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then, but he had added to it, put his own and his dead wife’s money into it, and now it was one of the showplaces of the district, producing some of the best merinos in the State. He was a successful grazier, running 12,000 head of sheep and 500 stud beef cattle, having achieved the dream of every old-time drover (though not that of his father Paddy, who would have remained a drover all his life if Sean’s mother had not been the strong one in the family). He was all that, yet he was still, deep in his heart, one of the old-time newspapermen, the sort who brushed aside the quick beat-up, who would dig and dig, like ink-stained archaeologists, to the foundations of a story. Malone, recognizing him for what he was, decided he would take his time with Sean Carmody.
    â€œDid you know Kenji Sagawa?”
    â€œNot really. I’ve never been interested in cotton. My dad would never have anything to do with grain—wheat, barley, sorghum, stuff like that. He was strictly for the woollies. I’m much the same. They approached me, asked me if I wanted to go in with them on raising cotton and I said no. They never came back.”
    â€œ Who?”
    â€œSagawa and his bosses from Japan. Chess Hardstaff introduced them.”
    â€œIs he involved with the cotton growing?”
    â€œNot as far as I know. As I said, he just rules, that’s all.”
    â€œDid you know him, Trev?”
    Waring took his time, taking a few more puffs on his pipe before tapping it out into an ashtray. He was like an actor with a prop; he didn’t appear to be at all a natural pipe-smoker. If he thought it gave him an air of gravity, he was wrong; there was a certain restlessness about him, like a man who wasn’t sure where the back of his seat was. Trevor Waring would never be laid back.
    â€œHe was unlike what I’d expected of a Japanese, I’d been told they liked to keep to themselves. He didn’t. He joined Rotary and the golf club and he’d even had someone put his name up for the polo club, though he didn’t know one end of a horse from another and it only meets half a dozen times a year.”
    â€œSo he was popular?”
    â€œWell, no, not exactly. For instance he was rather keen on the ladies, but they fought shy of him. You know what women are like about Asians.”
    â€œSome women,” said Carmody, defending the tolerant.
    â€œEr, yes. Some women. He came to see me last week at my office. He said he’d got three anonymous letters.”
    â€œFrom women?”
    â€œI don’t know about that. I didn’t see them. They told him Japs weren’t wanted around here. I told him I couldn’t do anything, the best thing was to go to the police.”
    â€œDid he?”
    â€œI don’t know. You’d better ask Inspector Narvo about that. He and Ken Sagawa were rather friendly at the start, I think it was Hugh Narvo who put him up for the golf club.”
    â€œFriendly at the start? Did something happen between them?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Waring shrugged, did some awkward business with his pipe. “They just didn’t seem as—well, as close as they had been. Not over the last few weeks.”
    â€œThere’s a second Japanese out at the farm, isn’t there? What’s he like?”
    â€œTom Koga? He’s young, rather unsure of himself, I’d say. I should think this, the murder, I mean, would make him even more jumpy.”
    Sean Carmody sat listening to this, his pipe gone out. Now he said, “This isn’t a simple murder. Am I right?”
    â€œMost murders aren’t,” said Malone. “Even domestics, which make up more than half the murders committed, they’re never as simple as they look. Sometimes you have to peel off the layers to find out why the murder happened—you hate doing it. You realize you’re going to make a lot of people unhappy, the family usually, who are unhappy enough