Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  They still say chauffeur here in Springfellow Avenue, thought Malone. Everyone else, even the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, had a driver.

  “Where did you go?”

  “To the early show up at Mosman—we always go to the movies on Monday night. Then we went down to the Manly Leagues Club for dinner.” She was sounding more human, less starched, by the minute.

  “What about Lady Springfellow? Was she home here on her own?”

  “You’d have to ask the security man, the night one. He’s not on duty now. He comes on at six.”

  “Was Lady Springfellow home when you left?”

  “No, she was working back, she does that a lot on Monday nights. She has her dinner sent over from the restaurant in the apartments where Miss Justine lives.”

  “How does she get home if your husband isn’t there to drive her?”

  “A hire car picks her up.”

  “Was she home by the time you got home?” Clements was doing all the questioning.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Clements suddenly changed tack. “That gun collection in the other room. Did you notice the Walther missing? The smaller hand-gun?”

  “Oh, that one. Yes, I noticed it was gone, the first time.”

  “The first time?”

  “Yes, just before they discovered Sir Walter’s—remains. Then it was back in the cabinet for a day or two, then it was gone again.”

  “Did you mention it to Lady Springfellow?”

  “No-o. She had enough on her mind—I mean with Sir Walter—turning up after all that time.”

  “What about the other missing gun?”

  “Oh, I don’t know a thing about that. You’d have to ask my aunt. She was the one who really knew all about the family. She was with them for forty years.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Mrs. Dyson. She was the housekeeper and cook here for years. When she retired, she got me and my husband our positions.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Oh yes. She lives in a retirement village out at Carlingford.”

  “Near Channel 15?”

  “Just down the road.”

  “Does Lady Springfellow visit her?”

  Mrs. Leyden looked at her cup, as if searching for scum on the coffee. “Well, no, not exactly. She and my aunt didn’t see eye to eye, if you know what I mean. Well, maybe you don’t.”

  “No, I’m afraid we don’t.”

  She looked up again. “Well, I’m not going to tell you. That’s in the family. Lady Springfellow doesn’t visit her, but she looks after my aunt. She pays for everything and my aunt gets a nice pension. I don’t think Aunt Grace complains.”

  “Forgive me asking,” said Malone, feeling he’d better ask something, “if Lady Springfellow and Mrs.—Dyson?—didn’t see eye to eye, how did your aunt last so long? And why did she accept your aunt’s recommendation of you?”

  He hadn’t meant it to sound so much like a barrister’s cross-examination; Mrs. Leyden took a moment to straighten it out. “I—I think Lady Springfellow sometimes has—I shouldn’t say this—well, she has fits of conscience. It seems like that. Sometimes she’s come home with an expensive present for my aunt, a nightgown or something like that, but she always asks me to take it to her. She’s really a kind woman at heart. My aunt just never understood that.”

  “Does your aunt refuse the presents?”

  Mrs. Leyden smiled. “No. She’s an old lady. Old ladies like to receive presents. So do old men, I should think.”

  “I’ll let you know when I get there,” said Malone.

  “We’d like to talk to your aunt,” said Clements. “She’s not too old to answer questions, is she?”

  Again Mrs. Leyden smiled, the plain look gone from her blunt-nosed, good-looking face. Policemen were not such ogres after all. “My aunt likes to talk. There’s not much else to do in a retirement village, except talk and watch TV.”

  And wait to die, thought Malone.

  He and Clements drove out through the heat of the day, away from the coast breezes. He wondered why Mrs. Dyson, having lived for forty years cooled by harbour breezes, should have chosen to retire away from them. But perhaps she had had no choice: when someone else was paying the bills, you went where you were sent.

  “What do you reckon about the guns?” said Clements.

  “I don’t know.” Malone was cautious. “Anyone could have taken them.”

  “Any one of the family, you mean? Yeah, I guess so.” But Clements’s mind was already starting to set.

  Despite the stationary air that felt as if it had escaped from a furnace and been filtered through a wet screen, Pleasant Oaks was not a hell-hole. The cottages and apartments were attractive, built of dark brick and with green—tiled roofs, fitting neatly into the landscaped grounds. Malone had a sudden dim memory of visiting his grandfather, his mother’s father, in an old men’s home somewhere in the southern suburbs, where the roof leaked, the rooms smelled damp and the season, it seemed, was always winter.

  Mrs. Dyson had a one-bedroom apartment in the main wing. “When we get on a bit, they move us in here so’s they can keep an eye on us. Everybody’s indoors today—it’s so hot. So you two are policemen, eh? You’re an inspector, eh? They must make „em younger these days.”

  She was in her late seventies, her back beginning to bend but not her mind. Her eyes, behind their glasses, showed how alert she might be; Malone only wondered about her memory. His own memory, at least of her, was dim; he couldn’t remember the woman who had opened the door to him and Zanuch twenty-one years ago, yet he was sure it would have been her. She was not tall, but she sat up as straight as she could in her straight-backed chair and he could believe she would have been a formidable guardian of the Springfellow privacy.

  “Lady Springfellow? Well, yes, I worked for her—” there was a pause “—when she married into the family.”

  “It’s going back a long way, Mrs. Dyson—” Malone decided it was time he did the questioning; he had given Clements enough rein. “Can you remember when Sir Walter disappeared?”

  “Of course. How could I forget?” Then her eyes clouded, as if the memory was too much for her and she wanted to forget.

  “Did anything unusual happen about that time?”

  “How do you mean?” She had made them some tea as soon as she realized they were going to spend some time with her; once a housekeeper, always a housekeeper. “Have a biscuit. I believe they call „em cookies now. Everything’s American. How do you mean?”

  “Well, did Sir Walter or Lady Springfellow do anything that wasn’t usual with them?”

  “They had a terrible row.” Then she looked at them cautiously. “I shouldn’t tell you that. I’m not a gossip.”

  “Giving information to the police isn’t gossiping, Mrs. Dyson.”

  But gossip is a great help; it oils the wheels and sometimes gives them a shove. Tell it not in Gath, whisper it not in the streets of Askelon: no Philistine policeman ever gave that advice.

  “Well—” She was dubious; but she was afraid that if she said nothing, they would leave her. Company was company: she looked out the window at the empty grounds. “We-ee-ll, some time that weekend, I can’t remember which night, they had this terrible row, I don’t know what it was about—my bedroom was at the other end of the house. It was unusual, all right—Sir Walter never raised his voice. She did—in those days she was . . .” She didn’t finish, but Malone made a guess: Venetia was common.

  “Were they still, well, cool towards each other when he left on the Monday morning?”

  “I think so. I’m sorry. When you ask me things like that, I mean the little things, I can’t remember as well as I used to. Your memory goes, you know, when you get on. That’s why I keep so many of my things out, to remind me.” She looked around the small living-room; framed photos formed a broken frieze on side-tables, a bookcase, the television set. A hearty-looking man with a laugh that could be heard even in the photo
looked out at her from a silver frame. “That was my husband, we never had a cross word in our whole married life.”

  “You were lucky, Mrs. Dyson. Had anything happened during the previous week, while Sir Walter was down in Melbourne, that might have caused him and Lady Springfellow to—to disagree?”

  She was silent for a while, staring at her dead husband. She closed her eyes and for a moment Malone thought she had dozed off; then she opened them and said firmly, “Yes, I remember something. A young man came to see her. Inspector Leeds had come to see her—I don’t know what night, the Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  Malone avoided Clements’s glance. “That was Inspector John Leeds?”

  “Yes, he was a friend of Sir Walter’s. He’s the Police Commissioner now. But I suppose you know that.” She smiled, showing what looked to be still her own teeth.

  “Vaguely,” said Malone, smiling back at her; he had a gentle way with old women, though he didn’t know where he had learned it. “Was Mr. Leeds a frequent visitor?” Christ, why did I ask that?

  “Did he come with his wife?” said Clements.

  “He wasn’t married then, not that I know of. He’d come when Sir Walter was home and sometimes he’d come and take her out to dinner. That was after Sir Walter had joined that spy lot and gone to work in Melbourne. They were very friendly.”

  “Who were?” said Clements.

  “Mr. Leeds and her.” Her mouth tightened, like a drawer snapped shut; she had said too much, some things should be locked away in the past. “No, I’m not going to say any more about them. That would be gossiping.”

  Malone nodded, taking the ball away from Clements again. “You mentioned a young man coming to see Lady Springfellow. Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t have a security man in those days. The family was well off, but nothing like she is today. It was different then—people were safe.” Again she stopped and closed her eyes. The two detectives waited patiently. Then she opened her eyes and went on, “He just came to the front door that morning—I think it was the Thursday, I’m not sure, but—and he said she was expecting him. She must have been, because she came into the hall before I could go and tell her and said to let him in.”

  “You’d never seen him before?”

  “No. He was a foreigner, I think, he had an accent. But that’s no help, is it? The place is full of foreigners these days. We even have them in here.”

  Con Malone would make a good neighbour for her, battling the invaders. All at once Malone wondered what would happen to his parents when they became too old to fend for themselves.

  “Can you remember what sort of accent?”

  She shook her head. “How can I remember something like that? You young people don’t know what it’s like to be losing your memory. I’m only remembering this because I had to remember it once before, when that spy lot—ASIO, is that it?—came to ask me questions.”

  Malone and Clements exchanged glances, then Clements said, “So you don’t know why he came to see her?”

  She shook her head again. “All I remember is, I went in to see if she—” It was she all the time now, never Lady Springfellow “—if she wanted me to serve tea or coffee. She was giving him money, quite a lot of it, in bundles. Like, you know, the way they have it in banks. She got angry with me for coming into the room. In front of him, too—ladies didn’t do that in my day, tick off their help in front of guests. I remember that distinctly—it’s why I remember seeing all the money she was giving him. He was putting it in a briefcase.”

  “Did she say anything to you after the young man had gone?”

  “She apologized to me for getting angry. But the damage had been done.” And persisted to this day.

  “She didn’t mention the money?”

  “No.” All at once she looked tired: her memory might be dim, but parts of what she had left weighed heavily.

  “We shan’t keep you any longer, Mrs. Dyson. One last thing. Do you remember Sir Walter’s gun collection?”

  “Of course. I was always wanting to dust it, but he would never let me. He used to oil the guns himself.”

  “The guns never frightened you?”

  “I grew up in the bush, Inspector. My father always had a gun or two in the house. No, I was never frightened of them. But she was.”

  “Can you remember one of the guns went missing about the time Sir Walter disappeared?”

  “Yes. It was a pistol, the big one.”

  “It was a Colt .45, an automatic,” said Clements.

  “Do you know what happened to the gun, Mrs. Dyson? Did you mention it to Sir Walter?”

  “No, not that I remember. I think I only noticed it had gone after he disappeared.”

  “Did you mention it to Lady Springfellow?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “To the Commonwealth police or the ASIO men?”

  “I may have. I don’t remember.” All at once she looked tired again; her memory had run more than its usual distance today. “I’m sorry, Inspector. It makes me sad to remember those days . . . I had a lot of time for Sir Walter.” But not for her: she would be a hostile witness there.

  The two men stood up. “You’ve been a great help, Mrs. Dyson.”

  “If you see Mr. Leeds, give him my regards. I think he might remember me. But it was all so long ago . . .”

  They let themselves out of the tiny flat, leaving her sitting stiff-backed in her chair, unafraid while death lapped at her like a rising tide.

  Outside, the elderly residents were now visible, moving through the heat in slow motion, like mirages, as they headed for the communal dining-room in the main building. Some of them smiled at Malone and Clements, glad to see new faces, especially younger ones. One or two couples had a buoyancy about them, but either the heat or the environment had got to most of them. They knew that, for all its pleasant surroundings, Pleasant Oaks was the end of the road.

  “It makes you sad, doesn’t it?” said Clements, chewing his bottom lip.

  “No,” said Malone, remembering where his grandfather had lived his last years. “They’d be a bloody sight sadder living in one room in Redfern or the old blokes dossing down in the Matthew Talbot.”

  “Why do you always look on the bright side?”

  “It’s the Irish in me.”

  “Bullshit. The Irish can be the most mournful buggers on earth, especially when they’re drunk.” They got into the car and Clements switched on the air-conditioning; it was working again. Then he said, “You’ve got something on your mind, haven’t you?”

  “What about? The Irish?”

  “Come on, Scobie, don’t muck about. Yesterday when we were questioning Justine, you were holding back. The same today. Is it something to do with the Commissioner?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Just the way you reacted when his name came up back there with the old lady.”

  “She was gossiping.” He was treading carefully, not wanting to put himself too far offside with Clements. His loyalty should lie with Clements, his sidekick; but he could not break the confidence of John Leeds. “Yes, I’ve got something on my mind. I’m beginning to wonder if Lady Springfellow is a double murderer.”

  It was fanciful, but he had to say something to throw Clements off the subject of John Leeds. But Clements said, “I’m thinking the same thing. Who was the guy she paid the money to? A hit man?”

  II

  “We’re in a bad way,” said Venetia.

  “We’ll get out of it,” said Justine.

  “Of course we shall. But it’s not going to be easy. I had them do a quick check on where we stand. We’ve lost 170 million since the Crash. Most of it on paper, but not all of it. There’s about 80 million we’ll never get back. Then there’s the servicing of our debt—that runs to 60 per cent of our cash flow. We’re going to have to sell off some assets.”

  “We’ve been cutting back on staff. I laid off another two girls from my Department today.”


  “Darling, people aren’t assets, not at that level. They’re disposable. No matter how much we pay a man or woman to join us, when they leave us we don’t get any transfer fee. Business isn’t like football.”

  Justine said nothing to that. Sometimes she was shocked at her mother’s ruthlessness. She was further shocked that it might be in her own genes: she dreaded the day when she would control Springfellow’s.

  They were in Justine’s apartment. Venetia, wanting a break, had come across from her office when all her personal staff had left for the day. She did not like the apartment’s decor and never felt at ease in it; but she recognized it for what it was, a rebellious expression, and she never made any comment on it. She just made sure that Justine’s decorator never got any work on any Springfellow project.

  “I was going to say fire Michael—”

  “He’s told me his head is on the block,” said Justine.

  “When did he start confiding in you?”

  Oh God, she’s not jealous of me, is she? “He’s not confiding in me. I went out with him the other night to a movie and some coffee afterwards.”

  “I don’t want anything starting up between you and him.”

  “There’s nothing like that. But don’t tell me who I can go out with. I’m not sixteen any more.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “It was this morning. He said you and he had had a run-in and he might get the chop. He didn’t seem too worried. He’s just so cocky, in his own quiet way. I don’t really like him, yet I find him interesting.”

  “He’s conceited, all right. But we need him—he’s one asset we have to keep, for the time being, anyway. There isn’t time to go shopping for someone else. Though Sydney at the moment looks like a game of musical chairs—I can’t keep up with the hirings and firings. We’ll keep him. We have to raise money again and he’s the one who knows where it is. When he took you out the other night, did you go in his Aston-Martin?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “He said he was going to have to sell it.”

  “Oh God, that’ll kill him!”

  Venetia smiled. “Life has its small satisfactions.”

  But Justine was too young for ironies. She had other worries besides those of the Springfellow business interests. “Changing the subject . . . Mother, I think Inspector Malone suspects me of having something to do with Emma’s murder. I didn’t want to worry you, but . . .”