Madman's Bend. 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, Exile Bay 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 in 1963 in the UK as Madman's Bend.
First published in 1963 in the USA as The Body at Madman's Bend.
First electronic edition published by ETT Imprint 2013.
Copyright William Upfield 2013, 2020
ISBN 978-1-922384-64-5 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-922384-65-2 (ebk)
Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy
Chapter One
Axe and Bullet
The girl sat in a rocking-chair, and on the end of the table beside her lay a .32 Winchester repeating rifle. Four yards separated her from the rear door of the large living-room and, like the front door and all the windows, that door was bolted.
The house was built on a high, level spur stabbing at the Darling River, and it nestled against a wide arc of red-gums. A cold wind blowing hard through the night from the far-distant Southern Highlands complained angrily at the obstructing gums, preventing the girl from hearing what she listened for—the arrival of a utility driven by her stepfather.
She was not quite nineteen, physically strong, her body filling her poplin blouse and man’s trousers and making them appear too small for her. Beneath the broad forehead the dark eyes seldom blinked in the lamplight, and the wide mouth maintained its signal of determined purpose. The lamplight occasionally gleamed on her dark hair, and pitilessly revealed the ravages of sun and wind on her complexion. Hard work had roughened her hands.
From an inner room a woman moaned and then called, “Jill! Give me more aspirin.”
Jill Madden turned up the wick of the lamp on the chest of drawers, where stood a jug of water, a bottle of aspirin, and salves. The woman’s eyes were bandaged; the girl had to raise her on the bed and push the tablets gently between her lacerated lips.
“Still hurting, dear?” she asked compassionately, and after the woman had taken a little of the water she added, “Just try to sleep.”
Her mother sighed as the girl lowered her to the pillow, and said, “It’s mostly my ribs where he kicked me. And my eyes and nose feel like hot irons. But don’t take on, Jill. I’ll be better presently. I’m sure I will.”
“If you’re not by morning I’m ringing the policeman. You and I have reached the limit, and we’ll have no more of it.”
“We mustn’t,” protested the woman. “I’ll be better in the morning, and then we’ll talk to your father. He’ll have to mend his ways, and stop his drinking. You must never call Constable Lucas. We can’t have a scandal. I’ve made my bed and must lie on it.”
The girl checked herself from vigorously denying that William Lush was her father, saying instead, “All right, dear. We’ll wait till the morning. Now just try to rest, just try.”
Mrs Lush sighed again, and, having turned down the wick of the lamp, her daughter stood awhile by the chest of drawers before returning to her rocking-chair and making a cigarette with expert fingers. The old American clock on the mantel above the range bonged once. It was half past eleven. Her “father” should not be long now. He was a careful driver; in fact, much more careful when drunk than when sober. He would certainly be drunk when he left White Bend to drive home through the cold of the windy mid-winter night, and in him all the slights would be bottled tight to be poured out on his wife. Yes, a careful man, one who minded his p’s and q’s in company, but without inhibitions when with those he dominated.
Jill Madden had been out that afternoon mustering sheep into a paddock farther from the river, which was expected to flood within a week. Returning home at about five, she had found her mother on the living-room floor, badly injured and shocked. Not delaying to investigate causes, she had lifted her mother into the bedroom, undressed her and tended the multiple injuries with the bush aids to hand. When the victim of brutal assault was quieter, the girl had learned that her stepfather had wanted a cheque from his wife and had gone berserk when she refused.
The history of this small pastoral property was not uncommon. Forty thousand acres had been taken from a very large leasehold and transferred to Edward Madden by the Western Land Board under the Closer Settlement Act. Madden had himself built his house on the spur of higher ground on the west side of the Darling River, and here Jill had been born. Madden had died when the girl was sixteen years old. During the last year of his life he had been a semi-invalid, and Jill had come home from a boarding-school to help him and take the place of a hired hand. After his death Mrs Madden, compelled to hire a man, had engaged William Lush, an itinerant stockman down from Queensland. The following year she had married him. A month after the marriage Lush had revealed his nature, and life at Madden’s Selection had rapidly deteriorated.
Lush had asked his wife for a cheque for three hundred pounds with which to settle debts incurred at the small township of White Bend. When she had refused because her account at the bank would have been unable to meet it, he had proceeded to punch her, knock her to the floor and kick her. He had then driven off to the township, twenty-four miles down-river.
The attack had been but one of a series, and the worst. Fear, plus her mother’s aversion to scandal, had so far prevented Jill from complaining to the police or to the people at the homestead of Mira Station on the far side of the river; but tonight fear was subdued by desperation, and