Swapping Clues
AT FIVE MINUTES after four o’clock Bony arrived at the Melbourne airport: at five minutes to five he was seated opposite the officer in charge of Military Records. On the desk was an opened file.
“Wessex, Eldred,” murmured the officer, and detailed the unit, rank, number, dates of enlistment and discharge. “Seems to have been troublesome, Inspector.”
“I thought it probable. Serious trouble?” prompted Bony.
“Disorderly conduct. Ah, striking a superior officer. A charge of theft from a forward canteen. Found not guilty by court-martial. Received a hundred days for grievously injuring a comrade in a mix-up at Port Moresby. Was recommended for the Military Medal at that time, and the recommendation withdrawn. Was returned to Australia to serve that sentence. Seems to have been no damn good.”
“But was recommended for the MM.”
“Sometimes goes that way, Inspector. Some men never make soldiers but are excellent fighters.”
“H’m! Revealing. This man Wessex served with a friend of his named Dick Lake. Could I ask you for Lake’s record?”
“Certainly. I’ll send for it.” A bell button was pressed and the order given to a clerk.“Lake! Haven’t I read his name in the paper recently? Ah, yes. I recall it. Down at Split Point, wasn’t it? Lovely place. Spent a holiday there a year or two ago. Thanks, Simms.”
The clerk again withdrew and the officer opened the file on Dick Lake.
“Lake, Richard. Fairly clean record. A number of small offences such as being AWOL, slovenly on parade, disobeying an order. All offences committed in the training camp. Ah… thought to be associated with Eldred Wessex on the canteen charge. Didn’t stop him from gaining a decoration, though. DCM.”
“Distinguished Conduct Medal!”
“An award well worth having.”The officer chuckled.“Court-martialled for refusing to accept promotion. I know the type. If I had a division of men like that, there’s no war I wouldn’t win.”
On leaving Military Records, Bony hailed a taxi, and at the third hotel at which he called he obtained a room. The price rocked him, but then Bolt would have to pass payment. He descended to the dining room wearing his best suit, was welcomed by the Head Waiter with unusual effusiveness and conducted to a table for two as far as possible from the band. He was studying the menu when Superintendent Bolt dropped like a stone from the ceiling into the opposite chair.
“Been getting around, eh?” Boltsaid, small brown eyes boring like gimlets. “Clear soup for me, and Sole Marnier followed by wine trifle and black coffee with a brandy.”
“Off the diet?” calmly inquired Bony.
“Don’t believe in starving the old body. Get much from Sydney?”
Bony sighed.
“And they promised not to press-agent me,” he complained.
“They didn’t. You were picked up coming off the plane, tracked to Military Records, then via the Australia, Menzies, and so to this pub. I then contacted the manager, who’s a pal of mine. Elementary, Bony my boy, elementary. I’ll be waiting for you to give when the coffee and brandy arrive.”
“A spot of trading, Super? The brandy might give us the confidence to swap clues. As you will be paying for the brandy, see to it that it’s the best.”
“And me saving up for a new car. What a hope! Call on Opal Jane?”
“I thought we were to wait for the coffee. Yes, I did.”
“Opinion?”
“A lovely lady,” replied Bony, and Bolt searched and found no subtlety.
“Wish I had her dough,” he said. “Wish I wasn’t so ruddy fat.”
“Sydney has her well taped,” Bony said. “The list of her gentlemen friends would astonish you. Know a man named Waghorn?”
The small brown eyes appeared to pivot round to search the card index in the domed head.
“No, can’t say that I do. Where does he fit in?”
“Waghorn is a small-time crook operating in Sydney. Suspected of being mixed up with smuggling. I’d rather like to talk to him about the weather.”
“Yeah, stormy weather,” Bolt said, and chuckled. “This Waghorn character dothe Lighthouse killing?”
“He may be able to tell us something about it, Super. Perhaps you would assist me by having him brought in.”
“Anything you want, Bony, anything. MyCommish is becoming annoyed at our failure to come up with results. You ask Sydney to pick him up?”
“No. I left that to you. Detective Sergeant Eulo knows the man well. Your opposite number in Sydney agreed not to divulge my operations in Sydney, but I told him you would become interested in Waghorn.”
Superintendent Bolt patted the marble dome rising from the fringe of grey hair about his ears. It could have been done to shoo a fly, but there were no flies.
“Want this Waghorn brought to Melbourne?” he asked.
“Yes. If he is still in New South Wales. I think it likely, however, that he’s in Victoria. Of course, he may be in South Australia, or down at the South Pole. I want him.”
“You’ll have him boots and all. Still interested in that signet ring?”
Without the slightest pause, Bony replied, casually:
“Yes. It might give something fresh about Thomas Baker. Did you find the jeweller?”
“Lives down at Point Lonsdale. Retired in ’42 from the business he had at Colac. His assistant bought the business. Says he remembers making the mistake about the solder, but can’t say who bought the ring. Said his late boss might have some record of it, and gave us his address. Info, only came in a minute before I left the office this evening.”
“Have you done anything further about it?”
“No. Thought you might want to interview that jeweller.”
“I do.” Bony smiled his thanks. “There are three rings exactly alike. The one found in the murdered man’s overcoat. Another on the finger of a champion axeman, the third on the finger of a woman in Sydney. There is a fourth ring, I think, although I haven’t yet come across it.”
Bolt was generous enough to smile his thanks. He chanced a question:
“Found out what the letters BB mean?”
“Oh, yes. Some time ago. Bully Buccaneers.”
“Enlightening.”
“Ship steward Thomas Baker ordered his suit with the Adelaide tailor, and paid cash there and then. The tailor thought he said B. Baker when recording his name. Actually, he must have said T. Baker.”
“Nice point.”
“Had the transaction been such that the suit was to be paid for on delivery, the tailor would have been more alert. The Bully Buccaneers were a crew of pirates who sailed the Caribbean and captured treasure ships conveying as passengers ladies old and bent who possessed much gold and many fine jewels. As I mentioned, I have located three of these Bully Buccaneers.”
The Chief of the Victoria CIB grinned, for his eyes threatened to shrivel the soul of Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Your lucidity continues to claim my admiration. Our friend in the preserving tank… he’s being decently buried tomorrow… was a reincarnation of Captain Morgan. So what?”
“He wasn’t a member of the pirate crew. What happened was that a member of the pirate crew removed the watch from the dead man’s wrist and put it in a pocket of the raincoat. The ring on his own finger was broken and slipped off. One can imagine the haste in which the body was stripped.”
“Another nice point, Bony. I suppose you wouldn’t care to add a few supplementary remarks?”
“I fear I am not yet in that happy position,” Bony said, blandly. “Should the jeweller I interview tomorrow be able to remember to whom he sold those signet rings engraved with the letters BB, I will have advanced another step. When you pick up Waghorn, I may advance a further step.”
Bolt frowned, heaved a silent sigh.
“As muddy as all that, eh? That feller, Lake, who fell over the cliff. Have anything to do with the murder, or was he bumped off?”
“Lake could have been walking in his sleep,” Bony said, without smiling.
“Bad habit. Lots of murders committed by fellers walking in their sleep.”
Bolt betrayed impatience only in the manner in which he struck a match to his cigar. It says much for Bony that the vast man’s confidence grew rather than diminished, and much for Bolt that Bony implicitly trusted him not to make moves beyond those agreed to.
“That gun Staley sent us certainly fired the fatal bullet,” Bolt contributed. “Has Lake’s fingerprints on it. I didn’t have Staley tell us where you found that weapon.”
“Among Lake’s effects. Any other prints beside his?”
Bolt stared. He pursed his lips and emitted a thin stream of smoke.
“No. Did you expect others?”
“Yes and no. Had there been prints additional to those of Lake, my reasoning would have been faulty.”
“Lake, then, was the murderer?”
“I don’t know… yet. Greed and loyalty, bitterness and love, viciousness and altruism, are some of the ingredients of this mystery.
“High up in the face of the cliff at Split Point is a cave, discovered years ago by small boys. It is so difficult to approach that none but those boys ever knew of it until I found it. It was in the cave that I discovered the murdered man’s clothes and suitcase. It was whilst coming up from it to the cliff top that I was hit with a stone. When he fell, Lake was going down the face of the cliff to find out if I had removed theclothes, and if not, to transfer them elsewhere. He made the attempt in the middle of the night, when it was raining torrents, when the wind blew a gale.
“I like to think, Super, that Dick Lake died in the attempt to removed evidence which would condemn a pal, not himself. He was one of those three boys I mentioned. The others were in it, too: a Fred Ayling and an Eldred Wessex. Eldred Wessex is known in Sydney as Waghorn. We want him to give an account of his movements on and about the date of the Lighthouse killing. He went out of circulation two days before Baker was shot. He and Baker were acquaintances at least.”
“Do we grill this Waghorn when we net him?” asked Bolt.
“I would prefer to do that as I hold several threads.”
“This other bloke, Ayling?”
“The Captain of the Bold Buccaneers! Leave him to me, Super.”