The Mountains Have a Secret. Arthur W. Upfield
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the murder of Detective Price.”
“I believe that Price was killed because he chanced to meet and recognise a dangerous criminal who was touring or who was a member of a large road gang camped near the place where he was shot.”
“You don’t think it might have any connection with the disappearance of the two girls?”
Groves shook his head and glanced towards the large-scale map affixed to the wall. Bony abruptly left his chair and crossed to the map, Groves standing beside him.
“There’s the Grampians,” he said. “Fifty-odd miles from north to south and twenty-five-odd miles from east to west. Here’s Dunkeld down here at the southern edge. There’s Hall’s Gap away up on the northern edge. Three miles from Hall’s Gap was where they found Detective Price. The girls were lost twenty-five miles south of the place where Price was murdered, and approximately in the middle of the mountains. Have you ever been in them?”
“No. Point out the road taken by the two girls.”
“Well, from Dunkeld down here, they took the road northward past Mount Abrupt, which you can see through the window. They left about nine in the morning, and at eight that night a truck-driver saw them camped beside the road where there’s a little creek. Twenty miles from Dunkeld. The next——”
“The truck-driver? Where had he come from?”
“From Baden Park Station—here.”
“Oh! Proceed.”
“The next morning the girls followed the road to Hall’s Gap for a further ten miles where there’s a bridge and a turn-off track to the Baden Park Hotel. There! See the creek?”
“Yes. That turn-off track appears to be secondary to the road to Hall’s Gap.”
“Yes, it is,” Groves agreed. “When they left the hotel here, the girls said they were going through to Hall’s Gap, but on reaching the turn-off at the bridge they must have changed their minds. There’s a signpost there saying that Baden Park Hotel is four miles away. They had a road map, and therefore they probably saw that they could take that turn-off track, stay at the hotel, go on to the guest-house at Lake George, and from there follow a track which would bring them again to the Hall’s Gap Road. I suppose you know all this, sir?”
“Never mind. You tell the story.”
“Well. The girls reached the Baden Park Hotel the day after they left Dunkeld. They stayed at the hotel for two days. The licensee telephoned to the guest-house at Lake George and arranged accommodation for them for one night. They left his hotel about ten and had to walk only three and a half miles to the guest-house.
“The next afternoon the guest-house rang the hotel to say that the girls hadn’t arrived, but no anxiety was felt at the hotel because the girls had camp equipment and tucker. Two further days passed before the hotel licensee set out to look for them. He could not find them, and the following day he organised a search. They——”
“Describe the search, please,” Bony cut in.
“Yes—all right. Er—having ridden along the road to Lake George and not finding any place where the girls had camped, the licensee reported the matter to me that evening. We arranged that he would contact Baden Park Station and ask for riders to get busy early the next morning, and I would take two men with me by car. I and my party reached the hotel at daybreak the next morning. We scoured the bush alongside the road, and the riders from the Station worked farther out. It’s hellish country. We kept at it for two weeks, but we found just nothing.”
“And then, two months afterwards, Detective Price tried his hand,” Bony supplemented.
“Price came in here one afternoon and said he was making for Baden Park Hotel to look round on the off-chance of finding something of the girls. He stayed there ten days. The guest-house people saw him pass their place on his way to Hall’s Gap. That was late in the afternoon prior to the morning he was found shot in his car.”
“Did the hotel licensee know he was a detective?”
“Yes. He let Price ride his horses. He said that, as far as he knew, Price found no signs of the missing girls. He also said that Price had given up the idea of finding anything of them when he left the hotel.”
“How long have you been stationed here?” Bony asked, and was told for ten years. “What is your personal opinion of the licensee?”
Groves frowned at the map before replying.
“The original licensee is Joseph Simpson, an old man and a chronic invalid. He settled there forty or more years ago. There’s never been anything against him, or against the son, James, who has been running the place for the last fifteen years. The son is a bit flash, if you know what I mean. Nothing against him, though. He gambles and runs an expensive car. There is a sister about thirty, and a mother who does the cooking. Usually a yard-man is employed.”
“Does the position of the hotel warrant the licence?”
“Yes and no,” replied Groves. “There’s fishing to be had at Lake George, and parties stay at the hotel in preference to the guest-house. I have the idea that the drinking is pretty wild at times, but the place is too isolated for proper supervision. However, the Simpson family are quite respectable citizens and thought well of by Mr. Benson of Baden Park Station.”
“The Simpsons’ nearest neighbours are the Lake George guest-house?”
“It’s a toss-up whether they or the Bensons are the nearer.”
“The Bensons! What are they in? Sheep or cattle?”
“Sheep,” Groves replied, a note of astonishment in his voice. “They breed the famous Grampian strain. Baden Park comprises about thirty thousand acres. There’s lashings of money. I was out there several years ago. The Bensons used to own the hotel property.”
“H’m!” Bony crossed to the window and gazed beyond at Mount Abrupt, warm and colourful in the sunlight, the serrated mountains beyond it darkly blue and mysterious. “The Bensons? What of them?”
“They don’t entertain much or interest themselves in the district’s doings,” Groves said. “The present Benson isn’t married. His sister lives with him. The father was quite a famous astronomer. He built his own observatory near the house, and it must have cost a fortune. The son didn’t follow it up, though. I heard that he’d sold the telescope. All he thinks about is breeding, and all he worries over is keeping his sheep from sheep stealers. Can’t blame him for that when he breeds rams which fetch a thousand guineas.”
“How many men does he employ, d’you know?”
“Not many, I think. Anything from six to a dozen.”
“Is sheep stealing prevalent?”
“Not at this time. Petrol rationing restricts that game. But before the war sheep stealing was very bad. You know, men operating fast trucks, pull up, over the fence, grab and grab, and off back to the city. Benson built a strong fence round his place and took other measures to defeat the thieves.”
Bony offered his hand.
“I’ll be going along to Baden Park Hotel,” he said. “Under no circumstances communicate with me. I’m a New South Wales pastoralist enjoying a long-delayed holiday. By the way, how did the guest-house people recognise Price’s car that day he passed?”
“Price had run over there twice during his stay at the hotel.”
Chapter Two
At the Baden Park Hotel
Having rounded Mount Abrupt, Bony drove northwards along a narrowing valley skirted by the frozen land waves. Either side of the road, the gums reached high above the dense scrub and exuded their scent into the warm, still air, but above them the menacing granite face of the ranges betrayed no secrets.
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