Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club

by Julian Leatherdale

  ‘Do you remember what kind of car it was?’

  ‘No. But I do remember it was one of the only times she mentioned his name.’

  Joan stared at her, holding her breath as if she would explode.

  ‘Gordon. His name was Gordon.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Friday, ten minutes before noon. Joan looked up from her watch and, with a keen awareness newly sharpened by fearful curiosity, took in the smallest details of her surroundings.

  The dining room at the Hotel Australia was packed with gentlemen and ladies having luncheon. This old-fashioned but still elegant building on Castlereagh Street, with its red Doric-columned entrance, its imposing Italian marble foyer and Victorian grand staircase in polished mahogany, was the epicentre of Sydney high society. The new Martin Place entrance opened onto a daring Art Deco lobby of black Carrara marble, multiple mirrors and walls of black glass with silver etchings that suggested an air of decadent mystery. This was where Sydney’s ‘old money’ came to primp and parade in the hushed splendour of neoclassical statues, chandeliers, palm court shrubbery and stained-glass windows.

  It was also a strategic choice of location for a blackmail drop-off, with lots of people about and none of them willing to risk a scene. Joan’s Uncle Gordon might try to tail and nab the courier after the swap was done, but surely he would not be willing to cause a ruckus in front of his peers—especially if that courier was a well-dressed society woman.

  ‘The trick is to make a neat exit, to simply disappear. It can be done, trust me,’ said Hugh, reassuring Joan that one of his friends, a waiter at the Hotel Australia, knew the layout well.

  On Monday, Hugh had borrowed a camera from a good mate who worked as a street photographer. On the Tuesday morning he mailed a photographic print of the incriminating Ladies’ Bacchus Club letterhead in an envelope addressed to Major Fielding-Jones, Flat 14, Level 7, Kingsmere. In the photo the letterhead was held up by a man wearing gloves and a heavy jacket, with a scarf obscuring his face. The attached letter, composed of cut-up newsprint, read:

  FOUND NEXT TO MURDERED WHORE AT BOMORA.

  POLICE OR PRESS NEED NEVER SEE. WILL EXCHANGE

  ORIGINAL FOR £800 AT EMERALD ROOM HOTEL AUSTRALIA

  12.30 PM FRIDAY TABLE NUMBER 6. DO NOT MAKE TROUBLE.

  WE HAVE PROOF YOU’RE IN BUSINESS WITH PHIL THE JEW.

  Hugh had rung Gordon on the Wednesday at his law firm to confirm the drop-off. Gordon had haggled over the price until Hugh—with a handkerchief over the speaker to muffle his voice, had threatened, ‘If we can’t agree on a figure, I’m hanging up.’ They settled on six hundred and fifty pounds, still a substantial sum representing over three years’ salary for someone like Joan, who now sat at table number six, nervously sipping a glass of wine and apologising to the waiter as her ‘lunch guest’ was running late.

  With help from her neighbours Velma and Iris (‘I’m playing a prank on a friend of mine!’) and their vaudeville colleagues, who were well-acquainted with Sydney’s wardrobe shops, Joan had acquired two blonde wigs, a fox fur-collared coat, a summer dress with shoes, gloves and handbag to match, and a make-up job that rendered her unrecognisable. Looking around the crowded dining room, she anxiously checked and rechecked the time on the lovely marcasite watch that Velma had lent her to complete the impersonation of a well-heeled socialite.

  ‘Jesus, these bastards have no inkling there’s a depression going on,’ thought Joan as she took in the glamour of the Emerald Room: the rococo ceiling high overhead, the monstrous Italian chandeliers, the white linen tablecloths and gleaming silverware (including fingerbowls), the tinkling fountain surrounded by a bevy of coy marble nudes. She glanced down at the menu in front of her—she had neither the means nor the stomach to eat anything—and blinked in disbelief at the cost of the offerings: Oyster Cocktail, Green Turtle Madeira-style, Filets of Whiting, Grilled Grain Chicken with Fresh Peas and Saratoga Potatoes, Omelette Surprise.

  In the midst of all these smartly dressed people with their bright, confident faces and gay laughter, their colourful highballs and plates of glistening food, someone was watching her intently. Maybe more than one person. There was no denying the fear that made her heart surge and her body go clammy, even though Hugh had promised he would have eyes on her the whole time and had a plan to get her out safely if anything went wrong. Were any of these silver-haired gents dabbing at the gravy on their chins carrying a gun? No, it was unlikely. As Hugh had reminded her: ‘They rarely pull the trigger themselves when they rob us. They have politicians and judges and cops to do that.’

  So who would Gordon send to conduct this sordid transaction? Joan wondered as she scanned the room. A strongman from the New Guard? One of Jeffs’s standover men? Joan still found it hard to believe that her uncle would go through with the meeting at all. It was as good as an admission of guilt, she thought, though Hugh had explained that sometimes the rich were happy to pay up just to make trouble go away. ‘Even if Gordon is innocent of murder, he wouldn’t want his name or Olympia’s publicly linked to a dead whore. Bad for business. A few pounds is a small price to pay to avoid that. Especially right now, on the brink of his moment of triumph as a New Guard commander, about to crush the workers’ revolution.’

  Joan had her eyes cast down, fiddling with one of her gloves, when someone slid into the seat opposite. The stranger had appeared so suddenly that she startled at the sight of him. He was a thickset older gentleman with a ruddy face, close-shaven except for his neatly trimmed grey moustache. He had the unmistakeable air of an ex-AIF officer, despite his dull, double-breasted blue suit. Obviously not expecting to encounter a woman, he studied Joan for a long moment with a surprised scowl and then, under cover of reading the menu, leaned forward and asked in a gruff voice, ‘Where is it?’

  Joan slid the envelope across the table inside a folded menu. Given the tension of the situation (Would the man simply grab the envelope and walk away? Would a police officer swoop down and arrest Joan for attempted blackmail?), she almost laughed when her ‘lunch guest’ fished a pair of reading glasses out of his inside jacket pocket and proceeded to scrutinise the envelope’s contents. They both looked alarmed when a waiter approached; the poor fellow was dismissed with a curt wave of the gent’s hand.

  Without a word, the gentleman then resealed the envelope and tucked it and his reading glasses in the same inside jacket pocket. He then took a second envelope from his trouser pocket and slipped it under the napkin in his lap. Leaning forward again to show Joan something on the menu, he placed the napkin in the centre of the table. Joan joined in this absurd pantomime, nodding at the menu and then placing her hand on the napkin as he refreshed her water glass from the jug.

  As instructed by Hugh, she dropped the napkin in her lap, opened the envelope and discreetly inspected the banknotes inside. Satisfied the contents were correct, she hastily shoved the envelope into the depths of her handbag. Not a soul at the tables around them had so much as glanced in their direction. What now? The brief expression of relief on Joan’s face must have been a signal, for in that instant another waiter was at her elbow. ‘Is everything to your satisfaction, madam?’ he asked, giving Joan a significant look.

  Joan nodded.

  Several things then happened at once. ‘Time to go,’ the waiter whispered as he hurriedly ushered her from her seat towards the nearest exit, brandishing his large metal tray like a shield. Her uncle’s emissary leaped to his feet in what must have appeared at first a gesture of chivalry but was, as it turned out, in readiness for pursuit. He was immediately joined by another younger gentleman who had been seated a few tables away. But as they neared the exit, they were detained by the head waiter, who suggested in a deferential but stern tone that the two gents should settle their bills before departing.

  Joan hurried from the dining room to be greeted by Hugh, almost unrecognisable in a well-cut suit, a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and a pigeon-grey homburg. Hugh smiled and, grabbing her by the shoulder
s, guided her quickly towards the ladies’ powder room close by. ‘Give me the handbag,’ he whispered as he ushered her through the door.

  Inside, Joan was greeted by one of Hugh’s comrades, Violet, who was wearing the second blonde wig styled to look identical to Joan’s. ‘Okay, love, time to get changed.’ The two women swapped coats and in less than a minute Violet had emerged from the powder room resembling the socialite from table six. Shortly afterwards, Joan, with her own dark hair and a different overcoat, took the elevator downstairs and left the building through the Martin Place lobby.

  Meanwhile, Hugh removed the envelope smartly from the handbag and pocketed it in his suit. The bag itself he dropped behind a cushion on a crushed velvet settee near the entrance to the Moorish Lounge where, soon after, it was collected by Violet as she made her way to the grand central staircase. It was here that Gordon’s men caught up with her.

  ‘You should have seen the look on their faces when these two mugs bailed me up!’ laughed Violet, recounting the story later. ‘They insisted on looking in my handbag. When I threatened to call the police, they backed off quick smart. Couldn’t work out how they had been played so thoroughly.’

  In Martin Place, Joan checked her watch: the drop-off had taken less than ten minutes all up. Her heart, galloping furiously through the whole episode, was beginning to slow again. Now she felt a rush of excitement and relief that made her want to whoop out loud. ‘I did it! Goddamn! I did it.’ Hugh’s confidence in her had been justified. And the two (what appeared to Joan as) New Guardsmen sent by Gordon had definitely been thrown off their stride by encountering a woman.

  So that’s what it feels like to work undercover! thought Joan—though, admittedly, she had gone undercover to commit a crime rather than expose one. Depending on your point of view, of course. Hugh was justifiably paranoid about being tracked by CIB detectives in disguise, including the master of undercover police work, Frank Fahy, known as ‘The Shadow’. Sergeant Jo Chuck (nicknamed ‘The Bogeyman’) was a regular at the artists’ balls, in drag or costumed as Pierrot. Bill had told Joan the stories about how Sergeant Armfield herself had posed as a customer to expose fortune-tellers ripping off grieving families after the war. When a cop on foot patrol in Centennial Park had been shot dead by a bag-snatcher a while ago, male officers decided to flush out the killer by dressing up as young women in wigs and frocks. It was Sergeant Armfield who taught them how to act convincingly female!

  On the tram back from Tempe yesterday, Joan had thought feverishly about everything Ruby Dawson had told her: Ellie’s distrust of her flatmate Jessie; the additional payment from Olympia for her night at the Ladies’ Bacchus Club; and, most startling of all, the identification of Ellie’s gentleman caller—a kindly protector, not a sugar daddy—as Gordon.

  So did Ruby’s testimony make Gordon more or less likely to be Ellie’s murderer? Joan could not be sure. But his now proven connection to Ellie—whether innocent or damning—certainly explained his willingness to pay off his blackmailer with little hesitation.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  That evening Hugh and Joan met for supper at Comino’s Oyster Saloon on William Street.

  ‘That is what I call an unqualified success!’ Hugh said as he handed her a bag containing the wig and overcoat Violet had worn. Under the table he slipped her the envelope of banknotes. ‘I had to pay two people a small fee for playing their part, but you still have close to six hundred and forty quid there for your folks. Keep it somewhere safe. Not a bank. I suggest you give it to your parents in instalments so as not to alarm them. Say you got a raise. Or a big advance on a novel! Two novels maybe? You don’t want to draw attention to your sudden fortune.’

  Joan kissed the handsome face of her clever and fearless warrior of justice, her desire mixed with gratitude that he had been amenable to her playing a part in their elaborate subterfuge. It was the most breathtakingly exciting thing she had ever done.

  ‘Tell me, why were you wearing that flash suit earlier?’ she asked, as they recalled the scene of their triumph.

  Hugh was back in his shabby trousers and jacket. The nasty bruise on his forehead, hidden under his hat earlier that day, was beginning to fade a little but was still noticeable. She did not know which Hugh she preferred: the ragged, idealistic soldier-poet or the smartly dressed fellow at the Hotel Australia. Was there not an in-between version of Hugh she could wholeheartedly embrace?

  Having shared the thrill and danger of today’s adventure, Joan felt closer to Hugh than ever before. Part of her was desperate to share the news from Tempe with him and hear what he thought. She wanted to make Hugh her confidante, her partner, her colleague in solving this case. She felt so alone in her quest for the truth. Not even Bernice, her closest friend, was above suspicion. But something held her back. Hugh had been so cross when she had first confessed to taking the note from the crime scene and making the phone call to Gordon. Would he be similarly angry—or, even worse, dismissive—of her amateur sleuth efforts? Would he insist now that she turn the whole thing over to the cops? Joan was reluctant to test the waters. How disappointed she would be to find out Hugh was no different to Bill Jenkins and all other men!

  Hugh sat back and spread his fingers before him; he was clearly in a relaxed, expansive mood. ‘Let’s order something nice to eat. And then I’ll tell you an interesting story.’ He had a big grin on his face. Something about the gleam in his eye set her heart fluttering, as if she were perfectly poised on the edge of excitement and fear; her instinct told her that her understanding of the world was about to take another unexpected turn.

  And so it proved as, over a hefty pile of oysters and chips, Hugh Evans unfolded the story of his secret double life …

  When he had returned from the war, he had been lost and angry for a long time. And then a bloke from his battalion had invited Hugh to a meeting of the Balmain branch of the Australian Communist Party. And everything he heard there made sense of a world gone mad and called to the volcanic rage inside himself.

  Around the same time, he had also been invited for a drink or two and a nostalgic yarn at the Tattersalls Club with his commanding officer, Major Gordon Fielding-Jones. ‘You were one of my finest, Hugh,’ he had said. ‘If there’s ever anything I can do …’ The door had been left open and it got Hugh to thinking that he must keep in touch with the Major.

  ‘I’ve never wavered in my commitment to communism, Joanie,’ he insisted now. ‘I want you to remember that when I tell you what happened next.’

  When the New Guard was being formed the year before, Gordon had approached his trusted lieutenant to recruit him to the cause. It was then that Hugh had conceived an audacious plan which he took to the Balmain branch of the ACP. He knew that the police planted undercover agents in the ranks of the party and no doubt inside the fascist militia as well. Why shouldn’t the party do the same to the New Guard?

  ‘We need eyes and ears inside this new militia,’ Hugh, who had worked in military intelligence for a while during the Great War, told his comrades. ‘I could use this opportunity to get close to some of the senior command.’ And then he revealed the most daring aspect of his proposal. ‘To fully win their confidence, I will offer to be their spy inside the Australian Communist Party.’ As a double agent, Hugh would have to provide the New Guard with some credible intelligence but, in return, he hoped to learn critical information about their plans. The party saw merit in this scheme and thanked their comrade for his courage and self-sacrifice.

  ‘So that’s how I became a member of Gordon’s personal bodyguard, one of his trusted right-hand men. Hence the flash suit and hat, my disguise as a New Guardsman.’

  Joan stared at him in utter astonishment, at a loss for words.

  ‘Two days ago, Gordon asked me to take care of some nasty blackmail business, though he didn’t go into details. “A commie scumbag trying to make trouble for me,” he said. That made me laugh! So I was able to plan our little blackmail operation from both sides. He�
��ll be furious we didn’t catch the blackmailer, of course, but it’s not like he can’t afford the money.’ Hugh drained his glass and reached for another oyster. ‘I’m not sure what the party would make of our little Robin Hood stunt, though. They’d approve of stealing from the rich to help the poor, but I didn’t do it in the name of class struggle; I did it for you.’

  No wonder Hugh had been so confident their blackmail scheme would work: he’d been pulling the strings from both sides! Joan was stunned by these revelations. But while they deepened her admiration for Hugh’s nerve, she did not like to think about what would happen if the New Guard discovered the truth.

  ‘I imagine my uncle is pretty jumpy right now,’ she said. ‘I hope he doesn’t start suspecting that one of his bodyguards is a snake in the grass.’

  ‘Your uncle believes that all the men who served under him regarded him with nothing but love and respect and willingly followed him into the hell-fire of every battle—me most of all.’ There was a note of bitterness in Hugh’s voice.

  Joan had to believe that Hugh knew what he was doing; he was a war hero, after all, and he had faced much worse dangers than this and knew which risks to take. But, oh, how tempted Joan was to tell him what Ruby Dawson had told her! She was convinced now that Gordon was Ellie’s ‘mystery man’. But was Ruby’s recollection evidence enough? Would the cops think that Joan had influenced her, corrupted her memory perhaps?

  Joan needed more concrete proof—and it occurred to her that, as a member of Gordon’s personal bodyguard, Hugh was probably in an ideal position to find the evidence she needed. Letters? A diary? A souvenir of their secret liaisons? Was it possible Gordon would be that careless? It looked like he had given Ellie the number for his direct line at work, that he had gone shopping with her in town and dropped her off at her mother’s house in Tempe. Was he really such a reckless, sentimental fool? Anything seemed possible.