Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club

by Julian Leatherdale

  ‘But then I overheard Olympia on the phone to Gordon at his club later that same evening. Geoffrey thinks he knows who your blackmailer is. Recognised her tonight, snooping around in your study. Our niece, that’s who! Probably in cahoots with that crazy woman Becker. They were both friends with the dead woman and want to pin her death on us. You have to scare her off.’

  A groan escaped Hugh’s lips and again he clutched his head in pain. It seemed to Joan that every time he had manipulated events to his own purpose, along came another unexpected contingency to knock him off course. ‘When Geoffrey told me he had killed your cat and left you a death threat on Gordon’s orders, I knew you would probably be too scared to hand over evidence to the police. He also told me he was trailing you all over town and had seen you and Bernice taken into Central Police Station for questioning!

  ‘So what was I supposed to do now? I was worried that Geoffrey, though no genius, would begin to suspect you and I were working together. It would be all up for me then. That’s why I had to stay away from you for a couple of days to throw him off the scent. In the end, of course, the penny did drop for Geoffrey and he came after you. But that took a while.

  ‘In the meantime, I had to change the story again, come up with something spectacular to take the police’s attention off you and Bernice and put the spotlight back on Olympia and Gordon. Something the police couldn’t ignore but a crime that still tied them to Ellie’s murder. And then I realised you had already handed the answer to me on a plate!’

  ‘I had?’ Joan’s voice was husky with grief.

  ‘Yes! You insisted I see that Greek play, The Bacchae, about the crazy women who hunt down the King of Thebes and tear his head off. By now I think my disease was starting to really play all sorts of games with my mind. I was prepared to risk anything to put Gordon behind bars for murder.’ Hugh’s attention drifted away again to the horizon, where the newly opened bridge floated in the darkness inside a cloud of light. Some rooms had blacked out inside the silhouette of Bomora; perhaps bored partygoers were resorting to smashing the light bulbs.

  ‘You know something, Joanie? I feel for the down-and-outs who have to use whatever they can to get by. The con men and women, the impersonators, the frauds, the spielers, the magsmen and “go-getters”. In my book, the rich, the self-deluded and the greedy, they’re all fair game for these con artists. It’s the age of the con man, after all. The con man is king. Tell the people what they want to hear, make them promises you can’t keep. Whether you’re Prime Minister Joe Lyons or Premier Jack Lang or Lieutenant Colonel Eric Campbell, it’s all the same.

  ‘But I always hated the likes of Frankie Goldman. An inferior type of human being who enjoys violence and cruelty for their own sake and uses them to make money for his boss. A lieutenant loyally serving his commander. A bully selling out everyone under him, sacrificing their lives. He reminded me of myself as a lieutenant in France. Sickening.

  ‘I knew Frankie was easily flattered. I told him that Gordon knew he was the real chief of the cocaine trade and wanted to cut him a better deal on selling snow to veterans. Would he come to a private meeting with Gordon? Just him. Not a word to his boss. Hush-hush. Frankie took the bait. I drove him down to the empty warehouses at Darling Harbour. There I shot him in the back. Later that night, I chopped his head off. Messy, yes. Very. But no worse than the carnage I saw in France. Just body parts, all of it. And this bloke had it coming.

  ‘Delivering the head to Jeffs was the tricky bit. But it left a convenient trail of blood in the boot of Gordon’s car. And I added the nice touch of the Ladies’ Bacchus Club letterhead in his mouth. I like to think Olympia would’ve approved of that. At least this time there was no chance of you coming along to steal it. And I knew that Jeffs would be so angry with Gordon he would hand him over, all stitched up with bags of snow, to the cops.’

  Hugh was silent for a moment. He was a little breathless, having talked almost non-stop for the last ten minutes. His face appeared oddly calm now, as if he were relieved to have unburdened himself of his ghastly secrets. The balm of the confessional. Joan sincerely hoped that he did not expect her to absolve him of three murders, particularly those of two innocent women. Why had he confessed to her at all? Because she had left him no room to move? Yes, Greta’s little secret was certainly a key piece of solving the puzzle. But Joan suspected that Hugh also wanted her to know how clever he was and how committed to destroying Gordon for his crimes. It had been a marathon of improvisation and invention, of quick-thinking and ruthless subterfuge and he was proud of it all.

  ‘Why have you told me all this?’ asked Joan. ‘Do you want me to go to the police?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’ Hugh shrugged. ‘I don’t really care now. It would have been good to see Gordon go to gaol, to pay for his crimes. But it’s your story now, to do with as you wish. And in the end, you are the only judge and jury I care about, Joanie.’

  ‘But you’ve confessed to murder. Three murders!’ Joan was astonished at Hugh’s seeming lack of remorse for what he had done and for the terrible responsibility he wanted to lay on her. ‘You can’t put that on to me. That’s not fair. You have to go to the police.’

  ‘Shhh, please don’t distress yourself, Joanie. It’s all too late for that now. I’m sorry I had to drag you into this mess. That was not my intention. But I believe everything I did was for a good cause. To bring people like Gordon to justice—for what he did to me and so many others; to your brothers, to your parents. All I wanted was for you to understand my reasons before I go.’

  ‘What do you mean before you go? Where are you going?’ What did Hugh intend to do?

  Hugh did not seem to hear Joan’s question. ‘I hope that perhaps one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me.’ He interrupted himself as he suddenly reached into an inside pocket in his suit jacket. ‘Oh, wait a minute—there’s something I have to give you.’

  But at that precise moment, a terrifying ruckus could be heard from inside Bomora. There were screams and cries of dismay that seemed to flow from room to room. And then there was a gunshot. Angry and frightened voices erupted all over the building. A second gunshot followed. ‘Jesus! She’s mad! Call the cops!’

  The noise grew rapidly louder and closer. The door of the downstairs laundry flew open and a tall figure in a billowing silver dress rushed into the backyard. She was silhouetted for a moment in the blaze of light from inside the house so that neither Joan nor Hugh could make out the woman’s face. But there was something in her carriage, in the cut and bounce of her shoulder-length hair, that was disturbingly familiar. She held a small pistol in her trembling hands.

  ‘Amelia?’

  Joan’s whole body went numb. She felt Death’s bony finger tapping her on the shoulder. The swoop of fear in her belly and the cold sweat on her face did not lie. Her time had come.

  ‘Where is she? Where is the bitch?’ Amelia’s cry was halfway between a sob and shriek of rage. It was the cry of someone whose whole world had been smashed to pieces. There was nowhere for Joan to run or hide. ‘There you are!’ Amelia shouted. It was obvious she was drunk, maybe even high. ‘You fucking bitch! You’ll pay for what you did!’

  Amelia aimed the gun at Joan’s chest and pulled the trigger. The flash was blinding. In the very last second, Joan saw Hugh step into the line of fire. The bullet struck him in the right shoulder. His body spun sideways; he cried out in pain and buckled to his knees.

  Before Amelia had time to fire again, the lumbering figure of Frank Bennett had burst through the back door and was upon her, tackling her to the ground. Now police sirens could be heard close by and lights could be seen in Macleay Street, washing the surrounding buildings in a ghostly blue glow. It looked like the neighbours must have rung the cops a while ago about the riotous party at Bomora and it had taken this long for the police to begin their raid.

  Good timing, thought Joan. She ran to Hugh, who had somehow managed to stagger to his feet. She was still taking
in the fact that he had almost certainly saved her life. Again.

  ‘Hugh … ?’

  ‘I love you, Joanie, I really do,’ he said regretfully. ‘Take care of yourself.’

  He kissed her passionately on the lips then took off at a quick trot towards the back fence. Even with the spreading patch of blood on his right shoulder, he found the momentum and strength to vault up onto the back fence, fling his right leg over and, with a shout, drop down onto the far side. Before the first cop made it inside the building, Hugh Evans had disappeared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was a triple-knock at the door.

  Joan rolled over and looked at her alarm clock. Her head was pounding severely. Christ, who was this at quarter to eight on a Sunday morning? Especially after the Saturday night she had just been through.

  The triple-knock repeated. And then a voice called out. ‘Miss Linderman?’

  Joan knew that voice all too well. Sergeant Lillian Armfield. What on earth did she want?

  ‘Hold on, I’m coming!’ Joan pulled on her dressing-gown and unbolted the door.

  The policewoman stood there in her pearls and twill jacket, that familiar soulful expression on her face. ‘I am genuinely sorry to disturb you so early. But I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

  ‘Is there any other kind?’ Joan pulled a sour face. ‘Am I under arrest again?’

  ‘No. May I come in?’

  ‘Of course. Cup of tea?’

  The policewoman nodded. ‘Thank you. Nice place,’ she observed, looking around the flat. ‘Given you didn’t have much time to look.’

  ‘Christ Almighty! Not her again!’ Bernice was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, nursing her headache with both hands. ‘Are you still convinced I murdered poor Ellie?’

  ‘No, Miss Becker, we are not at all convinced of that. But we are not ready to close the case yet. New evidence seems to turn up all the time.’

  ‘Like Frankie Goldman’s head?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Joan cleared her typewriter and her manuscript from the small kitchen table, and she and Sergeant Armfield sat down while Bernice made the tea. After all the excitement of the police raid on Bomora, Joan and Bernice had been given a free ride in a Black Maria to Central Police Station late the previous night along with some of the other guests to provide short statements and pay a small fine. The cops were unimpressed by the amount of sly-grog on the premises but, given that the whole building was condemned, they didn’t take the property damage too seriously. Joan and Bernice had argued that their lease was not finished until Sunday so nobody was strictly trespassing as they were all ‘invited guests’. The police had rolled their eyes at that elegant dodge! Bernice pointed out that if a similarly wild, boozy party had taken place at Darling Point or Mosman, the cops would have given the ladies and gents a good talking-to and walked away; this did not impress any of the officers on duty and earned her a foul-mouthed reprimand.

  Amelia was taken into custody and charged with possession of an illegal firearm and discharging a weapon in public. As no one other than Hugh and Frank Bennett had witnessed Amelia firing at her, Joan decided not to say anything about what had happened. She asked Frank to keep quiet too. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she told Amelia. ‘I’m not the one you want. It’s Phil Jeffs who’s screwed your parents over. Sic your lawyers onto him if you dare!’

  Bernice thought she was crazy to let her cousin off, but Joan had made up her mind. She hoped that Amelia already regretted her moment of insanity and was sobering up after spending a night in the cells. She even felt some compassion for her, though she would never admit this to anyone, least of all Bernice. Pressing charges would only make matters worse.

  ‘How is the novel going, if I may ask?’

  Joan may have been mistaken, but she thought she detected a note of contrition in Sergeant Armfield’s voice.

  ‘I’m still trying to work out the ending. Just like you.’

  ‘Of course.’ The policewoman cleared her throat. ‘Now, I have something to give you, Miss Linderman. But I must warn you that you may find it distressing.’

  ‘Please, call me Joan. After all this …’ Joan had no words to summarise everything that had occurred in the last two weeks and how it had affected her life.

  ‘Very well, Joan.’

  The policewoman pulled an envelope out of her pocket and placed it on the kitchen table. It was splashed with blood which had begun to dry to a dark red-brown. Joan’s hand flew to her mouth. She had a dreadful intuition.

  ‘We found this at six o’clock this morning on the footpath on the southern side of the bridge. It was inside a man’s jacket that had been folded up and placed next to a pair of shoes.’

  Joan began to cry, gently at first. She turned the envelope over and there, in Hugh’s handwriting, was her name: Joan Linderman. Grief clutched at her chest and throat so tightly, Joan could barely bring herself to speak. ‘Was there … a body?’ This was already an admission of disaster. She knew how this story ended.

  ‘No, Joan. No body.’

  ‘So …’ Joan’s hands were shaking. ‘So he …’ She could not finish the sentence. The oddest thought occurred to her then: was Hugh the first person to commit suicide from Sydney’s new bridge? As if this mattered! Two bridge workers had fallen to their deaths during construction. But had the engineers given any thought to acts of suicide when they designed the pedestrian pathway and its fence? Probably not. Maybe they would now.

  ‘It appears that he must have jumped. We’ve asked the Water Police to inspect the most likely spots.’

  Joan’s crying now escalated into full-throated sobs. Was it wrong for her to grieve over the death of a man who had confessed to killing three people? Wrong or not, she could not help herself. It was as if all the memories stored in her body had yet to catch up with the knowledge in her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joan.’

  Bernice placed a hand on Joan’s arm to comfort her. But she was beyond consolation. She kept nodding repeatedly, as if trying to persuade herself that Hugh had made the right decision, that she must accept this as the best possible ending. Images flashed into her mind of him pacing the pathway, smoking furiously. And then sitting patiently to watch the sun come up. Wouldn’t it have been easier to jump in the dark, so as not to see the metal-grey water looming up at him? Maybe he wanted someone to see him fall. He had said his disease was destroying his brain, playing havoc with his mind. It seemed then that Hugh’s plan all along had been to end his life before his mind deteriorated further. That his suicide was also a result of his own guilt, a sentence he passed on himself, was not at all clear.

  ‘His name was Hugh Evans, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he also used the name Billy Watts.’

  Joan looked up at Armfield. This was not delivered as a question.

  ‘We’ve been interested in Hugh for some time. Ever since he joined the Communist Party and then the New Guard. He would have made a very useful witness in our investigation of the Fielding-Joneses.’

  Joan nodded. Hugh had always been convinced the cops were on his case. He was right to be paranoid. But then, a lot like Bernie, he also seemed at home in this city of shadows.

  ‘We’ll need to have a talk with you about him at some stage. But not now. I think you’ve been through enough the last couple of weeks. We’ll be in touch.’

  The policewoman finished her tea and stood up. ‘Thank you, ladies. I’m sorry we had to go so hard on you both earlier. It was nothing personal. Just part of the job.’

  ‘Of course, we understand.’ Bernice stood up to usher Armfield to the door. ‘We want the person who killed Ellie and Jess brought to justice just as much as you do.’

  ‘Sergeant Armfield?’

  The policewoman turned at the door. ‘Yes, Joan?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  After the policewoman left, Bernice asked if Joan needed to be alone for a little while. ‘Than
ks Bernie, love. Yes, I think I could use some time.’

  ‘No worries. I was due to have a coffee with a friend later this morning anyway.’ Bernie dressed quickly and patted her flatmate on the shoulder as she left. ‘Be kind to yourself, Joanie.’

  Alone now, Joan opened the blood-splattered envelope from Hugh. The blood must have come from the bullet wound in his right shoulder, his stigmata from the attack by Amelia in Bomora’s backyard. Did he step between Joan and the gun out of love for her? Or was he hoping for a quick suicide that could be mistaken for a heroic sacrifice? If Amelia’s bullet had killed him, he would have been spared the decision to take his own life. But Joan preferred to think the impulse had been to save her and not himself.

  The envelope did not contain a letter of confession, as she was half expecting, or even a suicide note; a farewell from her lover who knew his mind was failing and had contemplated taking his own life. Instead, an old watch with a worn leather strap and a scratched brass case and winder fell into the palm of her hand. Was this the object that Hugh had fumbled for before Amelia arrived on the scene? Oh, wait a minute—there’s something I have to give you.

  A watch … Was it Hugh’s? And why was this his parting gift to her? It made no sense.

  As she turned it over in her hand, the mystery of this object deepened. Engraved on the back of the brass case was the message: To James with love from Horace and Gloria. Joan cried out in shock and anguish. Dear God! It was an old banged-up trench watch, a gift from her parents to her brother James before he left for France.

  How on earth had Hugh come to possess it? Joan knew that Hugh and James had been officers together in Gordon’s battalion. She’d had the impression they did not know each other that well, though Hugh had mentioned the odd encounter. Was it possible that James, convinced he would not return from some suicidal foray into no-man’s-land, had handed this watch to Hugh as a keepsake? But then why had Hugh waited so long to return it to Joan and her family? Joan was not sure what to do next. Would giving this memento to Horace and Gloria bring them any comfort or only worsen their grief and speculation about James’s final fate?