“’Course not,” said Bindy. “I reckon you’ve seen it all.”
“I reckon,” Jeffreys replied with attractive modesty. “So you’re off for the day?”
“Oh, no! I just go help Gran. She’s got . . .” She twiddled an index finger near her temple.
“Ah. That’s too bad.”
“Mr. Sweetman lets me off for two hours. Long as I’m back by 6:30 to help cook with dinner.”
“That’s good, that he lets you do that.”
“He’s good to work for, is Mr. Sweetman.” She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “’Course, between you and me, I think he’s glad to have me. After all the business on Parliament Row. All those people dyin’ and that. Some girls won’t go near the place.”
“You’re very brave.”
“Brave?” Bindy flushed and turned briefly away to stare through her reflection in the window. “Not me. I think all that’s just a string of bad luck, is all. Coincidence.”
She turned back toward him. “Crazy, though, isn’t it? Those people dyin’ like that?” She was not able to altogether suppress the twinkle of perverse enjoyment Jeffreys had often seen fire the eyes of those contemplating the misery of others.
Not a soul at headquarters would disagree with Bindy’s appraisal. It was beyond crazy. It was also, everyone felt, beyond coincidence. But, thus far, no one had turned up the least shred of evidence that the string of deaths on Parliament Row were anything more than they appeared to be: one suicide, one accident, and one suspicious death for which—gossip notwithstanding—there was no indication of foul play.
And now visitors to the only guest house on the Row had found a girl—all but dead—on the beach. Miles away, true, but still, what were the odds? “Crazy,” he said, and meant it.
He’d been trying to think of a way to guide the conversation in such a way as to make the transition to his request appear seamless and unpremeditated; but Bindy flung the door open before he could reach for the handle. “You comin’ back—to the house? Any more questions?”
“You know what?” he said, as if the thought just occurred to him, “I was going to come back, just to give the girl . . .” he referred to his notebook, “Angela.”
Bindy nodded. “I think she’s wonderful, don’t you? Very . . . American, and that.”
“Very American”. That was a good way to put it, even if she was clearly English. “Yeah. Anyway, would you mind giving her a message for me?”
She hesitated half a second, which Jeffreys read, accurately, as being coy. “Okay,” she said at last.
“I’ll just write it out, shall I?” He opened his notebook to a blank page, and scribbled out a quick note chronicling his conversation with Hawkes. He debated whether to ask Bindy not to read it, then deciding that would just heighten her curiosity if he did so, folded the note and tucked it in the purse hanging from her arm. “It’s just a note to let her know I did what I said I’d do.”
Bindy could care less. Reading gave her headaches. What she wanted was to keep him talking as long as possible because it gave her an excuse to keep looking at him and make a detailed study of his dimples, which were her chief consideration at the moment.
“It was very sad,” Mr. Sweetman said as he, Albert, and Jeremy Ash lounged in the sitting room, pruning, smoking, and thinking respectively. “They say misfortune comes in threes.” He plucked a piece of foliage that failed to meet his requirements of pieces of foliage, and dropped the clipping into a worn leather pouch suspended from his shoulder. “Suicide, accident, and well, misadventure was, I believe, the final determination in Drucie’s case. That’s Colonel Rivens’ wife. Drucilla. Not murder, Wendell’s reservations notwithstanding.” He turned and extended his neck toward his hearers. “The Colonel truly doted on his Missus. No doubt. They were married over forty years and, I tell you this, they positively shone in one another’s company—and wilted without it.
“Much as he’s done since she passed, poor fellow. Wilted.” He returned to pruning. “Marking time, I’d say.” His voice dropped. “I know what that’s like.”
“But why does Wendell think it was murder?” Jeremy Ash asked.
“Because the autopsy didn’t reveal any definite cause of death, I should think.” Sweetman squinted at and breathed upon another leaf which seemed to quiver in consideration of its prospects. “That is the compost from which a bumper crop of speculation and rumor grew.
“I didn’t pay much attention, of course. Still,” he dropped his sheers into the leather bag and turned his attention to the room; the leaf sighed and sagged in relief, “a neighborhood like this—old, established—is really just a little village. One can’t help breathing the air, and that’s where gossip resides, does it not?”
“What about the other ones, the suicide and the accident?” Jeremy Ash wanted to know.
“Tragic.” Mr. Sweetman, following the example of the leaf, hung his head. “Tragic.
“The first was Bella, my friend Gerard Dona’s wife.”
“You’re kidding,” said Angela. “Bella Dona?”
Mr. Sweetman blew a note of irony through his nose. “Yes. That’s what they called her, of course, though she preferred Isobella, for obvious reasons. Still, people being what they are . . . And no,” he said, holding up a finger, “before you ask, she did not die of nightshade poisoning. Nothing so Agatha Christie as all that. Got in the tub and pulled her husband’s electric razor in after her.”
He crossed the room and took a framed photograph from the mantle over the fireplace, upon which another potted plant sat, surveying the world. “This is them, with Susan and me not three years ago.”
He handed the photo to Jeremy Ash, who studied it closely. “That’s the Sydney Opera House in the background, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Sweetman. “Susan and Bella trotted us over to Oz every year or two. She was from Brisbane, originally. Bella, not Suzie. She was from Wellington.”
Jeremy Ash wheeled a turn or two toward Albert and handed him the picture. “Susan was your wife?”
“Suzie, yes,” Mr. Sweetman nodded. “Gone not a year after that was taken.”
“Sorry.”
“No surprise, really,” said their host with a deep sigh. “No woman in her family lived beyond 55.” He sighed. “When we celebrated her 56th, we figured she’d beaten the curse, or whatever you want to call it.” His eyes pooled with tears as he retrieved the photo from Albert’s outstretched hand. “It’s true what they say about our future being written in our genes, I guess.”
Albert didn’t know that’s what they said, and wondered if it applied to other clothing as well.
“Took good care of herself, did Suze,” Sweetman said. “Had her one brandy in the afternoon and the odd beer now and then. Exercised every other day. Didn’t smoke.” He stroked the frame of the photo. “Thought we’d beat it, didn’t we, girl?”
Sweetman placed the photo carefully back on the mantle, beside the urn, with its little bronze plaque, in which his wife’s ashes were kept. “Two old widowers we are now.”
“Three,” said Albert.
“Pardon?”
“The Colonel’s wife. He’s a widower, too.”
Sweetman retracted his head somewhat, as if someone had suddenly tossed a dirty washcloth at it. “Well, now I hadn’t thought of that. You’re absolutely right, of course; three old widowers, all in a row. Gets more Agatha Christie all the time.”
“And the accident?” Jeremy Ash wanted to know.
“Breaks the pattern, if that’s what you’re looking for,” said Sweetman, ringing the bell for the maid. “Woman called Tanny; that was Gerard’s cleaning girl, if you can credit it. Double-whammy for the poor sod.”
The last thing Albert wanted was to get involved in any local intrigue, but his mouth refused to withhold comment. “His wife committed suicide, then his cleaning lady died in an accident?” it asked.
“Just so,” said Sweetman as Bindy entered the room. “Just so. Abo
ut four, five weeks later. Worked for us during Suzie’s illness, and a while after she passed, did Tanny. Big help ’til I got my feet back under me. Very capable girl. Helped out Rivens, too, when Drucie began to slip away. I think it was he who recommended her to Dona when he said he was looking for a girl-of-all-work. Gave him her number, and she happened to be free. Indispensable, she was, up and down the Row. Great loss.
“Ah, there you are, Bindy, speaking of great losses! Come to call us to dinner? I was beginning to wonder if you were dead and moldering in the grave. All is ship-shape in the galley, I trust?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bindy, with the slightest trace of a curtsey. “Cook said she’ll throw herself under a train if you let it get cold.”
“Very well. Begone, wench.”
The wench under address giggled, and left.
“Still a woman, though,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Woman?” said Sweetman. “Not more than a slip of a girl, I’d say. But I am an ‘ancient of days,’ and you . . .”
“No, not her.” He nodded at the departing and more animated portions of the maid. “I mean the accident. Tanny. All the victims were women.”
“So was the girl on the beach,” said Albert.
Sweetman didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, he sank slowly into his chair by the fireplace and considered. When at last he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper. “Most obvious thing in the world,” he said. “All women.” Pause. “I wonder if it’s significant.”
They were seated at the table by the time Angela joined them. She looked, Albert thought, like an arrangement of flowers in an attractive vase, an impression intensified by her scent as she took her place beside him. He tried to concentrate on thankfulness as he closed his eyes and whispered grace, a habit he’d picked up at Miz Grandy’s boarding house in Tryon, North Carolina, and one that had been heartily endorsed and encouraged by Mrs. Gibson.
Well, not exactly a habit. He did it when he thought of it, and he tried to think of it often, whenever he thought about trying to remember.
Angela’s presence was not conducive to spiritual concentration, but he mumbled his way through a summary of those things for which he was thankful—crockery, curtains, fingers, and the little round bits of felt on the bottom of table legs that kept them from scratching the floor, as these were things his eye fell upon while he was praying—while Jeremy Ash bowed his head, more out of respect for Albert than gratitude to a Higher Power. Not that he doubted God’s existence—of that he had no doubt—but based on personal experience, he was unable to overcome the feeling that it would be best not to do anything that might attract His attention, which is just what prayer was designed to do.
Angela—though she, too, had feasted at Miz Grandy’s table—was nonetheless British and, therefore, profoundly uncomfortable about praying, preferring to leave that chore to the professional clergy as prescribed by the Church of England. They probably had a union and there might be eternal consequences for crossing the spiritual picket line. She silently reread the note in her hand.
Mr. Sweetman contemplated how deeply alien these Yanks were.
“Amen,” Albert whispered.
“Ditto,” said Jeremy Ash.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Sweetman.
“I got a note from Sergeant Jeffreys,” said Angela. She handed it to Albert, and it was read around the table. Jeremy got it last.
“Someone ought to bottle you, A,” he said. “The Venice Regent. You were right.”
Something about the account was bothering Albert. His grandfather, an untold number of greats in the past, had been captain of a sailing ship. Had the conversation not been of a nautical nature, he’d never have given a second thought to the distant and indistinct memories of the stories his mother told friends and visitors when they asked about the ancient melodeon in the parlor, the one that grandfather had had aboard his ship “in the glorious days of sail. Three times around the world, through hell and high water. And he didn’t even play the damn thing!”
Albert played the damn thing once when he was three. Critique had been instantaneous and disapproving. He massaged his knuckles at the memory.
“That’s the ship she came from, then.”
“But just the fact that there was a ship by that name in the area . . . it still doesn’t make sense, Albert,” said Angela. “They’d have reported her missing.”
“. . . and, like the note says,” said Jeremy Ash, “she wasn’t dressed for a freighter.”
Albert brushed a finger across the keys of an imaginary piano. “She wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“What do you mean?” said Angela and Jeremy Ash in concert.
“That’s why nobody said anything. She wasn’t supposed to be on that boat.”
“Then how did she get there?” said Jeremy Ash.
Albert shrugged.
“Maybe she was kidnapped,” said Angela.
That would make sense.
“Or she was lured aboard,” countered Jeremy Ash.
That would make sense, too.
“Or she could have been a stowaway,” said Angela.
“Maybe she was getting married, and got cold feet at the altar!” said Jeremy Ash, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Stowed away and fell overboard, somehow. And nobody reported it, because nobody knew she was there in the first place!”
That didn’t make sense. “If a bride disappeared from a wedding,” said Albert, who—though his personal experience of weddings was, well, he’d never been to one—had a pretty unshakable concept that a bride was integral to the proceedings. “Somebody would notice.”
“Well, then,” said Jeremy Ash, not to be dissuaded, “maybe she . . .”
“Either no one knew she was on the boat—for whatever reason—and she fell or jumped overboard,” Angela speculated, “or she was pushed or thrown over.”
Albert interrupted, something he rarely did. “And the captain had nothing to do with it.”
Jeremy Ash rattled his head. “Say what?”
“He’s either dead, or sick, or something.” Albert wondered if long association with Jeremy Ash might be rubbing off on him after all. He was coming up with possibilities all on his own!
“How do you figure?” said Jeremy Ash.
That was a question Albert couldn’t answer, but it had something to do with boats which, he knew—though he had as little personal experience of them as he did of weddings—had anchors. “Because the ship ran aground. A captain wouldn’t have let that happen. Even if he was sick, he’d have told the crew to put down the anchor, so they wouldn’t run into things.”
“Or run aground,” said Jeremy Ash, almost under his breath.
“Or into other boats,” said Albert. Another thought waved its hand at the back of his mental classroom. “And the crew isn’t the crew.”
Mr. Sweetman shook his head. “I feel I could use an anchor myself. Bindy! Scotch! A double.”
“What makes you say that?” said Angela.
“Because they didn’t know what to do,” said Albert.
Angela considered this. “Then who were they?”
Jeremy Ash jumped as much to attention as his leglessness would allow. “Pirates!”
“Pirates,” Albert whispered.
Jeremy Ash related the more salacious points of a story he’d been reading in the newspaper about a spate of attacks upon commercial shipping by a group or groups of four or five, machete-wielding Singaporean pirates in the Timor Sea.
“Wouldn’t pirates know how to sail a ship?”
“Not if they weren’t familiar with it,” said Jeremy Ash. “Maybe it was more ship than they were used to.”
“And maybe they didn’t know the waters around here,” said Angela.
Albert tilted his head at the wallpaper. “Foreign pirates.”
“Pirates!” said Sergeant Jeffreys.
“That’s what he thinks,” said Bindy through the steam of her tea, “that Piano Man. Pirates took over
that ship—the Venice whatever.”
“Venice Regent,” said Jeffreys almost absentmindedly. His brain circumnavigated the balloon of this new and unexpected possibility, and could find no immediate leaks. Pirates were a fact of life in Australian waters, but to the north—in the straights of the Arafura Sea between Oz and New Guinea. This far south, though? Still, there had been that special training on the Trade: the sale of body parts. He’d given it no real credence at the time, nor did he think it fit to mention at present. “Pirates,” he repeated, just above a whisper.
“Because they didn’t know how to handle the boat, and that. Or how to stay off the reef,” said Bindy, her eyes and lips forming perfect “O”s of exclamation. A shiver of excitement—not the first that evening—spidered up her neck, standing the fine hairs on her arms at attention. The first shiver had been when she’d called the sergeant and he, rather than taking her information over the phone as she’d expected, asked if she’d meet him for tea at Medley’s Emporium, the toffest tea-shop in West Auckland, where they sat now, right out in front of the world and everybody.
And they say eavesdropping doesn’t pay. Well, here was proof in cream cakes and cucumber sandwiches that that was so much blarney! What would granny say?
She shivered again.
“Let me tell you what else they said.” She leaned close enough for a whiff of his aftershave and repeated what she’d heard.
Taking in the stunning novelty of the scenarios that flowed from the unassuming maid without allowing his face to betray the fact that they hadn’t occurred to those in the professional police force, took conscious effort. Jeffreys’ instinct was to say “Absurd,” but he didn’t. It made too much sense.
“All that from one word,” he said, staring at her but addressing himself.
“Pardon?”
“One word. Venice.”
“Mmm. Lovely tea!” She was wondering what color eyes their children would have.
“I despair of you, Walton. Honestly, I do,” said Senior Sergeant Hawkes’ wife, Emelda. She had creased and carefully folded the evening newspaper and placed it on the table so the photo of Albert, a reprint of that from his press releases, occupied the plate upon which there was no dinner. “‘Some Yank piano player’, you called him yesterday. I suppose Edmund Hillary was ‘some rock climber’!”
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