The Orchard Murders

by Robert Gott

  Without demur, she said, ‘He is my husband.’

  ‘According to whom?’

  Prudence stood and opened the drawer of a small side table. She retrieved a document and passed it to Joe.

  ‘According to the state of Victoria, and more importantly, much more importantly, according to the congregation of the Church of the First Born.’

  Joe looked at the marriage certificate, which revealed that on the 2nd of May 1940, Anthony Prescott had married Bethany Hudson. Joe passed the certificate to Helen.

  ‘And you’re Bethany Hudson?’

  ‘I was that person.’

  Helen decided that indirection was pointless.

  ‘Your husband slept with your sister. How did you feel about that?’

  Prudence, not yet pitch perfect in her poise, displayed a slight affront in the narrowing of her eyes.

  ‘I was unable to give my husband children. David lay with Truth with my blessing, and we rejoiced when she fell pregnant.’

  ‘How could you be certain that it was his baby and not Peter Fisher’s?’

  ‘Because my husband withered Fisher’s testicles with the power of his mind.’

  Prudence declared this with some force, as if daring Joe and Helen to doubt it.

  ‘That’s absurd,’ Helen said. ‘It’s so absurd it’s laughable, and I don’t believe that you believe it. If he could make a man sterile, why couldn’t he make you fertile?’

  With sang froid worthy of Prescott, Prudence said, ‘My faith isn’t touched by your ridicule.’

  ‘If he can dry up a man’s testicles, getting himself out of prison should be a cakewalk,’ Joe said.

  Prudence turned her gaze towards Joe. There was heat in it, but no warmth. That was something she needed to work on, Joe thought. At the moment, her gaze was bland and empty.

  ‘I don’t expect my husband will get out of jail for some time. He came to me last night in a dream. He called me the mother of our church, and said that I must look after our congregation. He passed his wisdom into me. I’m in charge here now.’

  Prudence was no fool, Helen thought, although she wasn’t convinced that Prudence had the charisma to dupe people into believing that she’d been anointed as the mother of the church.

  ‘Are you saying that Mr Prescott will plead guilty to being an accessory?’ Joe said.

  ‘No. But I’m a realist, Mr Sable. Anthony was in the room when Pinshott attacked you, and Justice saw him help carry your unconscious body to the truck. I also was a witness to that and, when called, we will testify to that effect. Anthony helped Pinshott remove Mr Sable’s body, and I have no doubt now that he did the same with your friend.’

  The use of ‘Anthony’ didn’t go unnoticed by either Helen or Joe.

  ‘You’ll testify against him, even though you’re his wife?’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘As will I,’ Justice said.

  Helen was aware that she and Joe had just been privy to a sort of coup d’état. Perhaps these women believed the nonsense they spouted, but Helen was convinced that however strong their faith, their business sense was stronger.

  When Prudence rose to see Helen and Joe out, she made an attempt at majesty. Maybe with practice it would appear less ridiculous. She went for noble graciousness, but landed on clumsy haughtiness. This would change. She would hone her skills — Helen had no doubt about it.

  WALTER PINSHOTT WOULDN’T have harmed either of the Master’s wives. Nevertheless, he was glad to find the house empty when he entered it. He hadn’t missed them by much. A police car had collected them — Inspector Lambert was to interview them at Russell Street — just half an hour before he arrived. There was no sign of Nepheg either. This suited Pinshott too. He could go about his business undisturbed. He needed food, fuel, and clothing. He shaved his beard and cut his hair so that he looked less like a cut-rate prophet and more like a not particularly successful accountant. He couldn’t stay at the Master’s house, but he knew a man, another of the Master’s followers, who would take him in. He disturbed nothing in the house. He took only what he needed, and before he left he went into the chapel, prostrated himself, and prayed to the Master, who was, after all, God incarnate.

  TOM CHAFER PUSHED the letter that Winslow Fazackerly had written, along with its translation, across the desk to Tom Mackenzie.

  ‘Traitorous correspondence with the enemy in a time of war is tantamount to treason. Fazackerly will be court-martialled. Unfortunately, the death penalty will probably not be invoked. He can, however, expect to spend time in prison and then be dishonourably discharged without benefits.’

  Tom Mackenzie picked up the cigarette paper.

  ‘Be careful with it,’ Chafer said.

  Tom turned the paper over in his fingers.

  ‘You might care to read this as well.’

  ‘This’ was a document comprising two typed pages detailing the meeting that had taken place between Winslow and Clive Kent. Underlined, doubtless for Tom’s benefit, was the claim that Winslow had raised a glass in a toast to ‘the heavenly sovereign, Emperor Hirohito’. The report stressed that Winslow had made the rendezvous without any pressure being applied to him, and that in the course of the conversation he had freely offered support and sympathy for both the people of Japan and for their military representatives. The language was carefully unemotive. Tom Mackenzie had no way of knowing that it didn’t, in fact, represent the truth of the meeting and that it contained damaging statements that Winslow had not uttered. He was confused. Nothing in the report correlated to the man he thought he knew. Did he know him, though? How could he really? He’d worked with him for a brief period, and socialised with him once or twice. He’d seemed so decent and honest about his love for Japan, but he’d also made his loathing for its militarism clear. Maude had liked him, and Tom trusted his sister’s judgement about people. He pushed the material back across the desk to Chafer. ‘I don’t believe any of this. Can I talk to Winslow?’

  ‘Of course not. He’s being detained pending a court martial. And let me give you some advice, Mackenzie. I wouldn’t go about defending Fazackerly if I were you. You might get a reputation that won’t do you any favours.’

  ‘Are you threatening me, Chafer?’

  ‘I’m giving you a friendly warning. I’d heed it. Don’t imagine for a minute that you’re above suspicion.’

  ‘You’re a real little Napoleon, aren’t you? One day you might need friends. Do you have any?’

  Chafer’s lips moved in the approximation of a smile.

  ‘I have enemies,’ he said. ‘You know where you are with them.’

  ‘You’re a sad little person.’

  Tom stood up and left Chafer’s office. When he returned to his own office, he telephoned Maude Lambert. He needed to talk to her.

  INSPECTOR LAMBERT HAD taken statements from the two sisters, who gave their real names but insisted on being called Prudence and Justice. Their frankness had been unexpected. He’d assumed that they would try to secure Prescott’s release by covering for him. Instead they each gave evidence that allowed him to formally charge Prescott with being an accessory to murder. Prudence revealed that Emilio Barbero had been at Prescott’s orchard just a day before he was found hanging on Fisher’s veranda. She said that she’d only realised that Pinshott might have killed him after Guy Kirkham’s body had been found. Emilio and Guy had one thing in common, she said: they’d each entered the forbidden space of the women’s retreat. Pinshott did nothing without Prescott’s direction, so if he murdered Emilio, it was because Prescott had ordered him to, and the same went for Guy. And Nepheg? Oh, poor, silly Nepheg. No, he wasn’t implicated in any of this. He was a bit dull-witted and easily led, but not bright enough to be trusted with anything demanding or important.

  Titus interviewed each of the women separately, and released them, letting t
hem know, however, that he would need to speak to them again. With Prescott charged, Titus allowed himself to feel some satisfaction, but nothing could assuage his sense of having failed Zachary Wilson. He telephoned Maude after Prescott, whose equanimity had been unruffled by the charge, had been taken back to his cell in the watch house. It was Maude who suggested that he bring Constable Forbes home for dinner.

  ‘Tom rang me,’ she said. ‘He’s coming, too. He’s had a bad day, although he wouldn’t say why over the telephone.’

  ‘He mightn’t appreciate a stranger being there if he wants to talk.’

  ‘He might appreciate some decent conversation. I’ll ring him back, though, and let him know there’s going to be another person here. He can make up his own mind.’

  Titus was relieved that Maude seemed to have moved on from being overprotective of her brother. It meant that she felt secure in his recovery from the ghastly injuries he’d suffered the previous year.

  ‘I’ll try to be home by 6.30. I’ll bring Constable Forbes with me.’

  14

  WHEN CLARA DAWSON arrived at the Royal Melbourne Hospital to begin her shift, she found a message from Adelaide Matthews, asking her to telephone at her earliest convenience. She did so at 9.30 pm. It was clear from the slight slurring of her words that Adelaide had been drinking. She wondered if Clara might like to come to the house the following afternoon. She’d make afternoon tea. Nothing fancy, and Clara could meet the children. Clara declined the offer, saying that after a week of night shifts her plans for the weekend involved nothing more demanding than sleep.

  ‘I see,’ Adelaide said, snippily. ‘Perhaps another time. I didn’t realise afternoon tea was considered demanding.’ She hung up.

  Clara had no time to analyse the oddness of this response, as she was immediately called to an emergency. Later, when she was able to think about the telephone call, she wondered if that one meeting with Adelaide had created an erroneous impression that some sort of friendship had been forged between them. She felt vaguely guilty, as if she might be failing to support Adelaide in her grief. But she barely knew her. The only connection between them was the death of her husband, and that wasn’t a pleasant connection. Both Titus and Helen had warned her about creating any sort of relationship with Adelaide Matthews. Perhaps they’d been right after all.

  TOM MACKENZIE HAD half an hour alone with Maude Lambert before Titus arrived home with Alexander Forbes. It was enough time to tell her all he knew about Winslow Fazackerly’s situation. He’d remembered the note, word for word, and Maude agreed that if it was authentic it was an extraordinarily clumsy and risky expression of disloyalty.

  ‘My problem with it,’ she said, ‘is that it simply doesn’t sound like Winslow. There’s nothing of his voice in it.’

  Tom pointed out that Chafer had said that it was a translation from the Japanese that Winslow had written, and that would account for the strangeness of the tone.

  ‘There’s also the witness,’ Tom said. ‘There’s no question in my mind that it was entrapment. It was a set-up. The bloke who laid the bait is an Intelligence agent, but Winslow took the bait, and walked into the trap.’

  ‘The bait was his wife, if the people you spoke to at Loveday were telling the truth. Do you know this Intelligence person?’

  ‘No. I haven’t come across him, but if he’s in cahoots with Chafer, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him.’

  ‘Why was Chafer so suspicious of Winslow? Are we missing something, Tom? Did he fool us? Was his charm and openness an effective disguise?’

  ‘Chafer tried to recruit him, and he wasn’t interested. As far as Chafer was concerned, Winslow was guilty of treason at that point.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what to think.’

  ‘You know what I hate, Maudey? I hate feeling like I’ve been played.’

  ‘By Chafer or Winslow?’

  ‘Possibly by both of them. Definitely by Chafer. I wish I could talk to Winslow, but that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘He must be feeling dreadfully alone.’

  The conversation about Winslow Fazackerly came to an end when Maude told Tom that Guy Kirkham had been murdered and that Joe Sable had come close to losing his life.

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’

  ‘I telephoned your house. There was no answer, and the only information I could get out of Victoria Barracks was that you were interstate. They wouldn’t tell me where or for how long.’

  Maude gave Tom as much information as she had, and as she spoke his feelings about Chafer turned blacker than ever. It had been Chafer’s fault that Tom had been in South Australia when these dreadful things had happened. He’d been sent on a wild-goose chase. No, it hadn’t even been that — it had simply been a way of getting him out from underfoot when the trap that caught Winslow was sprung. Had he been here in Melbourne, he might have been able to do something for Joe. He had no idea what, but something. He would certainly have been able to give Helen Lord some sort of support. What must she think of him? His preoccupation with Winslow had pushed thoughts of Helen to the back of his mind. Now they tumbled forward, and he recognised again that there was something about Helen Lord that interested him. It was suddenly important that she understand why he hadn’t been in contact. A telephone call didn’t seem sufficient. He’d ask to borrow Titus’s car and drive out to Kew after dinner.

  Alexander Forbes looked out of place over dinner. This was simply the result of his being in uniform. Undoing the top buttons of his jacket helped a little. His presence constrained Tom from talking about Winslow Fazackerly, but it didn’t constrain Titus from revealing details of that day’s interviews. The fact that Titus had invited him for dinner — an indifferent meal, given Maude’s limited culinary skills — and that he permitted Alexander to see how unguarded he was in conversation with Maude about his work was evidence enough of Titus’s level of trust in the young man.

  ‘Do you prefer Alexander, Alex, Alec?’ she asked.

  ‘Family and friends call me Alexander. I rarely get called Alex, and whenever I do it takes a moment to realise it’s me.’

  Alexander didn’t find Maude’s questions intrusive, although he was aware that she was inserting them into the conversation at discreet intervals to avoid any feeling that this was an interrogation. He knew the bare bones of Tom Mackenzie’s history with Joe Sable — Titus had sketched this in. Without this, he would have wondered at Tom’s intense interest in the case.

  ‘So you met this Pinshott character?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Briefly. Inspector Lambert and I spoke with him and Anthony Prescott.’

  ‘Did he seem crazy?’

  Alexander thought for a moment.

  ‘No. He was dressed like a cut-rate prophet and he was protective of Prescott, but he seemed like a businessman to me. I think he saw Prescott at least partly as a financial asset. That might be because I can’t bring myself to believe that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would accept Anthony Prescott as the incarnation of the Messiah.’

  ‘History is littered with people who do believe such things,’ Maude said.

  ‘They’re always damaged in some profound way, I think. The exploiter and the exploited, although I suppose it might not always be that straightforward.’

  ‘For Pinshott to murder Guy with such ritualistic care and relish has more than a whiff of religious fanaticism about it.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Alexander said. ‘I have a tendency to over-simplify.’

  Maude could see that Titus was exhausted, so the evening wound up at nine o’clock. Titus was happy to lend Tom his car. There was half a tank of fuel in it, which would be plenty to get Tom to Kew and back, as well as to drop Alexander off in Fitzroy on the way. Maude and Titus left the dishes, and were in bed by 9.30.

  ‘Alexander seems like a very sharp man,’ Maude said.

 
‘I won’t have him for long. I wouldn’t have him at all if we weren’t undermanned. He’s ambitious. As soon as the war is over, he’ll go to detective school. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up being commissioner.’

  ‘He’ll be wasted. He’d make a brilliant detective, and we need brilliant detectives. We need people who can protect us from the Prescotts and the Pinshotts of this world.’

  ‘Those people are rare. How do we protect wives from their husbands? I’ve said it before, and every day confirms it, we are a truly ghastly species.’

  ‘Don’t despair, Titus. Please, please don’t despair.’

  AT 11.00 PM, Clara was called down to the ground floor desk at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The duty nurse told her that a man had left her a package. He hadn’t stayed. He’d said it was a gift and that he didn’t want to trouble Dr Dawson while she was on duty.

  ‘Are you sure he’s gone?’ Clara said.

  ‘Oh yes, doctor. He left as soon as he handed me the package.’

  ‘Did he leave a name?’

  ‘No. I got the impression he thought you’d know who it was from.’

  ‘Thank you, sister. I’ll be right down.’

  Clara put down the telephone. She hadn’t liked the slightly lubricious tone of the duty nurse’s final remark, as if she’d discovered that Clara had an admirer.

  When Clara came downstairs, Sister Kelly handed her the small package. Clara didn’t much care for Sister Kelly. She was an untidy woman, slovenly, and she was among those nurses who disapproved of women doctors. Clara didn’t know it, but Sister Kelly, on more than one occasion, had speculated during her tea break that Dr Dawson might be a lesbian. The idea had shocked and titillated her listeners. Now she had a morsel of proper gossip to impart.