Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club

by Julian Leatherdale

  She looked back over her shoulder through the porthole window in the padded kiosk door. The night manager was now on the phone and the man who’d had his back to her had turned around. It was Frankie Goldman! He was looking straight at her with his matinee idol eyes and cruel mouth. The night manager, still holding the phone, also glanced in her direction.

  A young male voice answered. ‘Sorry, we haven’t seen Billy at all this week. Can I take a message?’ Joan listened to the whining telephonic hum and wondered if she could detect another presence on the line. She looked out the porthole again. Both men were still staring in her direction. Could they see her, even overhear her?

  ‘Hello?’ said the man on the other end of the phone.

  She realised she had not spoken for several seconds. ‘Sorry. Could you please let him know that Joan is trying to get in touch? It’s important.’

  When she folded back the kiosk door, Frankie was gone. The night manager had replaced the receiver on the phone and looked up as if pleasantly surprised by Joan’s appearance. ‘Ah, Miss Linderman! Has your friend recovered from her injury yet?’

  ‘She’ll be back on her feet any day now. Thanks for asking.’

  Joan was at a loss as to what to do next. It was important she warn Hugh—if it was not already too late. Who knew what Gordon and his heavies would do to him if his cover was blown?

  ‘Can I borrow your telephone directory?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  She was going to take a big gamble. There were two places Hugh might be where she could reach him by phone. The first, of course, was the flat at Kingsmere.

  She looked up the number then returned to the kiosk and placed the call. ‘Hello, I was wondering if I could speak with Hugh Evans?’

  The voice on the other end of the line was not one she recognised. A maid, perhaps, or the housekeeper. She sounded a little flustered. ‘Hold on a moment, please.’

  Joan waited. This was madness. What if Olympia came to the phone? She would instantly recognise her niece’s voice. ‘Hello, Amelia Fielding-Jones here. Can I help you?’

  Joan was rendered mute for a moment. She and Amelia had not spoken in a couple of years. Could she get away with pretending to be someone else? ‘I was hoping to speak with Mr Evans, Hugh Evans. I believe he works for Major Fielding-Jones.’

  ‘He’s not here right now,’ Amelia replied. ‘Can I ask who’s calling, please?’

  Joan lost her nerve then. This was too dangerous. She glanced over her shoulder; the night manager was on the phone again, this time half turned away from her. She hung up.

  She had one throw of the die left: Hugh’s sister Celia. She had promised Hugh never to ring him at home as his sister was still emotionally fragile from being left at the altar. Hugh had put off the fateful day of their meeting again and again just like Joan had with her own family. In fact, she did not even have a home number for Hugh.

  She began perusing the list of ‘Evans, H.’ in Balmain. There were three, so she tried to remember if Hugh had ever mentioned a nearby street or some other landmark. The London Hotel on Darling Street was his local, she knew. She cross-checked the address of The London in a copy of the 1932 Sands Directory lying inside the kiosk. Fawcett Street was walking distance from the London. She dialled.

  ‘Hello?’ It was an older woman’s voice, shaky and too loud.

  ‘I was wondering if I could speak with Celia Evans, please?’

  ‘No, you can’t. She’s dead. Who is this, please?’ The voice sounded upset and cranky, maybe even fearful. Joan was utterly confused. How could Celia be dead?

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. May I speak with her brother Hugh, perhaps?’

  ‘You must have a wrong number. Celia never had a brother. I’m her sister Harriette. Sorry, goodbye.’ The woman hung up.

  What an odd coincidence: another woman called Celia Evans living in Balmain but unrelated to Hugh? What were the chances? Joan looked at her watch. She would be late for work if she didn’t go now. She would try the other numbers later. In the meantime, she had to pray that Hugh would get in touch soon. Otherwise she would send a telegram to Communist Hall or the CPA head office on Sussex Street in her mid-morning break. She ran for her tram.

  Joan was sitting at her desk flicking through a sheaf of reader contributions for ‘Between Ourselves’. The latest issue of the magazine was on the newsstands and Mr Lofting was in a good mood as he always was when the editor-in-chief was happy and the working week had just begun, full of promise.

  Joan, however, was struggling to adjust to the normality of a day at the office. She was reminded of that disorienting feeling she always had leaving a cinema in daytime, the sudden wrench from darkness to light, from reverie to reality. Or when, as a child in Sideshow Alley at the Royal Easter Show, she had stepped off the ghost train as it emerged from its pitch-black world of spookiness into the banal glare of the everyday world.

  ‘Miss Linderman?’

  Joan looked up from her work. It was Sergeant Lillian Armfield, in plainclothes as usual with her pearl necklace and earrings. Even so, Joan could hear the eager whispers and feel the eyes of all her colleagues fixed on them in the conviction there was something up.

  ‘Sorry to bother you at work, Miss Linderman, but I have to ask that you accompany me to Central Police Station.’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Stupid question really.

  ‘We need your urgent assistance with our enquiries into the murder of Miss Eleanor Dawson and the suspicious death of Miss Jessie Simmons. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.’ This diplomatic politeness was, of course, all a performance for the benefit of Joan’s colleagues.

  ‘Jessie is dead?’ Joan felt her face drain of colour. Of course, even this was not as great a shock as the dawning realisation that she, Joan, was now a murder suspect. ‘Are you arresting me?’ Joan asked quietly.

  Armfield leaned closer to Joan and whispered: ‘I can if you wish. But I assumed you didn’t want me to escort you out of here in handcuffs in front of your boss and workmates.’

  Joan rose and went to knock on her boss’s door. ‘Sorry, Mr Lofting, but this police officer has asked me to go to the station to help them with their investigation into the nasty business at our boarding house. I could be gone some time.’

  Mr Lofting seemed quite taken with the flesh-and-blood reality of a female police officer, something he had evidently given little thought to in the past. ‘Of course, Miss Linderman. Take care. I’m sure Olive can step in again to help out.’

  Joan walked in silence up George Street alongside Sergeant Armfield. Small talk seemed pointless, if not absurd, under the circumstances. The normal, everyday world flowed around Joan but did not touch her, isolated as she was in her own bubble of sheer terror. How strange it felt to now be in the power of the very woman she lionised: admiration blended with fear, a heady mix. Her thoughts went skittering in all directions like debris in a hurricane. How could they possibly think she was a murderer? She was a victim of crime, for heaven’s sake; someone had killed her cat! What in God’s name did the police know or think they knew? Would she have to drag Hugh and Bernice and her whole family into this?

  As they entered the sandstone police station from Central Street and passed under the low stone archway into the building’s inner courtyard, Joan felt she was climbing aboard that ghost train again, entering a pitch-dark world of fear.

  Armfield ushered Joan into a small office crammed with filing cabinets and gestured for her to take a seat in front of a large banged-up desk. Armfield then introduced Joan to Inspector Richards, a senior detective with the Criminal Investigation Branch, who sat down opposite Joan.

  ‘We have asked you here today for an interview in relation to a murder investigation, Miss Linderman,’ said the Inspector. ‘Therefore, I must inform you that you have the right to remain silent and that anything you do say can be used as evidence against you in a court of law.’

  ‘But I haven’t done anything w
rong,’ protested Joan, unable to fully believe that she was no longer an observer but someone caught up inside the unyielding machinery of the legal system.

  ‘Well, then you have nothing to worry about,’ said the Inspector with a smile.

  That was not true. Joan had plenty to worry about. She knew from Bill Jenkins that if the police pulled you in for an interview and informed you of your rights, then they probably had good reasons to regard you as a suspect. Even her presence at the crime scene could be sufficient grounds. But they already had her statement from the night of the murder; what more did they want to know?

  She had learned a thing or two from Bill. ‘I believe I have the right to have a lawyer present,’ said Joan, surprised at her own assertiveness and presence of mind.

  The Inspector leaned forward and spoke in a quiet, reassuring voice. ‘That’s right, Miss Linderman, indeed you do. Is there someone you want to ring?’

  Of course there was! Joan’s mind scrambled for a name. Her father had a family solicitor, but the idea of phoning Horace was impossible to contemplate. And then she remembered her phone call with Bill Jenkins last Tuesday. Hey, Joanie, promise me something. If you do get yourself in a tight corner, give me a bell. I won’t judge.

  Joan was left alone in the office to make her phone call. ‘Bill, is that you?’

  ‘Hiya, Joanie. Are you okay?’

  ‘No. No, I’m really not.’ At the sound of Bill’s voice, she began to cry. ‘I’ve been so stupid … I’m at Central Police Station—I’ve been arrested. They want to ask me more questions about Ellie …’ ‘Okay, Joan. Take it easy. This is just routine. I can be there in about half an hour. Do you have a lawyer? No? Okay, there’s a guy I know who’s good. I’ll give him a call; he owes me a favour. For God’s sake, don’t say anything and don’t sign anything until we get there.’

  The police were not idle in the next thirty minutes. Lillian Armfield remained courteous, even solicitous, but Joan was under no illusion that she was being treated differently to any other suspect being questioned by the police. Procedure ground on with clockwork inevitability. Another female police officer, Constable Mitford, sat her down and filled out an index card with Joan’s name and address. She then took fingerprint impressions and recorded them on the same card. ‘These are simply by way of eliminating your prints from the crime scene,’ explained the officer almost cheerily. The problem was Joan’s fingerprints were all over the crime scene, particularly Ellie’s bedside table.

  Joan was then taken to a windowless room downstairs, where she was asked to stand and look into a camera. Jesus wept! Was this bending the rules? Joan was pretty sure the police were not allowed to do this unless they intended to charge her. But if Bill Jenkins was to be believed, the rise of the razor gangs and crime bosses had encouraged a more hands-on, sometimes unorthodox approach to policing that took shortcuts when needed and focused more on getting results than observing all the protocols.

  ‘Better we have this on file than call you in for a police line-up, eh, miss?’ said the duty officer who escorted her to the basement. A police line-up: what did that mean? What witnesses did the police have who could identify Joan as somehow involved in these crimes? Wally, the drunk poet? One of her neighbours at Bomora? The night manager at the Cairo? Mavis Thorne?

  None of it made any sense, but she was too shocked—and, to be honest, too frightened—to protest. What a nightmare! Her photograph would now be filed in among ‘the Specials’, the faces of the criminal underclass. Little by little she was being stolen away from herself, transformed into the police’s view of her.

  Bill Jenkins and a solicitor named Joseph Abbott arrived shortly afterwards and were shown into the interview room where Joan, Sergeant Armfield, Inspector Richards and a police stenographer joined them. Bill gave Joan a hug and whispered, ‘It’s gonna be okay, Joanie.’

  ‘Thank you for joining us, gentlemen,’ said Inspector Richards, nodding at the solicitor and then addressing the journalist in a more familiar tone. ‘Bill.’ The two police officers both knew Bill Jenkins well, of course. ‘So, let’s begin.’

  Armfield flipped open her notebook. ‘We took a short statement from you on the night of Saturday, the fifth of March, the night of the murder of Miss Eleanor Dawson, but we wish to confirm some of the details. Where were you that evening between the hours of six and eleven?’

  Joan cleared her throat. ‘As I told you, I was working—writing—in my flat. I didn’t leave until I heard someone screaming and then I ran downstairs just after eleven.’

  ‘You were alone that whole time?’

  ‘Yes. Except for my cat.’

  ‘So there are no human witnesses who can confirm where you were?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you were writing. Writing a novel. A crime novel, I believe.’

  ‘How do you … ?’

  ‘Let the record show that myself and Constable Howard conducted a search of the suspect’s premises last Sunday afternoon under the authority of a warrant issued that morning.’

  So Lillian Armfield had indeed searched Joan’s flat and maybe read parts of Joan’s manuscript—perhaps even scenes involving the fictional version of herself. Joan blushed. There was no discerning what the policewoman thought of her prose.

  ‘Have you always been interested in crime, Miss Linderman?’

  ‘As a subject for fiction, yes. For some time.’

  ‘So much so that you have in your possession eight crime scene photos, presumably copies, from our own police forensic files, is that right?’

  A wave of panic swept over Joan. Armfield had seen these tacked to the wall on her first visit to the flat and had found them again, no doubt, shoved to the back of the locked desk drawer. Joan’s eyes darted nervously in Bill’s direction.

  Bill Jenkins leaped into the gap. ‘I am responsible for those, Sergeant, not Joan. They were a gift of sorts when she and I were dating last year. I understand they are all closed cases, not currently under investigation. I can explain how I came by them …’

  ‘That won’t be necessary right now,’ interjected Richards, barely able to stop himself rolling his eyes and cracking a wry smile in Bill’s direction. ‘But we will have a little chat about it later.’

  Armfield resumed. ‘Well, that answers one of my questions. Would you say that an interest in real crime, particularly murder, is unusual for a woman?’

  ‘How is this relevant to your investigation, Sergeant?’ objected the solicitor.

  Armfield let the question go. ‘How long have you known your flatmate, Miss Becker?’

  ‘Just over four years.’

  ‘And how would you describe your relationship with her?’

  ‘We are good friends. Close friends.’

  ‘Is it true that Miss Becker has been a mentor to you? Introduced you to influential people—editors, and so on?’

  Joan looked at the solicitor anticipating a similar objection but he did not seem concerned.

  ‘Yes, she has been helpful.’

  ‘Were you aware that Miss Becker was involved in a romantic, probably sexual, relationship with the deceased?’

  ‘I …’ How could the police know that? Had Bernie written poems or candid letters to her lover that were discovered at the crime scene or even found in Joan and Bernice’s flat? That was entirely possible. ‘Yes, I became aware.’

  ‘Did Miss Becker tell you herself?’

  ‘No. I was told by someone else.’

  Armfield looked inquisitively at her.

  ‘By Jessie.’

  ‘So your close friend Miss Becker did not tell you about a relationship which had been going on for at least six months with a woman who lived in the same building?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  Miss Armfield made a face to suggest this was either untrue or at least surprising. ‘Were you home on the evening of Saturday the twenty-seventh of February, a week before the murder of Miss Dawson?’

  Joan had to stop and
think for a moment. ‘Probably. Yes. Yes, I am pretty sure I was.’

  ‘Did you hear a heated argument take place between Miss Becker and Miss Dawson on that occasion in Miss Dawson’s flat—an argument so loud, in fact, it was heard by neighbours?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘Were you aware that in the course of that argument Miss Becker threatened to kill Miss Dawson if she ever left her?’

  Joan tried to hide her shock. Bernie had admitted to hitting Ellie less than a week later in a fit of rage. Had Joan, out of love and loyalty, been too quick to dismiss Bernie as a suspect?

  ‘Who is under suspicion here?’ demanded Abbott, the solicitor. ‘This Miss Becker or my client? Maybe you are interviewing the wrong person.’

  ‘We interviewed Miss Becker two hours ago. My question stands.’

  ‘No, I heard nothing of the sort. People say stupid things in anger!’

  Bill shot Joan a look, as if warning her not to lose her temper. But Joan could not help becoming agitated now she had learned that Bernie had already been interviewed. What had she told the cops? Had she been able to stay calm?

  Inspector Richards now spoke. ‘Let’s talk about Jessie Simmons for a moment.’

  He opened a file in front of him and began. ‘Miss Simmons’ body was found this morning washed up at Camp Cove and identified soon after at the morgue by Miss Becker. A strap-on shoe matching one found on the body was found near The Gap as well as cigarette stubs with lipstick marks. The clothes she was wearing were presumably those she’d worn to the party at Elizabeth Bay House the previous Sunday. Her right cheek was slashed.’

  Poor Bernie, thought Joan. Taken in for questioning and asked to identify Jessie’s corpse. And here was an unexpected twist: was it possible that Jessie had left the hospital herself and gone to The Gap?