The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Eight

A Round of Inspection

THE POLICE returned to Wilcannia without having secured a clue to the murder of King Henry. By the sergeant’s orders the body was interred in the tiny cemetery near the homestead, which already contained five graves.

There was one point that occurred to Sergeant Knowles two days later, and, ringing up the station, he said to the squatter:

“That girl, Nellie Wanting-does she live in the blacks’ camp?”

“Yes.”

“Then how did she cross the river the afternoon she met us on her way to the homestead? I noticed no boat at the camp.”

“I’m afraid I have no information on that point,” the station-owner replied. “I’ll see her and find out. You’ll agree that she didn’t swim the river like her alleged father.”

“No. She didn’t swim.”

The explanation, when forthcoming, was simple enough. As has been said, the level of the river was very low, and at a point about half a mile above the blacks’ camp an outcrop of rock formed the bed of the river at the lower rim of a deep hole. Most of the rocks were now uncovered and provided easy and safe stepping stones.

Although Thornton was in daily communication with the police-sergeant at Wilcannia, nothing occurred to help forward a solution of the mystery. The week’s work went on, that of Barrakee with its usual orderliness and regularity. The squatter prayed for rain.

Blair, with McIntosh for his offsider, was sent out to the back of the run with the bullock team to clean out a dry surface tank with a scoop. Clair went about his odd jobs, gaunt and taciturn. The only person for whom the murder still had a painful interest was Frank Dugdale.

At the time he denied having seen anyone revealed by the lightning, he could almost have sworn that the white-clad figure hurrying through the garden was Kate Flinders. This was his reason for suppressing that fact.

Whilst scouting the possibility of Kate having killed the black fellow, he could not but conclude that she was implicated. The why and the wherefore of this worried him to distraction.

And then one evening he saw Alice, the maid, and Mabel, the laundress, leave the house to stroll up the river, and experienced an unaccountable sense of relief when he noted that both girls were dressed in white. Upon that came instant recollection of having seen the young lubra, Nellie Wanting, dressed all in white, on more than one occasion. Mrs Thornton, too, generally wore a white costume. So that, instead of the hurrying figure at the garden gate being definitely Kate Flinders, it might, with equal plausibility or otherwise, have been that of one of four other women.

On realizing this, Dugdale felt immeasurable relief. His conviction that he had seen Kate Flinders in the lightning flash was now replaced by the conviction that he had not. And so indifferent did he become, as did Thornton and the other men, that this murder of a mere semi-civilized aboriginal was very quickly relegated to the sphere of forgotten crimes. Had King Henry been a white man, this indifference would have been impossible.

One morning in early April, when the sun was rapidly losing its summer intensity, Thornton ordered Dugdale to get out the big car for a run to Thurlow Lake.

The squatter never had taken to car-driving and usually delegated the job to the sub-overseer. Dugdale had the car outside the double garden-gates that morning about ten o’clock, when Ralph appeared carrying the last of three hampers and a moment later was followed by the squatter and Kate. Dugdale’s heart missed a beat, and he could have groaned and shouted at one and the same moment in anticipation of the bitter sweetness of being in her society most of that day.

Thornton and his niece occupied the rear seat and Ralph sat beside the driver. After an assurance from the book-keeper that the out-back mail was all in the bag in the boot, they glided away over the grey river flats.

Once out of the home paddocks and off the flats, they had a straight run of twelve miles over a good hard track, across a blue-bush plain. It was the finest piece of road on the run, and the great car leapt into its stride like an unleashed kangaroo-dog. On the elderly man the speed made no emotional impression but the girl it almost thrilled.

Looking between the two in front, she watched the speedometer register forty, forty-five, fifty five, sixty-two miles an hour. From the indicator her eyes went to the small powerful hands caressing the wheel, iron hands that could handle equally well a spirited or vicious horse.

“My! That was lovely,” she gasped when they pulled up before the first gate. “It’s notso quick as you have done it, Dug. But better luck next time.”

“And what is the quickest time we have done it in?” he asked, without turning his head. Ralph opened the gate and they moved slowly beyond it.

“Sixty-four, the time before last,” she replied at once.

“That’s nothing,” Thornton remarked. “One time last February, when I had an important appointment, and we were late, Dug hit her up to seventy-eight.”

“No, really! Oh Dug, you’ve been cheating me of fourteen miles an hour.”

Ralph having shut the gate and got in, the sub-overseer let in the clutch. He said gently:

“The back country is rather proud of the Women of Barrakee. If it were known that I ever endangered the life of one of them I would be due for a rough time.”

“Oh, Dug, but it’s quite safe,” she said reproachfully.

“Quite,” he agreed. “Unless a wheel comes off, or a tyre blows out, or the steering-gear fails, or I want to sneeze.”

“Well, if you keep me down to only sixty-four, I shall never forgive you.”

“I would do anything in reason to avoid that,” he said gravely. “But not to avoid it will I risk your life.”

Eighteen miles from the homestead they pulled up at a boundary-rider’s hut, near a great earth dam. The stockman was out in one of his paddocks, so his mail was left on the table, the door shut again, and they went on, stopping sometimes to open the few gates dividing the eight- and twelve-mile-square paddocks, once to take a survey of a flock of three thousand sheep.

“They’re not looking bad, Dug, considering the dry time,” their owner decided.

“No, they look quite all right, so far. Pity we can’t have a good rain to bring on the feed for the lambs,” came from the sub-overseer.

“We might get it yet. How much water left at the Basin Tank?”

“About two feet.”

“Humph! Remind me that we send O’Grady out there to get the bore and engine in order next Monday. Right! We’ll get on.”

The stockman at Cattle Tank had just come home when they arrived there. He was a lank, bow-legged man about forty, and when they pulled up he lounged beside the car, after removing his felt to Kate Flinders, who said:

“Good morning, David.”

“Morning, Miss Flinders,” he returned with conscious awkwardness.

“How’s the sheep, David?” inquired the squatter.

“The weaners are losing a bit, but the wethers in top paddock areholdin ’ their own.”

They conversed for ten minutes about sheep. At one time Kate, who often accompanied her uncle on these journeys of inspection, asked the squatter why he tarried so long at these places, talking over matters of which the evening telephone reports must have fully advised him. And this was his reply:

“My dear, if you led the life these men lead, you would not like to see your boss flash past in his car. You would enjoy a short chat with him, or with any other human being.”

When Thornton decided to go on, she had ready a large square basket, which she offered to David.

“Auntie sent this out to you, David,” she said. “Leave the basket on the table, and we’ll get it on our way home if you are out.”

Davidsmiled, a genuinely grateful smile. No wonder Mrs Thornton was known affectionately far and wide as the “Little Lady”. She always gave her husband baskets of eggs and fruit for the riders, adding butter in the winter.

“Now we forgot Alec’s basket, Uncle,” she said when they moved off. “Don’t let me forget to give it him on our way back. Has David got his mail?”

“I gave it to him, Kate,” Ralph informed her.

“What, Ralph, have you just awoken? That is the first time you’ve spoken since we started.”

“The wise are always silent,” he said, with a smile, looking back at her. “As a matter of fact, I have been thinking.”

“Oh-of what, if I am not rude?”

“You are, but I’ll tell you,” he said. “Peculiarly enough I was thinking of Nellie Wanting, and I arrived at the stupendous conclusion that she would be a really pretty girl if she was white.”

Kate Flinders laughed deliriously. Dugdale suddenly smiled. Thornton was absorbed in watching the country, i.e. the state of the sheep feed.

“I believe, Ralph,” she said, “that you are falling in love with little Nellie Wanting, the lady of colour.”

“You would, doubtless,” he replied dryly, “be much astonished if I did.”