by Robert Gott
Ros had suggested to Joe Sable that he might like to move into Peter’s bedroom, with its private bathroom, but Joe had declined the offer. His stay in the house wouldn’t be permanent. As soon as he could find alternative accommodation he’d do so. Building a new house was out of the question at the moment. Materials for such an enterprise were scarce, and the war economy meant anyway that new builds were restricted. He’d have to buy an existing property, which he intended to do. It was simply a matter of finding one. There was no urgency, although Joe had never felt entirely at ease in Peter Lillee’s house, despite every assurance that he was welcome. He’d accepted Helen’s offer of employment, though, without hesitation. She’d assured him that he wouldn’t be spying on the wives of disgruntled husbands.
Joe’s experience in policing was limited. He’d been promoted quickly, too quickly, and the promotion had been a mistake. It had created resentment at Russell Street, and he’d disappointed Lambert, who’d made this clear and who hadn’t discouraged Joe’s resignation. He wasn’t sure what private inquiry agents actually did. He’d always thought of them as vaguely sleazy, more associated with the lubricious Truth newspaper than either The Argus or The Age. He’d had a frank discussion with Helen before he’d accepted her offer of employment. His heart had sunk a little when she’d said that he’d need to do some work on book-keeping, not because the finances of Helen Lord and Associates would be his concern, but because she imagined that corporate fraud might form a part of their investigations. Joe hated accounting. But what skills did he bring to this position? He’d been to detective school — that title belied the seriousness of the training he’d received there — and he had a good knowledge of European art and some acquaintance with Australian art. These were not particularly impressive credentials. Helen had told him that he was underestimating his abilities and that what he had in spades was a quality that no amount of training could provide: courage.
Joe was in his room reading when Inspector Lambert arrived to speak to Helen. Ros Lord answered the door. They spoke briefly about the sadness and distress of her brother’s recent funeral, and she took him into the library, where Helen was waiting. Titus found the opulence of Peter Lillee’s house — now, more correctly, Ros Lord’s house — disconcerting. It didn’t marry at all with what he knew of Helen Lord, and he felt slightly ill at ease, a feeling he didn’t care for. The last time he’d felt like this had been inside St Patrick’s cathedral. For her part, Helen too was uncomfortable. Here was Inspector Lambert, the head of Homicide and until recently her superior, sitting in her house, the house she’d grown up in and the grandeur of which she’d long since become inured to, and he was coming to her as a professional equal. Clara had passed on Lambert’s request for a meeting and had said that it involved the recent deaths in Nunawading. She hadn’t said any more than that. Despite the closeness of their friendship, Clara’s discretion, until she was released from the need for it, was a quality that Helen admired and that she knew she could depend on.
Inspector Lambert took in the impressive room. The walls were crowded with pictures of various sizes. He supposed Joe Sable would know what each of them was, but to him they were simply a gallimaufry of shape and colour.
‘Dr Dawson no doubt explained why I wanted to, needed to, talk to you.’
‘Only in the sketchiest terms, Inspector.’
‘I think we can dispense with the “Inspector”, Helen.’
‘I’ll try, but it feels strange to call you “Titus”. I’ve never thought of you as “Titus”, only as Inspector Lambert.’
Lambert smiled. ‘Well, I’m still that, but under the circumstances …’
‘I will try, Titus. Clara said that this was about those awful deaths in Nunawading. The newspapers had a bit of a field day.’
‘They did, but they got nowhere near the truth, which is why I want to talk to you.’
‘Four bodies, Titus. It’s astonishing.’
‘And one survivor.’
Lambert paused.
‘He’s a man named Zachary Wilson. He was injured in the explosion and has been in hospital with no memory of what happened, which may or may not be convenient. At the moment, for him it’s inconvenient, because I’ve arrested him on suspicion of murder. And because the case has attracted such public notice, bail has been refused. Apparently, people won’t feel safe in their beds unless they’re assured the killer has been locked up.’
‘You’re not convinced, though, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Why arrest him?’
‘This is where I hope you’ll come in, Helen. My being here is, as you know, irregular, and irregular in a career-ending way if it got out.’
‘You didn’t need to say that, Titus.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. The information I’m about to give you is known to a handful of people inside Homicide.’
Lambert reached inside his coat and withdrew an envelope. There was the slightest hesitancy in his movement, which Helen noticed and which she read as uncertainty about the course he’d chosen to take. She understood that what was about to happen represented a stunning breach of protocol, a breach for which Inspector Lambert ought rightly to be dismissed by his superiors. A small part of her wondered if she could trust a man capable of such a breach, despite the fact that he was demonstrating enormous trust in her. He handed Helen the first of four photographs — four from among the dozens taken by Martin Serong. Helen looked at the first photograph.
‘The young man hanging from the rafter is a 17-year-old Italian farm worker named Emilio Barbero.’
Lambert was unsurprised when Helen immediately noticed the axe leaning against a wall, even though in this photograph it was out of focus.
‘The axe was used to murder this woman.’
He passed a picture of Deborah Fisher to Helen. It was a wide shot of the bedroom, with Fisher’s body, and the damage done to her face, clearly visible.
‘I imagine there are more graphic photographs of this than you’ve chosen.’
‘Yes. Her name is Deborah Fisher. She was 25 years old, and married to this man.’
He produced a small portrait photograph of Peter Fisher, borrowed from the house.
‘He was 35. This is what was left of him.’
He gave Helen the final photograph. Again, this was a wide shot so that the bottom half of his torso was visible, as was the small, starkly white corpse of the baby in his lap.
‘The man you’ve arrested for murder …’
‘Mr Zachary Wilson. He’s an orchardist who owns the neighbouring property.’
‘Which of these people is he suspected of having killed?’
‘At this point, all of them.’
‘So, to put it crudely, Mr Wilson took an axe to Mrs Fisher, strung Mr Barbero up, knocked Mr Fisher unconscious, or killed him, and then blew him up, and killed a six-month-old baby as well — not necessarily in that order.’
‘That’s certainly what we’re supposed to believe, but there are complications.’
‘How could this possibly get more complicated?’
‘Emilio Barbero’s are the only fingerprints on the axe handle, which would be suggestive, except that the autopsy revealed that he’d been dead for at least 12 hours before Deborah Fisher’s death.’
‘And I presume it was that axe that was used to kill her and the baby?’
‘Blood and tissue from each of them was on the blade and on the handle, so we’re assuming that was the particular weapon, yes.’
‘So whoever wielded it wanted to implicate Emilio Barbero? But he was inconveniently already dead. He must have worn gloves — the killer, I mean.’
‘Zachary Wilson was wearing gloves, gardening gloves, and there was blood on them. Deborah Fisher’s blood. Peter Fisher wasn’t wearing gloves, and his hands did have blood on them, but he was holding his dead son after all.’
‘This looks too much like a lay-down misère to be an actual lay-down misère.’
‘I haven’t got to the complication yet.’
Lambert reached into his pocket again and produced a folded piece of paper.
‘This is a piece of information that was withheld from the press. It’s an accusation, typed, but signed by Peter Fisher. As far as we can tell, the signature is correct. It was found between the pages of a family Bible — a Fisher family Bible that dates back to the nineteenth century. Forensics have the Bible at the moment.’
‘I presume you think the Bible itself might be of some significance.’
‘Of great significance, but the nature of its significance is a mystery to me.’
Lambert left the implication unsaid that Helen Lord might solve that mystery. He passed her the typed accusatory letter.
‘That, of course, is a copy, typed by me. We know that the original was typed on a machine in Fisher’s house.’ He didn’t need to explain how they knew this. Idiosyncratic letters must have matched idiosyncratic keys. Helen read the letter.
‘Zachary Wilson plans to kill me. He is a withersnake. He will kill us all. Peter Fisher.’
‘What is a withersnake?’
‘It isn’t a word I was familiar with either. It’s an archaic term with religious connotations. It means something like a betrayer.’
‘A traitor?’
‘Not exactly. Well, yes, but it’s closer to a word like “apostate”. Given where the note was found, there seems to be some sense that Mr Wilson was guilty, in Fisher’s eyes at least, of some sort of religious betrayal.’
‘What do you want me to do, Titus?’
‘I want you to do some discreet snooping out in Nunawading. I can’t pay you, and I can’t give you any overt help.’
Helen handed all the material she’d been given back to Titus.
‘I don’t think I ever thanked you properly for making sure I was granted my licence, Titus. Helen Lord and Associates is now in business, and is happy to take the case, as they say.’
She reached out her hand, and Inspector Lambert leaned forward and shook it.
3
JOE SABLE, HAVING become used to the noise at Russell Street Police Headquarters — even with the doors closed there was never real silence — found the quiet at Helen Lord’s office disconcerting. It wasn’t absolute silence; there were sounds that came up from the street, but there were no telephones ringing, or voices raised, or muffled laughter. He had his own office, and it was generously proportioned. All of the furniture had been brought from the house in Kew. There were rooms in that house that were rarely used, or even entered, but Peter Lillee had never thought of any room in his house as just a place to store superfluous furniture. Each of them was neatly and deliberately arranged. Helen, with her mother’s permission, had raided the spare rooms for chairs, desks, and even beautifully finished filing cabinets.
The desk Joe now sat at was large, and had been made in the 1920s by a skilled cabinet-maker. Its modern lines were at odds with much of the furniture in the Kew house, the contents of which was mostly a fastidiously curated collection of Edwardian splendour. This desk was much more to Joe’s taste. Helen’s desk was heavier and more ornate. With his door open he could see into the reception area. Two armchairs and a couch failed to crowd this room, and Helen had placed a table with six chairs at one end of it. Her office was next to his, and next to that was a small kitchen. The remaining room was a bathroom. This had been an expensive refit, and must have been done before the start of the war. The indoor lavatory and shower stall were luxury features for an office. Clearly, it had been designed to attract well-heeled tenants, and Helen Lord was certainly that.
Joe had read the detailed brief that Helen had prepared for him about the murders in Nunawading. There were descriptions of the photographs, but Inspector Lambert had taken the actual photographs away with him after his meeting with Helen. The brief was clear, concise, and dispassionate. It included a summary of the autopsy report on each of the bodies. It offered no speculations, but drew attention to certain anomalies or peculiarities. These included the absence of Zachary Wilson’s fingerprints, the use of the Bible to conceal Peter Fisher’s vaguely religious J’accuse, and the discrepancy in the time of death between the young Italian man and the other bodies. Whatever speculations might be made in this case would be made initially only in conversation. Helen believed that writing them down might secure them too firmly in their thinking, which might in turn misdirect them.
Joe was re-reading the final part of the report when Helen came into his office.
‘What do you think?’
‘I can’t grasp the connections. Why was the Italian bloke hanged so much earlier?’
‘What did you notice about his autopsy report?’
Helen saw Joe tense at her question and realised how it must have sounded to him.
‘Sorry, Joe. That sounded like an exam question. I wasn’t testing you. It wasn’t something I picked up immediately. Clara drew my attention to it.’
‘Clara has read your brief?’
‘Of course she has. She was looking after Zac Wilson in hospital. You’re my only employee, Joe, but we need Clar’s expertise. She’ll accept wine from Uncle Peter’s cellar as payment. Apparently, the ligature marks around Emilio Barbero’s neck are deep and more consistent with strangulation than hanging.’
‘So he was strung up after he died?’
‘Or at least at the point where he couldn’t put up a fight.’
‘This Zachary Wilson, is he guilty?’
‘Clara doesn’t think so, and she’s met him and observed him closely. Inspector Lambert is ambivalent, I think, but leans more heavily towards his being innocent. I have no idea. We can’t rule out Peter Fisher just because he’s dead.’
Joe wondered, but only for a moment, if a father could take an axe to his infant son. Of course he could. Small children were being murdered in concentration camps in Europe in numbers that defied rational belief. There was no act so vile that someone, somewhere, couldn’t commit it.
‘I think we should start with Emilio Barbero,’ Helen said. She handed Joe an address in Nunawading. ‘He was a boarder with this woman, a Mrs Suckling, which is a hideous name.’
‘It’s a noble English name. Sir John Suckling was a great poet.’
‘Probably not related to a woman in Nunawading. Anyway, thank you for plugging a gap in my knowledge. Uncle Peter’s car has a full tank of petrol, but I don’t think we’ll be able to maintain the level-three exemption to the petrol ration that he’d been given. Mum is trying to sort that out. We may be able to get some sort of exemption as a legitimate business necessity. Uncle Peter had influential friends.’
‘Peter must have had the inside running on critical shortages before any restrictions were introduced. There are six tyres in the garage.’
‘We couldn’t run this business without a vehicle.’
‘It’s a pretty flash vehicle to be beetling about in.’
Helen laughed. ‘We all have to make do, Joe. There’s a war on.’
MRS SUCKLING’S HOUSE in Nunawading sat beside a vacant block of land that was thick with thistles. The foundations of a house had been laid there, but the build had been abandoned. There were three similarly abandoned properties in the street. Joe, who’d lived in Melbourne all his life, had never ventured this far into the eastern suburbs. He’d been surprised on the drive out here at how quickly dense housing had given way to orchards and paddocks. When the war was over, and its conclusion now seemed inevitable, would he want to build a house out here? No, he thought. He didn’t crave open space. He would rather look into a painting than out at a view.
There was a woman in the front yard of Mrs Suckling’s house. She was perhaps in her sixties, although she may have been younger. Estimating women’s ag
es was a skill Joe lacked. He was better with men, but was prepared to admit that he wasn’t much better. The woman was wearing an apron and had her grey hair tied up in a scarf. She stood with her hands on her hips, and watched as Joe came towards her.
‘Nice car,’ she said. ‘Yours, is it?’
‘Strictly speaking, no. It’s the company car. Mrs Suckling?’
‘And what company would that be?’
Joe stayed at the gate.
‘May I come on to the property?’
Mrs Suckling stepped forward and opened the gate.
‘Please, come in.’
‘My name is Joe Sable. I’m a private inquiry agent.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘A private detective.’
‘Handsome, too. Just like in the pictures. The wallopers have already been here about poor bloody Emilio. I presume that’s why you’ve driven all this way in your big car.’
Joe couldn’t get a handle on Mrs Suckling’s demeanour. He wasn’t sure if she was hostile or not.
‘I would like to ask you some questions about Emilio Barbero, yes.’
‘Why?’
That question was certainly hostile in tone.
‘I want to find out why he died, Mrs Suckling, and I’d like to know something about him.’
‘But why? That’s the job of the police. Why are you involved?’
Joe ought to have been prepared for this question, but it flummoxed him briefly. He couldn’t mention Inspector Lambert. That would have been an indiscretion. Instead he was vague, and hoped that Mrs Suckling would be satisfied.
‘I’m representing a third party who has an interest in finding out who killed Mr Barbero. I can’t tell you more than that.’
