Death of a Lake. 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 in 2020 by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay.
ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange
NSW 1225 Australia
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
First published 1954.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint 2013.
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
ISBN 978-1-922384-66-9 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-56-0 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
Lake Otway
Lake Otway was dying. Where it had existed to dance before the sun and be courted by the ravishing moon there would be nothing but drab flats of iron-hard clay. And then the dead might rise to shout accusations echoed by the encircling sand dunes.
The out-station crowned a low bluff on the southern shore, and from it a single telephone line spanned fifty miles of virgin country to base on the great homestead where lived the Boss of Porchester Station, which comprised eight hundred thousand acres and was populated by sixty thousand sheep in the care of some twenty wage plugs, including Overseer Richard Martyr.
There wasn’t much of Richard Martyr. He was short, dapper, wiry, every movement a hint of leashed strength. His face and arms were the colour of old cedarwood, making startlingly conspicuous his light-grey eyes. Always the dandy, this morning he wore well-washed jodhpurs, a white silk shirt and kangaroo-hide riding-boots with silver spurs. Why not? He was Number Two on Porchester Station, and this out-station at Lake Otway was his headquarters.
Martyr stood on the wide veranda overlooking the Lake, the Lake born three years before on the bed of a dustbowl, the Lake which had lived and danced and sung for three years and now was about to die. The real heat of summer was just round the corner, and the sun would inevitably murder Lake Otway.
Short fingers beating a tattoo on the veranda railing, Martyr gazed moodily over the great expanse of water shimmering like a cloth of diamonds. It was a full three miles across to the distant shore-line of box timber and, beyond it, the salmon-tinted dunes footing the far-flung uplands. To the left of the bluff, the shore-line curved within a mile; to the right it limned miniature headlands and tiny bays for four miles before curving at the outlet creek, where could be seen the motionless fans of a windmill and the iron roof of a hut named Johnson’s Well. When Lake Otway was dead, that windmill would be pumping water for stock, and perhaps a man or two would be living at the hut six hundred rolling miles from the sea.
The cook’s triangle called all hands to breakfast. Martyr again puckered his eyes to read the figures on the marker post set up far off shore. He had seen the figure 19 resting on the water; now he could see the figure 3. Only three feet of water left in Lake Otway. No! Less! Only two feet and ten inches. Were there a prolonged heat-wave in February, then Lake Otway wouldn’t live another five weeks.
The men were leaving their quarters to eat in the annexe off the kitchen. The rouseabout was bringing the working horses to the yard. The hens were busy before the shade claimed them during the hot hours. The chained dogs were excited by the running horses. The crows were cawing over at the killing pens, and a flock of galah parrots gave soft greetings when passing overhead. A city man could never understand how men can be captivated by such a place ... six hundred miles from a city.
Martyr turned and entered the dining-room, large, lofty, well lighted, and sat at the white-clothed table to eat alone. He could hear the men in the annexe, and Mrs Fowler, the cook, as she served them breakfast. Then he looked up at Mrs Fowler’s daughter.
“Morning, Mr Martyr! What will it be after the cereal? Grilled cutlets or lamb’s fry and bacon?”
She was softly-bodied and strong and twenty. Her hair was the colour of Australian gold, and her eyes were sometimes blue and sometimes green. Her mouth was small and deliciously curved when she was pleased. But her voice was hard and often shrill.
“Cutlets, please, Joan. No cereal. Plenty of coffee.” Noting the set of her mouth, he asked: “A war on, this morning?”
“Ma’s in one of her moods.”
Tossing the fine-spun hair from her broad forehead, she departed as though trained to walk by a ballet master, and he remembered she had walked like that one morning when the Lake was being born, and she was just seventeen, and the Boss had come close to dismissing her and her mother because she could be dangerous ... among men without women.
“What upset your mother?” he asked when she was placing the covered dish before him.
“Oh, one thing and another.”
“You haven’t been nagging, have you?”
She moved round the table and stood regarding him with eyes he was sure were green. She lifted her full breasts and lightly placed her hands against her hips, and he knew that to be a wanton a woman needed no training.
“A girl never nags, Mr Martyr, until she’s married.”
“I believe you, Joan. Go away, and don’t annoy your mother.”
“Well, she started it.”
“Started what?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, and walked from the room rippling her bottom like a Kanaka woman.
Martyr proceeded with his breakfast, which had to be completed at a quarter after seven. Mother and