The Unfortunate Victim

by Greg Pyers

  ‘If you could finish these, Detective, I’ll make a pot.’ She bustled inside, leaving Otto with a basket of laundry, a bag of pegs, and the girl staring at him from the back porch. He bent and fetched out a tablecloth. It suddenly amused him that his murder investigation should begin with the hanging of washing in a Daylesford backyard, under the supervision of a child. The day itself had much to do with his good humour; the sky was clear and, in the sunshine, wattles across Wombat Hill were a blaze of the brightest yellow amid the dour green of the eucalypts and leafless branches of young oak, ash, and elm. He finished the basket and took it inside. The girl had gone.

  The Latham house was small and spare. They were in the tiny kitchen and sitting-room just inside the back door, his host bent over, stoking the stove firebox. Otto took the opportunity to study her. She couldn’t have been more than forty, yet she had the waddle of a woman half her age again. Her hair was lank and unbrushed; her hands were coarse and raw. Here was a stranger to the finer things in life.

  ‘How many children do you and Mr Latham have?’ Otto said, pouring himself tea into a chipped china cup and finding a chair. There was a pause, and it seemed to Otto she was a little reluctant to reply. She closed the firebox and stood.

  ‘Mr Berliner, I have much laundry to do today while the sun is out, so I prefer you come quickly to your business. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs Latham.’ There was definitely a change in her mood, as if she had had second thoughts about offering hospitality to a detective. If he was to glean anything, he knew he would have to tread carefully.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point, Mrs Latham.’ She was making it plain with her attending to various domestic chores that this cup of tea wasn’t going to be a shared, much less convivial, one. This, Otto found irritating — he did always prefer to have the full attention of his interlocutor than not — but he pressed on, confident that what he was about to say would rectify this.

  ‘I am concerned, as others are, that the man condemned to hang for the murder of your daughter is innocent of the crime, and —’

  Mrs Latham was staring at him.

  ‘And, so before a terrible injustice is done —’

  ‘You can bloody well think what you like, Detective, but the way I see it, my Maggie is dead, and a man is goin’ to pay for makin’ her so.’

  ‘Will that be a comfort if there is the slightest possibility that it’s the wrong man? To discover that the real murderer is still at large?’

  The girl was back, with three sisters. For Otto, the timing was perfect. Mrs Latham smiled at them and wiped the face of the smallest. They each took a carrot from a basket and skipped back into the yard.

  ‘It is not for me to decide who killed my Maggie. That is for police and judges.’

  ‘I agree with you, Mrs Latham, but I think they may have made a mistake.’

  Mrs Latham stared at her visitor, her face crinkling as anger and sadness vied. The latter prevailed; she looked away, her eyes reddening.

  ‘Mrs Latham, I am most terribly sorry. I know you may have found some peace in the verdict, but I urge you to —’

  ‘Please, Detective Berliner, just listen to me!’ The tears had been mopped, and now it was the face that was reddening. ‘I will not testify against my husband, so you can get that idea out of your head.’

  My God! Here was a bolt from the blue. Otto affected not to be surprised, or delighted, by the implication.

  ‘I know many think it was Joe what done it; probably even you, Detective. But I have four children here at home, and Joe is a good provider. He won’t be if he’s hanged.’

  ‘Mrs Latham, you seem to be saying you believe your husband —?’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ nothin’. But if police and the judges can get one man wrong, they can get two, and I know there’s many who think Joe killed Maggie. I’m not one of them.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Joe. When will he be home?’

  Alice smiled. ‘And I thought you was a good detective! Haven’t you heard? Joe don’t live here any more.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No you don’t. He don’t live here ’cause I told him to leave.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Adelaide. Don’t ask me for an address, ’cause I don’t have one.’

  ‘So, if he’s not in Daylesford, why not answer my questions?’

  Alice rolled her eyes. ‘My, you’re not so smart as you think. I’ll explain it for you nice and slow. Joe Latham is the father of my children; he sends me money. If he goes to gaol, I get no money, ’cept what I earn doing laundry, which isn’t near enough. Now, I’ve had enough of your questions, and I’m sorry to appear rude, but if you could be so considerate as to please finish your tea and be on your way.’

  Otto nodded that, of course, he understood perfectly. He set down his cup, stood up, and collected his hat.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Latham. I do appreciate how difficult your circumstances are, and I apologise if I have intruded.’ He stepped across to the back door and out into the yard. When he turned around, Mrs Latham was standing on the threshold.

  ‘Before I go,’ he said, ‘we both know that George Stuart was very certain that your husband made violent threats against your daughter. And Joe did admit at the inquest to striking Maggie, and I have learned that neither were you spared his temper. So let us not fool ourselves, Mrs Latham — your husband is, by any reading of his behaviour, a very violent man. And violent men are dangerous. Good day to you.’

  Of course, Otto knew she was lying; Joe Latham didn’t sound the kind who would leave simply because his abused wife told him to. No, she had something over her husband that he didn’t want revealed.

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING doing here, Berliner?’

  Otto didn’t need to look up from his coffee and sandwich to know that the man with the foul mouth was his former colleague Detective Thomas Walker. But he did look up anyway, after a suitable delay.

  ‘Walker, charming as ever. I’m having lunch, if your detecting skills are still a little underdeveloped. Please, won’t you join me, but if you could just keep your voice down …’ Otto cast his eyes about the room, where half-a-dozen other diners were enjoying light refreshments and conversation. ‘You see, a point of difference between the Argus Restaurant and the hotel counter lunch,’ he said, ‘is the quiet.’

  Walker had a choice here, and both men knew it: walk out or sit down. Either was a capitulation. He chose the latter, and, by way of a smile, Otto allowed himself a modest gloat. But Walker had too much of a head of steam up to care.

  ‘Look, Berliner, you left this town and now you’re back, on some kind of private investigation, undermining the work and reputation of the local police. And as for putting the bereaved mother through her pain again, I thought that would be beneath even you. Just what are you trying to achieve?’

  Otto listened with a deadpan face, but with a mind busy calculating how best to respond once Walker was done bleating. First, he would take a few moments before speaking; he always found it remarkable how a slight pause could give one the ascendancy, to have the other man waiting on one’s words.

  ‘Detective Walker, I know my presence causes you great discomfort —’

  ‘Try, your very existence.’

  ‘Very droll, but if you’ll let me finish. Perhaps your discomfort is because you stand to be monumentally embarrassed should I prove everyone wrong about David Rose — which I admit, I may or may not do. Or it could be the reward you stand to lose that concerns you most? I should think that thirty or forty pounds of that two hundred might have your name on it, seeing as it was you, and only you, who discovered the pipe that condemned the man. But your discomfort, or the bereaved mother’s, is not my concern; the truth is.’

  Walker sat back in his chair and waved away Mrs Homberg, the proprietor’s wife, who’d
arrived to take an order. He looked at Berliner with a smirk.

  ‘You’re such a pompous prick. Is that a Bavarian trait?’

  ‘It may well be, though my family’s Prussian, so don’t take my word for it.’

  Walker leant forward, but Otto wasn’t about to hand him the floor. He stood and took his hat and scarf from the stand. ‘Naturally, I will be speaking to Superintendent Nicolson and Chief Commissioner Standish in due course.’ He bent to Walker’s ear. ‘And, Thomas, you might even set aside your antipathy towards me and assist in my investigations. We are, after all, meant to be on the same side. Good day.’

  Otto stepped out into a busy Vincent Street, the day cold but still bright. He turned and walked, and was in front of the Union Bank when a woman’s voice spoke his name. He looked over his shoulder to see Mrs Homberg there. Beyond, Detective Walker was leaving the Argus.

  ‘Detective Berliner,’ she said, ‘do you have a moment?’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Homberg. By the way, I neglected to say that was a splendid sandwich.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you mind if we … ?’ She led Otto out of the pedestrian stream to a spot by the bank. After a glance back to the door of the Argus, she said ‘I heard you were in town, and asking questions about Margaret Stuart’s murder —’

  ‘My, word does travel so fast!’

  ‘Well, I do know Alice Latham; Maggie worked in the restaurant for a month or so. Did you know?’

  ‘No. Maybe she served me.’

  ‘You’d remember. She was a very pretty girl. Beautiful, I think. What happened to her was —’

  ‘I expect many men paid her attention?’

  ‘Of course, and often it was of the kind most unwelcome.’

  ‘From anyone in particular?’

  ‘None that made a habit of it.’

  ‘I see. Is there something else you wish to tell me?’

  She glanced behind again. ‘I just don’t want my husband to know I’m telling you this.’

  ‘Mrs Homberg, what exactly is it you wish to tell me?’

  ‘There was an incident, one night, not quite two years ago. Maggie’s stepfather would come to escort her home on those days she worked late. This night, when she was leaving, a man called Serafino Bonetti was here. He works at a bakery, and he was delivering —’

  ‘You do know Bonetti was arrested for a time on suspicion of Maggie’s murder?’

  ‘Yes I do, and Mr Homberg and I could not believe that he would ever hurt even a kitten. A fine young man he is, and Maggie did like his company. She’d have friendly words with him whenever he made a bread delivery.’

  ‘And on this particular night?’

  ‘Serafino was leaving and, like a gentleman, he opened the door for Maggie. I saw them, just out on the footpath, smiling and talking. And then I saw Joe Latham walk up. He would have been waiting for her, to take her home. He must have come from the Golden Age just there, because he seemed a little unsteady on his feet.’

  ‘So, there was an altercation of some sort?’

  ‘I couldn’t hear much, but I was at the window, and with the light turned down I saw Joe Latham pointing his finger at Serafino. He was threatening him. And then Maggie was arguing with her stepfather. Serafino left — I think because Maggie asked him to go. She could see that Latham was looking to start a fight.’

  ‘Pardon my asking, Mrs Homberg, but why are you telling me this?’

  ‘So you can know what a violent and jealous man Joe Latham is, and you can do something! You know he used to beat Alice, his own wife—?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘But I am not finished, Detective Berliner.’

  ‘Do go on.’

  ‘Two evenings later, when Maggie had to change her blouse — she’d had an accident with the sauce — I saw the most awful bruise on her neck. Like a hand had taken hold of it, like so, and squeezed.’ Mrs Homberg demonstrated a claw-hold. ‘She had a small neck. She knew I’d seen her, and she made me promise never to say anything to anyone.’

  ‘And you don’t you want your husband to know you’ve told me this because …?’

  ‘Only to avoid a row. He thinks a man was found guilty, and that is that. Joe Latham was a bad man, but he can’t hurt Maggie any more.’

  ‘I’m sure many people would agree with him.’

  ‘But Detective Berliner, if David Rose had to answer questions, why didn’t Joe Latham? I think there is something terribly wrong here.’

  Otto nodded. ‘And I’m most inclined to agree with you, Mrs Homberg.’

  IF OTTO HAD ENTERTAINED the idea of being a father one day, he was feeling rather glad at the moment of the luxury that parenthood was still an option. It wasn’t that young Henry Chuck’s company was intolerable; rather, it was just a little too much like hard work for Otto to prefer it over sitting alone. The pair of them — detective and child — were at the dining table, while in the kitchen Tom carved a chicken, and Adeline attended to the vegetables.

  Otto persisted; something from the rules of social etiquette told him that as the guest it was his responsibility to entertain the lad while the parents were busy preparing the meal. He reminded himself that to his parents, having recently lost a baby, the young fellow was especially precious.

  ‘How old are you, Henry?’ Otto said.

  ‘Ten next year.’

  ‘Ten next year. Well, well. And do you want to be a photographic artist, just like your father?’

  ‘No.’

  Otto nodded, and wondered how far away dinner was.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ the boy asked abruptly.

  ‘I came with my family to Sydney from Berlin when I was about your age—’

  ‘I’d like to be a detective.’

  The conversation had just turned mildly interesting.

  ‘Oh? Tell me why,’ Otto said.

  The boy shrugged. ‘I’m good at noticing things. I can tell you came here down Albert Street, from Camp Street.’

  ‘Really? I am staying at the Albert Hotel, on the Camp Street corner. Did you see me walk down?’

  The boy’s parents had entered the room, each bringing two plates.

  ‘Here we are at last, gentlemen,’ Tom said. ‘I know you both must be ravenous.’

  ‘It looks most edible!’ Otto said, not noticing that the boy was anxious to finish his account.

  ‘No, I didn’t see you walk down,’ Henry said, a little piqued.

  Otto turned to him. ‘So, how —?’

  ‘It’s your trousers,’ the boy said. ‘There are spots of yellow clay on them from the where the footpath was dug up for the drains. That’s how I know.’

  Otto twisted in his seat to see the hem of his tweeds. ‘So there are. That is very observant of you, Henry,’ he said, genuinely impressed. ‘I think you might make a fine detective. In fact, you’re a detective already!’

  AFTER DINNER, WHEN HENRY had been put to bed and Adeline had retired, Otto sat with Tom in the sitting room and, over a warming brandy, related the day’s developments.

  ‘Your inquiries have certainly attracted considerable attention, Otto. Does that concern you?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Otto said, crossing one leg over the other and holding a palm to the gentle fire flickering in the grate.

  ‘But should there be a murderer at large, might he not leave the district?’

  ‘He might, or might not. But remember, David Rose has already been tried and condemned, so I don’t know whether any killer at large would flatter me so much that he might think I could change that.’

  ‘But it’s what you intend to do, of course?’

  ‘Of course. Criminals do tend to underestimate the police, which is why there are criminals.’

  Tom chuckled.

  ‘But then, in this colony, criminals have good grounds,’
Otto added wryly. ‘Anyway, who knows, my poking around may even flush a killer from cover.’

  ‘Walker sounded most annoyed with you. Can the police order you to cease investigations?’

  ‘Perhaps. But why would they? To pretend that it’s to protect the likes of Alice Latham, maybe. No, they won’t want to risk appearing to have something to hide. They’d be thinking that, in three days, Rose will be executed and it will all go away, me included.’

  ‘A tipple more?’ Tom said, reaching for the bottle after a minute’s quiet reflection in the glow of the coals.

  ‘Tempting, Tom, but I really ought to take myself off to bed.’ Otto stood, and took his hat and coat from the hook.

  ‘I feel I should be doing something,’ Tom said. ‘To help, I mean.’

  ‘Feeding me a wonderful dinner is a good start!’ Otto smiled, then grasped Tom’s upper arm. ‘Of course, I know what you mean, and just as soon as I have something for you …’

  ‘But there is so little time, yet I wonder at times you seem to forget that — you seem so calm.’

  Otto smiled. ‘Would it reassure you if I turned a little frantic?’

  They walked through to the front of the shop, and paused at the door to the street.

  ‘So Joe Latham’s your suspect?’

  ‘Well, Tom, it is curious that a man who beat his stepdaughter, and threatened to cut her throat, should not have been investigated.’

  ‘And he was charged with taking Maggie’s belongings from the house three days after her death.’

  ‘Yes, makes you wonder —’

  ‘And she told the inquest Joe got up at ten-thirty or eleven to light his pipe, and she said he was only out of bed a few minutes. But then when the police came to her door at three in the morning, she said she and Joe had only just dozed off.’

  ‘Maybe their marriage wasn’t all violence!’

  Tom frowned at the levity. Otto hastened to reassure his friend.

  ‘It’s all right, Tom. I’m just tired. But you’re right, that is very curious. Maybe at 3.00 a.m. Joe had just come back from disposing of bloodied clothes? And a murder weapon, perhaps?’