THE NEXT MORNING, Rhoades came in well on the air, thank goodness, and I had a long talk with Bengough. My set was working well in spite of frequent moves. While I was away, my household, such as it was, had been transferred, lock, stock, and barrel, to the cadet’s house at the back of the station, whence I could duck into the jungle, by a variety of routes, at short notice.
The final evacuation was at last beginning. Daniel Pule got the Chinese party mustered; many of the original 150 had already moved on to San Cristobal or south Malaita, and his tabulated lists now showed a strength of only 47. We had great difficulty persuading them that they could not take more than a small amount of money with them when they were evacuated. I relieved them of as much of it as I could, giving them receipts to take to Sydney; I needed all the cash I could get to keep paying staff and police, even though there were few places where they could buy anything.
As Andrew had the station running smoothly, I refueled and provisioned Hing-Li for the eastern leg of the earth-scorching program. Sailing after lunch, I headed southeast, toward my first stop, Rere. We anchored at 1530. It did not take long to disable the equipment: I burned down the old copra dryer and gave instructions for the demolition of islander-built structures. Next morning I was very pleased to be able to do the radio “sched” with a quarter-sized aerial rigged between the schooner’s masts; I kept my fingers crossed until Snowy’s drawl assured me that VQJ10 was on the air. Wasting no time, we plugged on to Kau Kau.
I was not entirely prepared for the contrast. Clarry Hart was carrying on as if Japan had never come into the war. He still had eleven men working for him! Hart claimed to be producing ten to twelve tons of copra a month; he was also working Maronia, a small plantation nearby. It was baffling: I had been carrying out orders to deny all resources to the enemy, and here was Clarry Hart producing them, or at least one of them. He believed that he could get it shipped, too, if the Japs did not come too close. Who was right? The chief thing, for now, was that he seemed quite happy. I told him to get a jungle hideout organized forthwith. The northwest wind was blowing up a choppy sea, so, waving farewell, at 1300 we splashed out in the dinghy and, with the wind behind us and all sails set, scudded down the coast in fine style.
At Marau Sound, I anchored at the Catholic mission station, which I learned was called Makina. We went and inspected Hodgess’s plantation at Paruru, on the other side of the strait, but there was very little left except the buildings: a certain amount had been looted, and the Catholics had taken away the rest. Luckily there was no copra. I had a word with the crew of one of the RAAF “Cats,” which was sheltering there for the day. They did not, repeat, not, like the bombing, and they had a deuce of a lot of work to do keeping tabs on the Japanese. Their one day off each week was spent either going to or coming from the slit trenches on Tanambogo, unless they could get permission to come down to Marau.
The next morning I took the opportunity to wander around Makina with Brother James Thrift. Like the other two lay brothers he was a schoolmaster, for the main object of the mission was to run a school for the boys of the area. As in most mission schools, the boys worked in the fields in the afternoons, to provide their food. They had some excellent gardens, on good flat, alluvial ground, once riverbed, though there were too many stones for good plowing. I told them to plant up as much as they could, against hard times. The fathers had made no preparations for moving: they did not intend to go bush unless and until Bishop Aubin gave them the word. I remarked that, as it was extremely unlikely that the bishop would ever have the time or the necessary facility to give them the word, they should get used to the idea of having to make the decision for themselves. That, they said, they couldn’t do. They were all very brave men, but . . .
We were back at Makina when another Cat appeared, the wild waving of its wings before it landed indicating that the crew had a message for me. It turned out that a supply vessel had arrived at Tulagi the day before, and was busy unloading stores.1 That was good news. But a black cloud already hung over everything, for the teleradio had earlier brought some very bad news indeed.
The grim message, forwarded via Macfarlan and Bengough, gave me the cold shivers. It was from F. M. Campbell, who had stayed at the gold-fields. Campbell wanted me to come there immediately: he suspected that a European had been murdered. It would be disturbing news if it was true, for if the murder of whites had started our chances of survival were slim, even if we did manage to keep out of the hands of the Japanese.
The dead man was a penurious old-timer called Billy Wilmot. An ex-sailor, he had settled in the Solomons, but hadn’t done too well and eventually had drifted into odd jobs and beachcombing. When the price of copra fell, he had got a job on the goldfields, but had not held it very long. Advanced in years, he had lived alone in a small shack on the river, between Gold Ridge and Campbell’s place, doing nothing. Most of the miners and the locals had had a soft spot for Billy, and would leave him food from time to time. It would be hard work finding the truth.
After bringing in the Marau district headmen for a pep talk, I decided that all the coastal villages would have to be evacuated at the first sign of enemy landings, and the people moved to secluded bush villages inland. Kennedy was trying the same thing on Ysabel. This would reduce to a minimum the possibility of the Solomon Islanders’ contacting the Japanese. There was, I felt, a reasonable chance that most of the population would be loyal, but I had no doubt that the best of them, if closely questioned, might give away our whereabouts, under pressure of fear. The headmen agreed with the policy, and promised early action. Word went out to all other headmen of what they were doing.
We heaved anchor and ran up the coast to Aola. After a brief inspection in the dark, and a few hours’ rest, I was off before dawn for Berande, to investigate Wilmot’s death. On the way we saw the ship going down the channel, and although she was several miles out I climbed the rigging and waved like mad as she sailed away. “Give my love to Sydney!” I shouted, and swallowed hard.
At Berande I found my early start had been wasted, as Hay, who had promised to drive me across the plains, was in bed with malaria. Then my NMP, Eroni, whom I had brought for the postmortem, developed a violent toothache, so I packed him off to Auki in Hing-Li. I felt thwarted by these delays, because a quick inquiry into Wilmot’s death was vital, to let us know where we stood.
Macfarlan, who had just returned from Tanambogo, told me of the marvelous luck they had had with the ship. She had remained hidden during the raids the first day, but the day after five planes had bombed her while she was close to the wharf at Tulagi. Luckily there were no hits. It was agonizing listening to Mac as he tried to contact the RAAF. Jap aircraft seemed to be over Tulagi in ones and twos practically all day, and VNTG was off the air for five hours. We thought that they had all hopped into the launch and gone to Nggela to the mangroves, and that the radio watchkeeper was pinned down in a slit trench. When we got through to them later on, however, they had a sad story to tell. They had no report on damage at Tulagi, but Tanambogo and Gavutu had had a real plastering. Obviously, the radio sets had survived, but the Japs now seemed to have a good idea of what was there. I felt very uneasy, and spent a sleepless night in gloomy speculation.
The next day we climbed onto Ken Hay’s old Ford and bumped across the grass plains. It was pretty warm, but there was a dry breeze blowing, and all the scene wanted was a few giraffes to make it look like Africa. After the road ended, we had to walk three miles to Bamboo Creek, the first identifiable point of the mining area. We got to the police post at Koilo by 1100, and after a swim in the river and an early lunch we trudged on up the river to Campbell’s. The river valley where he had his workings was quite wide and pleasant, but the riverbed made a rough path.
The miners had built simple shacks of native leaf, but unless it was raining they lived in the open, with plenty of blankets against the cold night air. We found Campbell, with his two sons, sitting comfortably in his deck chair smoking a large black pipe, as he had always done on San Cristobal. Freshwater and Andresen, the other two remaining Europeans, had come down to join the convention, and we settled in to a real old-fashioned tea party.
After we had exhausted discussion, Campbell and I got down to the Wilmot case. Wilmot’s shack was a few miles up, so Campbell, who was no longer young, had sent his sons in his stead. Their photographs indicated a violent death. Billy’s revolver had been on the table in front of him, and therefore everyone initially had assumed that he had blown his brains out.
Now, however, there were doubts. In the first place, the incident had occurred on Good Friday, when the people from the surrounding villages, most of whom were Christians, were at home. Second, Campbell, a former police officer, was suspicious of the blood marks all over the hut: in his experience, bullet wounds to the head did not bleed until after the impact, and then rather quietly. It was strange that here the blood had been splashed far and wide. In addition, Campbell had known Wilmot for many years, and in his opinion Billy was not the sort of person who would have taken his own life. Although he had not been much of a success, he had got on extremely well with the islanders, and had been respected by everyone in spite of his poverty.
The report of Wilmot’s death had come from one of the very few men known to have passed his isolated shack that day. This fellow had worked for the old man for years, visiting him daily and occasionally cooking for him. A Christian, he had long been well known to many Europeans, and was as mild and peaceful as they come. On Good Friday, exactly a week before, the man had arrived at Campbell’s about nightfall; he was in an awful state, and obviously had had a nasty shock. He had gone to Wilmot’s to clean up and fix him an evening meal. From the door he had seen Billy collapsed over his table in a pool of blood, with blood splashed all over the hut. Scared out of his wits, he had not known what to do, and had come hot foot down to Campbell for advice.
After closely questioning everyone concerned, I decided that we would have to go up and dig the poor old boy out. I can hardly describe my feelings that night—I did not know what to make of the case, and I could not sleep. It would be hard work finding the truth, and even if we did discover what had really happened it would be even more difficult to find out who had done it.
Next morning, taking along Campbell’s boys and collecting Kelemedi,2 a Fijian with some medical training who was caretaker on one of the leases, I walked up to Wilmot’s place. The trip there, via a short but almost vertical cut known as Keeble’s Steps, took over three hours. It was not on any direct route, and local people only occasionally passed that way. Since the goldfields had been evacuated, passersby had been even fewer.
I found a one-room shack with two doors, set in a small clearing covered with dense long grass that showed no footprints. It was hardly furnished at all: a rough bunk bed against the wall, and next to that a fixed table, at which Wilmot had been sitting. A Penguin novel and his glasses were on the table, and they were covered with blood. His pistol, which also lay on the table, was quite clean. I wondered why. The holster hung on the wall behind. Although blood had run down onto the bed, there was far more spattered on the walls, not so much behind as to one side of the old man. There were even spots of blood on the opposite wall, twenty feet away. The only other thing was a clothesline on the other side of the room, on which hung an old undershirt with some peculiar blood marks on it. It was all very strange.
The pistol attracted my attention. Not only was there no blood on it, it also was well greased, and the grease was old. There were four rounds in the chamber, and the safety catch was on. The old servant, who seemed genuinely sorry about Wilmot’s death, had told me that Billy had always kept the pistol close by him but that he had never seen him open it up. I inspected the grease around the mouth of the barrel; then, on a sudden inspiration, I went outside and fired a round into the air.
I found what I had suspected: grease had been pushed out of the barrel grooves by the round I had just fired. That confirmed that the pistol had not been used for some time. It was at least extremely unlikely that Wilmot had shot himself, greased the barrel, and put the safety catch on again; nor did it look as if anyone else had used the weapon recently. A chill ran down my back, and I went outside to where they had disinterred him.
It was raining hard, but even so the atmosphere was pretty nauseating, and all of us used eucalyptus-oil masks. As Campbell and I had suspected, decomposition during the last six days had removed most of the clotted blood from Wilmot’s head. There before us was clear evidence that he had not been killed with a bullet: there were no holes, and no powder marks, but only a clean cut, starting over the left temple and extending over the left ear. There was a slight angle in the middle, and from the length of the cut we all agreed that it could have been made by two powerful strokes of a very sharp axe. That would explain the blood on the walls: the first blow would have splashed blood onto the wall nearby, and the second would have spattered more blood all over the place. Whatever it was had gone clean through the bone and severed a portion of the brain. The rain had washed the wounds clean, and made all strikingly clear.
Wilmot must have been reading at his table when someone came in. He probably took off his glasses, and while he was putting them down the intruder must have quickly swung his long-handled axe, which he had probably concealed behind his back, and brought it down hard on the old man’s skull. This all tallied with the distances between bed and table. It was grave news indeed.
We took some more photographs, and then, in the pouring rain, hastily reinterred poor Billy; as no flowers were available, we planted epicure beans on top of the grave. After erecting a wooden cross at his head, we went back to the hut.
I had another look at the undershirt on the clothesline. There was another clue. The strange blood marks were not splash marks: they clearly showed the outline of an axe head of about the same size as the cuts on Wilmot’s head. The other marks looked as if someone had wiped blood off his hands, perhaps to disguise the marks of the axe; but he had then hung the shirt the wrong way round. The evening mists were beginning to creep in, so we departed, shivering slightly inwardly, and trudged up to Gold Ridge to camp the night. It would be ideal for Macfarlan: there was a magnificent view of Tulagi Harbor and Tanambogo.
I felt very uneasy going to sleep that night, with visions of the corpse before my eyes. Was the murderer in the area, and were we also on his list? Was he a local man, or was he a wandering pagan who had settled an old blood feud by taking a European head?
In 1890, Charles Woodford, the first resident commissioner, had given the contemporary view of Solomon Islanders: “The main object of their lives is to take each other’s heads. They are not, however, what can be called a courageous people. . . . They are like wild beasts, always prowling about for prey, but rarely attacking unless they feel that they have their victim in their power without risk to themselves.”3
Woodford added: “In cases of attacks upon white men at any rate there is . . . an absence of the fear of future consequences. . . . But the prime motive for attacks upon white men and natives alike lies in the fact . . . that these people are primarily and emphatically savages, with some good points certainly, but in their nature reigns unchecked the instinct of destruction.”4
Although many of the Solomon Islanders of 1942 obviously had come a long way from that sinister background, its presence could still be felt in the bush, and eternal vigilance was a necessity of life. Most of the plantation laborers came from Malaita, where the inhabitants were still mostly pagan and native custom, still very austere, died hard. A cause was attributed to most deaths, especially of persons who had not completed their normal span of life. This cause was laid at the feet of some “devil” or spirit, who had been asked to kill the man by someone antagonistic to him. The dead person’s mother, father, or nearest relation consulted a fa`atabu (holy man) and mentioned the name of the one who he believed caused the death, or he could say merely that it was a stranger. In due course this person would be killed by the relation, or by a professional headhunter who had been given the contract or had heard that a reward was out for a head. If this did not appear possible, another life was necessary to balance matters, and a white person was considered especially good.
This was the old custom, and it was possible that one of the laborers, having gone bush when the others were repatriated, might have remembered some old death that needed squaring up and had taken it out on old Billy Wilmot, thinking that government control was over. Many murders of white men in the Solomons had happened in that way, with no apparent motive. Later the perpetrator had owned up, satisfied he had been correct in observing clan custom; but of course the dead man could not be brought back to life.
Next morning, all the headmen and people concerned turned up for the inquest. I spent all day trying to find out what had happened. Wilmot had been murdered, and now we knew how, but it was hard to establish the time of death. Since all the Christians had stayed in their villages on Good Friday, we were able to account for nearly everyone who lived within a day’s walking distance. Only two or three men, including Wilmot’s servant, had passed down the valley that day, and their alibis were very nearly perfect. One man had just the axe for the job, but it was perfectly clean, and it could not be proven that he had carried it on Good Friday. Fingerprinting was out of the question.
It was a deadlock. After my experience on Malaita and San Cristobal, however, I knew that the perpetrators of this sort of crime found it difficult to keep it to themselves. The only alibi about which there was any shadow of doubt belonged to the man with the axe; I held him in custody for further questioning, feeling that he might spill the beans later on. There was little else I could do except remove the man from the area and keep him under close watch. (As Campbell said to me later, if he knocked me off, at least we should know who had murdered Billy Wilmot!) Next morning it was a gloomy party that went down the river, with the suspect in front marching between two policemen.
Discussing the postmortem at Campbell’s wasn’t very cheerful, but we brightened up a little bit when mail arrived from Ken Hay. We sent the man back to ask him to bring the truck up the next day, and then I had a last try at getting the miners to evacuate. Both Campbell and Andresen had plantations on San Cristobal, and they would probably have been much safer there. But not a bit of it—they all reckoned that they would be happier where they were. Saying goodbye in the morning, I hoped I would see them again.
I spent some time at Koilo briefing my police, then walked to Bamboo Creek, where the truck was waiting. The drive across the grass was burning hot, and it was a relief to get into the shade under the coconut palms of Berande. Ken had been keeping a pretty good watch over Tulagi, and as far as he could see nothing untoward had happened. All was quiet on the coast, and there was no sign or news of any enemy landings in the area. I made up my reports and coded them for next morning’s radio schedule.
Since the evacuation, Hay had continued to produce rubber at Berande. He liked to think that he was helping the war effort, even if it could not be immediately shipped anywhere useful. As there was nothing else to do, Ken showed me how it all worked. The trees had only recently come into bearing, and they were yielding very well: Hay was producing about three hundred pounds of processed rubber a day. At dinner, we worked out how much Ken would have got if he’d shipped it out. It was quite worthwhile.
On the way back, I called at Ruavatu and tried once more to persuade the fathers to retire to the bush. They still refused to move. After the alarms and excursions of the past two weeks, I was dead tired, and I returned to Aola, on 15 April, prepared to go to sleep for a week. Andrew, now promoted sergeant, greeted me. “All quiet, I hope, Andrew,” I said. He smiled. “Yes, Sah, ’e all quiet, but tumas work ’e stop. Altogether ’long bush ’e no stop quiet. Plenty headman ’e come bring’m tumas man for court. Altogether steal, make’m fight, do’m no good. Altogether Catholic missionary no boil’m order b’long you for go ’long bush. Altogether say order b’long Bishop, mefella neutral, stop ’long saltwater. Headman b’long youme say altogether no hear’m talk b’long ’im, ’e hard work tumas for altogether stop quiet. ’Long station nomore everyt’ing stop goodfella, me shift’m house b’long you ontop, altogether plant’m tumas kaikai, everyone ’long lookout ’e no sleep.”5 “Number one, Andrew, number one,” I said.
With this comprehensive report I was well satisfied. The district headmen were playing the game, and trying to maintain law and order. I was also glad to hear that news of the inquest on Wilmot had traveled before us, and that my prompt arrival on the scene had had a reassuring effect all over the island. But there was much lawlessness afoot, and though the headmen who had brought in the lawbreakers were fairly cheerful they were finding it very hard to assert their influence, and none of them made any bones about the difficulty of maintaining control. I lay awake wondering whether they would stick it out when the Japs arrived.
The cadet’s house, to which Andrew had transferred my quarters, was very cool, and comfortable enough; but it was a little eerie at night, with the jungle close behind and our suspected murderer down on the station. I did not feel at all happy, and was no longer in the mood for sleep.