The Port Fairy Murders

by Robert Gott

  Again, Stanley Halloran laughed.

  ‘Well, bugger me. And you think his son did it? Or what? You think maybe I wheeled myself out to his place and did it myself?’

  ‘There’s no suggestion that John Starling was murdered by anyone.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, lovey? It’s not every day a female copper comes a’courtin’.’

  The question took Helen by surprise.

  ‘No.’ She added, ‘Thank you,’ and regretted it when she saw the smile creep across Halloran’s face.

  ‘You and John Starling shared an interest in politics.’

  Helen had expected that bald statement to make Halloran wary. Instead, he clutched the wheel rims of his chair and leaned forward.

  ‘Let me tell you something about politics, lovey, although it’ll go over your head. The female mind isn’t designed for thinking.’

  He paused to give Helen time to object. She didn’t give him the satisfaction, beyond a slightly exaggerated expression of ersatz interest.

  ‘I’m glad we’re going to win the bloody war.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Germany lost the war at Stalingrad, and the Japs were nongs for involving the Yanks. That’s not to say that National Socialism hasn’t got something going for it. I presume that’s what you’re referring to when you say Starling and I shared an interest in politics. I wasn’t Robinson Crusoe about the Nazis in the Thirties, you know. Mr Menzies saw its good points, but I’ll wager he regrets saying anything these days.’

  Helen looked doubtful in spite of herself.

  ‘He’s had a change of heart, but back in ’38 he was all for abandoning individual liberty. There was something magnificent, he said, about Germany turning its back on everything that was easy and pleasant. Magnificent — that’s the word he used, and he was right. I thought for a while that National Socialism was the answer for this dump of a country, but Australians are too dumb to diagnose their own cancer. Are you following me?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  Halloran snorted.

  ‘The truth is, lovey, that we don’t have any leaders — decent leaders. We’ve got milksops and nancy boys, but we need harsh men — men who are fanatics and who can inspire fanaticism in others. Democracy is weak. A strong leader, that’s what will work.’

  ‘Like Hitler, you mean?’

  ‘Sure. Like Hitler, but he’s not right for here.’

  ‘Hirohito, then?’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh. Wrong race, lovey. Race matters. I’ve got nothing against the Nips, except that they’re Nips and they should stay in Nipland, where everyone is happy to be a Nip, see?’

  Helen stepped around Stanley Halloran, obliging him to turn his chair to face her. She did this because she could no longer bear to look at his body in the full light from the windows.

  ‘You’re not a Jew, are you?’ he asked.

  His tone was so blunt that it bruised her in an inexplicable way — except that it wasn’t inexplicable. As soon as his question struck her, she imagined she was Joe Sable, and heard the words as he might have heard them — each syllable a gobbet of bile.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not,’ and instantly wished that she’d answered in the affirmative, realising, with some shame, that her answer represented a small act of cowardice.

  ‘I’m not a Jew hater,’ Halloran said. ‘Like everyone, they’re fine in their place. This just isn’t their place. This is what’s fundamentally wrong with this country. Jews, Italians, Japs, blacks — no one likes them, but they don’t dislike them enough. They don’t want them in their clubs, or next door, but that’s about as far as it goes. If you’re going to protect white Australia you have to understand what accommodating these people means; you have to understand this at the level of bone and marrow, and you have to be willing to do something about it, see? And you need someone to lead.’

  ‘You were looking for a leader when you met up with Starling and his cronies?’

  Halloran moved his wheelchair forward.

  ‘You wouldn’t be saying that if I wasn’t in this fucking wheelchair, you smug, ugly little bitch. I was the leader they were looking for.’

  Helen took a step backwards, repressing the urge to retaliate. The priority here was to find George Starling, not to best an old man in a wheelchair. She was close enough to him to lean in and retrieve the sketch of George Starling.

  ‘So, you haven’t seen him recently?’ she said.

  He wheeled away from her, towards the front door, which he opened.

  ‘Get out of my house, and tell my prick of a brother if he wants any information from me he should send a real policeman, not some silly slut who should be doing something useful like working on a munitions line, or fucking soldiers for free. If it’s dark enough, they mightn’t notice how fucking ugly you are.’

  If Halloran was expecting to get a rise out of Helen, he was disappointed. She moved past him, onto the porch.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Halloran. I think I’ve learned everything about you that’s worth learning.’ She smiled at him. ‘It only took ten minutes.’

  He slammed the door.

  Sitting in the car, Helen looked in the rear-view mirror.

  Sticks and stones, she said to herself. What a pious old lie that is.

  MARIA PLUSCHOW’S HOUSE sat close to the verge, ten minutes out of Warrnambool, on the Port Fairy road. Sergeant David Reilly liked neat houses — a preference catered to by his wife, who picked up after him — and the Pluschow house was a model of neatness. The land behind it, and on either side, was a comparative chaos of ungrazed grass and thistle, leading Reilly to surmise that it wasn’t owned by Maria Pluschow.

  He was slightly nervous. Having read and re-read the briefing notes, he’d been appalled by the violence meted out by people of Maria’s political persuasion. It had come as an unpleasant shock to him that there were people in his own familiar city who thought seriously, passionately, and dangerously that National Socialism wasn’t just a viable alternative to democracy, but a preferable and necessary one. He half expected that Maria Pluschow would be an exaggerated version of Magda Goebbels, whose austere, determinedly maternal visage he’d seen in newsreels. When Maria Pluschow opened the door to him, he found a thin, plainly dressed woman, with grey hair pulled severely into a bun, away from her face. Her skin was lined, making her look older than she perhaps was. Reilly’s wife, Barbara, always said that a little plumpness around the face protected it from ageing too quickly, which licensed her fondness for sponge cake — a fondness that had been sorely curtailed by the frequent difficulty in finding fresh eggs.

  Reilly took off his hat.

  ‘My name is Sergeant Reilly. I’m a policeman from Melbourne. May I come in?’

  Maria Pluschow looked him up and down, thought about closing the door in his face, thought better of it, and said, ‘I haven’t broken any laws. Why don’t you people leave me alone?’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘No, you may not.’

  Reilly was wrong-footed by her obstinacy. Back in Melbourne he might have insisted and used his foot against the door to demonstrate this insistence. Here, in a strange town, he felt constrained by an uncertainty about how his city manners would be received by Inspector Halloran. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the sketch of George Starling.

  ‘Do you know this person?’

  Maria Pluschow glanced at it and said, ‘No. Never seen him before in my life. What’s he supposed to have done, and why are you asking me?’

  ‘We’re asking a few people, Mrs Pluschow.’

  ‘You know my name. Why?’

  Reilly was flustered by the aggressiveness of her questions, and afterwards he realised he’d given her too much information too early in the encounter. He should have test
ed her claim that she didn’t recognise the sketch. Instead he said, ‘This is George Starling. He grew up around here. His father is — was — John Starling.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘John Starling died very recently.’

  ‘How recently?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘And what’s that old bloke’s death got to do with me?’

  By now Reilly was only too aware that he’d lost control of the interview. Maria Pluschow was asking all the questions. He tried to wrest back some control.

  ‘John Starling’s death isn’t being treated as suspicious. We want to find his son, that man in the sketch, so that we can tell him that his father has passed away.’

  Reilly thought this appeal to sentiment was inspired.

  ‘Why would they send a policeman all the way from Melbourne to look for John Starling’s boy just to tell him his dad was dead?’

  Reilly was unable to contain his exasperation.

  ‘Do you, or do you not, know George Starling?’

  ‘Well, now, I wouldn’t want to lie to you, given the charitable mission you’re on. I knew him when he was a boy. I haven’t seen him for years, and that sketch looks nothing like him. And I’ll tell you this, there was never any love lost between the two of them. I’d bet my bottom dollar that George won’t care less when you break the bad news to him.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw John Starling?’

  ‘He lived on the other side of Warrnambool. I wouldn’t have seen him for close enough to 10 years.’

  ‘Did you fall out with him?’

  She laughed.

  ‘Now you want more than you’re entitled to. No, I didn’t fall out with him. As a matter of fact, I quite liked him. Now, you’ve had your fair share of jibber jabber, and I’ve got things to do.’

  ‘If George Starling contacts you, the Warrnambool police want to know about it.’

  ‘Why on earth would that boy contact me? And just so you know, if on the off chance he did, I won’t be running to the coppers.’

  She closed the door, leaving Reilly to begin to construct a version of the interview that he hoped would satisfy Inspector Lambert.

  –4–

  MATTHEW TODD LOOKED critically at his fiancée’s face. He often did this, just to reassure himself that she really did bear a passing resemblance to Irene Dunne. Matthew loved Irene Dunne. He’d begun courting Dorothy Shipman the day after he’d seen her in Sackville Street. She was unaware of her resemblance to the movie star, and Matthew never mentioned it. This was a private passion. Dorothy rarely went to the movies. Dorothy rarely did anything that might put ideas into her head. She wasn’t silly, though — not by a long chalk. She was something of an accounting wizard, and she kept the books for her father’s drapery business. She’d been out of Port Fairy only twice in her life. On both occasions she’d travelled to Warrnambool to see a dentist. Consequently, her experience of the world was narrow, and whatever opinions she’d formed had become inflexible to the point of atrophy.

  One of these opinions concerned girls who surrendered their virginity before marriage. No marriage could survive such an assault on decency. Matthew discovered, on the night he made an inelegant manual dash for Dorothy’s crotch, the limits of the erotic possibilities between him and his fiancée. She’d been horrified that his fingers had slipped under the edge of her bloomers and brushed against her pubic hair. Indeed it was this incident that led to their engagement. Dorothy felt despoiled, but the despoliation was tolerable if it was to be redeemed by marriage. Matthew, who knew perfectly well that he could satisfy his lust elsewhere, agreed to Dorothy’s terms. After all, the idea that he would soon take Irene Dunne’s virginity was an irresistible attraction.

  As he watched her now, poring over the accounts book in the draper’s shop, he wondered if this engagement was such a good idea after all. He didn’t need whatever money she might bring to the marriage — and it wouldn’t be much, as Shipman’s Drapery wasn’t exactly booming. He had his own quite lucrative source of income, brokering the catch for several of Port Fairy’s biggest fishermen. Despite his relative youth, he’d proved a tough negotiator, and the fishermen’s income had increased under his brokerage. They’d been particularly impressed when he’d managed to minimise the rorting of the lobster catch by the buyers in Melbourne. It was common practice for the wholesalers to declare that a percentage of the catch had arrived damaged and that they wouldn’t pay full price for damaged goods. They would then on-sell the lobsters for a decent price, having bought them cheaply. The fishermen knew perfectly well that they were being diddled, but had had no way of proving it.

  Matthew took it upon himself to track a haul of lobsters brought in by the men he represented from the boat deck, to the wharf, to the railway station, and thence all the way to Melbourne. He watched the unloading, and ticked off each lobster as it was passed for inspection. It was tedious, but no lobsters were declared damaged in the batches he supervised. Other batches from Port Fairy wouldn’t be so lucky; he was certain of that. There would probably be an unusual number of damaged animals to compensate. Despite the inconvenience and the cost, Matthew accompanied the lobster catch, each time there was one, for several weeks until he’d established a pattern among the buyers of passing his catch without penalty. It would look peculiar if damaged lobsters suddenly started to appear just because Matthew wasn’t there. The fishermen he represented, at first reluctant to hire someone so young, were impressed.

  People in Port Fairy liked Matthew Todd, and he liked being liked. He attended church, even if it was the wrong church as far as half the town was concerned, and no one ever saw him drunk or disorderly. It was generally agreed that he and Dorothy Shipman were a good match, although it was occasionally noted that the Shipmans occupied a social rung a bit below the Todds. The fact that the village idiot was his uncle helped close that gap a little. Matthew could see Selwyn from Shipman’s window.

  ‘Is your uncle in his usual spot?’ Dorothy asked. She asked this question almost every day, despite knowing full well what the answer would be. This irritated Matthew intensely, but each day, in a measured tone, he replied, ‘Yes, he’s there, dribbling and drooling and scratching away like the moron he is.’

  There must have been something slightly different in his tone this day, because Dorothy, instead of going back to her figures, said, ‘He’s harmless, Matthew. You mustn’t be so cruel.’

  ‘I hate him. He’s repulsive. He’s only half human, and that’s the half that pisses and shits everywhere.’

  Dorothy was shocked. She left the counter and joined Matthew at the window, intending to berate him about his appalling language. The look on his face stopped her.

  ‘He’s not hurting anybody,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were related to him.’

  ‘But I will be related to him, when we’re married.’

  Matthew turned to her and was disappointed to find that the way the light fell across her face obliterated her resemblance to Irene Dunne. He leaned down, kissed her on the forehead, and said, ‘He should be put down. If you had a dog as useless and filthy as Uncle Selwyn, you’d have it put down.’

  GEORGE STARLING HAD been in Port Fairy for two weeks, and he’d been careful to keep out of the way. He called himself ‘Bert’ and didn’t offer a last name. He knew that the coppers would be asking about a bloke who called himself ‘Fred’. Having spoken to that little Sable cunt, he was glad he hadn’t gone back to his real name — not that there’d been any chance of that. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to make a connection between him and his lousy father. Port Fairy was the ideal place to retreat to. No one knew him there. Having grown up on the other side of Warrnambool — despite its being only 18 miles away, it might as well have been the far side of the moon — he felt at home here, in the sense that the
weather was familiar. The smells, too, calmed his nerves. Even the briny iodine air that frequently settled over Port Fairy was familiar, his father’s farm being close to the ocean. He liked the ocean, and he liked it best when it thundered. As a child, he’d escaped his father’s tongue and his vicious fists by clambering down the cliffs of Murnane’s Bay and sitting for hours on end on the damp sand of the small, private cove. He’d preferred to do this when the weather was wild so that the ocean drew itself up in a rage and broke almost at his feet. It had frightened him, but not in the way that his father frightened him. This was noble fear, and it excited him. As he grew older he would borrow his father’s motorcycle, and eventually explored the coast and hinterland from Mepunga to the far side of Port Fairy. Once, he’d made it to Portland. He came to know this area with the precision of an ordinance map.

  At the moment, he had no transport, and this, he felt, made him powerless. To do what he wanted to do — to punish Sable — he needed that motorcycle, although he wasn’t sure how he’d get the petrol to take him to Melbourne. There was a tank on the farm, but it would be bone dry. Well, he’d find a way. The important thing was to get hold of the motorcycle, and this was within his grasp because Peter Hurley was delivering a catch of couta and trumper to a mate just beyond the Mepunga turn-off. He’d get a lift and walk the rest of the way. He knew that Hurley would have no interest in his reasons for being dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and he’d repay the compliment by not asking why the catch was going to a farmer and not to market.

  IT WAS ALMOST four o’clock when the detectives gathered at the Warrnambool police station to compare notes. Constable Manton had returned, too, and had told them that he’d seen no evidence of any violent disturbance at Starling’s farm.

  ‘It struck me as not a bad way to go. Starling looked calm, as if he’d sat down for a breather and then died. The flies made it bad to look at. They’d been busy — not that it would’ve bothered Starling.’

  Having heard each separate report, the consensus was that George Starling would be unlikely to make contact with any of the people questioned. Halloran was curious about Helen Lord’s impressions of his brother.