“I’ve thought about it quite a lot,” Sasoon began after a pause. “We’ve never been real friendly with them like with the Jukes, but we’ve known them all our lives, and when I’ve had to call on Government business they’ve always welcomed me. I didn’t like the job, and I was put to disadvantage. I was invited to afternoon tea on the veranda. There was the old man, Jeff Rhudder, who’s a cripple with sciatica, his wife, his next son, Luke and his youngest son, Mark. With the family for many years has been a Mrs Stark and her daughter, Sadie. Sadie grew up with the Rhudder children as had the two by Matt Jukes. All went to school together, played pirates and all that.
“As you said just now, about not blaming the parents if Marvin was wanted only for evading the terms of his licence, I wouldn’t blame them for helping him to keep holed up. But there’s this to it. Many times since his son cleared out after what he done to Rose Jukes, old Jeff has said he’d shoot him like a dog if ever he went back home. They’ve been keeping tabs on Marvin through a lawyer in Sydney, and I think, or did think, that Jeff Rhudder would carry out his threat. He’s that kind of man.
“Now for what you asked. Up to the time I went down there, I think Jeff didn’t know Marvin was home. When I left, I think he was suspicious that the others did know, all of them, including Mrs Stark and her daughter. He said something to Luke like ‘what did you come home for without the wife and kids?’, and there was emphasis on the word ‘did’. Every one of ’em denied having seen Marvin since he left home years ago.”
“Luke, then, is married and not living at home?”
“That’s so. He left home a couple of days after Marvin left. Went to Perth and got himself a job, did pretty well at it, and was married five years back to a nice enough girl, we think.”
“When did Luke come down?”
“Three days after Karl Mueller saw Marvin in the night. Been home ever since. I could be wrong, but I think the women sent for him.”
“The situation could be worse,” Bony decided. “Inspector Hudson says that at this time the Rhudders would believe the police had no firm suspicion that Marvin had returned. Do you agree with that?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. They could have no cause to think otherwise. I was careful to give the impression that I was making a routine inquiry about their son’s latest crime committed two thousand miles away. I expressed regret at having to trouble them so sorely, and really felt regret too.”
Glancing at the mantel clock, Bony saw the time, and asked for information about the road south to the Jukes’s homestead. He was told that the road wasn’t good for fast travelling, that it wound down and up steep slopes for seven miles, and then eight miles of better grades, making fifteen miles in all. Should do the journey in under the hour. On from Jukes for four and a half miles would take him to the Rhudder homestead. There were no intervening farms save two on the outskirts of Timbertown.
He was informed that the Jukes were not on a telephone party-line, and this gave him satisfaction. Then he arranged procedure by which he could contact Sasoon, and Sasoon him, and with this understanding he rose to leave.
“It has been a pleasant evening, and thank you for the supper,” he said to Elsie Sasoon, and to her husband: “So far you have come out favourably with the top brass, Sam. If Marvin is still down there, I’ll pluck him out of it like pulling a feather from a fowl.”
Sam Sasoon escorted the visitor to the front gate, and on rejoining his wife, said, smiling broadly:
“Well, what d’you know.”
Chapter Four
One Tree Farm
Passing the second farm from Timbertown, the road became a rough track, winding and often steeply graded. Onward, Bony found himself in what any stranger would accept as a primeval forest. From the floor of green bracken and fern rose the jarrahs and cedarwoods, widely spaced, as the best of them had long since been gathered to the mills. The sunlight was beaming between their limpid crowns to cast green-gold pathways on the bracken, and, at this time of day, to polish the creamy grey-blue trunks of enormous karri trees.
On the green floor it was cool and completely still. The wind was blowing at two hundred feet: close to the ground the silence was the silence of a cathedral, with the vocal sounds of the tomtit, the honey-eater, and the lorikeet intruding through the great arched entrance.
Being unable to drive and appreciate this forest, Bony stopped his car, and leaned against it to gaze along the deep fold of a narrow valley. His last assignment had been in the country inland from Shark Bay east of Gladstone, in the arid lands of low scrub and blistering summer heat and searing sunlight. This forest so wonderfully clean of foreign growths wasn’t Australia: it was paradise.
The track was a slow one, and there was plenty of time, anyway. It was an hour later that he came to a bar ramp in a wire-fence, and twenty minutes afterwards came to a turn-off sign-posted ONE TREE FARM. Then he was driving towards the one tree and the tiny doll’s house his side of it, with other tiny buildings on the far side. The doll’s house was confined within a picket-fence, and Bony stopped his car outside the gate and stood entranced by the one tree. There was only the one tree, because fruit-trees and wattles and a couple of cedarwoods beside the track were toys to be bought at a store.
Bony had admired the occasional karri tree beside the road down from Bridgetown; he had been enthralled by the karri trees still standing in the forest, but this one was truly majestic. From behind him a man said:
“Girth at the butt sixty-eight feet. A hundred and seventy-seven feet up to the first branch.” Bony’s eyes slipped their gaze up the perfect column of blue-grey, up and up with never a halt to disapprove of a blemish, up to the first mighty branch, still upward to encounter the next branches. “Two hundred and eighty-six feet to the top,” said the man. “Proved by the surveyors. Make a dent in the roof if it fell on the house, wouldn’t it?”
As Bony’s gaze had moved upward like a climbing monkey to the topmost branches, so now it descended down the trunk to the ground. Almost reluctantly, he turned about to the man who had spoken.
“I take it you’re Mr Bonnar,” said Matt Jukes, plain curiosity in his dark eyes. Without his hat it could be seen he was balding, the greying hair forming a dark halo resting on his ears. “Mrs Sasoon told us you were coming. Come on in and meet the wife.”
“Thank you,” Bony responded as they shook hands. “Yes, Mrs Sasoon said she would ring you. Gave me a parcel to bring along.” He obtained the parcel from the back seat and then halted at the gate in the picket-fence to look back at the tree. “Well, that is a tree of trees. I’ve seen mountain ash in Gippsland but they’re pygmies.”
Matt led the way to the rear door of the doll’s house, and ushered him into the large living-kitchen-room of a rambling homestead. Emma came to meet the visitor, and in Bony’s mind was the thought that Sasoon’s wife was large and slow in action, and placid of mind, and this woman was small and vital and quick.
“It’s nice to see you, Mr Bonnar,” she told him. “Elsie has been raving about you to us. Said you are a friend of our Rose and her husband. Now do sit down, and I’ll pour you a cup of tea. It’s time for the morning break, anyway. And how did you leave Rose and the children?”
“Mrs Sasoon didn’t mention my business?” Bony asked.
“No, she said you were on holiday. D’you take sugar? Just help yourself.”
“Thank you.” Bony smiled at them, and sipped the tea. “I find myself still a little awed by your karri tree. How old could it be?”
“Probably only a couple of feet shorter when Tasman sailed the water of this coast, and that was 1642,” Jukes answered, and there was no evading the pride in his voice. “Biggest tree left standing down this way, and it’ll always stand while we’re alive. It belongs