Cake in the Hat Box. 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 in the USA as Sinister Stones
First published 1955 in the UK as Cake in the Hat Box
First electronic edition 2013
This corrected edition published 2020
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
ISBN 978-1-922384-40-9 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-922384-41-6 (ebook)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
At Agar’s Lagoon
Should you fly northward from Perth, fringe the Indian Ocean for fifteen hundred miles, and then turn inland for a further three hundred, you might chance to see Agar’s Lagoon. You will recognize Agar’s Lagoon if you look down on a tiny settlement completely ringed with broken bottles.
There is no lagoon anywhere near, because the stony creek skirting the township is far too impatient to carry the flood water away from the Kimberley Ranges and empty it into the quenchless sand of the great Inland Desert. The creek is infinitely less romantic than the bottle ring, estimated to total a thousand tons and laid down by a long succession of hotel yardmen who have removed the empties in vehicles ranging from bullock-drays to T-model Fords.
Nothing can be done about it; for, being so far from Perth, it is economically impossible to return the empties. Of necessity the ring must broaden outward, otherwise the hotel, the post office, the police station, a store and ten houses would ultimately lie buried beneath glass.
To Agar’s Lagoon had come Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, his journey to his home State from Broome, where he had terminated a homicide investigation, having been interrupted by a faulty plane engine. In this northern corner of a continent where plane schedules are erratic, he had to check in at the ramshackle hotel at a time when the tiny settlement was comparatively dead, even the policeman being absent on a patrol.
The hotel was comparable with the saloons of old America, being a structure of weather-board, iron and pisé, an oasis amid the thousands of square miles occupied by a hundred-odd white cattle- and sheep-men, prospectors, and the inevitable Government servants.
Bony found himself to be the only guest, and the only man about the place to gossip with was the hotel yardman-cum-barman, a wisp of a man recorded officially as John Brown. He was a part of the building, of the hectic scenery, and all knew him as ’Un. Bony was still to learn the genesis of this name, bestowed on Brown during the First World War when he arrived from nowhere wearing a Kaiser Wilhelm moustache in full bloom. The fall of the Kaiser’s Germany found the moustache as aggressive as ever, and even when the years bleached it and the beer stained it, the name clung. The Hun, born in Birmingham, degenerated to ’Un, even the local Germans affectionately so calling him.
He squatted this early evening on the hotel veranda beside the solitary chair occupied by Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, unaware of the guest’s profession and rank, and his reputation in every police department in the Commonwealth. Along the stony street passed a flock of goats in charge of a small white boy and an aborigine of the same age and size, and beyond the dust-dry creek the setting sun was flailing the armoured tors of Black Range.
“How long I been here?” echoed ’Un. “I came here back in nineteen-fourteen. Same pub. Same police station. Same houses. Two years later me and Paddy the Bastard found the Queen Vic Mine, and we went through three forchunes in three years. All in this pub, too. The year after Paddy died, I sold the mine to a syndicate for a thousand quid.”
“Real money, eh?” murmured Bony.
“Too right! Easy come, easy go. Paddy drank hisself to death right on this here veranda. It took the policeman and five men to hold him down.”
“A powerful man, indeed.”
’Un applied a match to what might be tobacco in the bowl of his broken pipe. Despite the years spent in this undeveloped territory of Australia, the Brummagem accent was strong. When he chortled the sound was not unlike the frantic calls of the rooster.
“Powerful!” he said. “Why, when I broke me leg out at the Queen Vic, he carried me here, and that’s all of nine miles. Why, when he spat at a man, that man went out like a light. Him and Silas Breen got into a argument on what won the Melbun Cup in 1900 and they fought for a week, knocking off only to eat. Hell of a good mate was Paddy. I never had no mate after him. Now, strike me pink! Here’s the Breens coming to town.”
The lethargy of the settlement was shattered by the noise of a heavy truck bouncing over the rough track. The hens rushed for home in the pepper trees. Two dogs raced neck and neck with the vehicle until it stopped before the hotel steps. Dust was wafted along the veranda front, and when it had passed, Bony saw the rear of an enormous man descending from the truck. He turned slightly, hitching up his gaberdine trousers, and Bony could see his face. It was square and rugged and grim. The thatch of grey hair was unkempt, and the long drooping moustache as aggressive as that which adorned the wizened face of ’Un.
He stood by the truck while another enormous man gingerly clambered down, a man not as tall but as wide and as thick as the first. His hair was barely touched by the years. It was black, as black as the square-cut beard. He nodded curtly when the other spoke to him, and led the way