The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Thirty-Nine

‘Judge Not’

“DUG, THE flood has brought material disaster to many people on the river; it seems to have brought disaster of another kind to my wife and me.”

The two men were seated in the station office. Mr Thornton had suddenly become aged. His mouth drooped at the corners, his hair was greyer, his eyes were full, and beneath them were small puffy swellings. Dugdale was shocked by the change in him: he felt stunned by the story of Ralph’s infatuation with Nellie Wanting, which he had thought to be only a passing flirtation.

“Mrs Thornton-how does she take it?” he asked.

“I am afraid, Dug, terribly afraid. My wife has turned into a block of stone, like the block of salt which held Lot’s wife. She hardly ever speaks, but the look in her eyes makes me afraid. Sometimes I think, after all these years, she is still a stranger to me.”

“And Kate?”The young man’s eyes were riveted on the saddened face of the squatter. There was a spice of sharpness in his voice, for at that moment Dugdale hated Ralph for preferring a black tulip to so fair a rose.

“Kate, of course, is greatly upset,” Thornton said slowly. “About her, I think, I have found out a surprising thing. She seems more concerned for my wife and me than for herself, as though she grieves because of our grief and not because of the wrong she has received. I have come to think that Kate did not love Ralph as a prospective husband.”

“That she feels relief at being justified in breaking the engagement?” demanded Dugdale swiftly.

“It appears that way. Matters being as they are, I am thankful for that.”

“And no one has any idea where he is now?”

“That is so.”

A long silence fell between them, a silence throughout which the squatter’s mind wandered aimlessly, deadened to lethargy, whilst the thoughts of the younger raced at lightning speed. Smitten though he was by the calamity which had fallen on the people dearest to him, yet he could not help feeling a sense of elation that Kate was not wholeheartedly in love with the fallen Ralph, a gladness that her hurt was not so very acute, a hope newly born when hope had been dead. He was about to speak when the office door opened and admitted Bony, who, seeing them seated at the broad writing table, came over and occupied a spare chair. Without preamble, he said:

“My work here is accomplished, Mr Thornton. Never yet have I failed in a case, and this one is no exception. I came to find the murderer of King Henry. I found him. I stayed on to discover the motive actuating the murder. I have found it. But at the end, at the moment when every clue, every proof, every motive, was in my hands, I found that I had a duty to perform-a duty not to the State, not to the Law, but to a woman. I would consider myself dishonoured if I evaded that duty, much as I could wish to; for I fear that, in doing that duty, I shall both shock and grieve you. I want you to request Mrs Thornton and Miss Flinders to meet both you and Mr Dugdale and myself in a place where we can talk in private. May I suggest your sitting room?”

“My wife is ill,” objected the squatter.

“She is ill because she has a millstone weighing her down,” Bony announced quietly. “At least I shall remove the millstone.”

For fully half a minute the station-owner gazed searchingly at the detective.

“I have a mind to refuse you,” he said. “Tell me what you have to say, and I will tell my wife.”

“Permit me to do my duty in the manner I think best.”

“I cannot agree.”

“I am sorry.” Bony regarded Thornton a little sternly. He went on: “In case you are unaware of it, I will tell you that I am a detective-inspector of the Queensland Police. I was sent here expressly to investigate the murder of King Henry. It was I who advised the arrest of Sinclair, alias Clair, the brother of Mary Sinclair, one time your wife’s cook and the mother of your adopted son, Ralph. If you refuse to allow me to speak to your wife in your presence, you will compel me to advise the arrest of Mrs Thornton.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“For complicity in the murder. Come, let us go to your sitting room and hold a conference. It will be so much better for all of us, even better for me, for I should find the arrest of your wife a matter of lasting regret.”

Bony met Thornton’s blazing eyes with steady calmness. He saw the fierce light die out of them, fade and become dull with the tiredness of despair which no further shock could lift. A chair scraped, and Thornton got to his feet. The others rose and followed him silently from the office, through the gates, to the house veranda, to the sitting room. Bony and Dugdale remained standing while Thornton went in search of his wife and niece. A clock ticked with startling loudness, ticking away the seconds of fate.

The door opened again to admit the Little Lady. When she saw Bony her eyes showed no recognition, but surprise flickered in them for a moment at sight of Dugdale. Behind her came Kate, and into her eyes leapt a light that blinded the eyes of Dugdale’s soul. The young man smiled at her, and moved forward to escort Mrs Thornton to a seat. It was Kate, however, for whom he performed this courtesy. Bony, having reached the Little Lady first, with ineffable gallantry led her to a great lounge chair.

“Mr Bonaparte wishes to speak with us all, dear,” Thornton explained, seating himself near his wife. Kate sat on the other side, Dugdale stood behind them. Bony’s eyes were half shut, as though he wished to conceal emotion or experienced pain. His voice reached the Little Lady faintly, as coming from a great way off. The startling scene in the office was burned into Dugdale’s brain. The possibility of the Little Lady’s arrest was balanced by the amazing revelation that Bony, the half-caste painter of boats, was a detective-inspector; whilst above and beyond that was Bony’s statement that Ralph was not Mr Thornton’s son, but the son of some woman named Sinclair, a cook.

“I fear that in order to make matters quite clear it will be necessary to go back to the year 1908,” Bony was saying. “It was a mere coincidence that Mrs Thornton and Mary Sinclair gave birth to boy babies within forty eight hours of each other. The records show that the baby born to Mary Sinclair died and the one born to Mrs Thornton lived. Whether the doctor attending the two patients was aware whose baby died and whose baby lives it is impossible to discover, as the doctor is dead and his case books are destroyed.

“In any case, Mary Sinclair died shortly after Mrs Thornton’s babydied, and Mrs Thornton took Mary’s child, reared it, loved it, and called it Ralph Thornton. But before Mary died she confided to Mrs Thornton the name of her betrayer.”

Bony saw the squatter’s eyes narrow and turn upon his wife, whose face was an alabaster mask. Bony went on:

“I think, and the philosophers agree with me, that the most wonderful thing in the world is a woman’s love for a baby. Mrs Thornton, saddened and heartbroken at the loss of her own child, took and cherished Mary’s child; but when Mary whispered the name of her paramour, the father of her child, Mrs Thornton deliberately took to her bosom a living asp. The laws of heredity are immutable, and it is a very great pity that she did not recognize this.

“The father, moreover, was unprincipled, or perhaps proud of his paternity. We will credit him with the latter motive when he interviewed Mrs Thornton a few weeks later and demanded his child. Apparently he was refused and offered payment, which he took; but, being dissatisfied, he came again to Mrs Thornton, who again paid and eventually wrote an appealing letter to Mary Sinclair’s brother, whom we knew till recently as William Clair. That letter I found in Sinclair’s pocket wallet.”

Dugdale’s hand went convulsively to his inside pocket. For a second or two he stared into the half closed eyes of the detective-inspector, then took a stride forward:

“You have no right to that wallet,” he said fiercely. “I don’t know how you came by it, but it was given me by Sinclair before he died to deliver to a particular person.”

“Exactly, Mr Dugdale,” Bony murmured. “He gave it to you to bring to Mrs Thornton. As the contents of the wallet bore upon the case under discussion, I relieved you of it. It is fortunate indeed that Knowles, or his juniors, did not do so. I will now read Mrs Thornton’s letter to William Sinclair. It is dated April 1908, and reads:

Dear Mr Sinclair,

Thank you for your letter written from White Cliffs. Your thanks for what I did for your poor sister are appreciated, as is your assurance that never will you speak ofthe fact that I have adopted her child or claim relationship to it. I did all I could for Mary, and now you must do all you can for me and the child.

I have paid King Henry over?20, and now he is demanding more. I have thought and thought about this menace till my head aches. What can I do? Can you do something to seal his lips and stop his demands? It would be no crime to slay a black-would it?

Ann Thornton.”

“Am I to understand that King Henry was Ralph’s father?” exclaimed the squatter; and, not waiting for Bony to reply, turned to the Little Lady: “Tell me, Ann, is that so?”

In reply she nodded, but kept her eyes unseeingly upon her shoe. Thornton’s breath hissed between his teeth. He would have spoken, had not his wife said very softly:

“Let Mr Bonaparte go on. This is my Waterloo.”

“We know how Sinclair, calling himself Clair, replied to that letter,” Bony continued. “Somehow King Henry learned of Clair’s determination to kill him, and fled. Clair tracked him for more than nineteen years. A report being circulated that Sinclair was dead, King Henry returned to his people. As he himself said to Mr Dugdale, he made an appointment with somebody at Barrakee-we will presume with Martha-and Sinclair, hearing of this, as we will again presume, waited in the dark for the black fellow to come down the river.

“We know, or rather the police know, that Sinclair spent many years in North Queensland and there learned the art of throwing a boomerang. In his confession, written an hour or two before his death in Mr Dugdale’s hut, he describes how he missed his throw, how the boomerang returned, how they both stooped for the weapon. Sinclair got it and struck King Henry whilst the latter was still stooping forward.

“There is one point which still remains unexplained. It happened that one day a gentleman named Pincher Joe ransacked Mrs Thornton’s boudoir, and among other things he stole a boomerang. Without any shadow of doubt it was the boomerang which killed King Henry, because it was made by a member of the tribe with which Sinclair sojourned. It bears the marks of the tribe on it, and it left an outline of those marks when it struck a gum-tree instead of King Henry when thrown. Either Martha was at the meeting place and handed the weapon to Mrs Thornton, or Mrs Thornton herself was present and picked it up.

“Parallel with this story, we have the parentage of Ralph and its effect upon him. Like many half-caste children-even like myself-the baby was white of skin. For years the black strain in his blood was held in abeyance by his upbringing and education; for years the pigmentation of his skin remained white. But the inevitable change of colour began much earlier than the heredity of character. The cessation of college life, the return to the native bush of his father, hastened the hereditary urge, so that Ralph’s reversion to ancestral blackness was accelerated.

“In no case does a half-caste rise to the status of his superior parent. In this case we have the mother possessing, as all white people possess, a veneer of what we call civilization; and the father full-blooded and wild, able to speak the white man’s language, but without the mother’s veneer of civilization.

“I watched the growing change in the lad, and for a long time it puzzled me. I saw the growing love of colour in hisclothes, I noted how quickly his college accent dropped from him. For many years at school, and only for short periods in the bush when on holidays, the young man picked up the art of tracking with remarkable ease. You will remember how he tracked the dingo and slew it. You will remember how he caught the outlaw horse at Thurlow Lake and rode it. He took to the bush as a duck takes to water, he who most of his life was away at school.

“The lure of the bush gripped him. I could see it in his face, and I marvelled. He felt the lure and could not explain it even to himself. And then came this last, this fatal yet inevitable surrender. He fell in love with a black gin. He was betrothed to a beautiful white girl, he was heir to a great estate, yet he fell in love with a gin. Mr Dugdale reasoned with him. I discovered the affair and pleaded with the girl. She went away, persuaded by me, but the youth learned of her whereabouts and wrote passionate letters, and she, being a woman, and a poor ignorant black woman, too, could not resist.

“Blame not the boy, Little Lady. You could not wipe from his heart the lure of the bush planted by his black father, not with all your forethought, all your love. Do not blame nor cherish anger against him, Mr Thornton. Would you be happy in the city now? Would you not long for the bush? You are wholly white, but the lad was half black, half wild, half of the bush. And you, Miss Flinders, bear no rancour for the wrong done you. Crimson lips and black velvet cheeks were a greater magnet than your lily complexion and azure eyes. For countless ages his ancestors found beauty in large black eyes and black velvet cheeks.

“The boy fought his battle, the battle which could end only in his defeat. I watched and wondered. I saw a headstone in the cemetery bearing the name of Mary Sinclair. I knew Clair’s name was Sinclair, from a friend in North Queensland who remembered him. And at last I saw the light. I saw clearly how Mrs Thornton’s maternal desires overwhelmed her judgement, her prudence, even her morality. As I have said, she took to her bosom an asp.

“I knew what she knew. I knew that Ralph Thornton was to marry Miss Flinders, that Miss Flinders, unknowingly, would marry a half-caste Australian aboriginal. The wonder of it was that neither she nor Mr Thornton guessed. Even during the few months I have been at Barrakee, I have seen Ralph’s skin slowly darkening, as my skin slowly darkened when I was his age. Five or six more years at the outside, and the colour of his skin will be as mine is.

“My duty, then, was clear. Sinclair, in his letter to Mrs Thornton, written just before he died-for even the water has not obliterated the drops of blood which I assume fell from his lips-rings clear the call of Duty. This is what it says:

Dear Mrs Thornton,

I am dying, and have but a few hours at most to live. Friends have been supplying me with tucker, but Knowles got me. If he hadn’t, some other policeman would. Only yesterday I heard that your adopted son is betrothed to the Darling of the Darling, and that is not right. You must not let that be: you must not wrong a white woman. Let her be told, and then if she wishes they can marry.

You know me for a poor man, my sister for a poor working woman. Yet our people were high, and always did we keep our colour. Keep yours. Do not let your love of Mary’s child blind your eyes to facts.

You are safe, Little Lady. I am about to pay the price for all you did for Mary. When I die, I die free of debt to you. And dead, I demand of you that this marriage does not take place.

Till the end,

Your obedient servant,

William Sinclair.”

Bony refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope. In the same envelope he put Mrs Thornton’s letter to Sinclair, and then for a while regarded her and her husband and niece with curious intensity.

Memory of a Sydney waxwork exhibition occurred to him in gazing at the Little Lady. The waxen pallor of her face, the expressionless immobility of her features, the absolute stillness of her body, caused her to resemble nothing so much as a dainty doll. What she was thinking or what she felt was hidden by a deathlike mask. Her husband, seated at her side, appeared shrunken in stature, hardly recognizable for the hale, bluff, and genial squatter of Barrakee. Kate, only Kate, retained her vividness, but down her cheeks Bony observed that now and then ran unheeded a tear.

“It is not for me, or for any man, to judge you, Mrs Thornton,” he said very softly. “Only a woman could understand a woman’s craving for a baby to love, a woman’s determination to fight for a baby she has come to love. Throughout your actions there is, I think, only one point to censure, and that was in not telling your husband that King Henry was Ralph’s father. Had you confided in him, you both would have been better able to meet the inevitable event of his return to his native wilds, whilst the betrothal doubtless would never have been permitted.

“My duty, as I saw it, is finished. I am a stickler for duty, as was that illustrious man whose name I bear. These letters are now yours. Destroy them. I shall forget their existence. The case of King Henry will end with the death of Sinclair, who has paid the price that the law would have exacted.

“As for the young man, you will never get him wholly back. The chains forged by countless nomadic ancestors are too strong. I know, for I am bound by the same chains. Probably he will tire of the gin and return to you for a few weeks, but the bush will draw him back for ever longer periods. I will send him to you this evening, after I have told him everything. Judge him not; for you cannot judge him, as I, Bony, cannot judge you.”