The Orchard Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Guy,’ she said.

  ‘His parents have been told. Inspector Lambert telephoned them. I don’t know how they reacted.’

  ‘They must have been devastated.’

  ‘Oh no, I doubt that very much. They’d go through the motions, but Guy wasn’t what they wanted in a son. They’ll give him a decent funeral, the full requiem mass — there are people in the district to impress, after all — and then they’ll tidy away their emotions and mention Guy less and less until they stop mentioning him at all.’

  ‘My God, Joe, that’s a bleak assessment. Will you go up for the funeral?’

  ‘No. They don’t like Jews, and I couldn’t bear to sit through all that ritual that Guy despised. He was a good man, Helen.’

  ‘I know he was.’

  ‘But I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, and when he turned up a few months ago he wasn’t entirely himself. Something was missing. Something was broken, and I feel guilty saying it, but I thought he’d take his own life, and in a way I think that’s what happened. There was enough of the Catholic left in him to stop him from actually committing suicide, but putting himself at risk was the next best thing.’

  Helen was surprised by Joe’s calm rationalisation of Guy’s death. She was relieved, but also disturbed. Perhaps it was a way for Joe to find consolation, but there was something chilly and intellectual about it. His emotions had been raw just 24 hours ago. Now they were disciplined. If she’d been more practised in expressing her own emotions, she might have challenged him. As it was, despite the traumatic events, they settled quickly back into a conversation that functioned to displace the personal in favour of the practical. Helen was suddenly loath to mention her decision to close the business. Indeed, when Joe walked into the office, she’d changed her mind. Helen Lord and Associates had to continue. The idea of dragging Joe down into her own sense of failure was appalling to her. Despite the romanticism of Clara’s words, she’d been right. Guy Kirkham needed justice, and she and Joe would see that he got it.

  13

  WHEN CLARA DAWSON tried the door of the house in Powlett Street, she was relieved that it was locked. Pat was finally getting the message. Clara had waited at some distance from the house, scanning the street for Kenneth Bussell. When she was satisfied that he wasn’t about, she went inside. She checked each room and the backyard before going into her room. She read until lunchtime and then, unusually for her, she fell deeply asleep. The discordant jangle of the telephone woke her. It took a moment to disentangle the sound from a dream. She barked her shin on the way to answering it, so when she said, ‘Hello,’ into the mouthpiece it wasn’t entirely cheery.

  There was silence.

  ‘Hello? Are you there?’

  Silence.

  ‘I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.’

  This was true. Clara could hear breaths being taken and released.

  ‘I can hear you, Mr Bussell. How did you get this number?’

  As soon as she uttered his name, she heard the click of disconnection. She found that she was shaking. It was as if he’d been in the room with her. Her first instinct was to check yet again that the front door was locked. It was just before 5.00 pm. Should she telephone Inspector Lambert? Was she being hysterical? Maybe it hadn’t been Bussell after all, but a wrong number, or a child playing a random prank. It hadn’t felt like that, though. Why had the phone gone dead at the mention of Bussell’s name? She telephoned Russell Street, and was told that Inspector Lambert was unavailable. She left her name and the simple message that Kenneth Bussell had contacted her. She decided not to ring Helen. She had enough to worry about without adding news of an anonymous call to her list.

  ANTHONY PRESCOTT HAD requested that his solicitor be present for his formal interview. He’d been detained in custody for the past 24 hours. He’d been offered a change of clothes, but he’d insisted on wearing the tunic he’d been wearing when he’d been brought in. He was unshaven, and was beginning to look slightly dishevelled. He’d declined to shave, and had said that the remand cell was his wilderness and that he would shave again only when he’d come out of the wilderness. Apart from this, he’d made no complaints about the accommodation. He’d borne it with equanimity.

  The young man named Nepheg, whose real name turned out to be John Ogilvy, had been released on bail into the care of his family. This arrangement had been accepted with reluctance on both sides.

  Constable Forbes had brought Prescott across Russell Street from the watch house cells to the interview room on the third floor of police headquarters. Prescott’s solicitor, a thin man in his fifties with horn-rimmed spectacles and oily hair, hadn’t admitted to being a member of Prescott’s church, but the subtle deference he paid Prescott suggested to Alexander that he was an acolyte. Neither he nor Prescott was aggressive or uncooperative. The sight of a man in a tunic, bare-legged, in an interview room was peculiar, but Prescott was utterly unselfconscious.

  With the preliminaries dispensed with, Inspector Lambert began his questioning.

  ‘Are you a murderer, Mr Prescott, or the accessory to the murder?’

  ‘I am neither of those things, Inspector.’

  ‘And yet Guy Kirkham is dead, and Joe Sable would have been killed if the man named Abraham hadn’t been discovered and interrupted. I’d like to deal with the assault on Joe Sable first. Where were you when this happened?’

  ‘I was in the kitchen.’

  ‘So you didn’t witness it?’

  ‘No, of course not. Joe Sable had come to see his friend, Mr Kirkham, who as far as I knew had left us the previous evening. We had a conversation in the chapel, and at some point I offered a cup of tea, which Mr Sable accepted. I left to make it, and when I returned there was no one there. I heard the truck start, and came outside to find that Abraham had driven away in it. I wasn’t sure what had happened, and then your car appeared, which confounded me even more.’

  ‘Are you asking me to believe, Mr Prescott, that this man, Abraham, struck Joe Sable on the head, carried his unconscious body out of the house, loaded it, single-handed, into a truck, and that you heard and saw nothing?’

  ‘I am asking you to believe that, because that is what happened.’

  ‘Joe Sable says that the last thing he remembers is talking to you. You were in the room when he was assaulted.’

  ‘He suffered, I believe, a severe blow to the head. His memory, I’m afraid, is faulty.’

  ‘The woman named Justice — is her memory faulty, too? She saw you helping Abraham with Joe Sable’s body.’

  ‘She’s mistaken. I think you’ll find that the death of her sister has addled her brain somewhat.’

  ‘Who is Abraham?’

  To Titus’s astonishment, Prescott didn’t repeat the Church of the First Born guff he’d indulged in previously.

  ‘He came to us out of a bad marriage and a failed business venture. It wasn’t my place to inquire about either deeply. The Church of the First Born offers sanctuary, not interrogation.’

  ‘And his name? His real name?’

  ‘Walter Pinshott.’

  Alexander Forbes left the room briefly. Titus held off asking further questions until he returned.

  ‘You understand that Walter Pinshott murdered Guy Kirkham?’

  ‘I find that shocking.’

  ‘Do you doubt it?’

  Prescott looked at his solicitor.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t doubt it. I’m shocked by it, but I don’t doubt it. He must have believed that he was doing the righteous thing. I wish he’d come to me. I would have counselled him.’

  ‘Why do you think he killed Guy Kirkham?’

  ‘How did Mr Kirkham die?’

  Prescott’s calm irked Titus. The ease with which he lied, and his measured, mellifluous tone lent him a disturbing c
redibility.

  ‘Mr Kirkham didn’t die quickly. He was tied to a tree, and three six-inch nails were hammered into his heart.’

  Prescott didn’t appear to be surprised by this. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his left leg over his right.

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘You see what?’

  ‘Abraham named Mr Kirkham when he came to us. He called him Absalom, and at the time I thought this was premature, but Abraham was adamant — adamant that this young man wasn’t what he said he was. He said that he’d betray me, betray us.’

  ‘So the name was significant?’

  ‘Absalom was one of David’s sons. He betrayed David, and died when three darts were fired into his heart. I think Abraham might be guilty of being rather literal.’

  ‘He’s guilty of murder!’

  Inspector Lambert’s fierce exclamation stunned Alexander, and caused Prescott to blanch. It only took a moment, though, for him to recover.

  ‘I apologise if that seemed like a trivial thing to say, Inspector. I, like you, am trying to understand Abraham’s actions.’

  ‘Let’s agree to call this murderous man by his real name, Walter Pinshott.’

  Titus’s voice was now quiet.

  ‘Yes,’ Prescott said. ‘The Church of the First Born does not give sanctuary to murderers. As soon as I return, we will conduct the necessary ceremony and declare Walter Pinshott anathema.’

  Alexander began to wonder how much of this was performance and how much insanity. Prescott must know, surely, he must know that the evidence for his involvement in these crimes was strong: two witnesses, and possibly three if the young man spoke against him, had declared that he’d been present when Joe Sable had been assaulted.

  ‘Where would Pinshott go?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Where will he hide?’

  ‘Once he’s been declared anathema he’ll have nowhere to hide. It’s forbidden to give shelter to someone who has been declared anathema.’

  ‘Where will he go now?’

  Alexander worried that Inspector Lambert might lose his patience.

  ‘I suppose he might go to someone in our congregation.’

  ‘Do you have a list of the people who form your congregation?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that.’

  ‘How large is your congregation?’

  ‘It’s growing, but at the moment I think there might be about 100 people who have been saved.’

  ‘But you don’t know who they are or where they live.’

  ‘Not all of them, no.’

  ‘I want the names and addresses of everyone you can remember.’

  Prescott slipped his hand under his tunic and scratched his thigh.

  ‘No, Inspector, I’m afraid not. There is no reason to harry my followers.’

  Alexander knew, and he was certain Inspector Lambert knew, too, that there was a list of worshippers. The Church of the First Born raised funds for itself efficiently, and that required knowing who’d paid and who hadn’t.

  ‘I’d like to take a short break,’ Titus said. In the corridor outside the interview room, he asked Alexander if John Ogilvy, who called himself Nepheg, had been fetched for questioning.

  ‘He should be here now, sir. A car was sent to pick him up.’

  ‘Good. I don’t want Prescott to know that he’s here. Set him up in another room. I’ll tell Prescott that I’m suspending the interview for half an hour. And we need to go back out to Nunawading and turn that place inside out. There’s a list of names — nothing is more certain than that.’

  JOHN OGILVY WAS wearing clothes that weren’t his own. They didn’t fit him. The trousers were too large and were tied around the waist with a piece of rope. Unlike Prescott, he was freshly shaved, although the small nick on his chin suggested he’d shaved hastily. His solicitor gave every appearance of being annoyed at having to be here, a situation that didn’t bode well for Ogilvy. Perhaps, Alexander thought, he’s doing a favour for someone in Ogilvy’s family. An angry lawyer is not the ideal advocate. Ogilvy seemed dazed, as if he wasn’t entirely sure where he was, let alone why he was there. After some preliminary questions about Ogilvy’s decision to join the Church of the First Born, Inspector Lambert asked him what he knew about Walter Pinshott.

  ‘I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘Abraham.’

  ‘Oh, is that his godless name?’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He wasn’t kind, but the Master favoured him, and so I suppose he was a better man than I thought he was. When am I going back to Nunawading?’

  ‘That depends on what you tell us and whether or not we believe you. Guy Kirkham was murdered by Walter Pinshott, and there are four other victims, some or all of whom may have been murdered by him as well.’

  ‘No. The Master wouldn’t allow it,’ he said quietly.

  The solicitor looked at his client, but said nothing. Titus allowed the silence to build.

  ‘But there was a young man who came to our sanctuary. I don’t know his name. I didn’t meet him. I left to do work soon after he arrived. I was in the orchard and I stopped work to … to relieve myself, and I saw this young man come out of the women’s hut. I knew Justice was in there for her body to be cleansed of its foul bleeding. I was shocked, and as he walked away — and I think he was crying — as he walked away Abraham fell upon him. I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but the young man’s body went limp, and Abraham picked him up as if he was a broken puppet. He put him in the front of his truck and drove away.’

  ‘Emilio Barbero.’

  ‘I don’t know that name.’

  ‘That’s the name of the young man who you saw Pinshott kill.’

  ‘Who says he killed him?’

  ‘He was strung up like a carcass on Peter Fisher’s veranda. He was 17 years old.’

  ‘And Absalom?’

  ‘You know what happened to Absalom. You were there.’

  ‘He left.’

  ‘No, he didn’t leave.’

  Ogilvy shook his head and whispered, ‘Though I should receive a thousand shekels of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand against the king’s son.’

  He looked at Inspector Lambert, and his eyes filled with tears.

  ‘But he did, didn’t he?’ Ogilvy said.

  Titus took a piece of paper from his pocket and read from it: ‘And he took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.’

  Ogilvy slumped in his chair, and Constable Forbes believed that whatever else this young man might be guilty of, being an accessory to murder wasn’t among his crimes. Perhaps his only crime was credulousness. Ogilvy rallied briefly and said, ‘The Master will be filled with grief for Absalom when he hears about this.’

  ‘Mr Prescott is in custody. We have no doubt whatever that he knew precisely what had happened to Guy Kirkham.’

  ‘No. That can’t be right. That won’t be right.’

  ‘I assure you, Mr Ogilvy, that it is right.’

  ‘No,’ Ogilvy said simply.

  INSPECTOR LAMBERT HAD organised the return of Peter Lillee’s car from Prescott’s property. By midafternoon of the day of his release from hospital, Joe had convinced Helen that they had to drive out to the orchard. Helen had been reluctant and had argued that the police mightn’t approve of them poking about what was now a crime scene. Joe pointed out that Helen Lord and Associates was a licensed inquiry agency, and that, as a victim of a crime carried out there, he had something of a personal interest.

  There was no police presence when they arrived at Prescott’s orchard. They were invited into the house by Prudence, who had watched their approach from the veranda. She offered her condolences to Joe for the death of his friend, and exp
ressed her regret over his head injury. Prudence was not in the least obfuscatory. Helen introduced herself as a private inquiry agent, and Prudence offered to answer any questions that she might have. It was in everyone’s interest, she agreed, that Abraham should be found and taken into custody.

  ‘He is no longer a member of our community, so he is now just plain Walter Pinshott,’ she said. ‘He has forfeited the right to sanctuary here. I have already spoken at great length to detectives, and they have invaded the privacy of this place and taken away material which I hope they’ll treat with respect and return. This includes your friend’s clothes, Mr Sable. His loss must be terrible for you, and I will honour your grief by giving you as much information as I can.’

  In the course of a long conversation, Prudence told them all that she knew of Peter Fisher, his apostasy, and the fact that Sean Fisher was Anthony Prescott’s son — although she called Prescott David. She acknowledged that Emilio Barbero had come to see Justice and had broken the taboo of entering the women’s hut. She couldn’t explain the circumstances of his death. She acknowledged, too, that Guy had broken this taboo.

  ‘And what,’ Joe asked, ‘is the penalty for breaking this taboo?’

  ‘There is always room for absolution through penance in the Church of the First Born.’

  ‘So not death then?’

  ‘No, Mr Sable, not death. This is 1944, not 944.’

  ‘And yet Guy is dead.’

  As these words were spoken, Justice entered the room carrying a tray with a teapot, cups, a milk jug, and a bowl of fruit on it. Until this appearance she hadn’t made her presence known. Having placed the tray on the table, she crossed to Joe, leaned down, and kissed the bandage that was wrapped around his head. This was done so swiftly that it was accomplished before Joe had time to pull away.

  ‘Please stay,’ Prudence said to her.

  As Joe watched Prudence pour the tea, he realised that every movement, and that every word, was a deliberate and self-conscious act of metamorphosis. Prudence was changing before their eyes from Prescott’s handmaid into … into what? Prudence smiled benignly and emanated calm. Joe believed that Prudence had been watching, studying Anthony Prescott for a very long time. She was trying Prescott’s mantle on for size. In an attempt to goad her out of her studied tranquillity, he asked, ‘What is your relationship to Anthony Prescott?’