The Bachelors of Broken Hill. Arthur W. Upfield
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can find me a corner? There will be much research work to do.”
“Yes, we can give you an office.”
“Thank you. H’m! One o’clock. Perhaps you would like to ask me to lunch.”
“Your suggestion is acceptable,” Pavier said dryly. “A moment.”
He ordered Switch to put him through to the Sunset Club and spoke to the head steward, and when he rose from his desk he was undecided whether to laugh at himself or this extraordinary Bonaparte.
“Let’s go,” he said, and went for his hat.
He walked erect, the constable’s training still evident. Taller than Bony, he moved like an imponderable sea wave. A man at whom other men looked more than once and to be with was to lose something of oneself. Having crossed the road, a young man bailed them up with the greeting:
“Hallo, there! Trailin’ already?”
He was blue-eyed and fair-haired, and his nose and mouth made denial of him impossible. Pavier regarded him calmly enough, but there was resignation in his voice.
“My son Luke. Friend of mine, Luke.”
“Cheers!” Luke Pavier nodded coolly to Bony. “Saw you leave the Sydney plane this morning, Mr Friend. Name on passenger list Bona Knapp. Same name in the register at the Western Mail Hotel. Glad to know you, Mr Friend.”
“And I you, Mr Pavier.”
“I trust that Mrs Napoleon Bonaparte is quite well?” asked the young man, and Pavier muttered:
“Damn! Now please don’t publish Inspector Bonaparte’s arrival.”
“All right—for a price,” argued the young man, who laughed at his father and winked at Bony.
“The price?” Bony murmured.
“A promise to let me in at the showdown. It’s easy guessing why you’re here.”
“You might not be worth it. What d’you know of the people of Broken Hill?”
“Everything,” Luke Pavier claimed. “I know everyone. I know all the two-up schools, all the baccarat joints, all the molls. I know the inside of every mine and the contents of every mining manager’s report to his directors before they get it.”
“But you don’t know who poisoned two men with cyanide,” interposed Bony. “Be patient, and some day I’ll tell you. You will co-operate?”
“I always co-operate with the police.”
“Rubbish,” inserted his father.
The young man smiled, waved a hand, departed, and his father conducted Bony to the Sunset Club, where they were given a table in an alcove.
“I think you’ll get along well with Crome,” Pavier said when they were engaged with cheese and celery. “Crome is a good man, but we don’t have the opportunities of unravelling subtle crime. He’s the chief of the Detective Office. You’ll come to understand all our limitations, and our difficulties in a place like Broken Hill. People here are prosperous, healthy, and clean mentally as well as physically. Contented, too, because of the amity between the workers and the companies—not without former years of strife. Before these cyaniding cases, crime hasn’t been serious for several decades, and often the visiting magistrate was presented with the white gloves of a clean register.”
“Your son Luke—is he a journalist?”
“He is, and, I’m told, a good one. With him his paper comes first, as with me the department does. At home we never talk shop. He’ll use you up if you’re not wary, but he can be helpful. He flayed Stillman in his paper.”
“I have always found Stillman a most unpleasant person,” Bony said. “His observations are coloured by a singularly distorted outlook. It was hinted to me that a change in the commissionership might be to his detriment.”
“I’ve always impressed on the minds of young constables that there isn’t the slightest excuse for a policeman not being a gentleman,” Pavier observed. “You obtained a copy of Stillman’s official summary, of course?”
“Yes. Disappointing in real value. Throws much of the onus on Sergeant Crome for having permitted the customers to leave Favalora’s Café before questioning. In fact, Stillman wriggled out by blaming all and sundry, excluding himself.”
“No one blames Crome for that affair at the café more than Sergeant Crome,” Pavier said. “The circumstances, however, relieve him of some of the blame. It was a hot and sultry day, unusual for Broken Hill, where the summers are very hot with little if any humidity. The temperature today, for instance, is somewhere about ninety-eight degrees but isn’t trying. Old Parsons was just the type to collapse from the heat. And Crome knew him, too.”
“Crome didn’t get along with Stillman?”
The Superintendent gave one of his rare smiles, and this one was minus laughter. Bony side-stepped the subject.
“If Crome will work with me,” he said, “we’ll put Stillman hard and fast into his box. Well, thanks for the lunch.”
Pavier went first down the stairs to the street, satisfied that Bonaparte and Crome, and Crome’s staff, would team well, and pleased that first impressions had not endured. Arrived on the pavement, he heard Bony exclaim:
“Jimmy! How are you, Jimmy?”
Pavier did not hear the ensuing conversation, crossing the street to Headquarters, and Bony kept an eye on the Superintendent, smiling at Jimmy the Screwsman, who was emphatically uncertain of the situation.
“On holidays, Inspector,” asserted Jimmy, inwardly cursing his luck. He watched the smile fade from the blue eyes. “Honest, Inspector. Haven’t taken a trick now for years—true.”
“Of course you haven’t, Jimmy. Been long in Broken Hill?”
“Since October. Decided to go straight, and found the only chance of doing that was to get right away from the cities.”
“So you were here when Goldspink was murdered, and a man named Parsons, eh?”
“Now look here, Inspector,” pleaded Jimmy. “You know I wouldn’t go in for murder. You know very well I’ve never carried a gun or ever done any bashing.”
“Working?”
“N-no. Holidaying, as I told you.”
“I marvel that you were not picked up by the boys from Sydney—Inspector Stillman, too.”
“Never showed out,” declared Jimmy, wishing the pavement would become mud soft enough to bury him. The terrifying blue eyes went on prodding his ego with blue-hot needles.
“Where living?” came the barked question.
“Twenty-two King Street, South Broken Hill.”
“Much left of the cash you took from the bookmaker’s flat in King’s Cross?”
Jimmy fought a losing fight. The blue eyes were terrific. “Most of it,” he confessed. “I’ll do a deal, Inspector. I’ll return the lot if you——”
“Don’t bargain with me, Jimmy. I’ll issue orders. You will stay put. If you clear away from Broken Hill without my permission, I’ll track you ten times round the world if necessary to get you put away for a nice seven years of the best.” The blue eyes softened, and Jimmy was truly grateful. “Be around, and don’t get yourself arrested. By the way, your tie is a monstrosity. Run along and buy yourself others at the shop owned by the late Sam Goldspink. Take afternoon tea at Favalora’s Café and make love to the waitress who served old Parsons with his last cup of tea. Clear, Jimmy?”
“You want me to work with you, Inspector?”
“I didn’t actually say so, Jimmy. Some distance along the street I see