It was again Sunday, and Larkin was washing his clothes at the outside fire when the sound of horses’ hoofs led him to see two men approaching. His lips vanished into a mere line, and his mind went over all the answers he would give if the police ever did call on him. One of the men he did not know. The other was Mounted Constable Evans.
They dismounted, anchoring their horses by merely dropping the reins to the ground. Larkin searched their faces and wondered who was the slim half-caste with, for a half-caste, the singularly blue eyes.
‘Good day,’ Larkin greeted them.
‘Good day, Larkin,’ replied Constable Evans, and appeared to give his trousers a hitch. His voice was affable, and Larkin was astonished when, after an abrupt and somewhat violent movement, he found himself handcuffed.
‘Going to take you in for the murder of William Reynolds,’ Evans announced. ‘This is Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.’
‘You must be balmy – or I am,’ Larkin said.
Evans countered with, ‘You are. Come on over to the house. A car will be here in about half an hour.’
The three men entered the kitchen where Larkin was told to sit down.
‘I haven’t done anything to Reynolds, or anyone else,’ asserted Larkin, and for the first time the slight man with the brilliant blue eyes spoke.
‘While we are waiting, I’ll tell you all about it, Larkin. I’ll tell it so clearly that you will believe I was watching you all the time. You used to meet Reynolds at the boundary fence gate, and the two of you would indulge in a spot of gambling – generally at poker. Then one day you cheated and there was a fight in which you were thrashed.
‘You knew what day of the week Reynolds would ride that boundary fence and you waited for him on your side. You held him up and made him climb over the fence while you covered him with your.32 high-power Savage rifle. You made him walk to a place within a mile of here, where there was plenty of dry wood, and there you shot him and burned his body.
‘The next day you returned with a dolly pot and a sieve. You put all the bones through the dolly pot, and then you sieved all the ashes for metal objects in Reynolds’ clothes and burned them up with sulphuric acid. Very neat. The perfect crime, you must agree.’
‘If I done all that, which I didn’t, yes,’ Larkin did agree.
‘Well, assuming that not you but another did all I have outlined, why did the murderer shoot and burn the carcase of a calf on the same fire site?’
‘You tell me,’ said Larkin.
‘Good. I’ll even do that. You shot Reynolds and you disposed of his body, as I’ve related. Having killed him, you immediately dragged wood together and burned the body, keeping the fire going for several hours. Now, the next day, or the day after that, it rained, and that rainfall fixed your actions like words printed in a book. You went through the ashes for Reynolds’ bones before it rained, and you shot the calf and lit the second fire after it rained. You dropped the calf at least two hundred yards from the scene of the murder, and you carried the carcase on your back over those two hundred yards. The additional weight impressed your boot prints on the ground much deeper than when you walk about normally, and although the rain washed out many of your boot prints, it did not remove your prints made when carrying the dead calf. You didn’t shoot the calf, eh?’
‘No, of course I didn’t,’ came the sneering reply. ‘I burned the carcase of a calf that died. I keep my camp clean. Enough blowflies about as it is.’
‘But you burned the calf s carcase a full mile away from your camp. However, you shot the calf, and you shot it to burn the carcase in order to prevent possible curiosity. You should have gone through the ashes after you burned the carcase of the calf and retrieved the bullet fired from your own rifle.’
Bony smiled, and Larkin glared.
Constable Evans said, ‘Keep your hands on the table, Larkin.’
‘You know, Larkin, you murderers often make me tired,’ Bony went on. ‘You think up a good idea, and then fall down executing it.
‘You thought up a good one by dollying the bones and sieving the ashes for the metal objects on a man’s clothes and in his boots, and then – why go and spoil it by shooting a calf and burning the carcase on the same fire site? It wasn’t necessary. Having pounded Reynolds’ bones to ash and scattered the ash to the four corners, and having retrieved from the ashes the remaining evidence that a human body had been destroyed, there was no necessity to burn a carcase. It wouldn’t have mattered how suspicious anyone became. Your biggest mistake was burning that calf. That act connects you with that fire.’
‘Yes, well, what of it?’ Larkin almost snarled. ‘I got a bit lonely livin’ here alone for months, and one day I sorta got fed up. I seen the calf, and I up with me rifle and took a pot shot at it.’
‘It won’t do,’ Bony said, shaking his head. ‘Having taken a pot shot at the calf, accidentally killing it, why take a dolly pot to the place where you burned the carcase? You did carry a dolly pot, the one in the blacksmith’s shop, to the scene of the fire, for the imprint of the dolly pot on the ground is still plain in two places.’
‘Pretty good tale, I must say,’ said Larkin. ‘You still can’t prove that Bill Reynolds is dead.’
‘No?’ Bony’s dark face registered a bland smile, but his eyes were like blue opals. ‘When I found a wisp of brown wool attached to the boundary fence, I was confident that Reynolds had climbed it, merely because I was sure his body was not on his side of the fence. You made him walk to the place where you shot him, and then you saw the calf and the other cattle in the distance, and you shot the calf and carried it to the fire.
‘I have enough to put you in the dock, Larkin – and one other little thing which is going to make certain you’ll hang. Reynolds was in the Army during the war. He was discharged following a head wound. The surgeon who operated on Reynolds was a specialist in trepanning. The surgeon always scratched his initials on the silver plate he inserted into the skull of a patient. He has it on record that he operated on William Reynolds, and he will swear that the plate came from the head of William Reynolds, and will also swear that the plate could not have been detached from Reynolds’ head without great violence.’
‘It wasn’t in the ashes,’ gasped Larkin, and then realized his slip.
‘No, it wasn’t in the ashes, Larkin,’ Bony agreed. ‘You see, when you shot him at close quarters, probably through the forehead, the expanding bullet took away a portion of the poor fellow’s head – and the trepanning plate. I found the plate lodged in a sandalwood tree growing about thirty feet from where you burned the body.’
Larkin glared across the table at Bony, his eyes freezing as he realized that the trap had indeed sprung on him. Bony was again smiling. He said, as though comfortingly, ‘Don’t fret, Larkin. If you had not made all those silly mistakes, you would have made others equally fatal. Strangely enough, the act of homicide always throws a man off balance. If it were not so, I would find life rather boring.’
A. E. MARTIN
The 1930s and 1940s were times of great opportunity for Australian writers. Magazines and newspapers published original fiction, publishers clamoured to sign new names, particularly in the mystery field, and for those capable of mastering the exacting art of scriptwriting, radio beckoned with almost non-stop work.
One of the more interesting talents of the time was Archibald Edward Martin. Born in Adelaide in 1885, Martin worked in a variety of fields including boxing promoter, showman, theatrical press agent for such groups as J.C. Williamson, film importer, travel agent, and sometimes journalist. In this latter role, he assisted C.J. Dennis in the establishment of the satirical weekly journal, The Gadfly.
In 1912 he travelled to Europe, signing acts for a variety circus that toured Australia the following year. The people he met in this endeavour, and throughout the next few decades in the theatre world, provided the basis for many of his future stories.