by Joy Dettman
‘Has there been . . . an accident?’ asked a shrivelled male who’d materialised in the doorway.
‘We believe Mrs Morrison may be able to assist us with our investigations,’ Jack replied.
Amber knew why they were here. There had been an accident of sorts. Things happened at times, happened so fast she failed to consider the possible consequences. She watched the female place the statuette back where it belonged, a beautiful thing, one of six. She’d only taken two. The blue sisters. They matched this room. Out of nothing she’d created it. She’d always done her best with what she’d been given. Had never been given enough, that was the trouble.
She looked up at the ceiling, prefabricated like the rest of the house, looked at the door they’d left open for the street filth to blow into her parlour. Norman’s front door had opened from a veranda into a passage, and when they’d taken her away from that house, there hadn’t been a speck of dust in his parlour.
She turned to the crystal cabinet and the statuettes, turned one slightly to the left, just a fraction, so she might face her blue sister. A week after moving in with Lorna, she’d found those statuettes hidden away in the dark of a sideboard, their perfection buried beneath years of grime. She’d washed them clean. Had planned to take all six before the accident. Wrapped them well in layers of newspaper, intending to call a taxi when she was done – but when she was done and the mist of anger had washed away, she’d changed her mind about a taxi and caught the last tram back to the city. Had to leave the other four behind. Her Waterford crystal bowl was heavy.
And how dare that filthy old bitch allow that house to get into such a state. How dare she!
‘We’d like you to come to the station with us, Mrs Morrison,’ the sergeant said.
‘I’ll fetch my jacket,’ Amber said.
Reginald blocked the doorway. He looked green, and she thought of a bug-eyed grasshopper, useless without its hoppers, a big-headed crawling thing.
‘There’s stew on the stove,’ she said, and walked by him to her bedroom, the female at her heels. She needed time, not a jacket. She needed space in which to think. She’d got rid of Lorna’s keys. They’d gone down a grating in the city.
A blunt instrument, the newspapers had said. Amber had read every report. There’d been no mention of the champagne bottle. She’d washed it, washed it in the bathroom because she couldn’t get near that filthy old bitch’s sink. That’s what had angered her. The kitchen. On that final morning when they’d walked off to church they’d locked an immaculate house, a chicken left roasting in the oven with potatoes, carrots, pumpkin. They’d sat side by side in the front pew, she turning the pages of both hymn books. Lorna had taken her arm as they’d walked from the church – then she’d been flung away like a piece of filth. And after all those years of Fetch this, fetch that, Duckworth. Time for my eye-drops, Duckworth. Read this, read that, Duckworth . . .
Amber closed her bedroom door, attempted to close it. The female in blue was standing so the door wouldn’t close. Wouldn’t give her that time, that space in which to think.
It was Sissy’s fault too, and her stray bitch’s with her skewered onions. Never had Amber roasted onions in the meat pan. They fell apart, and their overpowering flavour ruined the gravy’s.
It was her wretched finger’s fault too, the blood on white lace. Bloodstained.
‘Are we ready, Mrs Morrison?’ the female said.
‘You, perhaps, are ready. We are not,’ Amber replied.
Are we ready, Miss Hooper?
You, perhaps, are ready, Duckworth. We are not.
Old bitch. She’d deserved what she’d got.
Amber slid her dusty pink frock from its hanger. On her final day in Kew, Elizabeth had worn her dusty pink and matching hat. Hadn’t worn that frock and hat since, and where had she put that hat?
She found it on the upper shelf of her wardrobe. She removed her house frock and pulled on the pink. She brushed the hat then set it on her silky white curls, and Elizabeth smiled at her again from the mirror.
She slid her maroon jacket from its hanger. She’d paid a small fortune for it, and that old bitch had seen fit to toss it into a pile of dog shit on the nature strip. Amber slid her arms into it then opened her top drawer. Elizabeth had always worn white gloves to church. They’d covered her hands’ sins from God’s sight. Old gloves and older gloves in her top drawer, gloves that no longer fitted her hands, but she chose a pair of white kid, and smiled at the memory of white lace. They’d gone down the grating with Lorna’s keys.
Left the house she’d schemed to acquire, an escort on either side.
A ludicrous assignment for a burly sergeant. Jack Thompson had arrested drunks and addicts, wife killers, thieves and rapists, and felt a fool walking that white-headed old granny to the police car. He took her arm to assist her into the rear seat and when she couldn’t find the end of the seat belt, he found it and buckled her in before sliding in beside her.
Four kids delayed their game of cricket to lean against fences, against a telephone pole, to stare. Their mothers peered through windows. A few came outside to get a better look. Amber waved a queenly gloved hand as the car drove towards the setting sun.
At the police station they offered her tea and a biscuit and they asked her many questions. They asked about Kew.
‘My memory isn’t what it used to be,’ she said.
They asked about her husband.
‘I have been told that he was a station master in a small timber town. I have no memory of him.’
‘In ’47, you were arrested for his murder, Mrs Morrison.’
‘That may well be so. I suffered life-threatening head injuries in a car accident twenty years ago and recall nothing at all of my former life.’
They asked about the Royal Doulton vases.
‘Now that I can help you with. I came across them at an opportunity shop in Richmond, and what a buy they were. I enjoy having a poke around in those shops, and that day, there they were, in a cardboard carton with a pile of other goods. The woman who sold them to me had no idea of their value. She offered me change from a two-dollar note.’
They led the subject back to Kew, to Lorna Hooper. ‘When did you last speak to her, Mrs Morrison?’
‘The years go by so quickly. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there.’
Lorna Hooper’s murder had made the front page for a day; it had gained a mention for a few days more, but old news is like a pair of pantihose, worn once or twice then relegated to the bin. Police sift through bins. They flip through old files, speak to neighbours, to relatives, to taxi and tram drivers. They take photographs, measure with their tapes and make copious notes.
They’d found the champagne bottle, the only wine bottle in the house, and its clean new state was an alien presence there. They’d found no fingerprints that matched those on Amber Morrison’s file, but they’d found the prints of lace gloves, finger and handprints, and who in this day and age wore lace gloves?
An elderly woman might. They knew an elderly woman had been seen standing at the Kew gates when a neighbour had driven in at around ten o’clock on 17 December, the neighbour certain of that date. She’d been at the Royal Women’s hospital visiting her daughter and her brand new grandson, born that morning.
They knew an elderly woman had caught the last tram in from Kew on that same night. Had the tram driver not recently buried his own mother, he might not have noticed Amber, but he had, and had been concerned for the poor old dear struggling home with two heavy shopping bags. He’d been able to give the police a description, and the time he’d seen her. He’d clocked off for the night soon after.
Police speak to taxi companies. It had taken many phone calls and much footwork, but they’d found a driver who recalled picking up an elderly woman and her shopping bags at the Flinders Street taxi rank. He remembered dropping her off at an address in Doveton. Drivers don’t forget the big tippers. He was dead certain of the address. His sister and her five ki
ds lived two streets away from the old dear.
Martin Leeds and his wife had been helpful. They’d known Miss Hooper and Miss Duckworth well, had taken tea with them regularly during the sixties and early seventies. Martin Leeds, the dead woman’s minister for years, and her executor, had been given charge of Lorna’s house keys. Both he and his wife had been to the house. They’d seen the state of the rooms. It was the wife, Mary, who noticed Miss Hooper’s Royal Doulton vases were missing from the parlour mantelpiece.
‘My wife had always admired those vases,’ Martin said. ‘Eight or ten years ago she came across an auction house catalogue containing a colour photograph of a pair of near identical vases.’
Two weeks ago, the minister’s wife had found that catalogue in the drawer of her writing desk. It was now in Jack’s possession, and on page four the vases, Lot 57, had been circled. He’d handled one of those vases today.
The dust Amber had chased for the greater part of her life led to her undoing, and the vases she had found in a carton at an opportunity shop in Richmond. Dust settles not only on a folderol but around it and when, after several years, that item is removed, the dust-free circles leave mute evidence of that which has been removed. As with the six figurines of fine ladies. Four had been found in the house, found wrapped in layers of three month old newspaper. They’d found evidence of six on a begrimed blackwood sideboard, on a small table, on the television.
Jack had the probable murder weapon, a champagne bottle with not a fingerprint on it. He had the vases, the figurines, Amber Morrison’s prior record, but no confession. It would have taken strength to do what had been done to Miss Hooper. Amber Morrison looked as if she’d be hard-pressed to swat a fly.
Twice Jack asked her if she’d like him to call her a solicitor. On the second occasion, she told him that all she required was a bed.
‘Please,’ she said.
The tram driver came in at eight. He identified her as the old dear who’d ridden his tram into the city on the night in question. So Jack charged her with the murder and mutilation of Lorna Hooper, and Amber yawned.
He asked her if she understood the seriousness of her situation. She asked him to make sure that she was given a private cell.
‘My hearing is acute,’ she said.
And how could he lock a ninety year old woman in a cell? He made alternative arrangements. It took time, and by the time he led her out, the vultures had gathered.
Most want to hide their faces from the media. They’ll cower beneath jackets, beneath blankets when they’re led away. Amber smiled for the gathered hoards, smiled as she was assisted into the rear of the police car, and once seated and buckled in she waved her queenly white kid gloved hand.
Her handbag gave up little, a handkerchief, a gold mesh purse containing twenty-five dollars, the keys to Number 12 and a small key, pinned into the lining of a zipped pocket.
Her undergarments gave up more.
She’d been admitted to a private ward at St Vincent’s hospital where a doctor noticed the pockets, stitched neatly to the hip and buttock region of Amber’s girdle – button-down pockets.
They were packed with bank notes totalling eight thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars, and come morning, Jack learned how Amber Morrison had come by that money.
That small key unlocked a private mailbox at the Richmond post office where a mess of mail awaited collection. The box, registered to Elizabeth Duckworth, contained six pension cheques, two addressed to Elizabeth Duckworth, two addressed to Maryanne Brown, and the last two to Margaret Hooper. Two manila envelopes, addressed to Elizabeth, contained the bankbooks of Margaret Hooper and Maryanne Brown.
*
Ninety year old pensioner Amber Morrison was charged tonight with the murder of Lorna Hooper, her lifelong companion . . .
It was on the ten o’clock news. Television news writers don’t always get it right.
‘My God,’ Jenny said, springing to her feet. ‘Oh my God.’
Jim turned to her and for an instant, when their eyes met, Jenny saw his father’s eyes, his father’s expression in those eyes.
‘It’s almost incestuous,’ Georgie said, putting Jenny’s thoughts into words.
Jim rose and left the room, and Jenny sat down to watch, to listen.
‘Did they say ninety, or nineteen?’ Paul asked.
‘Ninety. She’s your adoptive grandmother-in-law,’ Georgie said.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
They sat late, but learned no more. They saw her, fleetingly, saw her gloved hand, her smile for the cameras.
‘My God,’ Jenny said, recognising little other than the grimace of a smile, then she too went to bed. Jim was asleep. Perhaps he was asleep. She didn’t disturb him.
Cecelia Duckworth, daughter of Amber Morrison, was on the six o’clock news the following evening, or the rear end of an overweight woman was on the screen as she struggled into a large and modern car, her rear end protected by a stocky male. The news broadcaster identified the two as Cecelia Duckworth and her husband.
‘That’s not Sissy,’ Jenny said. ‘And that male is no Duckworth either.’
‘How long since you’ve seen her?’ Georgie asked.
‘Years, but those legs aren’t Sissy’s.’
The reporters got it right on Thursday when their cameras caught Sissy opening her front door to pitch a saucepan of water at a cameraman. Jenny recognised her through a dripping lens.
Given time, the Duckworths rallied as Duckworths ever had. They removed the useless duo from Doveton to a farm fifteen miles from Bendigo, and with nothing more to aim at, the cameramen moved on to greener pastures. The neighbour’s dog stopped barking and the kids got on with their cricket match.
FAME
Nobby owned a large trailer. He, Rosemary and Jim emptied Lorna’s house while Jenny remained at Greensborough, locked in, the television playing from morning to night. On the Friday following Amber’s arrest, Jim arrived home, the car boot loaded with old files, moth-eaten albums, his great-grandfather’s Bible and four statuettes.
‘They were Mum’s,’ he said. ‘There were six of them when I was a kid.’
Jenny didn’t want them, or the files that had transferred their odour to her car boot. She changed her mind about the ornaments when Jim unwrapped the first twelve inch tall lady, clad in a maroon and green gown and carrying a basket of delicate china flowers. Beneath its layers of grime it was beautiful. She helped remove the newspaper from the others.
‘They’re old,’ she said.
‘Older than me. I was allowed to look at them but not touch,’ Jim said, and they carried them into the laundry where Jenny ran them a bath in the sink then bathed them with dishwashing detergent and a toothbrush.
They were air drying on the family room table when Georgie came in. Like Granny, like Jenny, she saved used tissue paper. They wrapped each lady well before placing it into the case, well protected on all sides by clothing. Jim wanted to go home in the morning, as did Jenny – until they watched that evening’s current affairs program.
Reporters had tracked the woman they’d named the Grinning Granny to Woody Creek where, in 1946, she’d been arrested in connection with the murder of her husband. They’d found Maisy, neighbour and childhood friend of the Grinning Granny, and there she was, on the box in full living colour – and knowing Maisy, the tape editor must have worked overtime to patch together three minutes of usable interview. For Jenny, even those three minutes were too much.
‘I’m not going back there, Jim.’
‘We’re packed,’ he said.
‘I went through it when she killed Dad, and again when Raelene and Margot died. I can’t do it a third time. I can’t. And I won’t.’
Jim phoned John, who suggested they stay where they were. ‘The dogs have been worth their weight in gold,’ he said.
‘We’ll move over to Nobby’s in the morning,’ Jenny said.
‘Stay where you are,’ Georgie said. ‘I was hoping to get a
look inside Lorna’s house.’
‘Paul is sick of the sight of us,’ Jenny argued.
‘I’ve been thinking about offering you a job as cook,’ Paul said.
‘Live in, ute supplied? I’ll take it.’
He’d bought a new battery for the ute. Twice Jenny had driven to the local shops. The roads around Greensborough were viable in the late morning or early afternoon.
Georgie, who battled peak-hour traffic daily, should have been content to stay home on Saturday, but she drove Jim to Kew in the ute. There was an old oil painting he hadn’t been able to fit into his boot, and with room for only two in the ute’s cabin, Paul stayed home, Jenny barely aware that he was there. Like Jim, he typed, but his computer keyboard was near silent.
At one, she heated a can of tomato soup and made two toasted cheese sandwiches. She called him, and when he didn’t come out to eat, she took a mug of soup and a sandwich to his study.
‘It’s getting cold,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m inclined to become involved when I get in here.’
He cleared a space between his computer and half a dozen flat squares of what appeared to be cardboard. One fell to the floor at Jenny’s feet. She placed the mug and plate down then picked up the cardboard square.
‘What is it?’
‘A floppy disc,’ he replied.
Discs were round flat things, not square. She placed it with the others, turned to go, then changed her mind.
‘They’re the things Georgie said she’d put her grandfather’s diaries on?’
‘Her Itchy-foot? He’s here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Would you like to see what she did?’
‘You’re working,’ she said, but he opened a drawer to riffle through a dozen more of the same-sized squares of cardboard until finding the one he sought. He slid a square disc out of a slot in the computer, slid the other one in, hit a few keys and, half a minute later, up popped THE DIARIES OF ARCHIBALD FOOTE FILE ONE.
Jenny moved closer as the screen filled with words then, elbow to elbow with this quiet man who had somehow managed to run Georgie down, she watched as page after page slid by, until she glimpsed what appeared to be a poem.
