Archiwum
- Index
- Giovanni Guareschi [Don Camillo 01] The Little World of Don Camillo (pdf)
- Christine Young [Highland 01] Highland Honor (pdf)
- Angela Verdenius [Heart & Soul 16] Soul of a Guardian (pdf)
- Chalker Jack L W Świecie Studni 5 Zmierzch przy Studni Dusz (pdf)
- Dahlia Rose, Brenda Steele, Regina Paul, Dorian Wallace Mating Season (anth.) (pdf)
- Cooper McKenzie [Menage Amour 161 Club Esotera 03] Minding Mistress (pdf)
- Dena Garson [Emerald Isle Fantasies 03] Ghostly Persuasion [EC Twilight] (pdf)
- 33 1 3 087 Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson Darran Anderson (pdf)
- Alan Burt Akers [Dray Prescot 07] Arena of Antares (pdf)
- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- gim12gda.pev.pl
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beyond his Police Department.
The Chief Secretary had departed to confer with the
Premier, and Lowther was dictating his notes to a typist. With
the Chief Commissioner were Superintendent Linton, Bona-
parte s superior, and Superintendent Boase.
It would seem, sir, said Linton, heavy and red, that
Bonaparte has the game sewn up. The point about lack of proof
that he received the telegram could be made the subject of an
amendment to the Regulations, don t you think?
I ll store that for further consideration, Linton, the
Colonel evaded. First things first. The Chief Secretary will
present to the Premier an undeniable handle to turn in the
innards of more than one Commonwealth Cabinet Minister.
For, mark you, the Commonwealth Government won t face
Bonaparte s threat of publicity. The S.S. and the C.I.S. will be
so shaken up that they won t recognise each other next week.
They ve had it coming to them, and by gad! it ll take em now
by the throat.
You approve of Bonaparte s tactics, sir? pressed Linton.
I do not, retorted Colonel Spendor. But, Linton, I have to
admit to private feeling in this matter, and the result has pleased
me greatly. Others in this State will rejoice also. And when you
dissect what Bonaparte said this morning, you will agree that he
employed diplomatic blackmail like a Canberra veteran.
I m sure, Boase, that your own C.C. will concur that the
Commonwealth has steadily been edging into our State
206
spheres of police activity. How the Commonwealth deals with
subversive activities is of little concern to us at this moment,
but when Commonwealth organisations act like a lot of damn
school-children playing cops and robbers, resulting in citizens
being in physical danger, we are entitled to protest. And now
this Bonaparte and his Cowdry affair will arm the resistance
movement, as it were. Bony knew this, and he played every
trump in the pack. Well, we ll have him in. Lowther! Where
the devil are you, Lowther?
Bony was invited to be seated between the two super-
intendents. Smartly dressed in a grey pin-striped suit, the tie
just one shade too bright and the breast handkerchief a
fraction too ironed, he regarded the white head of his Chief
Commissioner, and then glanced at the man either side of
him. The face was calm, the eyes were masked, the mobile lips
were still and gave nothing away.
Inspector Bonaparte, Colonel Spendor said, a glare in his
eyes, I suggest that you cease believing you are extremely
clever, so that you need not be shocked when proved to be
otherwise. The verbatim report of the Enquiry into your extra-
ordinary conduct at Cowdry will go to the highest quarters, and
the powers may decide that your particular appointment is no
longer of use to the State. Meanwhile, I do not accept your
resignation.
Colonel Spendor ripped and tore the resignation to tiny
pieces and hurled them into the w.p.b.
I admit, sir, that the act of producing my resignation at
the Enquiry was theatrical, and was intended to impress those
persons present not of our Department, Bony said. At the
Enquiry I stated bald facts, but clothed them with loquacity
that certain imputations should be strengthened, one of them
being that outsiders cannot with impunity tread on our toes.
On our toes! snorted the Colonel. On your toes, you
mean.
You pink me, sir. My toes.
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Damn it, Bonaparte! roared Colonel Spendor. Is that all
you set out to achieve?
That is all at the Enquiry. On all other matters, sir, such
as the murder of Benjamin Wickham, the wishes of Benjamin
Wickham, and certain property belonging to his estate, as well
as the justification for my own conduct of the investigation, I
am anxious to be guided by you.
The Chief Commissioner was visibly rocked. He snorted.
He haw-ed. There was a note of desperation when he said:
Then I wish you would be guided by me when I have you
ordered to report to Department Headquarters.
I felt that the order was not in the interests of this Depart-
ment. Nor of justice.
Is that so! The message was plain enough. Linton and I
agreed it should contain a personal note from him so that you
would realise the seriousness of it. You answer me that.
My wife would call it intuition, sir.
Eh? Damn and blast your eyes, Bonaparte! So would
mine. Now for this murder you say you uncovered.
Bony prefaced his report with Mr. Luton s thesis on delirium
tremens, and interpreted Luton s character as the product of
that early background of an era so vastly different from the
present. He then sketched the people in contact with Luton,
and the relationship of Luton with Ben Wickham.
I tested Luton s suspicion, he went on, by asking Knocker
Harris to put it around in the local township that a police
inspector was staying with Luton and seemed interested in the
death of the famous meteorologist. The early results were
promising. I was questioned by Gibley the local constable, by
the doctor, and by the Reverend Weston. And then we had a
visit from Wickham s chief assistant, Dr. Linke, accompanied
by Wickham s secretary.
Linke informed me that Wickham had been visited by a
foreigner who came from Adelaide in a car registered in the
name of a staff member of the Hungarian Consulate. This was
followed ten days later by a telephone call from a person who
208
wouldn t give his name, and whose voice Linke recognised as
that of the manager of the Commonwealth Bank. Wickham
was absent, so the man called the house when the people were
at dinner. That night, at ten, Wickham went to the manager s
rooms, remained for some time, and left with two men. I then
decided to interview the bank manager, and you know what
emerged from that interview in addition to the flat denial that
Wickham had ever gone there.
Linke further informed me that Wickham s office had been
broken into after his death and ransacked, and that Mrs. Parsloe
had not reported the matter to the local police. An important
green-covered notebook was missing when Mrs. Parsloe opened
the safe before the burglary. Eventually, Linke was questioned
by a C.I.S. man accompanied by Sergeant Maskell.
All these events occurred before I received the recall
message, and I claim that in total they provided grave doubt
that Luton was in error about his hoo-jahs. And the prodding
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