Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing

by Lord, Gabrielle

Outside the main doors, they were about to go their separate ways when Brenda ran out to them.

  ‘I remember you now,’ she said to Gemma. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. You used to be a copper.’

  Gemma nodded.

  ‘You busted me,’ said Brenda. ‘For possession. About ten years ago. I got six months.’

  Ten years ago, Gemma was thinking, Robyn would have been about ten or eleven then. She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember, Brenda. I busted a lot of people. It was my job. I hope there are no hard feelings,’ she said, wanting to go home.

  ‘You did me a favour,’ said Brenda. ‘I’ve been clean ever since. I do weights. I take care of myself.’ She started crying again, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping her eyes. ‘But I couldn’t help my little girl.’ She put the handkerchief back in her pocket. ‘If you’re going to go after the animal that did that to my Robyn, you’re my hero.’ She pushed her hair away from her face and Gemma could see that she was a good-looking woman under the exhaustion and distress. ‘I’d do anything,’ Brenda was saying, ‘to help you. Anything to get that mongrel.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gemma.

  ‘I mean that,’ said Brenda.

  Four

  First thing next morning, Gemma stood on the balcony of Minkie Montreau’s waterfront house at Vaucluse looking across at the Harbour Bridge. She followed the movement of a small ferry riding the slight chop of the water. Even with the grey wash of the rain over the skyline and mist veiling the tops of the tallest buildings it was still a breathtaking panorama of the most beautiful harbour in the world. Gemma shivered, remembering another night two years ago in an apartment not far from here when the harbour had been dark with rain and she’d thought she was going to die. She stepped back inside the splendid room, reassured that there was nothing sinister here. Rich fabrics at the windows and a carpet thick as a fleece created cosy opulence in the overcast light, and Minkie Montreau, an elegant woman in her late forties, Gemma guessed, hovered near an oversized damask sofa, finally settling on its edge like a nervous moth on a magnolia. Around her neck was a string of huge South Sea pearls, so pure, so luminous that they seemed to cast light and the woman bloomed with nervous energy, her neck and face lit up with pearl light. Gemma wondered if she was wearing her famous floral satin underwear beneath the classic black trouser suit.

  ‘The insurance company is saying it was arson,’ Minkie Montreau said, a crooked grimace twisting her brilliant red lipstick. ‘And I was shocked to hear the police have been informed.’

  ‘That’s quite usual,’ said Gemma. ‘Standard procedure with suspicious fires, Mrs Montreau.’

  ‘Miss, actually.’ Minkie Montreau lowered her head and studied a huge ruby on her left hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Gemma. ‘I thought you said your husband—’

  ‘I kept my maiden name, long before it became the usual thing to do. I was a successful professional woman for many years before I married.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gemma. ‘I remember.’

  Minkie Montreau lifted her head, although the fingers of her right hand still fiddled with the ruby ring. ‘So, I now find myself the subject of a police investigation.’ She stood up, unable to contain her distress, hands flashing diamonds and rubies as she moved around the room, touching things blindly as she passed them, as if to reassure herself that what was happening was real, and not some nightmare. She walked to the apple-green silk-covered wall between the french windows and leaned against it as if she needed a support. ‘And I’m getting the distinct impression that I’m their prime suspect.’

  You would be, Gemma thought. The closest person to the victim usually has the strongest motive. Add in whatever sort of money goes with this lifestyle and the motive for murder becomes even stronger. Gemma’s eyes took in a Picasso hanging next to a Chagall in which a garlanded blue donkey floated in a purple sky near a pair of drifting lovers. Then she noticed a framed portrait of a man in his sixties, whose eastern European features were partly hidden by a single red rose in a crystal vase, standing on a table next to a porphyry cigarette case. She recalled the ‘Fatal fire’ note and Spinner’s added question mark.

  ‘That’s why I need you,’ Minkie Montreau said. ‘I adored Benjamin.’ She turned to look at the portrait. ‘You don’t know what it’s costing me, talking business like this with him dead.’

  Of course, this is Benjamin Glass’s wife, Gemma realised as Minkie spoke. Bad sign, lady, using the past tense and already wearing widow’s weeds.

  Minkie was still standing against the wall, eyes half-closed, as if awaiting the action of a firing squad. Gemma leaned back in her seat, looking straight into her client’s eyes.

  ‘How do you know your husband is dead?’ she asked, remembering the ambiguous police report on television. ‘He’s listed only as missing.’

  Minkie Montreau pushed herself away from the wall, frowning. ‘Of course he’s dead,’ she snapped. ‘He’s been completely’—she searched for the right word—“vaporised”.

  Gemma was astonished at the woman’s sudden display of ire.

  ‘The fire at the house was extraordinary. You can’t imagine what it was like. Someone up there took some video footage.’

  She collapsed back onto the white damask, hunched over her knees, her body shaking. Gemma waited, not untouched by this visible distress, but knowing that her business was to stay separate from it. Human beings don’t vaporise in fires, Gemma was thinking. Even in the crematorium ovens at well over 1000 degrees Celsius natural teeth are not destroyed and certain dense bone fragments have to be pulverised before they can be fitted into the polystyrene boxes with the chrome plate on the lid and handed back to the relatives.

  ‘That’s why you must help me,’ said Minkie Montreau, now blowing her nose and wiping copper-shadowed eyes that Gemma could see were alive with intelligence.

  ‘Miss Montreau—’ she started to say.

  ‘Please. Call me Minkie.’

  Gemma nodded. She took a breath. ‘The first thing to remember, Minkie, is not to take this investigation personally. It’s completely normal procedure whenever arson is suspected. Any suspicious fire may become a criminal matter. Both the fire brigade and the police have teams that will examine this issue. No one’s pointing a finger at you.’

  ‘Yet,’ concluded Minkie, rummaging for a cigarette. She found one, and then searched around for a light, finally picking up a huge gold cylinder from a cedar side table. ‘God knows how long Benjamin’s had these,’ she said grimacing as she inhaled. ‘I haven’t smoked in ages.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Gemma, ‘when did you last see Benjamin?’

  Gemma watched the woman’s face closely at this mention of her missing husband, but could see only disgust as she squashed out the long stub immediately.

  ‘In the morning,’ she said. ‘He went to work yesterday just as usual. Then he drove to Nelson Bay in the late afternoon. That’s where we have our holiday house. I was intending to join him on the weekend.’

  ‘And—’ Gemma started to say.

  ‘And he was his usual self, if that’s what you’re about to ask me. We had breakfast in my sitting room as we always do. I saw him off. He was wearing his new winter coat.’ Her lips compressed as if she were trying not to cry. ‘There was a tiny thread near the collar. I picked it off for him when I kissed him goodbye.’

  It was very convincing, Gemma thought. That little wifely detail of the thread. The projected scene of domestic contentment was perfect. But was it the truth? Gemma was about to ask another question when Minkie Montreau answered it herself.

  ‘I’ve called you in because I want you to do a parallel investigation—on my behalf. I don’t want to be left in the position of passively waiting for the police to tell me what’s going on. I need someone who’s completely disinterested.’ She raised her coppery eyelids to Gemma. �
��I must know exactly what happened,’ she said. ‘How that fire started. What caused it. What happened to Benjamin and why.’

  Gemma clearly saw that here was a woman who was used to power and very uncomfortable with delegating or indeed trusting any agent other than herself. How, she wondered, did such a woman give up a lucrative career and become someone’s nice little wifey?

  ‘I’d do it myself,’ Minkie continued, ‘but I simply don’t have the expertise. Or the contacts.’ She flashed a glance at Gemma who saw again her sharp intelligence at work. ‘How will you conduct this?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll talk to the relevant people,’ said Gemma, impressed by the woman’s question. ‘I’ll go over the witness statements, re-interview anyone who might have seen or heard anything. People sometimes remember details after they’ve completed their witness statement. I’ll have a look at the fire site. I’ll find out all I can about the fire itself. I’ll do everything the police or the fire investigation people might do.’ And then some, she thought to herself. ‘Firstly, tell me what you told the police,’ Gemma asked, ‘regarding your movements on the day of the fire.’

  Minkie looked away for a second, fingers clasping the huge pearls. ‘I didn’t do much that day,’ she said. ‘Benjamin left about 8.30. I pottered around here the rest of the morning. In the afternoon I went shopping and then’—Gemma was alerted by the pause and waited in silence until the woman continued—‘and after that I came home. It was later that night when the police came round and told me about the fire. She shrugged. ‘It was awful.’

  Gemma wondered at what might have been omitted from the narrative. The best way to lie, she knew, was to tell the truth—just not all of it.

  ‘And that’s all you did that day?’ she asked, giving Minkie a chance to add anything, knowing from her experience as an interrogator that anything originally left out, then later admitted, is often extremely sensitive.

  Minkie Montreau paused for a second, then nodded, reaching under a tapestry cushion for a crocodile-skin bag. She pulled out a wallet and began counting five hundred dollar notes. ‘Will this be sufficient to get things started?’ she asked. ‘Of course, I’ll want a full inventory of every expense and time spent.’

  ‘And you shall have it,’ said Gemma, taking out a card, writing her rates on the back and handing it over. ‘Now I’ll need to ask you a few more things.’ She knew she wouldn’t have to use her Sunday School language here. She came right out with it. ‘Minkie,’ she said, ‘did you have anything to do with your husband’s disappearance?’

  There was a fraction of a second’s pause before Minkie shook her head. ‘I did not,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m not going to pretend to you that marriage to Benjamin Glass was always a garden party. But I owed him a lot. In many ways he was my best friend.’ Again, Gemma noted her use of the past tense.

  ‘Did you have an insurance policy on the house?’

  Minkie shrugged. ‘I’m not even sure of the amount,’ she said. ‘But yes, and it would be large—several million. And yes,’ she said, shooting a glance at Gemma, ‘I would stand to collect it all. He has no other living relatives. There were two maiden sisters, much older than him, but they died years ago. And yes, it would be helpful to me.’

  ‘I’d like the name of the insurance company, please,’ Gemma asked.

  ‘It’s with Australasian Magister.’

  ‘Do you have a copy of the policy?’

  Minkie shook her head. ‘There’s probably one somewhere with Benjamin’s things. At the office. In his study. I don’t know.’

  ‘So you haven’t seen it recently?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This may sound like something out of a gangster movie,’ said Gemma, ‘but if you know of anyone who might want to hurt your husband, this is the time to tell me. Strictly in confidence. Is there anyone you can think of?’

  Minkie Montreau considered. Gemma watched a range of emotions move across her features.

  ‘Gemma,’ she finally said, ‘Benjamin was a big man. I mean that in many ways. He was imaginative and generous. But it stands to reason that a man of his stature and influence will have offended other people. Little people are always offended by big ones. It’s the world we live in.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He was widely known as an entrepreneur and a philanthropist and he favoured a couple of charitable organisations.’ She paused. ‘But I don’t personally know of anyone who would wish him ill.’

  Gemma was alerted by the words Minkie had used. ‘You say,’ she said, ‘you don’t personally know of anyone who would wish him harm, but maybe you’ve heard something? A rumour perhaps? A suspicion?’

  Minkie went to the french windows and watched as a couple of tug boats shoved a container ship under the Harbour Bridge. Then she turned back to Gemma and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t bring anything to mind.’ She turned her attention back to the rain-swept harbour.

  ‘If I’m going to do my job properly,’ Gemma said to Minkie’s back, ‘I’m going to have to go everywhere, speak to everyone. If you’ve got any secrets now, you might as well tell me. Because it’ll all come out one way or another. Either to the police, or the insurance people or me. Better it’s me and we can discuss damage control. If necessary.’

  Minkie turned away from the french windows, walked back over to the table and opened the cigarette case. She upturned its contents into the dainty Japanese-style wastepaper basket near the grand fireplace and then closed the lid with a snap.

  ‘I myself have no secrets,’ she said, putting the glassy box back on the table. ‘I live a quiet life, I have a couple of women friends, I go out to the theatre, galleries, lunch, things like that. I make the occasional foray into the antique buying world. I used to make time for Benjamin. That’s it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Gemma asked, hovering over her note pad. ‘I myself have no secrets,’ she’d said, implying that she knew someone else who did, thought Gemma, making a note of it.

  More hesitation. Minkie Montreau shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she repeated. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What is your financial position?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ Was her response, Gemma wondered, just a little too fast?

  ‘Just two last questions,’ she said, closing her note book and standing.

  ‘First, was there an outstanding loan on the property?’

  Minkie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was fully paid for. Why?’

  Gemma pressed on with the next query. ‘Did your husband have a pet on the premises on the night of the fire?’

  The woman’s face hardened. ‘Why on earth do you want to know that?’ she said.

  Gemma gave a half-smile, shaking her head as if her question was merely a whim. ‘Did he?’ she repeated.

  ‘Well . . . yes, now that you mention it,’ Minkie said with reluctance. ‘He had a cat. I can’t bear them.’ She wrinkled her nose as if smelling something unpleasant. ‘A dreadful black and white thing. Benjamin was very fond of it. It lived at the factory. But he’d take it up to the Bay if he was going to be there for a few days.’

  Gemma nodded and reopened her notebook, noting it down.

  ‘So where is the cat now?’ Gemma asked.

  Minkie Montreau’s shadowed eyes widened. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘It’s not a matter I take an interest in.’

  ‘Do you have a photograph of it?’

  ‘Why all this interest in a damn cat?’

  ‘Do you have a photograph?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Like I said, I couldn’t stand the animal.’

  ‘Could you describe it to me?’

  Minkie Montreau’s bronze-shadowed eyes blazed and Gemma wondered what it would be like to really cross this woman.

  ‘What is this, Miss Lincoln?’

  ‘Miss Montreau,�
�� she said, mirroring her companion’s return to the more formal address, ‘I have to ask myself why you are so defensive about this matter. Please accept that I wouldn’t be asking you these questions if they weren’t of vital importance to an arson investigation.’

  ‘How?’

  Gemma didn’t answer and waited until the fire went out of the woman’s eyes. Minkie lowered her shimmering lids. Now her voice was soft and compliant.

  ‘It’s a black cat with a very distinctive white ear and white cheek. On opposite sides. A bit like large houndstooth check. Benjamin called it Harlequin.’

  Gemma made relevant notes. ‘You mentioned the video footage of the fire,’ she asked. ‘Where can I find that?’

  ‘I think the police have it now,’ said Minkie. ‘And once you’ve seen it, you’ll understand how I know that Benjamin is dead. No one could have survived a fire like that.’

  As Minkie was showing her out, Gemma turned back to her near the front door and the two of them paused.

  ‘I remember your famous lingerie business. I bought a Hawaiian-print satin bra of yours once.’

  Minkie almost smiled. ‘I put my business into the hands of managers,’ she said. ‘Benjamin was very old-fashioned. He liked me to be at home for him.’ She sighed. ‘And at one stage, that’s all I wanted to do.’ She shrugged. ‘But now,’ she said, ‘Who knows what might happen? I might go back to work.’

  ‘Back into lingerie again?’ Gemma asked, But Minkie shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No more of that world for me.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Gemma, stepping outside, noticing the beautiful wooden double doors of the house.

  ‘How long will it take?’ Minkie said.

  Gemma turned back to her. ‘How long is a fire investigation?’ The words sounded like a riddle.

  Minkie remained standing at the door, fiddling with the bronze monster with its tail in its mouth that formed the handle. She looked up at Gemma. At these close quarters, her strange green eyes reminded Gemma of a cat. So Minkie’s next question caught her off-guard.