Good Murder

by Robert Gott

  ‘Mr Tibald Canty is not only a fine actor,’ I interposed, ‘he is also a chef whose skills would intimidate Escoffier himself.’ I took the liberty of putting my arm around Augie Kelly’s bony shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. ‘I can guarantee that in no time at all the word will spread that you are serving great food at the George. This will become the only place to eat in town, and that will mean a substantial increase in your profits. There must be people, even in a town like this, who like food. Imagine your dining room filled with people licking their lips and buying your booze.’

  ‘I don’t have much stuff in there,’ he said uncertainly, but there was no hostility in the look he gave me. I knew we had him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from staying in hotels, it’s that every hotel proprietor dreams of greatness. Most of them settle for squalor because after a while even that becomes a standard requiring effort.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you can do, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.’

  The speed with which he acquiesced was unsurprising. He could not afford to turn my troupe away. Even if we stayed for only a week, it would mean more money than he had earned in a long while.

  He allocated rooms on the third floor for the men, but gave Annie Hudson a room on the second floor. It was, he said, the best room in the hotel. Not for the first time, I admired the effortless, almost unconscious, ease with which Annie subdued men.

  ‘If business improves, you can stay for eighteen shillings a week.’

  ‘Fifteen’, I said quickly, ‘and it goes down further if business really improves.’

  ‘Show me the kitchen,’ Tibald said, before Augie Kelly could object.

  I followed them both down a narrow corridor. The others in the company peeled off to explore their rooms and to lie low. No one ever wanted to join me on my first excursion into a new town in search of a place to perform, which is what I would be doing after the tariff had been settled.

  The kitchen was dark, filthy, and malodorous. Flies buzzed, drawn by the seductive promise of rancid fat. I thought Tibald would change his mind on the spot and express his disgust in tariff-raising eloquence. I didn’t want him to do this because I had already assimilated the financial relief his cooking would provide. We would all pitch in, at least until Titus was up and running. I was looking forward to telling Annie that she would have to drag out her French maid’s costume yet again and wait on tables. At least we would eat well. To my astonishment he didn’t recoil in horror from the grim spectacle of a room that seemed to be held together by forces no stronger than congealed lard and darkness. Instead he uttered a little whoop of joy.

  ‘It’s an Aga,’ he said, in a tone normally reserved for the highest expression of stage joy. ‘I can’t believe it. Here, in the middle of this cholera zone you call a kitchen, you have an Aga.’

  ‘You mean the stove?’ Augie said, puzzled.

  Tibald looked at him with such exaggerated pity and contempt that his expression could have been seen from even the cheapest seats in the house.

  ‘Be in the dining room at 8.00 pm,’ he said imperiously, ‘and if you have any friends, bring them. Now, I need the name of your purveyors. I will purchase the food for this evening’s meal and I will charge it to this establishment.’

  Tibald drew a red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. It created the unfortunate impression of slobbering at the mere thought of food.

  Augie said nothing.

  ‘I presume you have preferred providores.’

  ‘I don’t even know what that is,’ Augie said, ‘but frankly it sounds expensive, and this new law means that we can’t charge more than five shillings for any meal — not that there’s a single person in this town who’d pay that much for a meal anyway. Where do you think you are? Paris?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tibald. ‘I don’t think I am in Paris, at least no part of it that’s above ground. If you give me the name of a butcher and a dry goods merchant, that will be a start.’

  ‘You can go to Geraghty’s for flour and stuff, and Lusk’s for meat, but you can’t charge anything. I don’t have an account, and even if I did I don’t think I’d be sending you off to spend my money on spec.’

  ‘All right, Mr Kelly,’ I said. ‘I quite see your point. We will pay for this evening’s meal as a demonstration of our good faith. If it is unsatisfactory we will pay you for one night’s accommodation and be on our way. You have nothing to lose and a reputation to gain. May I suggest that you shave before dinner.’

  I bustled Tibald out of the kitchen and towards the truck.

  ‘I hope,’ I said with studied calm, ‘that you can live up to your notices, because if this meal is a failure, we’re ruined.’

  ‘Who’s going to replace me in Titus if I’m cooking every night?’

  ‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘I’ll just cut the part out. Nobody here will notice.’

  I suspect Tibald was secretly glad to be out of Titus. My interpretation was a little too athletic for him to feel comfortable in his role. The somersaults I had wanted him to do were proving arduous and he was definitely disgruntled about wearing a leather posing pouch and nothing else.

  I dropped Tibald in Adelaide Street with ten pounds to spend. This was more than most people earned in a week. It was a fortune for us, but I knew that it would pay off. I then began to reconnoitre for a suitable hall. Maryborough is sensibly, if dully, laid out, its streets running logically in a treeless grid. A town without the aesthetic imagination to plant trees along its wide, sun-blasted streets might not be ready to embrace the poetic jungle of the Bard, I thought. As I drove I began to have grave doubts about our chances of a successful run in Maryborough. Each citizen who stared at the truck as it passed seemed to me to be a wretched dullard. The general witlessness threatened our very existence. Where were the public servants posted here to support the military, and hungry for the theatre they no doubt took for granted in Brisbane, or Sydney, or Melbourne? I had had such high hopes for Maryborough. I had imagined it as a sort of Antipodean Stratford. Instead, as I explored its streets, it was revealing itself to be little more than a flat town, an inconvenient distance from the ocean, watered by a river that moved through it with the slippery ease of a tapeworm. There was at least pleasure to be had from the sublime thrill of martyrdom in the service of art. But this was a private joy I could share with no one.

  Maryborough didn’t seem to me to be a town whose residents were expecting the Japanese at any moment. There was not an air of poised readiness. A few people had built decent shelters in their backyards, although from what I could discern most had desultorily dug a deep trench, propped some corrugated iron on top and, I supposed, watched it fill with water. If a bomb ever fell in Maryborough its citizens were in greater danger of drowning in their back yards than of being blown up.

  There wasn’t anything promising in the way of a hall in the centre of town. The Town Hall, oddly identified by the inscription ‘City Hall’ over the columns at its entrance, was far too imposing for our requirements. I didn’t imagine that we could fill it once, let alone for a season, however brief. So I drove down Kent Street away from the Town Hall, not knowing where I was headed but feeling my way confidently. It was not possible to get lost in a town of this size. I turned left into Ferry Street, and within a few blocks had crossed the Lamington Bridge into a settlement called Tinana. It was a sort of suburb of Maryborough and, apart from its sawmill and a slightly dilapidated hall, it seemed practically uninhabited. Off-Broadway is one thing; off-Maryborough is quite another. I turned the Bedford around and headed back into town, keeping to Ferry Street. The only traffic was bicycles, and there were plenty of those. They were obviously how most people got around in this town. Near the corner of Ferry and Walker Streets I found what I was looking for. A squat, wooden hall, its paint peeling badly, announced over its door, ‘Roller skating here.
’ Presumably this was a weekend feature because it was firmly shut. There were no blackouts on the windows, so it could not have been used at night. We carried our own blackouts as we were well used to preparing halls to receive us. I would return on Saturday and negotiate a price with the owner of this charmless space. We had transformed grimmer structures into Globes with the honeyed cadences of Avon’s swan. This mean little hall would become our wooden O.

  I returned to Adelaide Street to find Tibald standing outside Lusk Brothers Meats surrounded by parcels. Blood was oozing from several of them, and flies were gathering. We loaded his goods into the truck, and he seemed very pleased with himself. Tibald was an alchemist. He could turn pig shit into strawberry jam.

  ‘We need to go to Geraghty’s in Lennox Street’, he wheezed. ‘They deliver, so all I have to do is point.’

  This was just as well. The exertion required to lug his parcels from Lusk’s had taken the wind out of him.

  ‘What have you got back there?’ I asked.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It didn’t cost much. It’s mostly bones for stock and a few bits and pieces. Fortunately today isn’t one of the beefless days.’

  Friday had been declared, by government decree, one of two beefless days each week. We would win this war, apparently, by eating vegetables.

  I didn’t inquire any further about Tibald’s purchases. It doesn’t do to know what part of the beast Tibald uses. By the time he has finished with it, it has become sublime. I don’t want to know that the delicious morsel I am about to put in my mouth is a sheep’s testicle.

  ‘Mr Lusk is coming to dinner tonight,’ he said. ‘I have promised him tongue.’

  ‘Your private life is your own affair,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you’d be happier in vaudeville after all,’ he countered. ‘Mr Lusk knows meat, and he’ll appreciate my skills. Perhaps he’ll send his customers to the George.’

  ‘You’re talking like it was The Ritz.’

  ‘I’ve eaten at The Ritz, in 1934, and I am a much better chef than whoever insulted my palate that night.’

  I was about to turn the key in the ignition when the piercing rise and fall of an air raid siren made me jump. Surely this was a malfunction or a drill. Why would the Japanese want to drop bombs here? Did their Intelligence really extend to knowing that Walkers Engineering was turning out battleships? The reactions of people in the street indicated that this wasn’t a drill. They seemed startled, and then wardens began appearing from shop doors, and a policeman arrived and marshalled people towards the shelters.

  ‘We’ll have to leave everything,’ I said.

  Tibald was not leaving his meat.

  ‘You go.’ He clambered fatly into the back of the truck.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What if a bomb lands on the truck? Surely you don’t want to die surrounded by offal.’

  ‘We’re all just offal, you know. Bones and offal. I’m not leaving this for some crooked warden to help himself.’

  I wasn’t going to argue with him and instead followed the lead of the few people still on the street. We ended up in the shelter outside the Town Hall. I barely had time to look about me and confirm my worst suspicions about Maryborough’s citizens when the ‘all clear’ blasted forth. I think there was a general air of disappointment that no bombs had fallen. The strongest impression I received of these people, our potential audience, was an undifferentiated adenoidal utterance, unsullied by elocution, that passed for conversation. The language of Shakespeare would be as foreign to them as Swahili. My spirits sank.

  I drove up Lennox Street to Geraghty’s, and waited in the truck while Tibald placed his order. I was drubbing my fingers on the steering wheel and singing an air from ‘Iolanthe’ to myself when I became aware of a figure lurking near the rear of the truck. I caught sight of him briefly in the side mirror, and after a few moments he reappeared on the passenger side, having first lifted the flap of canvas at the back. I thought this was a bit rich. Perhaps Tibald had been right to be worried about his meat. This clown mustn’t have realised that I was in the car. I opened my door and stepped down, intending to confront the thief. I walked around the engine to meet him but he had ducked around the other side. He moved so quickly that he came up behind me and startled me mightily by clamping his hand on my shoulder. I actually jumped and let out what I blush to admit sounded more like a girlish squeal than a banshee call to arms. This doesn’t create a firm impression in the mind of an attacker that here is someone to be reckoned with. On the contrary it suggests that his next move should be to say ‘Boo!’ very loudly and the truck would be his.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in town before,’ he said. He spoke so remarkably slowly, stretching every vowel as if it were taffy, that I had time to turn around before he had reached the word ‘town’. I was relieved to find myself face to face with a policeman. He was about my height, just under six feet, and was dressed in crisp khaki. His digger’s hat was pushed up so that his face was fully visible. There were sweat stains under his armpits, and a faint waft of body odour wrestled with the Lifebuoy soap he had used to battle it. He was about my age, I guessed — thirty, perhaps slightly younger. His fair skin had seen a lot of sun, and it had been tanned against its natural inclination to pallor. He had brown hair, cut close to the scalp, and eyebrows that were thick but not unruly. They gave the impression that they ought to have been joined, although they were not. He needed a shave, even though it wasn’t yet two o’clock and doubtless he had shaved that morning. His eyes were blue and had a limpid quality that made me think that they might water easily. I took all this in rapidly. I see faces and try to assign them to roles. What would this walloper be suited to? Horatio, maybe. I wondered why he was not in the army.

  ‘The Power Players,’ he said, nodding at the name on the side of the truck and doubling the number of syllables. ‘Actors, are you?’

  ‘I’m William Power,’ I said, and held out my hand. He shook it. ‘I can see why you’re a policeman.’

  ‘Sergeant Topaz.’ He smiled at my jibe, but there was a hint of indulgence in it that I didn’t like. I don’t mind giving offence, but I do mind being indulged. He pointed his thumb at the truck. ‘Use a lot of fuel, does she?’

  ‘No more than we’re allocated.’ Was I sufficiently haughty, or did I sound defensive?

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it, Will. Just interested. You here for a show?’

  ‘Titus Andronicus,’ I said, expecting him to look bewildered.

  ‘Awful bloody play,’ he replied. ‘Right up there with Cymbeline. I suppose you get to splash a bit of blood around. That must be fun.’

  ‘It has hidden depths,’ I said, bristling unreasonably, I was aware, at his criticism of the play I had chosen. I would not presume to find fault with the way he issued a summons or arrested a thug, after all. His gimcrack education may have been sufficient to teach him a thing or two about Shakespeare, but I did not believe for a second that he had any insights to offer. ‘Perhaps you will change your mind when you hear the poetry read properly.’ The sounds of the voices in the air-raid shelter came back to me. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever actually seen it performed?’

  ‘No, no I haven’t. I read them, that’s all. All the plays. Sonnets, too. Where’s it on?’ His enthusiasm mollified my annoyance somewhat.

  ‘I don’t know yet. We’ve only been in town for a few hours. I’ve seen a hall, in Ferry Street I think it is. A skating place.’

  ‘That’d be Wright’s place. Not exactly Drury Lane.’

  ‘This isn’t exactly London.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’ Somehow he managed to cram that second ‘no’ with a sentence’s worth of dubiousness about our talent.

  ‘I’ll have a word to Wrighty, see if we can fix you up with the hall. I wouldn’t mind seeing what you can do. Most of the entertainers who come th
rough use the Town Hall, though. Where are you staying?’

  Before I could answer his question, Tibald answered it for me.

  ‘We’re staying at the George Hotel, Sergeant, and we would be very grateful if you could put in a word.’ He had galumphed out of Geraghty’s without my noticing. Topaz took in Tibald’s bulk, and I thought I detected at the corner of his mouth something like disgust that rationing and shortages had done nothing to curb this man’s obviously epic appetite. When he spoke, however, it sounded to me like the exaggerated politeness of a man who thinks he has been caught in unguarded rudeness.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ Topaz said.

  He and Tibald moved away from the truck and engaged in a conversation that included an exchange of furrowed brows, laughter, and a vigorous handshake. The ability to create such sudden intimacy was one I lacked and envied. People generally found my reserve off-putting, and read it as haughtiness or arrogance. This unfortunately meant that I almost always got off on the wrong foot with people. I got back into the truck and leant on the horn. Tibald clambered up into the passenger seat.

  ‘You were pretty chummy,’ I said, as I ground through the Bedford’s gears.

  ‘He’s a nice chap as it happens, and he’s coming to dinner at the George tonight. At least there’ll be two influential locals there. You should be bloody happy about that.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I like him. He’s …’

  ‘He’s what? Unimpressed by William Power?’

  I immediately saw the justice in Tibald’s brutal remark, and laughed.

  ‘Well, that’s a good enough reason not to like someone, don’t you think? Where to now?’

  ‘The fish depot. It’s directly opposite the hotel.’

  The dining room of the George Hotel saw a return to the days of fine dining last night. In an atmosphere softly lit by candles and hurricane lamps the Hotel’s new chef Mr Tibald Canty, originally of Melbourne, demonstrated to an appreciative group what was possible under the soon to be introduced austerity measures for public houses. He presented three courses, a fish soup, a flavoursome selection of meats in delicious sauces and a dessert of berries. Attending the dinner were Mr Lusk, Police Sergeant Peter Topaz, and councillor Tom Doohan and his wife Marjorie, who was wearing a frock of ivory suede taffeta with rosettes of ruching on the bodice. Mrs Doohan said that it was nice to dress up in these times. Also attending the dinner was Miss Polly Drummond. She was accompanied by LAC James Smelt. Miss Drummond chose a frock of white Swiss organdi. Members of the touring theatrical company, the Power Players, filled out the guest list. Miss Annie Hudson, who will be known to readers as the girl in the Colgate advertisement, currently touring with the Power Players, wore a bouffant gown of ivory ninon mounted on moire and stiffened net. The bodice was frilled with valence lace which was also introduced discreetly at the hem line. The proprietor of the George Hotel, Mr Augie Kelly, said that he was pleased to offer Maryborough fine food at an affordable price. Mr Canty’s austerity menu is available each evening and can be enjoyed for less than four shillings a head.