The Holiday Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘Not bad, exactly. Unreliable. It’s a sort of arrhythmia, and sometimes, just sometimes, it throws everything out of whack. It can happen at moments of stress. It happened last night, and I passed out — in Bowen Crescent, like I said. I think my body goes into shock. It’s anxiety about it, partly — well, mostly. Whenever it happens, I panic that I’m having a heart attack or that the bloody thing will just stop permanently. I was only out for a few seconds. When I got home, I gave myself a fright when I looked in the mirror.’

  Helen Lord’s face was such a picture of concern that Joe hurried to reassure her.

  ‘It’s not life-threatening, Helen. I’m not going to keel over and die. Not in the foreseeable future.’

  She didn’t look convinced, and Joe knew she would carry out her own checks about his condition. When she did that, she’d discover that Joe’s heart could fail him at any time.

  ‘I feel awful about asking all those questions,’ she said as she started the engine.

  ‘I don’t want Inspector Lambert to know about last night.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want him thinking that … I just don’t want him to know.’

  ‘Surely you don’t think it will change his opinion of you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s partly it.’

  Helen Lord shook her head.

  ‘Men,’ she said.

  Titus sat in the front room of a small weatherboard cottage in Camberwell. Its owner, a woman in her fifties, sat opposite him. The room was stuffy and dark, despite the blazing sun outside. The shut-out light did little to ameliorate the heat. Mrs Emerson, for that was the woman’s name, was of a type easily and regularly satirised in films and plays. She’d never adjusted her sense of entitlement to the realities of her position. Now widowed, she’d always believed that she’d married beneath her station. It was love, she said — that’s what had been her downfall. She’d sacrificed her entitlement for love, which was all very well; but Bert, who’d worked hard and who’d never been feckless, had nevertheless died with dispiritingly few assets. She made do and mended, and firmly believed that any fool could see the disparity between her true worth and her situation. Such a reality would be blindingly obvious to a man such as the inspector who sat on her settee. The quality of the china cup he held in his hands would be signal enough, despite the chip on the rim.

  When Mrs Emerson had left him to make the tea, Titus had looked about the room and come to no more controversial a conclusion than that this was a lower-middle-class household with a limited income. He was sure Sergeant Sable would disapprove of the Landseer print in pride of place on the wall. It was a picture so ubiquitous that even Titus recognised it.

  ‘Now, Inspector,’ Mrs Emerson said, ‘I can’t imagine how I can be of any help to you.’

  ‘I hope my questions won’t be distressing.’

  ‘As they’re about my late sister, they’re bound to be a little distressing.’

  ‘Yes. Were you close to Carmel?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say close, Inspector. Carmel was the black sheep. She had every advantage that I had, but she wanted to go on the stage, and that was that. You can imagine how our parents felt about it. She was headstrong. It broke Mother’s heart.’

  ‘Did she make a success of it?’

  ‘Oh well, it depends on what you call a success. Mother certainly didn’t think so. “And what does Carmel do?” people would ask. Well, no mother can feel proud about saying, “Oh Carmel is doing very well. She’s a Tivoli girl.” Mortifying.’

  ‘Did you ever see her on stage?’

  ‘Inspector, do I look like the kind of person who’d patronise the Tivoli Theatre? What if someone saw me go in?’

  ‘I believe it’s very popular.’

  Mrs Emerson gave a little sniff to indicate her view on popularity as a measure of success.

  ‘My Bert was always campaigning to go along. Just to see Carmel, he’d say. Of course, I put my foot down on that score. No husband of mine was going to pay good money to ogle my half-naked sister. He might as well stick his head around her bathroom door and expect me to be happy about that, too.’

  ‘Did Carmel ever mention a man named John Quinn?’

  ‘Mention him? She never stopped mentioning him.’

  ‘So you spoke to Carmel. I mean, you were still close enough to your sister, despite her work, to talk to her?’

  ‘She was my sister, Inspector. I made no secret about what I thought of her career, if you could dignify what she did with that expression, but we spoke regularly.’

  ‘You knew that John Quinn was a married man?’

  ‘She made no bones about it. That’s what the Tivoli does to people, of course. If you run with a louche crowd, your moral compass goes haywire. She justified the whole thing in the usual way: his wife didn’t love him, and the marriage was a sham.’

  ‘When Quinn’s wife died, did Carmel expect to marry him?’

  ‘There was no doubt about it in her mind. She’d marry him and move into his flash house — oh yes, I knew that he had money.’

  ‘Was that important to Carmel?’

  Perhaps feeling that she was speaking ill of the dead, Mrs Emerson sought to restore some reputation to her sister.

  ‘Whatever else might be said about Carmel, one thing no one could accuse her of being was a gold-digger. She had no interest in money.’

  ‘So her feelings for Quinn were genuine?’

  ‘Genuine, yes. Morally reprehensible, but genuine.’

  ‘Did you meet Quinn?’

  ‘I was quite prepared to meet him after he’d married Carmel. It was impossible before that. It would be condoning what amounted to adultery.’

  ‘Even after his wife’s death?’

  ‘Then it would be condoning promiscuity.’

  ‘Did Carmel show you photographs of Quinn?’

  ‘Never. He was just a name to me.’

  ‘Did you know he had two children?’

  ‘Carmel mentioned them. They were both grown up.’

  Titus began to think that Mrs Emerson knew much more about the Quinn family than she was letting on.

  ‘How did Carmel feel about the children?’

  ‘She didn’t ever meet them, although I got the impression that they disapproved of their father’s relationship with Carmel, and quite rightly so. They were hardly likely to embrace their father’s mistress, were they? Perhaps later, but Carmel was killed, so …’

  Mrs Emerson’s voice betrayed real emotion the moment that she mentioned her sister’s death. She sniffed away tears. [trs]

  ‘She was struck by a car. I suppose you know that. I suppose that’s why you’re here, Inspector, and if I can be frank with you, I’m surprised it’s taken you three years to investigate it.’

  Titus narrowed his eyes.

  ‘My understanding is that it was a hit-and-run accident, Mrs Emerson.’

  ‘It was a hit-and-run, but it was no accident.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the police report to suggest that it was deliberate. Do you have information that we don’t have?’

  Mrs Emerson put her teacup down.

  ‘I just know, Inspector. No one was more careful than Carmel about crossing the road. She’d had a close call when she was younger, and she was nervous about cars after that. She’d be just about the last person on Earth to walk in front of a car travelling at high speed. It’s unthinkable.’

  ‘That’s the thing about accidents, Mrs Emerson — they take us by surprise.’

  Mrs Emerson gave a little harrumph.

  ‘Hit and run. What kind of decent person does that? No, Inspector. Whoever ran my sister down was using his car as a weapon.’

  Titus agreed that it was hard to fathom the behaviour of some people, b
ut that this didn’t necessarily point to murder, which was what Mrs Emerson was suggesting.

  ‘Who would want to harm your sister?’

  ‘She ran with a fast crowd, Inspector. The mind boggles and the flesh creeps when I think of those types — dope fiends, drunkards, and spivs. Who knows who she rubbed up the wrong way?’

  ‘I don’t think the Tivoli Theatre is a hotbed of criminal activity, Mrs Emerson.’

  ‘If you lie down with a dog, Inspector, you get up with its fleas. That’s all there all is to say about theatre types.’

  After more exchanges about the murky depths plumbed by showgirls, actors, and actresses, Titus decided that he’d exhausted Mrs Emerson’s potential as a source of information about Carmel’s relationship with the Quinn family. She’d produced a farrago of unsubstantiated speculation, and she’d swung vertiginously between supporting her late sister and criticising her. The only thing that Titus could say with any certainty at the end of the interview was that Mrs Emerson, in her way, loved her sister and missed her.

  Joe Sable and Helen Lord had both been moved by the distress of the Dutchman’s wife. Her English was excellent. Mrs Van Heyk had given them the names of her husband’s friends, including his closest friend, a fellow Dutch immigrant, with whom he’d had dinner the previous evening. That he might have struck her husband was unthinkable. They were like brothers.

  They interviewed the man, Pieter de Hooch, with whom Van Heyk had had dinner, but he was so convincingly upset that neither Helen nor Joe could believe that he was their assailant. Finally, having gained reluctant permission at the hospital, they briefly interviewed the victim, groggy after surgery, and he was unable to offer any useful information. They decided that the Van Heyk assault had nothing to do with the Quinn–Draper investigation, and left it in the hands of other detectives to unravel the truth about it. Whether it was a random attack or a case of mistaken identity was of consequence now to the Van Heyks and local police. It was of no consequence to Homicide.

  Clarry Brown waited impatiently in his café for Jones and his mates to arrive. They hadn’t told him when to expect them, so it was unreasonable to feel slighted. Nevertheless, he felt miffed, as if Jones had failed to keep an appointment.

  Clarry scoured the papers for a report of the dead Jew. There was nothing. When he thought about it, though, he realised that the body wouldn’t have been found in time to make the papers. The report would be there tomorrow — proof that he was worthy to be a full member of Our Nation, and not just an ordinary member, but a member with real credentials.

  It was late afternoon when Fred, Mark, and Frank came in. Jones wasn’t with them. They wanted beer, and made no move to pay for it. They sat at a table away from the counter, and made it clear when Clarry brought the bottle over that he wasn’t welcome to join them. Mark, the overweight, blond simpleton, said something that Clarry didn’t catch. The other two laughed, and he was sure it had been a remark about him. He returned to the table and said, ‘The beer’s two bob.’

  Fred, who had his back to him, said, ‘The beer’s free for party members.’

  ‘The beer isn’t free for me. I’ve got to buy it.’

  ‘You’re not a party member. That’s why it’s not free for you.’

  Frank and Mark laughed at this clever riposte. Clarry, seeing the muscles in Fred’s neck tense, and the hands at the end of those hairy arms form into fists, withdrew to his counter. He couldn’t see how he could tell them about his triumph the previous night. They weren’t in the mood to be impressed, and they probably wouldn’t believe him. Well, it could wait until tomorrow, when Jones was back.

  He wondered, looking at the trio in his café, how he could have considered them to be comrades in arms. Without Jones, they were nothing. Jones would have asked him to join them at the table if he’d been there, and he wouldn’t have minded about the beer. That blond one, Mark, didn’t belong in Our Nation, surely. He was too ugly and too stupid. There he was, laughing again, and that big, cherry-red lower lip glistened with saliva. What did Jones see in him Did Jones feel sorry for him? It could only be pity. He couldn’t possibly admire or respect him.

  As the three men talked, Clarry thought how easy it had been to kill the Jew in Toorak. He closed his eyes and re-imagined the scene with Mark on the receiving end of the beating. He opened his eyes and stared at Mark’s porcine profile. Who would miss such a creature if he were to die? I can choose to spare your life, or take it, Clarry thought, and he was suffused with pleasure. What a gift Jones had given him — the liberating knowledge that he could summon death, and that death would come. But when he moved his gaze to Fred, his confidence evaporated. He didn’t imagine he could ever take Fred by surprise — and he didn’t want to. Clarry saw the point of Fred. He and Jones were similar people, cut from the same cloth. Whatever cloth Mark was cut from, it was shoddy. Laugh, fat boy, Clarry thought, laugh like a drain. Your days are numbered.

  It had been a long recording session, in which they managed to commit three episodes of The Red Mask to acetate. The serial had aired only four times so far, but the response had been better than anyone at 3UZ had expected, and not just in Melbourne — audiences in all the capital cities had loved it. The sponsor, Lifebuoy Soap, was pleased. A representative of the company had even been in the studio watching the cast perform that day.

  By five o’clock, Mary Quinn was exhausted. In all three episodes, her character had been in great peril, and she’d been required to produce two blood-curdling screams of terror. Her throat was feeling the effects of this exertion, and Constance Thorpe was keeping an eye on her. She admired Mary’s ability to corral her emotions in such a way that her hideous personal circumstances didn’t encroach upon her work in the studio. That scream had unsettled Constance. Somehow it didn’t feel like Mary Quinn was acting. At the very least, she’d drawn on something within herself to produce it, and that something was disturbing.

  Constance noticed, in the course of the taping, that Jack Able’s eye kept settling on Mary Quinn, and that there seemed to have been a change in the rapport between them — a change for the better. Not that there’d ever been any coolness, but now there was a real warmth. She knew that Jack wasn’t committed to the pursuit of a particular sex, and she supposed that Mary wasn’t so naïve as not to have noticed this. If Mary was willing to engage in a romance with Jack under those circumstances, it wasn’t for Constance to disapprove or intervene. She felt great sympathy for Mary, and she liked Jack enormously. He was, Constance thought, a man without malice — a rare-enough quality in the community generally, and beyond price among actors. A real-life romance between her leading man and leading lady would be a publicity boon for The Red Mask

  However, as Constance watched them, she found herself worrying about how Jack would cope with what she could foresee as the inevitable failure of the romance. He was promiscuous with his cock, but not with his feelings. Mary Quinn wasn’t promiscuous, but there was a steeliness in her that hardened her against disappointment. Or so it seemed to Constance. She looked forward to discussing this turn of events with Dora.

  Jack invited Mary to join him for dinner. She said she was too tired to bother with dinner, but that he could walk her back to the Windsor Hotel if he liked. On the way there, they spoke about the success of The Red Mask, and Jack told her that he’d heard that her performance was the talk of the country. Did she ever imagine when they started this silly serial that it would take off like this?

  ‘Your Dad would have been very proud,’ he said.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘He wouldn’t have listened to a single episode; it wouldn’t have mattered to him how successful it became.’

  Jack knew instinctively not to suggest that Mary was surely exaggerating, and that Mr Quinn would most likely have come round.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to …’

&
nbsp; Mary touched his arm and assured him that he’d said nothing offensive, that it was perfectly normal for a person to assume that a father would take pride in the achievements of his daughter.

  ‘One day, Jack, I’ll tell you all about it.’

  ‘You know there’s no such thing as the perfect family.’

  ‘No? What about your family, Jack?’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t have a father to disappoint. He bolted when my mother got pregnant. I’m a bastard.’ He laughed. ‘Ask anyone.’

  ‘That’s not in any of the articles I’ve read about you.’

  ‘Of course not. My father died a hero in the first war, according to the approved biography. I wouldn’t be surprised if in reality he ended up dead in a gutter somewhere. We can’t frighten the horses by telling the people the truth.’

  ‘Would they really care?’

  ‘It’s a funny thing, Mary. It actually changes the way people look at you. It’s as if they think illegitimacy is contagious.’

  ‘How did you know that I wouldn’t look at you like that?’

  ‘You’re not like everybody else. You’re not like anybody I know.’

  He stopped and held her wrist.

  ‘I think I could tell you anything,’ he said.

  He moved towards her. She pulled away.

  ‘I’m not ready, Jack.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She touched his cheek and said, ‘I’ll keep you in mind, though.’

  They both laughed and continued towards the Windsor Hotel.

  Ptolemy Jones had returned from Candlebark Hill that afternoon, having left Magill and company up there, along with Tom Mackenzie. Mackenzie had impressed him, although Fred was still wary. Fred was always wary around new recruits; it took years to win his trust. Fred was right, of course. Mackenzie had yet to prove himself, although Jones had every confidence that he’d do so. Jones didn’t think the same about his friend, Joe Sable. For a start, Jones was sure that there were Jews somewhere in Sable’s past, and not the distant past either. He was a lightweight, anyway, and had more in common with Magill’s girlfriend than with anyone in the fledgling Our Nation party. Sable wouldn’t last the distance; Mackenzie would. Jones was willing to back Mackenzie, but if he let Jones down, he’d regret it.