The Black Rabbit
ON PASSING THROUGH Geelong, Bony deviated to Point Lonsdale where he called on Mr Letchfield who, in 1942, had decided to spend the rest of his life watching the ships passing through Port Phillip Heads.
“I am informed that Mr Cummins bought your business in Colac, and it was he who suggested you may be able to assist me with a line of inquiry I am conducting,” Bony said, having announced his name and position.
“Certainly, Inspector,” agreed the rotund jeweller. “I am all attention.”
“It appears that when Mr Cummins was your assistant he made a mistake due to inexperience as a goldsmith. When altering an 18-carat gold ring for a customer, he used 9-carat solder. Can you recall that incident?”
“Quite well. I remember it clearly, Inspector. Poor Cummins was most remorseful. As you said, he was then an indifferent goldsmith, although, mind you, he was an artist with watches and settings.”
“It is not, then, a common mistake?”
“Only a very young apprentice would make such an error. My word, it all comes back to me. I was very busy, and having removed the necessary segment, I asked Cummins to solder it. I should have pointed out that the solder must be, like the ring, 18-carat”
“Can you recall the date, approximately?” pressed Bony. “Mr Cummins is unable to unearth the record of the transaction.”
The jeweller pondered so long that Bony was anticipating disappointment.
“Y…es, Inspector. It was in August or early September ’38. There was a festival or something at the time, which was why I was busy.”
“Not a football match?”
“Ah, yes, that was it. It was the final of the Western District Football League. Colac played Split Point, and won. Of course, that was it. The customer… Actually there were three of them, three young men from the Split Point team. They wanted to look at signet rings, and insisted that the rings must be all alike. I was able to show them rings of a standard make and design which they finally chose. And then whatd’youthink they wanted?”
“To have them engraved alike?”
Mr Letchfield’s bushy eyebrows shot upwards.
“Remarkable, Inspector. Yes, they wanted each ring to be engraved with the letters BB. I remember asking them what the letters stood for as they had no relationship with the team to which the young men belonged. They wouldn’t tell me. Fidgeted, looked sheepish, as young men sometimes will. Thencame the difficulty. I was able to suit two of the customers, but did not to have a ring to fit the finger of the third young man. And, so, as they were remaining in Colac overnight, I told them I would have the third ring ready by the next morning.
“I cut out the segment and gave it over to Cummins, and he completed the work before we shut the shop. The next morning, when the three young men came, I took the ring from my drawer, gave it a final polish before presenting it to the customer… and saw Cummins’s mistake.
“I confess, Inspector, that I was horrified not so much by the mistake itself but at the discovery being made so late. I pointed out the mistake to the customer, and said I would have another ring ready for him by twelve. To that, he said they were leaving Colac under the hour, and he insisted that the slight and narrow variation of colour didn’t matter. So I allowed him to take it.”
“Do you remember their names, Mr Letchfield?” Bony asked.
“No. No. I can’t remember their names, that is to say, the name of each individual. But I do remember that, a week or so later, I received an order from Split Point for another ring of the same design to be engraved with the same letters. On a piece of paper accompanying the order was drawn in pencil the size of the required ring, evidently done by running a pencil point round a ring pressed to the paper.
“There was an oddity about that order which fixed it in my memory. The customer signed himself Eldred Wessex, and wrote from Split Point. The ring he required was far too small for the finger of a man, so this one was evidently meant for a lady’s hand. I fulfilled the order.”
“You did not receive any subsequent orders?”
“No.”
“Or engrave the letters BB on any piece of jewellery for a customer?”
Bony was pleased that Letchfield hesitated to answer before being sure. He stated that never subsequently had he engraved those letters on any article of jewellery, and, having warmly thanked him, Bony left.
He lunched at the hotel at the pretty little hamlet ofVarwon Heads, and it was after four when the old single-seater chugged up the rise to the post office store at Split Point. The now familiar scene was dulled by rain, and, beyond the great Inlet, the coast headlands were but a degree darker than the slate-grey sea.
For a second or two he felt like the prodigal returning home, and then he became a stoat confronted by a rabbit burrow, a fastidious stoat having a predilection for a black rabbit. This stoat knew every passage, every circus, every cul-de-sac of this warren. He knew every brown rabbit inhabiting this warren… but the black one he had never seen.
When Bony left Melbourne that morning, the police in every capital city had been requested to bring in a man known as Waghorn, and recognized by Detective Sergeant Eulo when presented with the picture of Eldred Wessex. Waghorn was known to the Sydney CIB Consorting Squad as a man moving on the edge of gangland, a man long suspected of unlawful practices but not to date enmeshed in the law’s net.
Nothing was known against the woman who hoped to marry him, and inquiries conducted after Bony had questioned her produced the telegraphed report that Jean Stebbings was of good repute to several responsible people who had known her for years. The report confirmed Bony’s opinion that Wessex had withheld from her his activities as Waghorn, and confided his background as Eldred Wessex.
Why had this man not returned home after war service? Had he been forbidden to return by a father who had learned of the goal sentence he had served as a soldier? Was the story of his going to America a fabrication issued by his parents to account for the son’s absence?
On February 26th Eldred Wessex had left his Sydney flat ostensibly to purchase a string of pearls to be a birthday present for the woman he had known for a year. A few hours after he had left, Thomas Baker, the ship’s steward, had called at the flat asking for him. Less than seventy hours after that call, Baker’s nude body was discovered in the Split Point Lighthouse, on the far southern coast of Victoria, only four miles from the homestead where Wessex was born.
What brought Baker to Split Point? If Eldred Wessex, alias Waghorn, had come to the district of his parental home, what had brought him after an absence of ten years? It was reasonable to assume, until Waghorn had been apprehended for questioning, that Eldred Wessex and Thomas Baker had come to Split Point either separately or together. In view of the discovery of the murdered man’s effects in the cave, the discovery of the murder weapon in the trunk of Dick Lake, the death of Lake in the effort to retrieve the dead man’s effects, it could be assumed that Eldred Wessex had called on his old friend either to assist him in the murder or assist in a plan to defeat justice. For without Eldred Wessex there was no connexion between the dead man in the Lighthouse and the dead man found at the foot of the cliff.
Wessex, the black rabbit, had probably been in this burrow on or about February 28th when Thomas Baker had been shot. Which of these brown rabbits had seen the black one? Which of these brown rabbits had assisted the black rabbit to vanish from the burrow? Or was the black rabbit still within the burrow, lying low like Brer Rabbit of old?
The stoat entered the burrow entrance at the Inlet Hotel.
Thecontortive Stug followed him in, and was ordered out by the licensee. There were a couple from a car parked in the driveway, the driver of a delivery van, and Moss Way. Moss nodded a welcome and called for a drink for Bony, who joined him.
“How’s things, Mr Rawlings?” asked the carrier.
“Very well, Moss. How are you coming along? Found another mate?”
“Not yet,” replied Way. “Don’t think I will. Manage somehow on me own for a bit. Didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“No. Had to rush up to Melbourne about my wool. Go off all right?”
“Biggest planting I ever seen. People come for miles. Poor old Dick: never knew how important he was.”
“You will certainly miss him,” murmured Bony, avoiding a general discussion with people he’d never met.
“Already started,” corrected Way. “Loading and unloading on yourown’s no cop. And living aloneain’tno cop, either. Great coffin old Penwarden turned out for Dick. Yououghtaseen it.”
“Oh! Extra special?”
“Yair. Didn’t know he had it on hand. Like the one he made for Mrs Owen, but not with the same polish.”
“Red-gum?”
“Same colour.”
“Probably the one he was making for me,” surmised Bony, and Moss was decidedly interested.
“Yair, that’ll be it,” he agreed. “Anyhow, the oldbloke done her up well. Dick’s pals carried the coffin from the truck… our truck… to the graveside, and other pals were the pall bearers. I was one of ’em. Fred Aylingoughta been with us, but the Slide fell down and stopped Alfie reaching him with the news. Alfie had to come back and try another track.”
“He and Lake were very firm friends, weren’t they?” Bony prompted.
“They were so. The two and Eldred Wessex were kids together, so Dick told me one time. Dick worried a bit over Eldred Wessex not coming home, and I remember that a few weeks back he was on top of the world, telling me Eldred might be coming home. Nutted out a grand surprise for the old people. Borrowed their car on some excuse and drove to Geelong to pick Eldred up at the train. But Eldred never arrived, and Dick came back without him. Worried him no end for a week or so. Musta worriedmore’n I thought. Did he seem worried to you?”
“He did not,” replied Bony, thoughtfully. “Still, he was the kind of man who wouldn’t let strangers know what he was thinking. You knew him better than I. Are you sure he was worried?”
“Mustabeen. I don’t reckon he just got up in the middle of a rainy night and went for a walk… not even in his sleep. His old man told Staley Dickuseta sleepwalk when he was a kid, and Ma Wessex found him sitting one night on the veranda rail of their house. That was when Dick boarded with her. Usetastop there when he went to school, going home only for weekends and holidays. Fred Aylinguseta board there, too. Dick never sleepwalked when he was camping with me.”
“When was it that Dick expected Eldred to come home?”
“When! Lemmethink.” Moss drank deep to aid memory, and Bony askedWashfold to set the drinks up again. “Few weeks back, anyhow.” Way stared at Bony, the frown almost connecting his eyebrows. “I wonder, now. Dick went to meet Eldred a day or so before they found the body in the Lighthouse. Think there’s…”
“Think nothing,” Bony said quickly. “You saw the body in the Lighthouse. Everyone did. It wasn’t Eldred Wessex.”
“I know that, although I’ve never seen Eldred Wessex. It’s funny, though. I…”
“Forget it,” Bony snapped. “Dick wasn’t the kind of fellow to be mixed up with anything like that.”
Slowly, Moss Way nodded agreement.