Mr Jelly's Business. Arthur W. Upfield
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Bony Novels by Arthur W. Upfield:
1 The Barrakee Mystery / The Lure of the Bush
2 The Sands of Windee
3 Wings Above the Diamantina
4 Mr Jelly’s Business/ Murder Down Under
5 Winds of Evil
6 The Bone is Pointed
7 The Mystery of Swordfish Reef
8 Bushranger of the Skies / No Footprints in the Bush
9 Death of a Swagman
10 The Devil’s Steps
11 An Author Bites the Dust
12 The Mountains Have a Secret
13 The Widows of Broome
14 The Bachelors of Broken Hill
15 The New Shoe
16 Venom House
17 Murder Must Wait
18 Death of a Lake
19 Cake in the Hat Box / Sinister Stones
20 The Battling Prophet
21 Man of Two Tribes
22 Bony Buys a Woman / The Bushman Who Came Back
23 Bony and the Mouse / Journey to the Hangman
24 Bony and the Black Virgin / The Torn Branch
25 Bony and the Kelly Gang / Valley of Smugglers
26 Bony and the White Savage
27 The Will of the Tribe
28 Madman’s Bend /The Body at Madman's Bend
29 The Lake Frome Monster
This corrected edition published by ETT Imprint in 2020.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange
NSW 1225 Australia
First published 1937 in Australia as Mr Jelly's Business.
First published 1943 in the USA as Murder Down Under.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint in 2013.
Published by ETT Imprint in 2018. Reprinted 2019.
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
ISBN 978-1-925416-96-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-48-5 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
Napoleon Bonaparte’s Holiday
If it had not rained! If only the night of 2nd November had been fine! Raining thirty points that most important night was sheer cursed bad luck.
John Muir sauntered along the south side of Hay Street, Perth, heedless of the roaring traffic and of the crowd. To him the life and movement of the capital city of Western Australia was then of blank unconcern; of greater moment was the heavy shadow of failure resting on his career. To the average ambitious man temporary failure may mean little, and that little but the spur to the posts of achievement; failure now and then interposed among marked successes to one of Muir’s profession merely delays advancement; but failure repeated twice, one treading on the heels of the other, raised the bogey of supersession.
Detective-Sergeant Muir was not a big man as policemen go. There was no hint of the bulldog about his chin, or of the bull about his neck. Although he walked as walks every officer in the Police Force, having attended that school of the beat in which every constable is enrolled, John Muir in appearance looked far less a policeman than a smart cavalryman. Not much over forty years old, red of hair and complexion, he did not seem cut out to be a victim of worry: worry crowned him with peculiar incongruity. So deep were his cogitations about the weather that it was not the hand placed firmly on his left shoulder, nor the words spoken, but the soft drawling voice which said:
“Come! Take a little walk with me.”
It was a phrase he himself had often used, and the fact that other lips close to his ear now uttered it produced less surprise than did the well-remembered voice. The drabness of his mood gave instant place to the lights of the world about him. He swung towards the kerb, caught the arm of the man whose hand was upon his shoulder, and gazed with wonder and delight into a pair of beaming blue eyes set in a ruddy brown face.
“Bony! By the Great Wind, it’s Bony!”
“I at first thought you were the ghost of the Earl of Strafford on his way to the block,” Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte said gravely. “Then I was reminded of poor Sinbad the Sailor, wearied by the old fellow who so loved him. Why the mantle of gloom this bright Australian morning?”
“Where were you the night of the second of November?” demanded John Muir, his grey eyes twinkling with leaping happiness.
“November the second! Let me think. Ah! I was at home at Banyo, near Brisbane, with Marie, my wife, and Charles, and little Ed. I was reading to them Maeterlinck’s——”
“Did it rain that night?” Muir cut in as though he were the prosecuting counsel at a major trial.
His mind being taken back to the night of importance by Muir’s first question, Bony was able to answer the second without hesitation.
“No. It was fine and cool.”
“Then why the dickens couldn’t it have been fine and cool at Burracoppin, Western Australia?”
“The answer is quite beyond me.”
Detective-Sergeant Muir, of the Western Australian Police, slipped an arm through that of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, of the Queensland Police, and urged his superior across the street. The delight this chance meeting gave him, resulting in this impulsive act, suggested to the constable just behind them that the quietly dressed half-caste aboriginal was indeed taking officially a little walk with the detective-sergeant. He became puzzled when the two entered a teashop on the opposite side of the street.
They were fortunate to secure a table in a corner.
“The fact that it rained a certain night at a particular place seems to perturb you,” Bony remarked, with his inimitable blandness, after tea and cakes had been set before them.
“What are you doing here?” Muir asked with a trace of anxiety.
“Waiting for you to pour out my tea.” Bony’s deep blue eyes shone quizzingly. Perfect teeth gleamed between his lips when he spoke. His fine black hair, well brushed, had the lustre of polished ebony.
“Well, what are you doing here in the West?”
“Impulsive as ever, John. Your head is full of questions as uncontrollable as the tides. After all my interest taken in your career, despite my careful coaching extending over a period of eight years, in spite of your appearance, which is less like that of a policeman than any policeman I know, you flagrantly give away to even the most unsuspecting person your precise profession through your excessive questionings.”
John Muir laughed.
“By