LITMIR.BIZ

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reminds me of the beer swill,” said Bony, not daring to smile. “I’ll replace these bottles. Wait there, please.” On returning, he went on: “Mrs Rockcliff leased this house, but furnished it herself. Last Monday evening she went out at shortly after eight o’clock, leaving the baby in the cot at the foot of her bed. It appears that she often went out at night, leaving the infant unattended.

      “I will not tell you more than that now, and before we go to lunch I want you to do what you like with the place to find the answers to these questions. One: What was Mrs Rockcliff’s character? Two: What were her habits in the house? Three: Why does the bottle in the bedroom contain cow’s milk, and the bottle on the kitchen bench preparatory food? And any other information you may glean.”

      For a full hour Bony silently watched Alice McGorr at work, effacing himself. She examined the bedclothes, the interior of the baby’s cot, and the clothes in the wardrobe. She rummaged into drawers and cupboards, removed the contents of shelves and expertly looked at cooking utensils. She brought the washing in from the line. She fingered the curtains, examined the backs of the few pictures, lifted the linoleum along the edges. She glanced through the magazines and opened the covers of the few books. And when she was done, her hair was wispy with dampness and her hands were dirty.

      “That woman was proud of her baby,” she said, when seated at the lounge table and smoking the cigarette from Bony’s special case. “The baby’s clothes are hand-made, and expensive material. The needlework is simply glorious. I can see her making those little garments, every stitch a beautiful thought for the baby.”

      “And yet Mrs Rockcliff left the infant alone for hours at night,” murmured Bony.

      “It doesn’t square,” Alice McGorr admitted, her eyes puckered, three vertical lines between her brows. “What did the woman do for a living?”

      “We don’t know.”

      “No money ... handbag?”

      “No handbag, money or bank-book. Her picture has been shown at every bank and no one can identify her.”

      “She must have had money to live, and she lived well. She knew how to cook, and wasn’t satisfied with plain ingredients. She hated dirt and untidiness. She took an interest in geographical subjects and read travel books in preference to novels. Her taste in clothes was beyond what I understand, but then I never had a hope. Her clothes were expensive. She must have had money ... more than I earn.”

      “I haven’t omitted the matter from my calculations,” Bony said. “Go on, please.”

      “Things don’t square, sir,” she reiterated. “She had to go out at night and leave the baby alone in the house. She wasn’t hard up. The baby’s clothes are all made with the most expensive materials. It lacked for nothing. She didn’t entertain, for no one entertains these days without having empty bottles in the back yard. But she had to draw money from some place or person. D’you know what place or what person?”

      “No.”

      “I think she lived here under an assumed name,” Alice proceeded, her eyes almost closed. “There’s something here I don’t catch. You said her name was Pearl Rockcliff, but on some of her clothes is a name tag with the initials P.R. overlaid on others which could be J.O. or J.U. And she didn’t buy her clothes second-hand, I’ll bet a pound.”

      Because he hadn’t observed her taking special interest in clothes’ tags, Bony secretly gave her a hundred marks. He was rather liking the role of maestro encouraging a pupil.

      “Go on,” he said softly.

      “Mrs Rockcliff took care to rub out all evidence of her life before she came to Mitford. She came here to escape the consequences of a crime, or because she feared someone. Her Christian name wasn’t Pearl. It was Jean or Joan ... for preference.”

      “Why Jean or Joan for preference?”

      “The paper said the woman’s age was about thirty, and thirty years ago it was the fashion to name baby girls Joan or Jean or Jessica.”

      “There are, then, fashions in Christian names?”

      “Oh yes. Read the death notices and compare names with ages.”

      “I should do so, but ... What do the feeding bottles tell you?”

      “Before Mrs Rockcliff went out that night, she fed the baby. The baby didn’t take all the food, and she took the bottle to the kitchen, where she should have washed it. She didn’t wash it because she must have been in a hurry. The steriliser is still on the stove, face powder is spilt in the bathroom cabinet and two dresses have fallen from their hangers. Everything else is tidy, so she would have replaced them. The baby was being fed on a preparatory food; I found a large tin partly used, so the bottle on the kitchen bench is the baby’s real bottle.

      “The person who came to steal the baby brought the other one, the one near the cot. It was brought to keep the baby from crying while it was being taken away. It was a man who stole the baby.”

      Alice McGorr fell silent, flushing slightly as though suddenly conscious of talking too much, assuming too much to this man Bolt had often told her was the finest investigator in Australia. Quietly, Bony pressed her.

      “Why do you vote for a man? It should have been a woman.”

      “A woman would not have risked a bottle having a teat with a hole so small. A tiny baby might not have been able to draw the milk and would have yelled, which would be the last thing she would want to happen. A woman would have been sure about that teat. A woman, in any case, wouldn’t have brought the milk at all. She’d have brought an ordinary dummy and dipped it in malt extract or honey, which she could have carried in a small jar. That would keep any baby quiet for ten minutes at least ... all the time she needed to take it out of the house.”

      Bony rose, smiling.

      “Put on your hat,” he ordered. “We are going to lunch.”

      He watched her putting on the absurd hat without bothering to stand before the mirror over the mantel. As she was flushing when she joined him in the hall, he said:

      “I’ve known Superintendent Bolt for many years. Bolt calls me Bony. Even my Chief in Brisbane invariably does so. All my friends so address me. It would be nice if you could make yourself believe you are one of my friends.”

      She said wistfully that it would not be difficult, and added that she would be very happy to call him Bony on the condition that he called her Alice.

      As his illustrious namesake is said to have done when pleased, he pinched her ear, laughed outright at her startled face, and opened the front door. Bolt would have been astounded that he got away with that pinch.

      Chapter Five

      Baby Number One

      Across the luncheon table in a quiet restaurant, Bony departed from practice by taking Alice McGorr further into his confidence.

      “You know, Alice, your theory that it was a man who took the bottle of cow’s milk to the house, that it was a man who stole the baby, is not a little upsetting,” he said, as though it were a reluctant admission. “It doesn’t support what I read on the linoleum, yet still could be the truth. The story I read begins with the entry of a woman by the front door when Mrs Rockcliff was out. She was in the bedroom when she heard the man climbing in through the scullery window, and she crawled under the bed. The woman had a good look through the house. The man didn’t. It would seem that the man was familiar with the house and the woman was not. He heard Mrs Rockcliff open the front door on her return, and he slipped to the bedroom to stand behind the door, where he waited to strike her down. He departed via the scullery window; the woman left by the front door. As Essen found the front door snibbed back, and the door closed merely by the catch, either the strange woman forgot to release the snib, having a key or a strip of celluloid, or Mrs Rockcliff herself forgot to release the lock. We can assume that the man and the woman were not accomplices, and also that the woman was under the bed

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