"The Widows of broome" - читать интересную книгу автора (Upfield Arthur W.)

Chapter Seven

At Dampier’s Hotel

JOHNNO was from Java. For several seasons he had worked under-water as a number-one diver, and when paralysis tore into him one afternoon, he decided to quit diving and run a hire car service. The service consisted of one old car, but in transporting people to and from the aerodrome, and the stores, he prospered surprisingly. His speciality was conveying gentlemen to Dampier’s Hotel.

Precisely at seven, he appeared at the post office to pick up Mr. Dickenson and Napoleon Bonaparte. He stopped with complaining tyres, agilely alighted and opened the door for his passengers, smiling as though they were his dearest friends. He was small and electrical, and he wore khaki drill shirt and shorts with an air of naive grandeur.

“There’s no need for abnormal speed, Johnno,” remarked Mr. Dickenson as he took his seat. His worn clothes were less conspicuous against the upholstery of the car, but given a top-hat to crown his head he could have been the President of France. The car swept into high speed, and Johnno lounged over the back of the front seat to converse with his passengers and steer with one hand.

“As long as the wheels stay on we may arrive,” remarked Bony.

“Arrive!” echoed Johnno. “I always arrive. Peoples say, Johnno you arrive at nine o’clock, two o’clock, any ole time, and I arrive. Peoples like to arrive. I like to arrive. We all arrive.”

“Then keep on the road,” advised Mr. Dickenson.

The off-side wheels were gouging into the soft earth off the narrow strip of macadamised roadway, and Johnno brought the car to the path prepared for it, and laughed. Sweeping past the southern boundary of the airport, with its control tower and hangars and white boundary markers, they were running over a natural earth road of the North-West. The road skirted the dry tidal flats of the Dampier Creek, the surface almost white and powdered with the dust which rose like belching smoke behind the car. When the track turned suddenly into the scrub and the ground was sandy and red, the “smoke” was rising high above the trees so that anyone in Broome chancing to look out would know that Johnno would presently arrive, barring accidents.

It was quite a good road for the North-West, and safe at ten miles an hour. All Johnno had to do was to keep the wheels in the twin ruts made by motor traffic, but at thirty miles an hour this is somewhat difficult. Kangaroos leisurely hopped across in front of the car. Bush turkeys ran, then stopped to look their astonishment, and the several species of cockatoos shrieked their defiance at Johnno and his car.

By the time they reached the big red gums bordering Cuvier Creek, Mr. Dickenson was grim, Bony was inclined to keep his eyes shut, and Johnno was still laughing. He pulled up with screaming brake drums at the veranda steps of the large and rambling one-storeyed structure which had been the Mecca of thousands of travellers over the last sixty years. Johnno stood at the door he had opened for his passengers, his good teeth emphasising the dark velvet of his creaseless face.

“What time do you wish to leave?” he asked.

Bony turned to Mr. Dickenson, and the old man raised his white brows and considered.

“Perhaps at eleven,” he said, tentatively, and Bony agreed.

“Very well. I arrive at eleven,” predicted Johnno. “You pay now, eh? Yes, three pounds. No worry then going home about money. You enjoy yourselves. Money is hell. You sing and you laugh, and you leave everything to Johnno. And if you are a bit too, too merry, Johnno will put you to bed when you arrive.”

“Fair enough, Johnno,” Bony said, chuckling, and from the veranda he turned and watched the car disappear into the scrub beyond the pall of red dust.

The top-most branches of the creek gums were bedecked with rubies by the setting sun, and the remaining branches of a tall dead tree were outlined in white by cockatoos preparing to roost for the night. As this land is north of Capricorn, the twilight is ever short, and Bony wanted to view the hotel yard before the light failed. He made the universal excuse, and Mr. Dickenson led the way through the building to the rear door.

It was a spacious yard of plain red earth enclosed with a paling fence. Along one side was the narrow building devoted to single bedrooms and invariably occupied by male guests. At the far end stood the garages and stables, whilst a divisional fence marked off a large plot of lawn bordering the creek along the third side. The yard was scrupulously tidy, and the entire establishment was indicative of good management.

Swept of all litter though it was, the tracker would have had an easy task to indicate to his white superiors the footprints of Mrs. Cotton’s murderer had the man who had found her and all those in the hotel who had trooped out at his alarm not smothered them with their boots. On recrossing the yard, Bony foundhimself familiar with the scene from the sketch-plan prepared by Sergeant Sawtell.

Here was the “Spot Marked X”, to reach which Mrs. Cotton must have come from one of two doors at the rear of the house. Her bedroom faced the lawn beyond the division fence, and midway in that fence was a small wicket gate on which was the word “Private”. She could have walked through that gate, or her body could have been carried through it by her murderer. If the latter, then why? If she had been killed in her room, then why was her body brought out to the yard and left there some time before eleven-thirty? The theory that she had walked in her sleep was the only reasonable explanation.

No footprints left in the yard by the murderer, and no finger-prints of a man in her bedroom. Sawtell had been able to prove that. A half-caste girl was taking washing from the line beyond the division fence, and she was laughingly beseeching a small aboriginal boy not to turn the tap from which water would flow through a hose to the sprinkler. An aborigine trundled a barrow loaded with wood from the stack across the yard to the kitchen door, and he shouted to the girl to hurry with the clothes, and laughed at Bony as though it were a fine joke for the imp to play.

There were only five men lounging in the main bar. Two oil-lamps suspended from the ceiling had recently been lit, their wicks not yet turned up. Behind the bar stood a giant screen composed of large pearl shells from which all the dross had been removed and the screen itself fashioned into the likeness of an oyster shell. Spaced between the bottles on the shelves were polished tortoise-shells, and framed pictures of luggers. In the angle stood a potted palm growing from the terrible teeth of a tiger shark resting on a small occasional table. The entire front of the bar could be raised on hinges, but tonight was bolted down to the main struts.

“What’s it to be?” asked Mr. Dickenson, his poise sure in the possession of Bony’s “loan”. They breasted the bar. A young man came from the five men at the far end, and he appeared uncertain until he caught sight of the pound note the old man put down on the counter.

“How’s things, Pop?” he enquired cheerfully after scrutinising Bony.

“My name is Dickenson, young man,” returned Mr. Dickenson in the tone of one accustomed to authority. “Had I begotten sons, they would have been respectful to their elders.”

“Suits me, if that’s how you feel about it,” countered the barman with no change of countenance.“Thought you didn’t get your quarterly interest until the thirtieth.”

Mr. Dickenson flushed, and Bony softly interposed.

“Wonder where I’ve seen you before. Could have been in Sydney.”

The barman shook his head.

“Never been in Sydney. Don’t recall having met you. What’s your name?”

“Knapp. What’s yours?”

“Blake.”

The barman left them to attend to the other customers, and as Bony made some remark to his companion in vice, his mind was busy with its card index system.

“He’saswifty,” said Mr. Dickenson.

“Face is familiar. Been here long?”

“First time I’ve seen him behind the bar. He came in from the cattle country up north. Thanks, I will have another.”

Bony nodded to the barman, who drifted back to them, pouring the drinks better than a novice. He said:

“Might have seen me out in the Territory sometime.”

“Likely enough,” agreed Bony. “I’ve been around.”

“In for a spell?”

Interest in the question was not evident in the light-grey eyes, and Bony almost succeeded in turning up the card in his mental index. He said casually “Just travelling,” and escaped explanation by the entry of two men into the bar.

“Not very busy tonight,” he observed to Mr. Dickenson.

“Not so far. Early yet. I’ve seen two hundred men drinking here, and ten people serving ’emas fast as they could. Great pub. Wish I had it.”

“Who does own it?”

Over the rim of his glass, Mr. Dickenson regarded Bony with a singular expression.

“The late Mrs. Cotton’s estate owns the property,” he said. “You’ve heard of Black Mark, I’ll warrant. He’s the present licensee. Black Mark’s an out-and-out sinner, and out-and-out sinners don’t strangle people. They knock heads off when they’re in a rage, but they never close wind-pipes on a dark night. The feller who strangled Mrs. Cotton was no out-and-out sinner… in the day-time.”

“H’m. Seems sound psychology,” agreed Bony.

“It is. Mrs. Cotton was a fine woman, and her husband was a fine man. Pity the police didn’t catch her murderer. The other one didn’t matter so much, but she was entitled to her life.”

“What’s your personal opinion of the murderer’s race?” asked Bony.“White or black?”

“White, for sure. I know nothing of the inside of these matters.” The old man regarded Bony steadily. “The Asiatic does run amok with akris. He does slip a knife into you for some reason or other. He’ll even strangle… but with a cord… and for a reason. The police know more about these Broome murders than I do.”

Mr. Dickenson drank his whisky, dabbed his lips with a tattered but clean silk handkerchief and called the barman. His nose appeared now somewhat less frost-bitten, and his eyes were decidedly brighter. Time passed pleasantly. The bar remained almost empty, and the barman was having an easy evening. His card would come up eventually. Mr. Dickenson said, conversationally:

“I believe I saw the man who murdered Mrs. Eltham.”

“Indeed!” Bony’s reaction was not unlike that of a cat on sighting a bird. The barman served the drinks, talking the while to a man about a herd of cattle on the move to the Wyndham Meatworks. When he had again left them Bony waited before being impelled to say: “You actually saw him?”

“Yes. Not that night he strangled Mrs. Eltham. Another night. I mention it because through you I might assist the inspector.” Mr. Dickenson solemnly studied the magnificent shell screen. “I’m careful to avoid connection with trouble. You would not mention my name?”

“No, certainly not.”Bony made a swift decision. “I’ll return your confidence. My business in Broome is to reveal the murderer of these two women.”

“The thought did occur to me. I like paying my debts. I owe a debt to InspectorWalters, and another to you, sir. What I am going to tell you, you understand, is from one friend to another. I am a peaceful man.”

“The children, when they greet you, support that claim.”

“I thank you. The night I believe I saw the man who killed Mrs. Eltham was last Tuesday week. I was then suffering from lack of funds, and also my heart was behaving badly. Angina pectoris, my doctor says. I find relief in whisky, but at this time I was out of funds. I’m afraid I am not like the squirrels who gather in summer the food to sustain them through the winter.”

Bony nodded politely, and Mr. Dickenson lit a cigar and with the other end smoothed into place the beard about his mouth. Humour was faintly betrayed by his eyes when he continued:

“Throughout my winters, when I am bereft of the wherewithal to ease a painful heart, I am compelled to have recourse to a practice which is really abhorrent to me. I have found that ten drops of battery acid in a small tumbler of water is efficacious, but this method of relief is restricted by suspicious people, with whom Broome is overcrowded. Anyway, I recalled that Mrs. Eltham possessed a car, and that the car was still within the garage at the rear of her house.

“Having been on the premises but not, of course, inside the house, at the time of the murder… with many other rubbernecks… I had noted that the padlock securing the garage door was a common one, and I gambled on possessing a key which fitted. Accordingly, when the Perth detectives left Broome, I sneaked into the yard from the rear at about three in the morning. It was very dark, as a sea mist was thick over the town. I had filled a small bottle with the battery acid, and was congratulating myself on having obtained sufficient to last me a whole week, when I fancied I heard movement inside the house. You see, I had re-locked the garage door, and was passing along the path at the side of the house on my way to the front street. I was wearing rubber-soled canvas shoes for the occasion. And so, I sat me down with my back to the veranda base and waited to see who would come out, either by the back or the front door.”

Mr. Dickenson ceased speaking while the barman refilled the glasses. The hair at the back of Bony’s head was stiff. Here, possibly, was the flaw in the picture for which he so patiently sought.

“All I could make out of the man who left by the kitchen door and passed me by within a yard was the blurred outline of his figure against the sky. If my old eyes weren’t sharp, I wouldn’t have seen even that. Although I was squatting down, and the fellow passed so close, I’m sure he was a big man. He was wearing a felt hat, like a stockman’s. I saw one arm, and it seemed abnormally long. And that was all I did see.”

“How did he walk?” asked Bony.

“That I couldn’t see. As I said, I was sitting down like Brer Rabbit, and the night was dark.”

“D’youthinkhe was carrying anything… large?”

“I didn’t get that impression. He wasn’t aComic Cuts burglar getting away with the swag, leastways, I don’t think so. He locked the kitchen door after him, because I went to find out. D’youknow what I think?”

“Tell me.”

“If he wasn’t the murderer who returned for something he had forgotten, then he was one of the woman’s friends who went in to take some small thing which might prove his visits to the house.”

“That was the night following the departure of the detectives?”

“That was the night.”

Despite examination of Mr. Dickenson, nothing further was brought out. Having given his information, the old man determinedly evaded adding to it. He drank like the gentleman he surely was, but his capacity astonished Bony. The evening mellowed, and Bony’s guest was in the mood to discuss the people of Broome in general, with additional biographical details of certain personalities. Time passed so swiftly that Bony was astonished when Johnno appeared.

“I arrive, eh!” he exclaimed. “Yes, one drink for me. Then we depart. Yes, plis. Brandy, Dick.”

Mr. Dickenson was tired, and Johnno assisted him down the veranda steps to the door. The night was black and white with no mezzotint. One could have read a newspaper in the moonlight, and be completely concealed in the shadows. Bony slid in beside the old man, and Johnno, loudly braying with thehooter, departed at top speed.

The homeward journey was fast. Mr. Dickenson was not nervous. He sang a little. He quoted poetry. Abruptly, he drew Bony’s head to his mouth and whispered:

“I might know that feller again. As he passed me, I could hear his teeth clicking as though he were in mortal fright.”

Bony was about to press a question when Johnno turned back to shout something of the evening, and the car went into a bad sand skid. It almost collided with a tree and almost turned over. Mr. Dickenson chuckled, and Johnno laughed but thereafter gave his attention to his driving. Eventually, he was instructed to put the old man down at the post office, where Bony also alighted and dismissed Johnno with a handsome tip.

Mr. Dickenson insisted on shaking hands before parting from Bony, and Bony sauntered to the police station, where he found Inspector Walters in the kitchen, in his dressing-gown and reading a novel.

“Well, you drunkard,” he greeted Bony.

“I found your derelict quite good company,” Bony said, so happily that Walters was suspicious.“Brought home a little memento of the evening.”

“A glass! We’ve plenty,” objected Walters.

“But a special glass. Before my last drink, I wiped off all the finger-prints. When the filled glass was handed to me by the barman, I picked it up by the base to empty it, and I’ve held the glass by the base all the way back, despite an ugly skid.”

“That barman important… Black Mark?”

“It wasn’t Black Mark. Black Mark didn’t appear. The fellow’s name is Richard Blake. I’ll send his prints to my department. Sawtell can take them.” From his hip pocket Bony extracted a bottle of beer, and without comment the inspector left his chair for glasses and bread and cheese.