A Few Right Thinking Men

by Sulari Gentill

  “Do you know where the Coroner’s Court is, Johnston?” Rowland asked his driver.

  “Yes, sir, I do.” Johnston put the car into gear and swung it out of the sweeping driveway. For a while there was silence and then the chauffeur spoke again. “My condolences, sir…Terrible business this.”

  “Thank you, Johnston. You knew my uncle, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. The other Mr. Rowland were a young man when I come to work for your late father…’Course it were carriages then. Terrible business this.”

  Rowland nodded. It was a terrible business.

  The morgue was located in the basement of the Coroner’s Court building in The Rocks, near Circular Quay. An unimposing structure, it stood between the Sailors’ Home and the Mariners’ Church, and was neither austere nor foreboding, despite its unhappy function.

  Peters and Delaney guided them to the rear of the building. As they descended the stairs to the morgue, the smell confronted them. Rowland paused, steadying himself against the banister. He gagged, trying to disguise it with a cough.

  “You all right, Rowly?” The poet was less affected by the stench. It was hardly pleasant but, unlike Rowland, he had spent his life in far less salubrious haunts than the clean, polished world of Woollahra. Disagreeable odours did not penetrate the better suburbs, but they were a reality of lesser addresses.

  “You’ll get used to it in a moment, sir,” said Peters, reassuringly.

  “God, I hope not!” Rowland straightened and took the stairs slowly.

  They entered the central mortuary. The acrid smell was more intense. There were seven tables in the room, with clean white sheets sombrely protecting the dignity of those who lay beneath.

  “The coroner will conduct his postmortem on the body tomorrow,” Peters pulled back the sheet on the table nearest them.

  Rowland stared, then stepped closer, silently.

  “Bloody hell,” he said almost under his breath. His painter’s eye took in too much. His uncle’s face was swollen, battered. Blood had congealed in his snowy hair and stained the smoking jacket which bore a Cambridge crest. It had seeped into the crevices of the wrinkles in his skin, deepening the purple bruising with etchings of red. Flat on the table, the body looked too small. Rowland Sinclair had been large in life. Milton put a hand on his shoulder.

  Rowland felt sick. “Yes…that is…Rowland Sinclair.”

  Delaney pulled the sheet back over the body and the older Rowland Sinclair again became little more than a draped mound on a table.

  “Thank you, sir.” Peters motioned them to the door. “The detectives will want to talk to you in the morning.”

  Rowland nodded. He and Milton followed the constables up the stairs, where they left Peters and Delaney to their paperwork, and returned to the car. Johnston started the engine and Milton opened the drinks compartment built into the back of the front seat. He poured Rowland a drink from one of the crystal decanters.

  Rowland choked on the first gulp. “I really hate whisky,” he said, handing the glass back. Milton shrugged and not being a man inclined to waste, he drained the glass himself. Rowland found the port and drank that instead.

  “Who would beat an old man to death?” he said, gazing into his empty tumbler.

  “Is that what killed him?”

  “I don’t know.” Rowland rubbed his forehead. “I guess the coroner will figure that out.”

  “I’m damned sorry, Rowly,” Milton refilled his friend’s glass. “I know you were close.”

  Rowland sat back in the seat. “He taught me to play poker, you know—I used to spend school holidays with him during the war…” He smiled faintly. “Until my father found out where he was taking me of an evening. It’s hard to believe…” He didn’t finish, retreating instead into a silent private grief.

  Milton let him be.

  ***

  Edna and Clyde were up waiting for them.

  Rowland slumped into the armchair and loosened his tie. “Well, that’s done.”

  “Was it awful?” Edna asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What happens now?”

  “The coroner has to do his bit.” Milton distributed beverages yet again. He found that most situations could be helped with a stiff drink. Or several.

  Rowland took the glass. “The police will want to speak to me tomorrow, Milt. I can’t be drunk.”

  “You won’t be drunk,” the poet insisted. “Perhaps just a little hung over.”

  “Why would they want to speak with you?” Edna curled her legs up on the couch as she rolled her glass between her hands.

  “Murder investigation.” Rowland said the words slowly, getting used to the reality behind them. “I assume they’ll need some sort of background on my uncle—though I don’t know how much help I’d be. They’ll probably learn a lot more from that housekeeper of his.”

  “Poor old thing,” Edna murmured. “It would’ve been a terrible shock for her.”

  Milton raised his brow. “It didn’t look as though the old boy went quietly…surely she would have heard something going on….”

  “Mrs. Donelly is about a hundred and six.” Rowland blanched as he thought of his uncle’s final moments. “I don’t think she hears too well.”

  Clyde examined the unfinished painting on Rowland’s easel. “This is going well, Rowly,” he said. “You’ve got the light on Ryan’s face just right…it makes him look almost biblical.”

  Milton laughed. “He’ll just love that! Who’d have thought…? Paddy Ryan leading the workers to the Promised Land…Not bad for a godless Communist!”

  Rowland tried to smile. “I might get back to it tonight.”

  “You should get some sleep.” Edna reached over and rubbed his hand. “There will be things to deal with tomorrow…and not just the police.”

  “Talking of which,” Rowland said, putting down his drink, “I really should phone Wilfred. Let him know what’s happened.” He stood, and walked into the hallway to ring through to the exchange.

  Milton replenished Rowland’s glass, and they all listened while he spoke, first to the telephonist and then to his brother.

  The conversation between Rowland and Wilfred Sinclair was strangely formal. Direct, but sad. Rowland recounted what the policemen had told him; then after some silences, during which Wilfred must have been pressing for more information, Rowland told his brother what he had seen at the morgue. Clyde and Edna were shocked by his description, and moved by the distress in his words. Then there was another series of silences interrupted only by Rowland saying: “Yes,” or “All right.”

  When he came back into the drawing room, Rowland did not resume his seat, but headed straight to his easel. His eyes seemed a greyer shade of their normal blue, and they were distant. Edna recognised the look. He didn’t want to talk anymore. She uncurled herself from the couch and said goodnight, squeezing his hand gently as she left. Milton and Clyde stayed a while, watching him work, and drinking in companionable silence. In time, they too retired, leaving Rowland alone with his brushes, his canvas and his thoughts.

  Chapter Five

  Housekeeper’s Suit

  Against Grazier’s Estate

  Action for £10,610

  MELBOURNE, Thursday

  Alleging an oral promise to be “provided for during her life”, Maude Winifred of Mentone, spinster and housekeeper, brought an action against the trustee of the estate of John Francis Darby, of Studbrook, Birregurra, claiming £10,610…The late Mr. Darby, who was a grazier, left an estate valued at approximately £68,000.

  The Argus, December 11, 1931

  Edna took the tray from the downstairs maid and carried it into the drawing room. Rowland was still at his easel. It wasn’t difficult to see that he had not slept. The suit he had worn to the morgue was now spattered with paint. His hair, too, was streak
ed where he had dragged his fingers through it as he worked. Edna smiled. Rowland had always been a little chaotic in the way he painted. She placed the tray on the sideboard and poured coffee into a fine china cup.

  “Here, drink this,” she ordered.

  Rowland took the cup but left the saucer in her hand. He drained it in a single gulp and handed it back to her with a smile. The night at his easel had apparently lifted his spirits somewhat.

  Edna looked past him, to the painting: Ryan’s speech at the Domain. She was awestruck by Rowland’s detailed recall. It was as if the figures had been posed before him while he painted. She saw the passion and conviction in Ryan’s face as he spoke from his makeshift podium…the men in the crowd, some enthusiastic, some sceptical, and the New Guardsmen, hostile. Edna motioned Rowland out of the way and looked more carefully at the faces of the last, militant and determined, like soldiers.

  “Oh my, Rowly, you’re good,” she said, almost to herself.

  Rowland said nothing, but he was pleased. Edna was sparing with her praise.

  “Do you want any of this?” he asked finally as he poured more coffee.

  She grimaced. “Heavens, no.” Edna drank only tea. This month anyway.

  Rowland gulped his second cup. “Wilfred caught the train early this morning. He’ll be in Sydney by afternoon—wants me to meet him at Uncle Rowland’s house.”

  “Why there?”

  Rowland shrugged. “I guess he’s got to find papers and deeds, hide the odd skeleton…that sort of thing.”

  Edna stepped over a wet palette that Rowland had left on the floor. She had never met Wilfred. He preferred the country and came to Sydney infrequently. On those occasions that he did, Rowland would dine with him at the Masonic Club. She wondered if Wilfred had ever seen any of Rowland’s work.

  “You’re finished then?” She looked again at the painting.

  “Maybe.” He pushed his hair back from his face. “Sometimes it’s difficult to know when to stop…What do you think?”

  Edna stood back, tilting her head to one side as she considered the picture as a whole. “I think you need to put in a couple more figures.”

  “Really?”

  “Here, and here.” She pointed to two spots on the canvas. “You have the Communists here and the New Guardsmen facing them in opposition. But there were others there too…ordinary people who were somewhere between the two. It won’t be complete without the people in the middle.”

  Rowland stepped back and considered his work. The people in the middle. He thought of Alcott. Yes, she was right. “What would I do without you, Ed?”

  “Nothing worth hanging, anyway.”

  He grinned as he picked up his brush and started dabbing at the mess of colour on his palette.

  Milton sauntered in, fussing with the cuffs of a cream jacket he had paired with a red brocade waistcoat and cravat. He carried a pale buckskin fedora with a jaunty feather stuck into its band. Where and how Milton procured his idiosyncratic apparel was a mystery to his friends. The poet had his own contacts. Rowland assumed there was an insane, colour-blind tailor among them.

  “Oh, you’re still at it.” Milton kept well clear of Rowland and the paint, lest his immaculate attire be spattered. He pointed vaguely toward the dining room. “Breakfast is served. Are we ready to partake, wot? Those cooks, how they pound, and strain and grind, and turn substance into accident, to fulfill all your greedy appetites.”

  “Chaucer,” Rowland said, without taking his eyes from his canvas. “Tell Mary I’ll eat later.”

  Milton nodded. “You coming, Ed? Clyde’s working too. Don’t make me eat alone.”

  Rowland worked through the morning. Absorbed, he didn’t notice the time. Clyde came in at some stage to borrow some viridian blue and Rowland could hear Edna and Milton in the conservatory. It was where Edna sculpted the clay models she’d use to make castings for her bronzes. Despite the tragedy of the previous evening, the morning seemed almost normal.

  ***

  It was afternoon when Rowland finally cleaned his brushes. His brother had arranged to meet him at four. Johnston, the chauffeur, was to meet the train at Central Station at two-thirty with the Rolls. Wilfred Sinclair had some business in the city he needed to attend to first, but Rowland knew he wouldn’t be late. Wilfred was never late.

  Rowland showered and changed, going through several shirts and waistcoats before he found one free of paint, and only then did he wander into the kitchen in search of food. Mary Brown shooed him out, sighing repeatedly, and banishing him to the dining room while she reheated the meal he’d earlier missed.

  His stomach settled, he stuck his head into the sunroom where Clyde painted.

  “What’s your hurry?’ Clyde began, tapping his pocket watch in case it had stopped. It read just half-past two and the elder Rowland Sinclair’s house was not far.

  “I thought I’d have a chat to Mrs. Donelly—the housekeeper—before Wil arrives,” Rowland explained. “The poor old thing might have calmed down by now and have something to say.”

  “The police didn’t get anything useful out of her.”

  “Yes, but she knows me…has for years. She might be able to remember something if I ask her.”

  “Would you like a mate?” Clyde asked, a little too eagerly.

  “No. You finish your commission…the sooner you get that blasted harridan out of my house, the happier we’ll all be.”

  Clyde sighed. A struggling artist could hardly turn down commissions, but the wealthy subject of his current work had few redeeming qualities. The portrait was taking Clyde much longer than usual because he was struggling to balance accuracy with his artistic desire to produce something pleasing to the eye. “It’s hopeless,” he said, despondent. “Its only value as a portrait is that it does actually look like her.”

  “You should’ve painted her from behind,” Rowland grinned. “You could have said it was avant-garde—Lady McKenzie would have loved that.”

  “Get off!” Clyde snorted. “From the back, I would have had to paint her hump and bristles!”

  Rowland laughed. He was glad he didn’t have to take commissions. “If you make sure the frame is spectacular,” he advised, “and match the colour of her dress in the painting to the curtains in her drawing room…she’ll be more than happy.”

  “But look at it!” Clyde was in despair. “It’s almost cruel to give it to her.”

  Rowland pondered the portrait. There was nothing wrong with it, except that it did depict Lady McKenzie in all her triple-chinned, buck-toothed squint-eyed glory. The woman had not one good feature that Clyde could highlight to distract the viewer from the bad ones. Indeed, having met the subject, Rowland thought that Clyde had, if anything, been kind. He remembered the hairy mole on Lady McKenzie’s cheek as a good deal more prominent.

  “I don’t know, Clyde. She owns a mirror…it shouldn’t be a great surprise.”

  Clyde grunted and turned back to the portrait.

  Rowland understood. He knew Clyde to be a truly decent man, more considerate than most artists. Clyde felt a responsibility to find the beauty in even cantankerous, vain Lady McKenzie. But nothing presented itself, and Clyde couldn’t escape the fact that a portrait did have to look at least vaguely like the sitter.

  Clyde picked up his palette. “I’ve put together some stretchers for you. I’ll stretch the canvases this evening.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Rowland replied, knowing it was useless to argue. Clyde insisted on doing odd jobs about Woodlands, and no amount of assurances that it was unnecessary would dissuade him.

  Clyde waved Rowland away as he went back to work.

  Rowland left the house for the old stables that now served as a garage. The Rolls was of course out, but he never drove that himself anyway. To do so would probably have offended Johnston.

  He cl
imbed into his yellow Mercedes Benz, patting the bonnet affectionately as he did so. He had brought the supercharged tourer back with him from England. The car had once belonged to a Lord Lesley, with whom Rowland had played cards at Oxford. The Sinclairs meant very little to English society. There, they were looked down upon as colonial upstarts of dubious breeding. Lord Lesley had been no exception, and made no secret that playing poker with an Australian was akin to dining with savages. The evenings were regularly peppered with barbed witticisms about convicts and bushrangers.

  Rowland had found it grating, but he was playing poker. He kept his face closed.

  Perhaps it was because of this that the Englishman could not simply walk away as he started losing. By the time Lesley had bet his newly acquired motorcar on a single hand, a significant crowd had gathered to look on. The triumph of the colonial upstart was a public sensation. Rowland would probably have forgiven the wager to anyone else, particularly since the car in question was German. But it was too sweet a victory. He drove the Mercedes whenever opportunity allowed, even if the distance was short enough to stroll.

  The engine roared into life. Rowland smiled, satisfied, as he savoured the familiar vibrations. He pulled slowly out of the stables and into the street, and in all of three minutes he turned into the driveway of what had been his uncle’s home.

  Though smaller than Woodlands House, the residence was similar in style and grandeur. Its gardens were formal, framed with box hedge and kept in park-like condition by a permanent gardener. The door was opened before Rowland could knock. The Mercedes had announced his arrival. It was not a quiet car, and had penetrated even Mrs. Donelly’s deafness.

  “Mr. Rowly!” She was obviously pleased to see him.

  “Hello, Mrs. Donelly,” Rowland replied in a strong, loud voice.

  “Oh, Mr. Rowly, do come in, sir.” She opened the door wide for him.

  “I am so sorry about Mr. Sinclair—he was very good to me.”

  “As, I am sure, you were to him.”

  His uncle’s house was as it had always been: richly decorated and crammed with trinkets and other objects from his many travels. The old man had always liked to call them his “objets d’art,” but Rowland never quite saw them that way.