Taking a Chance

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘But she was in a bad state?’ I asked.

  Hilda nodded. ‘She was suicidal. The girl loved him, there’s no doubt about that.’

  I glanced at Johnny to see how he was taking this. He was frowning slightly, with a preoccupied expression. ‘You don’t think that Henzell could have taken the poison himself?’

  ‘Suicide?’ Arthur Dodd looked perplexed. ‘No. They went through that at the trial. There was no suggestion of that.’

  ‘But he was being forced into marriage with the Buchanan girl.’

  Hilda said, ‘No one was forcing him. Once he knew she was pregnant he offered. He said that no child of his would be raised a bastard.’

  So, all Lena needed to do was to have his child, and Rick would have married her.

  ‘Now,’ said Hilda gently, ‘what is the purpose of your visit, Mr Horvath? Even I’ve heard of John Horvath and his “Bataan Bulletins”. Why is a famous war correspondent visiting this little village?’

  ‘It’s not a secret,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to get clear in my head exactly what happened in the Henzell case. I know Lena Mitrovic and it just doesn’t add up.’ He shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts. ‘I guess I just want to satisfy myself that Lena hasn’t been sent down for something she didn’t do.’

  ‘The police investigated very thoroughly,’ said Arthur. He sounded slightly affronted, as if it was inappropriate for an American to second-guess the Western Australian police and justice system. ‘Lena Mitrovic was the only real suspect. She was terribly jealous, and no one else had the opportunity or the motive.’

  Hilda said, in her measured way, ‘Motives are strange animals, Arthur. Jealousy is a very strong motive, but there are many kinds of jealousy.’

  ‘People can be jealous of someone who is better-looking than them, or more successful with women, I suppose.’ They looked at me. ‘Well, it seems to me someone like Nugget would be likely to hate someone like Rick Henzell – he was handsome, talented, didn’t need to work for a living and the girls adored him.’ My voice died away. ‘I don’t mean that Nugget killed him, just that he’d have a motive.’

  ‘Indeed, Nugget hated Rick,’ said Arthur. ‘He’d got Nugget’s little sister into trouble. And Rick was a communist; Nugget is very conservative in his politics and disliked him for that reason alone. But Rick had offered to marry Molly.’

  ‘Might he have killed Mr Henzell rather than have his sister marry a communist?’ I asked.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘You are correct, in that he hated the idea of the marriage, but he was with his father and a farm equipment salesman all that morning.’

  But an alibi wasn’t everything, I thought. You didn’t have to actually give someone poison yourself to murder them, you could get someone to do it for you. But then you’d have to trust that person to keep the secret and you’d always be scared that they’d tell. You’d probably end up having to kill them too. No, that scenario was far too complicated. I took another bite of my bread and butter and concentrated on what the others were saying.

  Johnny rubbed the fingers and thumb of his right hand together in the gesture that meant money and said, ‘Cui bono. Who benefited from Henzell’s death? He was wealthy, after all.’

  ‘I understand that he left his money in trust for the artists’ colony. He owned the cottages and let the artists live there for nominal or no rent.’

  ‘What about Molly’s parents?’ asked Johnny. ‘How did they feel about her pregnancy?’

  ‘Their daughter was getting a rich husband and they would have a legitimate grandchild. They were thrilled,’ said Hilda dryly.

  ‘What will Molly do about the baby now?’ I asked.

  Arthur smiled. ‘George Loew has said he’ll marry Molly, but he doesn’t want to raise Rick’s child. Hilda has a cousin in Adelaide. He and his wife have been trying for children for some years, with no luck, and they have offered to adopt the baby. Molly will go over in a couple of months, and have it there. Then she’ll return to marry George. It’s an excellent outcome for a very sorry situation.’

  He seemed pleased. I felt sick at heart for Molly, having to give up her baby, but the stigma attached to being an unwed mother was terrible, especially in a small community like this. Molly would be unlikely to find a husband if she was supporting a fatherless child, and the child would face social ostracism. And without a husband, how could Molly support herself and the child? I supposed it was better all round for the baby to be adopted into a loving home. But still, to give away your baby . . .

  I dragged my attention back to the conversation.

  Hilda was talking. ‘In all communities like that there are petty jealousies, but I can’t see any of the people in the artists’ commune slipping rat poison into Rick’s tea. And the police investigated the matter thoroughly, spoke to everyone and worked out where they were at the time.’

  ‘Is it an actual commune?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a group of about eight cottages in the forest, fifteen minutes’ drive down Glen Road, not far from Hollyoak, where I work,’ replied Hilda. ‘They’re old millworkers’ cottages – there used to be a lot of small private timber mills in the area at the end of the last century. It’s run on socialist lines as a commune.’

  ‘Did they find out where she got it from? The poison?’ Johnny was lounging back in his seat. ‘I suppose it’s easy to get.’

  ‘Konka-rats is far too easy to get,’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve tried to tell people how dangerous it is, but it works so well that everyone uses it. Mrs Carter said that some of her supply was missing, but who knows if that was so? She’s very emotionally disturbed.’

  ‘Agnes Carter?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t she the lady who lost all of her sons to the war? And her daughter is missing, along with another girl.’

  Now they were all looking at me again.

  I blushed. ‘Mrs Walker from the general store told me. Actually, I’m a reporter too. Not as important as Johnny, but I’m doing a feature story about girls who’ve gone missing. I work for the Marvel.’

  ‘I don’t think I know that paper,’ said Hilda.

  Arthur said, ‘Oh, I always read the Marvel. It’s very naughty sometimes, but most diverting. Nell Fitzgerald . . . Don’t you write the women’s section? I do enjoy reading that.’

  I caught Johnny’s eye. Somehow I managed not to laugh, although I knew that if Arthur said he loved ‘This Old Hat’ I wouldn’t be able to help myself. Instead, he looked thoughtful, and sighed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sad to say that girls have been running away from all the country towns, and from good homes in Perth, too.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Four girls have run away from Richmond alone since the start of the war with Japan, and Perth became full of American and other servicemen with money to burn. It’s a very exciting place now, and girls that age want a good time. No matter how much you warn them, they want the fun and excitement, especially with nearly all the local boys away at war. Don’t get the wrong idea – most of our girls go into town on the train to go dancing or shopping, and come back on the train at the end of the evening. The four missing girls were special cases.’

  ‘And two have been found now, haven’t they?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been to visit them.’ He shook his head. I suspected that the visits hadn’t gone well.

  ‘But nothing has been heard of the other two, Lily Carter and Susan . . .’ I couldn’t remember her surname and let the name hang in the air.

  ‘Susan Lorrimer. Her parents are artists and her upbringing was rather bohemian. She was very upset by the death of Rick Henzell, whom she adored. We all think that Lily decided she’d had enough of her mother and Susan simply followed her.’

  ‘But how could they just disappear?’

  ‘We’re confident that they’ll turn up soon,’ said the Reverend, rising to clear the table. ‘Perth’s still a small town in many ways. And they’ve both sent postcards to their families, saying that they’re fine, but won’t
come home.’

  I’d forgotten about that; it sounded suspicious to me. Not the sort of thing that a runaway girl would do.

  The seed cake was just as delicious as Arthur had promised, and we lingered over coffee – with real cream! – until Johnny said that we’d better be going or we’d never finish all that we needed to do. He didn’t elaborate.

  Arthur lent Johnny a stout cane that he extracted from a particularly hideous elephant’s foot umbrella stand in his hallway and we walked the short distance back to the Richmond Gallery to interview Molly Buchanan. She was sitting alone in the empty gallery surrounded by the paintings of her dead lover and didn’t have much to say. She’d been nowhere near the cottage on the morning Rick died, and could prove it. It was clear that she was terrified of Nugget, but she backed up his alibi. When Johnny mentioned Lena’s name, her sweet face darkened.

  ‘She’s a horrible woman,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t care what Reverend Dodd says about not hating people – I hate her. She just wanted Rick, and if she couldn’t have him then she wanted him dead.’

  At that the tears came, and she sobbed into her handkerchief. We left soon after.

  ‘Rick Henzell would have tired of that little girl in a month,’ Johnny said when we were outside. ‘I’m not putting aside the suicide theory. He must have felt trapped, knowing he was going to marry someone who couldn’t make him happy.’

  I wasn’t so sure. ‘It might have worked out very well, actually. Molly would have let him do what he wanted. She’d have been happy simply minding the children and keeping house for him. He’d have kept playing the field with other women, but have had a sense of self-satisfaction because he’d “done the right thing” by Molly.’

  ‘So beautiful and yet so cynical,’ said Johnny. ‘You may be right.’

  I was surprised, and frightened, to see Nugget standing across the road from the gallery, watching us intently. Catching my eye, he sneered. I felt Johnny tense, and put my hand on his arm. The muscles were bunched up, knotted and hard.

  ‘Leave it, Johnny. He just wants a reaction.’ My grip tightened. ‘Please. He scares me.’

  Johnny’s mouth was tense and angry, the graze on his cheek red raw. I stared at him imploringly.

  ‘Please, Johnny, let’s just go.’

  He shook his head slightly and turned away from Nugget to look down at me. ‘I thought that nothing scared Nell Fitzgerald,’ he said with a tight smile.

  Cinnamon, I thought. His eyes are the colour of cinnamon when he’s angry, and amber when he’s not.

  I was able to laugh a little. ‘You haven’t seen me around a spider. Then you’d see true terror.’

  His smile turned into a grin. ‘I’m champion at dealing with spiders.’ Then his expression became apologetic. ‘And when my ankle’s not smashed to pieces I’m pretty good at dealing with psychopaths.’

  Hilda had said that Nugget was possibly a psychopath. It was the word used to describe Edward Leonski, the American soldier who had brutally murdered three women in Melbourne last year. I had told Johnny the simple truth: Nugget did scare me.

  ‘Nugget is irrationally violent,’ I said. ‘It’s better to avoid people like him if at all possible.’

  We didn’t look back to Nugget, but Johnny was sombre as he limped slowly back to the car.

  ‘Sometimes you have to get involved. Hitler is a psychopath. If someone had stopped him earlier, then maybe the world wouldn’t be in such a mess.’

  We had reached the car. He leaned against it and looked at me. It was around two thirty and the weak sunshine was golden in the trees around us; the scent of eucalyptus was almost overpowering.

  ‘Where do you want to go next?’ he asked. ‘I think you need to see the Lorrimers and Mrs Carter for your article, and I’d like to speak to them too.’

  I felt queasy at the thought of it, and wished I hadn’t eaten such a big lunch. I still hated the idea of intruding on people’s misery, just to write a newspaper article.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘You need some human interest in the story, so you need to be able to write about the effect on the families of girls who go missing. Mrs Carter is pure gold with her dead soldier sons – the empty house analogy would work well. If she’d let you use photographs of the boys that would be even better. Then you could wrap up the article with a heartfelt plea from the grieving mothers for their daughters to return. It’s a great story.’

  Now I felt ill. ‘That’s horrible. Compared with you, I’m not cynical at all.’

  ‘It’s what reporters do, Nell. Look for the human element in every story so you can make it real to the readers. I’ll help you.’

  I sucked in a breath and straightened my shoulders. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll try.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, smiling. ‘We’ll make a feature writer of you yet.’

  ‘Johnny,’ I said, ‘I think Evie knows one of the girls. Remember how she mentioned a friend who knew Lena and Henzell?’

  ‘Did she? I don’t remember. You must have been distracting me. Well, we’ll have to wait to talk to her until we get home. And if Evie does know one of the girls, and we can find her, then you can finish with an emotional reuniting of mother and daughter. That would be the icing on the cake for the story.’

  Shaking my head, I managed a smile. ‘Johnny Horvath, if you were cut you’d bleed printers’ ink. Do you think of every­thing in terms of a story?’

  ‘Not everything. Not you, honey.’

  I ignored that.

  A sad little woman was walking along the road. When she caught sight of Johnny she started to walk towards us, head down, peering through grey hair that badly needed a wash and a cut. A large buff-coloured envelope was in her hand. She came up close and stood next to Johnny.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he said.

  She said nothing, but reached into the envelope and pulled out a white feather. When she handed it to him he was so surprised that he took it, but his face flushed. ‘What’s this?’

  She backed away in alarm as Johnny threw the feather away with a sudden, angry movement. He drew his hand into a fist, but then he loosened his fingers and leaned back on the car with studied nonchalance. He was still holding his mouth very tightly, though.

  ‘This gentleman is a war correspondent,’ I said to her. ‘And he’s got serious injuries. You’re Mrs Carter, aren’t you? Please don’t give out those things, it’s mean. You don’t know anything about the men you hand them to. They might be in a reserved occupation, or unable to fight because of a medical condition.’

  She looked confused and started gnawing at her bottom lip. Then she shook her head and regarded me through her lank hair.

  ‘My boys are dead,’ she said. ‘My three boys are dead.’ And the look in her eyes was so bleak that I wanted to cry.

  ‘We know that, Mrs Carter.’ I made my voice very gentle. ‘May we talk to you about them? And about Lily? We’re reporters. We want to write a story about your boys and about Lily – see if we can get her to come back home.’

  She became very still. When she spoke she sounded surprisingly lucid.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  We took her into the little tea room on the main street, sat her down and ordered tea and spice cake. When it came the waitress assured us, ‘It’s made without eggs, milk or butter.’ There was a quick look at Mrs Carter. ‘So we’re not depriving the soldiers of anything.’

  Mrs Carter nodded. ‘My boys were soldiers,’ she said. ‘And they’re dead. Lance, Andy and Bill. All dead.’

  ‘I know, dear. It’s a terrible thing.’ The waitress moved away quickly.

  Agnes Carter apparently had decided to tell her story only to me. In Ancient Mariner fashion she held me with her gaze, staring fixedly at me as she turned the large envelope which contained the feathers around and around in her hands. I took out my notebook and started to write down what she said.

  ‘Lance died in Greece,’ she told me, speaking quietly and
coherently. ‘He was in the 2/2nd Battalion and he died on the twenty-fifth of April 1941. On Anzac Day. Lance was my eldest and he was a corker. He was only sixteen when his father died in 1933, but he took over as the man of the house, and he managed to keep our orchard going. He was a corker, was my Lance.’

  I wrote steadily. When I was writing I didn’t have to meet those eyes that held a world of sorrow.

  ‘Andy was in the 2/28th Battalion. He died at El Alamein on the twenty-fifth of October 1942. He was such a clown, always laughing. Loved George Wallace – saw all his movies. And he told the funniest jokes; he’d have us all in stitches sometimes, around the dinner table.’ There was a little laugh, high and eerie. ‘Even when he was little, he told jokes. I sent him a cake for his birthday – he turned twenty-one on the twentieth of August 1942 – but I don’t think he received it.’

  I wrote it all down, exactly as she said it.

  ‘Billy died in New Guinea four and a half months ago. He was nineteen, my baby boy.’

  Her voice died away. After a pause she spoke again, but there was a hesitancy in the tone. ‘After Billy died I did some things I can’t remember. Lily got angry with me. She yelled at me.’

  There was another pause. I raised my eyes; in her face was the rather blank gaze she had shown in the street. She glanced down at the envelope.

  ‘Oh yes. I killed the white hen.’ She held up the envelope. ‘Lily didn’t like that. Got her feathers, though.’ She looked at me with her head tilted a little and opened her eyes wide.

  ‘Lily left when that man died. She hates the feathers. But I need to give them out, you know. Who’ll do it if I don’t?’

  I wrote, ‘I need to give them out, you know. Who’ll do it if I don’t?’ I wanted to get up and run away, leave the unhappy woman with her haunted eyes to her lonely misery. I looked over to Johnny, who was quietly smoking. My gaze said, Help me.

  ‘Do you have any idea where Lily might have gone?’ Johnny asked her.

  She made a sudden, startled movement when he spoke. ‘You’re American,’ she said.