MURDER AT BLACK SWAN POINT
A whimpering echoed underground.

Along the cliff the duo travelled, the wind in their fur. Kitty Koala held her breath as she snuggled against Terence Tiger's soft coat. Each giant boulder vibrated with alarm. Each tiny pebble quivered underfoot. Kangaroos bounding to the crime scene covered the eyes of their curious joeys, while overhead a flock of galahs streaked the sky a wild pink. When there was trouble at Black Swan Point, the bushland creatures were the first to know.

A crowd of animals had gathered in the driveway of the Siddell's ramshackle cottage. No sooner had Terance arrived than the tiger pricked his sharp ears. From underground a whimpering echoed: "Boo-hoo-hoo!" Then, goodness! A little furry nose popped out of a burrow. "Why," Kitty exclaimed, "it's Wally Wombat!"

"Wally," said Terence breathlessly. "Whatever has happened?"

"Oh dear!" sobbed the usually gruff wombat. "Poor Ellie Siddell . . . "

Terence raised an eyebrow.

"Well," Wally murmured, slightly shamefaced, "I guess you've heard about her torrid personal life?"

Kitty blushed, wringing her paws. Ellie was a nurse at the local veterinary clinic, a fun-loving girl and strikingly pretty. But every local pet, recently vaccinated, had a story to tell about Ellie and the debonair vet. No matter that Graeme Harvey was married with three children---half the dogs in town returned from being fixed with some humiliating anecdote involving the couple's lunch-hour exploits.

A tear rolled down Wally Wombat's fur. "She was still a lovely girl, a lovely, gentle girl!"

Terence and Kitty glanced at each other. Rushing to the Siddells's windows, they peeked inside. "Turn away, Kitty!" implored the tiger: "Please don't look!" Ellie's room, with its blue rosebud wallpaper, bore evidence of a deadly struggle. The cosmetics covering her dressing table had been strewn sideways; an evening dress hung on the wardrobe door; horribly slashed. Why, even some small china ornaments on the windowsill---a turtle, a bunny, a kitten---were cracked, or shattered to dust.

Terence Tiger covered Kitty Koala's eyes. He could hardly bear to look himself, yet somehow he managed. It was as if a wild---well, frankly---a wild animal had been at work here, the tiger thought. "Who could have done such a thing?" He stared across the horizon. At the bottom of the cliffs, black swans sang mournfully. The stately birds dipped their long necks in and out of the water, arching, straining: an ocean of question marks.
 

The road along which Thomas and I were travelling was cut clear into a cliff face. Rude shadows of electricity poles and gum trees flashed across the windscreen. I lifted my skirt. Peeling off my panty hose, I examined new luminous veins running along the insides of my thighs. Thomas liked the way that primary-school teachers dress. Each morning, he claimed, teachers imagine what the children would like them to wear. "I have seen grown women in party frocks with ribbons in their hair." A posse of Alices who took a wrong turn. As my hand crept higher, Thomas's driving deteriorated. I concentrated on the scenery: the boulders could be tiny of like the buttressed walls of a cathedral. Some were very curvaceous, almost bulbous. "I spy a granite elephant complete with a trunk." I giggled. With my little eyes, rocks also form shapes like mouths, like tongues, like pornographic things.