’t appreciated. Too much money, and too much spoiling by government and societies interested in aboriginal welfare, produced too many FrederickWilmots.