‘Tricky Characters’
BONYANDConstable Irwin were ten miles north of Agar’s Lagoon when they met the mechanic returning with Ramsay’s car.
“Oughtergot back last night,” he told them.“Had two blowouts just before dark and camped.”
“Fixed the jeep?” Irwin asked.
“Yes. Put another steering-wheel on her.”
“What time did you part from Constable Clifford… yesterday?” Bony inquired, and the mechanic said that it had been about one o’clock.
Half an hour later Irwin pointed out the turn-off track negotiating Black Range to reach the Breen homestead, and twenty minutes later they came to the branch track to the Wallace homestead. At this point, the Wallace homestead was fifteen miles eastward from Black Range, and because Clifford might pass by on his way back to the settlement when they were visiting theWallaces, Bony wrote a note and tied it to a stick he thrust into the ground.
The side track wound over low range hills and then followed a narrow and verdant valley where the going was much easier. The homestead could be seen from three miles away, white squares against the foot of a coffee-coloured mountain.
Eventually, dogs came to escort the utility to the main house with its several spindly windmills providing electric light and power. Aboriginal children stood at the entrance to a small shed, and a white man left two others who were helping him with a truck repair job. Then Bony was being introduced to Jack Wallace, a nuggetty man in his early thirties. Flat, slaty-eyes summed him up and a soft voice acknowledged the introduction. Irwin said:
“Did you hear aboutStenhouse, Jack?”
“Yes. Heard about it in last night’s news. Had it coming to him. Had lunch yet?”
“Yes, thanks,” replied Irwin. Strolling to the house, Bony put a question:
“Sent all your fats to Wyndham this season, Mr Wallace?”
“Oh yes, Inspector. Dispatched the last mob a month ago.”
“D’youemployindependent drovers?”
“Yes. This year we did.”
Mrs Wallace stood on the veranda, a small woman with grey hair and large brown eyes hiding nothing.
“Why, Constable Irwin!” she cried with evident pleasure.“How do you do!”
Stooping to take her hand he told her it was surely but yesterday and not three years, since they had last met. She smiled warmly at Bony, who expressed pleasure at the meeting and said they hadn’t forgotten to bring the mail.
“Come along and see Father,” she said, her voice bird-like in its clarity. “He’s on the other veranda, in the sunshine. Poor dear, he does suffer.”
The invalid was reclining in a long wicker-chair, a man having a pointed grey beard and alert grey eyes. His welcome to Irwin was genuine. With Bony he was more reserved, and apologized for not getting up.
“Under the circumstances,” Bony said, “I hate to touch on a subject I know will hurt you. We are looking into the death of ConstableStenhouse, and I am really regretful that we’re here on duty, as it were, in view of your warm welcome. That we do appreciate.”
“I’m sure no one here knows anything about it, Inspector,” the elder Wallace returned quickly. “We are not vengeful folk, so don’t think we are less pleased to see you. Candidly, we have no sorrow in our hearts thatStenhouse was killed, and we’re not so foolish as to condemn all policemen for the wrongs done our daughter by one. We shall be glad to help, if possible, to clear up the matter. That’s so, Jack?”
Jack Wallace agreed with obvious reluctance. Mrs Wallace said something about afternoon tea and withdrew a little hastily. A cow bellowed in the near distance and a lubra’s voice drifted round the corner of the house. Ignoring the implication behind the question directed to the son, Bony said suavely:
“We have to tackle these problems with detachment from personal opinions and feelings, Mr Wallace. A man has been murdered, and our task is to locate and apprehend the murderer. Very often our investigation is similar to a jigsaw puzzle, and we find one piece here and another somewhere else. Would you be kind enough to reply to a few questions?”
“As many as you ask, Inspector.”
“Thanks. I’ll be as brief as possible. Stenhouse was found dead in his jeep on the 17th. We know where he was up to the early morning of the 14th, and we are trying to ascertain what happened between those times. Did he call here?”
“No,” replied Wallace senior. “He wouldn’t come here.”
“Then let us go back to the 14th… yesterday week. What station work was going on that day?”
The old man looked at his son. Jack Wallace was cool and steady. He took time before answering.
“Nothing out of the way. A couple of the hands helped me repair the homestead stockyards.”
“The 15th?”
“Same thing, and the next day, too.”
“What of the following day, the 17th?”
“That day I took three of the men out on a truck to repair the windmill at Deep Well,” replied Jack Wallace. “Left about nine and got home about six in the evening. I can account for all my movements.”
“Naturally,” agreed Bony. “I’m really less interested in your personal movements during this period than by the station work in general as it concerns your men. No one of them reported having seen Jacky Musgrave, I suppose?”
Bony detected the relief this question gave to the elder Wallace.
“Been waiting for you to come round to the tracker,” he said. “Hemusta done it, and he’d take care not to be sighted, even by a station black. He’d be a stranger up in these parts, and our blacks wouldn’t have any truck with a wild Musgrave man.”
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t. This Deep Well… what direction does it lie from here?”
“East. Eleven miles east,” answered Jack Wallace.
“On that day, can you remember observing any smoke signals? I’d like you to be sure about this.”
“No, I didn’t notice any smokes. Might have been, of course. So used to seeing smokes that I wouldn’t take particular notice of them on any one day.”
The invalid picked one of a dozen rolled cigarettes from a small box, and they were made so perfectly that Bony was confident Mrs Wallace was the maker. The son applied the match, and the old man thanked him. The father was more perturbed by this visit than was theson, and Bony wondered to what extent the father could corroborate the son’s replies to the interrogation. In view of the invalid’s imprisonment, it might well be not at all, and, were that so, Jack Wallace could have been on the Wyndham road when he said he was repairing the stockyards.
“Blacks always sending up smoke signals,” the old man said. “Used to wonder what they did it for. More than once I tried to find out what they meant, but narya black-fellow would explain. I can’t see any connexion between the shooting ofStenhouse and smoke signals. If it had been Jacky Musgrave who’d been shot, yes. All the tribes in the country would then work overtime sending up smokes. Anyway, our blacks had nothing to do with the shooting. As Jack said, they were all here in camp at the time it must have been done.”
“You won’t mind if I talk with them later?”
“Course not, Inspector. You’ll find ’emtame enough.”
The inevitable afternoon tea arrived on a tray carried by Mrs. Wallace, who wanted to know how Irwin’s wife and family were ‘coming along’. Bony caught her uneasy glances at her son, and his reading of them was that she, like her husband, was troubled about him. Not a big man, he could be ruthless, or Bony was a novice in estimating character.
Jack Wallace evinced no reluctance in taking Bony to the blacks’ camp, a line of tin-and-hessian humpies along the bank of a waterless creek. He called three men, and told Bony their names. That of an elderly, gaunt man was Lofty. The other two were youths, being known as Brownie and Mike.
“You bin see-up Jacky Musgrave?” asked Bony, easily and without authoritative tone.
A flicker deep in black eyes directed beyond the questioner. Low laughter as though the idea was even humorous. A faint hiss of held breathing from Brownie. That was all to indicate the curtain that fell between them and Bony. Knowing that one would have to reply, the elderly man did so.
“No. Jacky Musgrave no time come here.”
They were obviously nervous. All the camp would know that Constable Irwin was at the house, and without doubt Wallace would have passed on the news given by the radio thatStenhouse had been found shot dead and his tracker missing. Bony moved so that he could observe Jack Wallace as well, and when he asked his next question he was confident that from Deep Well they could have seen beyond Black Range the signals made by the blacks… those same signals noted by Sam Laidlaw.
“You bin go with Mr Wallace to Deep Well… fix windmill?”
This one was easy and brought eager affirmation.
“What them smokes bin tell you, eh? You know, wild black feller smokes?”
Puzzlement. Faint distress occasioned by such unfortunate ignorance. The scuffling of bare feet. Lofty, the spokesman appointed by age, said:
“Them wild-feller blacks. No know-um their smokes.”
Bony accepted defeat and turned away, Wallace stepping beside him. He walked twenty paces and abruptly spun about and went back to the three men.
“I bin tell you what them smokes say, eh?” he said, and they were caught in the web of his blazing eyes. “Them smokes bin tell-um Jack Musgrave he bin come horse-feller, eh?”
The strain snapped. The curtain was lifted. Heads were shaken, and feet scuffled. Lofty burst out with:
“No fear, boss. Them smokes bin tell-um policeman him bin shot.”
“And you no tell-um Mr Wallace?”
“Too right! Brownie, him bin tell-um Jack Boss when we bin fix-um mill.”
Bony nodded, turned away to Jack Wallace, who had been waiting for him. When walking to Irwin, who was talking with Mrs Wallace at the utility, he said:
“So you knew of those smokes sent up by those western blacks?”
Wallace did not speak.
“Your men saw them when they were working with you at Deep Well. They told you what they meant.”
Wallace stopped and barred Bony’s progress. His face was wooden, and his slaty eyes were singularly void of expression.
“So what?” he asked softly. “You’ve come to the wrong place for help to find who killedStenhouse.”