The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  The nosy Parker in the post office, a woman named Bell, couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw her. That was Maria’s firm belief, but that applied to almost everyone in the town. She’d learned, and nurtured, a great contempt for Catholic and Protestant alike. Truscott had taught her that Christianity in any form was just a Jew religion, with a Jew as its god, and with a vile and dangerous belief in equality. The idea that a black, or a Jew, or a cripple were ‘equal’ to a pure Aryan was laughable.

  When she entered the post office, there were three people ahead of her, each of them exchanging banalities as they waited. Maria wasn’t invited to join them. These women weren’t rude exactly, although their studied indifference to Maria’s presence was a kind of hostility. There was no small talk when Maria reached the counter. She pushed a piece of paper towards Mrs Bell, and Mrs Bell pushed it back along with a blank telegram. Mrs Bell saw no reason why Maria Pluschow couldn’t fill out the telegram herself, rather than expect her to write out the six words.

  Maria transcribed her message — ‘Dinner tomorrow night. Do come. Maria’— paid for it, and left. Hardy Truscott wouldn’t reply to the telegram. He would either show up or he wouldn’t — but he always showed up when invited to dinner, because Maria was an excellent cook. On more than one occasion in the past, she’d also allowed Truscott into her bed. This was never a certainty, but had occurred sufficiently often to make it an enticing probability. She was worried that George wouldn’t be impressed by Hardy Truscott. He wasn’t impressive physically, and he lacked magnetism, but his message was compelling, and it seemed to Maria that George might be susceptible to the glorious power of the old gods, the real gods, the gods who offered hard, strong remedies to the flabby, sentimental faith of the Jewish Christians.

  INSPECTOR LAMBERT’S BRIEFING on the deaths of the two policemen in Coburg, and on the discovery of Peter Lillee’s body, had left his officers with a good deal to talk about. They noticed that he was oddly muted in the explanation of Watson Cooper’s death. One or two of them had already heard from Kevin Maher that Joe Sable might cause trouble, although Maher hadn’t been explicit. He certainly hadn’t admitted to shooting an unarmed Cooper. All he’d said was that Sable seemed to be up himself, and they took this to imply that Maher thought that Sable might try to claim some credit. Even though they’d never seen any evidence of this in Joe’s behaviour, they were willing to accept it as a possibility simply because he seemed to enjoy the protection of Inspector Lambert.

  Ron Dunnart, who’d been briefed separately about Lillee’s death, and who’d been given a list of people to talk to, was mildly disconcerted by this news. He would have been one of the last people, possibly the last person, to speak to Lillee before his death. He couldn’t, of course, declare this. He couldn’t declare any knowledge of Peter Lillee at all. He regretted having taken that dullard Bob O’Dowd into his confidence. O’Dowd, because he had the imagination of a simpleton, would assume that he, Dunnart, had had something to do with Lillee’s death, which might cause O’Dowd to panic and say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Dunnart was unsure how to proceed. Should he take O’Dowd aside and threaten him? Should he give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’d be smart enough to realise that trouble for Dunnart meant trouble for O’Dowd?

  Sergeant Bob O’Dowd wasn’t just slightly disconcerted by the news of Peter Lillee’s death, he was shocked by it. When he heard about it in Lambert’s briefing, he felt ill — so ill he thought he might be sick. There was no doubt in his mind that Dunnart had killed Lillee. Blackmail was one thing. Murder was quite another. He knew that Dunnart would approach him and point out the fucking obvious — that if Dunnart was exposed, he would be implicated too. And Dunnart was such a ruthless bastard that he’d find a way of shifting the blame, of loading it onto O’Dowd’s shoulders. Could he avoid telling his wife? He’d never been good at disguising his anxieties from her. She’d know that something was up. He’d been no good at lying to her either, and God knows he’d tried often enough. She always found him out and made his life miserable for a period. ‘I can read you like a book,’ she was fond of saying, ‘and a kiddies’ book at that.’

  O’Dowd didn’t catch Dunnart’s eye during the briefing, and afterwards, he slipped away before Dunnart could confront him. He had work to do, but he wouldn’t be able to concentrate, so he went to the gymnasium and tried to ease his nerves by punching a bag. His psoriasis, which itched at his wrists, elbows, and ankles, would flare up. That much was certain.

  ROS LORD HAD prepared dinner for Helen and Joe and had automatically made enough for Peter as well. She’d also absently set his place at the table, and when the three of them sat down, the spare setting was strangely comforting, as if Peter Lillee might walk through the door at any moment.

  The soup was too salty, and the meat was tough — failures of technique which were rare for Ros. No one noticed. Both Ros and Helen were half numb, and Joe felt crippled by awkwardness at being a witness to their grief. He wanted to tell Helen that he’d told Inspector Lambert about Maher, but that somehow felt petty and self-interested. Sitting at the dinner table with these two women, he felt diminished by their strength. He realised, suddenly, how much he admired both of them, and how little he knew of each of them.

  ‘Dunnart and O’Dowd call here, and within twenty-four hours, Uncle Peter is dead. That can’t be a coincidence.’

  Joe wanted to say that it could easily be a coincidence, but instead he nodded in agreement.

  ‘Inspector Lambert is sure that no one inside Homicide knows that you and Mrs Lord are related to Peter, and they don’t know, either, that I’m staying here for a while.’

  ‘Reilly knows that I live in this house,’ Helen said. ‘He was in the car when Lambert dropped me off a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Inspector Lambert said that David Reilly wasn’t the gossiping type.’

  Helen’s face assumed its usual moue at the sound of Reilly’s name.

  ‘The two policemen who came to our door were bad specimens, Joe.’ Ros Lord began to clear the plates away. ‘One of them was worse than the other. The man who called himself Dunnart had that bullying quality about him that you see in policemen who think they’ve been overlooked for promotion. The other one was the second fiddle. Do you think Peter was mixed up in something?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, Mrs Lord.’

  ‘Both of them will be investigating Uncle Peter’s death, won’t they?’

  ‘I suppose they will be.’

  ‘Lambert needs to know that they called here, and they need to be taken off the investigation. They’re both persons of interest.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to Reilly yet about Dunnart. I’ll tell Inspector Lambert first thing tomorrow that they came here.’ Joe looked from one to the other. ‘Inspector Lambert knows that Peter didn’t take his own life.’ Joe noticed that Helen’s eyes widened slightly, and he hurried to clarify. ‘I don’t mean he’s got extra information. I just mean that he trusts your and Mrs Lord’s judgement about Peter.’

  ‘Does Inspector Lambert think it might be murder?’ Ros Lord asked.

  ‘He doesn’t know, Mrs Lord. I’m sorry. If suicide is ruled out, murder isn’t the only possibility.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Misadventure. Or something else.’

  Joe was reminded that Ros Lord had been married to a policeman.

  Helen and Ros took the dishes to the kitchen, and they refused Joe’s offer to help. His mother had always insisted that Joe help with the washing up. His father could never be persuaded to do the same. This had been a daily skirmish between them until the great silence had descended on the house and all conversation between them had ceased. Now, though, Joe assumed that Helen and her mother wanted the privacy that this small domestic chore offered. He was left alone in the dining room looking at the rich portrait of Peter Lillee that hung on one of the walls. It was beautifully done, Joe thou
ght. He had looked at it many times and admired it. Peter had thought it entertainingly vulgar. The skill with which it had been painted rescued it from being truly vulgar. The artist, Forbes Carlisle, was someone who might be worth talking to. The rendering of Peter’s face wasn’t just accomplished. It spoke of someone who knew the sitter well.

  Helen returned to the dining room.

  ‘I’ve never liked that picture. Uncle Peter would never have worn a coat like that.’

  Joe turned to face Helen.

  ‘It’s more of a dressing gown. I think Peter liked the joke.’

  ‘Mum’s relieved me of washing up so you can tell me about the investigation.’

  Joe didn’t hesitate. He suggested they go into the library, where he told Helen about his interview with Monsignor McGrath and how unsatisfactory it had been.

  ‘He seemed to think that converting to Catholicism was the most sensible thing in the world.’

  ‘So he didn’t see it as being a symptom of something that might be troubling.’

  ‘God, no. If anything, he saw it as proof that Peter was healthy and wise.’

  ‘And wealthy of course.’

  ‘Yes. I left that out deliberately. I’m pretty sure Monsignor McGrath wouldn’t lavish such personal attention on a poor man.’

  They spoke for two hours, ringing changes on things already said and speculating with small variations on aspects of the case, at the end of which each of them was exhausted. Helen felt reassured that Joe would keep nothing from her and that he wouldn’t make the patronising assumption that either she or her mother needed shielding from whatever a close examination of Peter’s private life might expose.

  ‘I’ve promised Mum that I’ll tell her everything.’

  Joe thought this was reasonable. He didn’t know that such a promise represented a significant change in the relationship between mother and daughter.

  ‘There is something you need to know, too, Joe. If Uncle Peter was murdered, Mother and I ought to be suspects, which means you’re guilty of a gross breach of professional conduct in talking to me about the investigation.’

  Joe hadn’t thought about this, and it made him feel queasy.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just telling you that Lambert wants you to stay here so you can keep an eye on us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Listen to me, Joe. You should not tell him that you’re keeping me up to speed. He’s testing you. When you see him tomorrow, he won’t ask you outright, but he’ll be listening for clues that you’ve breached protocol, and he’ll be very, very disappointed if he thinks that you have. The thing is, of course, that you have.’

  Joe felt ambushed, and his confusion was obvious. Helen reached across and put her hand on the back of his hand, a gesture she’d never made before.

  ‘I’m not trying to upset you, Joe. I’m just telling you that Lambert is good at his job, and he wants you to be good at yours. If he thinks you’re giving me information I shouldn’t have, he’ll know your inexperience is a liability and that he shouldn’t have pushed for your promotion. Lots of blokes in there resent your promotion. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Why are you saying these things to me?’

  ‘Because you’re my eyes and ears inside Homicide, and I need you to keep your position there.’

  Joe stood up and walked to a wall crowded with small drawings. He kept his back to Helen as he tried to marshal his emotions. Without knowing quite why, he felt humiliated.

  ‘Joe, I’m sorry, but you ought to have known that Mum and I would be persons of interest.’

  He knew she was right, but still he said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because both Mum and I know what is in Uncle Peter’s will.’

  He turned around.

  ‘Uncle Peter was a very wealthy man. Mum stands to inherit ten million pounds in cash and assets.’ She paused. ‘And Uncle Peter left two million pounds to me. So you see, we’d have good reason to get rid of him if we were that way inclined. And we’d have to do it before he married Lillian Johnson, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘You didn’t know about Lillian Johnson.’

  ‘We could be lying, Joe. We’re not, of course, and it is terrible that she’s now in hospital. Should we visit her? I don’t know what to think about Lillian Johnson. It doesn’t feel like she actually exists.’

  ‘Well, she exists all right, but you and Mrs Lord might be as big a shock to her as she is to you.’

  Helen sensed that Joe was holding something back.

  ‘You’re not telling me everything, are you, Joe?’

  ‘On the night before Peter died, he’d called off the engagement.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was about to be accepted into the Catholic Church. That made his relationship with her impossible.’

  ‘She’s not Catholic.’

  ‘Not practising.’

  Helen considered this for a moment.

  ‘So she might have been angry enough to kill Uncle Peter. God, I’d like to meet her. I’d like to find out more about her — and before you say anything, Joe, I know that isn’t possible at the moment. I hadn’t thought of her as a suspect until now. I hadn’t thought of her at all. But suddenly she’s more than just a name on a letter.’

  MAUDE AND TITUS Lambert were astonished by the plate of food that Maude’s brother, Tom, put in front of them. It was a rabbit stew, but Tom had made it so flavoursome that it even made an impression on Maude’s and Titus’s indifferent palates. The stew represented much more than good cooking. It was proof that Tom’s recovery from the violent torture to which he’d been subjected just a couple of months ago was occurring more rapidly than anyone might have hoped. The physical evidence of that torture could still be seen, although his body was healing well, and the only thing that still bothered him was a cigarette burn on his thigh, which had become infected and stubbornly refused to heal. The nightmares continued, but his confusion about what had happened to him had gone, and now he was able to stitch together the events of that terrible night into a coherent whole, where previously, disconnected moments would erupt in his mind with terrifying unpredictability. This meal of rabbit made Maude’s spirits soar. When she’d first seen Tom in hospital after his rescue, she’d thought she’d lost him. When she looked at him now, she marvelled at his resilience.

  If Maude and Titus had been in their own house in Brunswick, they would have discussed whatever Titus was working on over dinner. But while they were temporarily living with Tom Mackenzie, they confined their discussions to bed. Returning to Brunswick didn’t just depend on Tom’s recovery. Titus was reluctant to move back until George Starling had been captured. Starling had confronted Tom in the backyard of the house, and the risk of him returning was too great to expose Maude to that danger.

  ‘This is delicious,’ Maude said. ‘I need this recipe.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom said, ‘but let’s face it Maudey, you’re never going to make this. It’s fiddly and time-consuming. You’d fall at the first hurdle.’

  ‘Nonsense, Tom. I’m not that hopeless.’

  ‘It’s not about skill. It’s about patience.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘OK. Let’s just assume that you’re willing to break down the carcase into manageable parts. Now, you need to salt the parts so that they’re dry-cured.’

  ‘All right. You win. You lost me at dry-cured.’

  Tom laughed.

  They talked easily about the main stories in that day’s newspaper. In a pause in the conversation, Tom said, ‘I’d like to talk to Joe Sable.’

  ‘Are you sure, Tom?’ Maude asked. ‘You went through a terrible thing together.’

  ‘But that’s the point, Maude. We went through it together, and I need to talk to him. He must think I’m a bit of a prick. I haven’t contacted him
.’

  ‘Joe doesn’t think you’re a prick,’ Titus said. ‘He wasn’t as badly injured as you. He knows you need time to get well again.’

  ‘Even so, I want to know what he thinks about what happened. I want to know if he’s all right.’

  Titus took a pen from his pocket and jotted down the telephone number of the house in Kew.

  ‘Why is he in Kew? Why isn’t he in his flat in Princes Hill?’

  As briefly as he could, and because he believed that Tom was ready to hear it, Titus brought him up to date with George Starling’s crimes. The fact that Joe was billeted in the same house as Constable Lord meant that Peter Lillee’s death couldn’t be edited from the account.

  Later that night as Titus talked with Maude about Lillian Johnson, and Peter Lillee’s conversion to Catholicism, he expressed his concern that he might have over-loaded Tom with grim news. Maude reassured him that if Tom was to talk with Joe, gaps in his knowledge would make conversation difficult, and it would put Joe in the awkward position of not knowing what and what not to tell Tom.

  ‘I think you should ask Joe to come here for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll tell Tom in the morning. He’ll want to cook. It will be a good way of breaking the ice.’

  ‘Won’t they want privacy?’

  ‘You can take me to the pictures after dinner. They’ll have plenty of time to talk before we get back.’

  Titus saw the sense in this and agreed to take Maude to the pictures, even though he thought most pictures were trivial and a waste of time. They then went over Titus’s interview with Lillian Johnson. Maude, as she always did, pressed him for details.

  ‘She was very firm, was she, about the message on the back of the photograph not being a suicide note?’

  ‘Adamant. No one we’ve spoken to so far believes Peter Lillee would take his own life. Joe said the priest ruled it out as not just unlikely, but impossible.’

  ‘There’s all that eternal damnation stuff which is meant to discourage self-slaughter.’