‘PROPERTY HEIRESS MURDERED,’ screamed the headline above what looked like a double photograph of his hit.
‘A daughter of late property tycoon Sir Roderick Banks has been brutally murdered,’ Muldoon read. ‘The strangled body of Miss Susan Banks was found at seven o’clock last night in a women’s toilet in the heart of Brisbane’s popular Park Road cafe precinct. Police believe Miss Banks, who was involved in a bitter dispute with her twin sister Elizabeth over the settlement of their father’s $45 million estate, may have been killed during a bungled robbery. The victim’s sister, informed at her Toorak home last night of her twin’s death, said ...’
Muldoon didn’t get to what Elizabeth Banks said. He was already on the phone.
‘What do they mean, twin sister?’ he said as soon as Harry answered. He didn’t give him time to go through his security routine.
‘Exactly what it says, bright boy.’ Harry’s voice was brittle. ‘You’ve terminated your own client.’
‘But I didn’t know ...’
‘You didn’t need to know.’ Harry cut him short. ‘If you’d gone to Melbourne the way you were told ...’
‘Harry, mate. Is it my fault this Banks chick had a dead ringer sister?’ Muldoon thought of the three grand he’d probably just kissed goodbye. ‘Look, how about I go down there and do her, too? This other one, Elizabeth. No extra charge, no hard feelings.’
‘Are you deaf as well as dumb?’ Harry’s voice grated like an old lock. ‘I just told you there’s no more money. The woman you snuffed was the one paying the bills. You could kill every woman in Toorak for all I care, but you still wouldn’t ...’ He was winding up to chew the kid’s ear to shreds when the chilling thought hit him.
‘Where are you calling from?’ he asked Muldoon.
‘Cairns. Where else do you think I got to in the last five minutes?’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
‘Reef Plaza, out on the deck.’
‘The public phones?’
‘My phone. Mate, it’s time you crawled into the twentieth century and got yourself a mobile.’
Harry swore. ‘Why don’t you say what you’re wearing as well? Make it really easy for them.’ He hung up, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and started to wipe the handpiece.
He was still wiping his prints off the door of the phone booth when the first police car skidded around the corner, a blue light flashing wildly on its roof.
Death of a Widow
The murder would have gone undetected, but for the sharp eyes of a young mechanic in the Gendarmerie Nationale garage at Nice.
He noticed, in the crumpled mess of metal that had once been a bright red BMW coupé, how certain sleeves of both brake lines were loose. Not twisted and broken off. Not as one could expect in a car which had plunged more than two hundred metres off the road which cascades in steep curves down the last tumble of the Alpes Maritimes where the mountains meet the Mediterranean on the French-Italian border. No, both sleeves were neatly unscrewed as if someone had loosened the thread. As if someone expected the brakes to blow out under the pressure of vigorous mountain driving.
The car was registered in Monaco, so a French accident investigation became a Monégesque murder case. The file came to the desk of Inspecteur Jean-Paul de Roque of the Bureau des Étrangers of the Monaco Police. The Office of Strangers, as it is sometimes called in certain quarters of the principality, is the police branch which deals with the tax exiles, mainly English speaking, who live in Monte Carlo. And with the people of all tongues who prey on them.
The driver of the BMW, now officially known as the murder victim, had become a tax exile, certainly enough. Wendy Miller was well known among the Anglo community for her lavish entertaining and loud Australian ways. According to the reports Inspector de Roque read, she had become even louder of late. His office, on the fourth floor of an anonymous 19th Century building and on the wrong side of the railway line, was as far away from Wendy Miller’s Monte Carlo as you could get and still be inside the principality. It was light years away from the lifestyle Wendy Miller had led in the eighteen months between her husband’s and her own deaths.
They both died fast. Wendy at the wheel of her BMW, Sam Miller at the wheel of his ocean racing power boat. They both died rich, too. Though at the rate Wendy had been entertaining lately, Inspector de Roque estimated Sam had died considerably richer.
‘I wonder, madame, how her two sons felt about the way their mother was spending their inheritance?’ the inspector asked the Miller’s housekeeper in his first interview with her. They were in the main reception room of the family apartment, located across the harbour from the palace. Inspector de Roque noted that the apartment was almost directly in line with the ornate parapets. The pink walls below them gleamed opulently against the bright blue sky, washed clean by the rain of the previous week.
‘Stepmother,’ Madame Noiret corrected him acidly. ‘Such scandal, that a woman her age should pretend to be a real mother to boys who are already men.’
The sneer of her arched nostrils increased by a degree or two as she pointedly gazed at the painting that dominated the wall opposite the entrance. The inspector understood her meaning. He knew the painting to be a portrait of the dead couple, commissioned by Wendy Miller from a renowned Provençal artist as a first anniversary gift for her husband. A cruel gift, the inspector mused. It emphasised the difference in their ages in almost every aspect – Sam austere in grey against Wendy’s vibrant red, standing at formal attention while she is seductively supple. The inspector wondered if the parcel under Sam’s arm was symbolic of the fortune he brought to their liaison.
‘They are upset by their stepmother’s death?’ the inspector persisted, taking his notebook from his jacket pocket.
‘But of course! What do you think, coming so close after they have lost their dear papa?’
‘It’s strange,’ mused the inspector. ‘I had a somewhat different impression from observing them at the funeral the other day.’
‘You were there?’ Madame Noiret regarded the detective suspiciously and he noted the change in her expression. He had deliberately not yet told her why he was investigating the case.
‘As an observer.’
‘Then you observe the Australians incorrectly. They are not like us. They have too much of the English, so they hide their emotions, like this.’ The portly little woman let her face fall to a stony blankness, but she could not dull the Latin fire in her eyes. It made a picture which would have been comical under other circumstances.
‘And you, Madame?’ the inspector pursued. ‘You also seem to me to be not too much distressed by the death of your patronne.’
The fire flickered in her eyes.
‘We each tolerated the other. There is no secret we were separated by ... upbringing. If I had not already worked for Monsieur Miller for several years before he married that woman, all the world knows I would never have accepted this employment.’
Inspector de Roque nodded. He already knew what she said was true. His duties at the Bureau des Étrangers required him to maintain regular contact with the financial firms where the expatriate millionaires do their business and he had a good ear for gossip, even in English. Sam Miller’s romance with the brash young Australian secretary he met in one of these offices was widely disapproved among the upper reaches of Monaco society. Sam Miller, despite some doubts as to the origins of his antipodean wealth, was regarded as a man of satisfactory savoir faire. Wendy Patterson, as she was then, was regarded as a gold digger.
‘Five years is a long time to tolerate one you do not admire,’ he said.
‘It is a short time for the sake of the boys,’ she replied, and the detective noted another change in her eyes, a softness that tamed the fire to a warm glow.
‘The boys. These young men still live here, in this apartment?’
‘It is a big apartment. But no, not all of the time. Steven is not so much here since he has lost his papa. He was with h
im in the boat crash, do you know? He was what they call the throttle man,’ she paused and gazed out to the sea. ‘Now he stays most often at the farm at La Turbie.’
‘And Phillip?’
‘He is a student. Most of the year he is in England, at Cambridge. Or often he stays in the small flat in Paris. He calls it his art atelier. An escape from all those English law books.’
‘Where are they now?’ asked Inspector de Roque.
‘They went together up to the farm yesterday.’
‘Good,’ the inspector put his notebook away. ‘I must interview them both and the farm will be an excellent situation. You will accompany me, Madame Noiret?’
‘For what?’ she frowned suspiciously.
‘I must have someone to show me the way. It would be a crime to waste my department’s time getting lost, would it not?’
The farmhouse was an old stone gîte on the southern slope of the mountains high above Monaco. It was a low, rustic building with only a few deeply recessed windows set into the side walls, but its southern face had been opened up with sliding glass doors. A modern terrace had been added beyond the glass doors, to take advantage of an impressive view across the craggy peaks to the sea far below. On either side of the short driveway which led up off the tortuous mountain road from Monte Carlo, neat rows of lavender on rocky terraces climbed the hillside.
‘The crops of share farmers,’ Madame Noiret informed Inspector de Roque as his silver-grey Renault Megane crunched up the driveway.
The driveway ended in a flat space of rocky land, big enough to park four cars, below the level of the house and to the western side of it. The inspector could no longer see the house as he parked beside an Audi Q5 SUV and a British registered Peugeot 208 GTi. Both cars were splattered with tan coloured mud. He followed Madame Noiret up the steep stone stairs and around the side of the house.
Steven and Phillip Miller were on the terrace, in the shade of grape vines which had been trained across a rough timber pergola. Phillip was sitting at a small easel working on a painting with an abstract resemblance to the scene beyond the terrace. The inspector wondered what his opinion might be of the double portrait in the family’s Monaco reception room. No such thoughts occurred concerning Steven, who crouched on the terra cotta tiles, carefully folding a huge and colourful expanse of lightweight fabric. The inspector recognised it as one of the hang gliding parachutes that were now such a regular sight in the sky between Monaco and Roquebrune.
Madame Noiret made formal introductions and the men shook hands. Steven Miller had a firm Anglo grip and the rough hands of an active and practical man. The inspector recognised the callouses that come from endless hours of windsurfing. Phillip’s handshake was softer in every respect, except for a rough scratch across his knuckles.
‘I have reason to believe,’ the inspector said in English once the formalities were over, ‘that your stepmother did not die by accident.’
He was going to repeat it in French but realised there was no need. Madame Noiret looked as shocked as the two young men.
‘You mean she was murdered?’ said Phillip.
‘Why do you say that? I did not mention such a thing,’ the detective looked at him sharply.
‘Murder or suicide,’ the young man shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s got to be one or the other, and I can’t see Wendy having any reason to kill herself.’
‘How did they do it?’ Steven suddenly broke in.
‘Do what?’ said the inspector.
‘The murder. Phillip’s right, if you reckon it wasn’t an accident, it had to be murder. So how did they do it?’
‘I have only the liberty to say we have certain evidence.’
‘From the car or the body?’ Steven asked.
‘It does not matter,’ the inspector replied quietly.
‘It does if you want to know whether Wendy was drugged or her car was fiddled with,’ Steven persisted.
‘Monsieur,’ the sea blue eyes which are the most distinctive part of Inspector de Roque’s face blazed suddenly, ‘what matters is that a woman, your stepmother, died mysteriously on Wednesday morning last week. What I must demand to know now is how she passed the previous Tuesday night. And also, where you were, Monsieur, and you, and you.’ He turned as he spoke to nod curtly to Phillip Miller and Madame Noiret.
‘Vous demandez quoi?’ Madame Noiret’s nostrils flared and her face flushed with indignation.
‘Easy now, Blackie,’ Phillip gentled the woman on the shoulder with one hand and held her back by the elbow with the other. ‘The inspector’s quite right. He’s got a job to do and obviously you, Steven and I are his prime suspects.’
‘Moi?’ the woman angrily twisted her shoulder away from his hand.
‘The inspector’s no fool,’ Phillip still held her, but gently. ‘He can already see neither Steven or I was exactly close to Wendy, and who else could gain from her death? It wouldn’t take too much detective work to find out she was threatening to fire you. So, let’s cooperate and have him clear us all. Then he can look for the skeletons he’s certain to find in her closet, n’est-ce pas?’
Madame Noiret settled into a sullen silence.
‘Tuesday night last week,’ Steven volunteered, ‘I was up here at the farm. And Blackie, I mean Madame Noiret, was too. Wendy drove her up Tuesday afternoon. Said she had some business to do with the tenant farmers, and she had some job up here for you, didn’t she, Blackie?’
‘Clearing cupboards,’ Madame Noiret huffed with barely concealed contempt.
‘They came in the BMW?’ asked Inspector de Roque.
Steven nodded. ‘Wendy planned to take Blackie back with her in the morning, but changed her mind when Phillip called.’
‘Phillip was not here?’ the inspector asked Steven.
‘I was in Paris,’ said Phillip. ‘I drove up on the Monday to look at some paintings in the Centre Pompidou. I’ll show you.’
He reached across his box of paints and brushes and picked up his phone. He held the screen towards the inspector as he swiped through several photographs of artworks on gallery walls, and a selfie of him smiling shoulder to shoulder with an Oriental girl in the courtyard outside the museum. The tubular skeleton of the building filled the background like a plate of hi-tech pasta.
‘That’s where I was pretty much all of Tuesday and Wednesday morning,’ Phillip said as he offered the phone to the detective.
Inspector de Roque noticed that the images he swiped back through were timed and dated — in English — to 16 and 17 September.
‘And who is the girl?’ he handed the phone back, leaving the selfie on the screen.
‘Some Japanese tourists thought I looked like a real French artist.’
The inspector smiled at that, then turned to Madame Noiret.
‘So, you passed the night of Tuesday here in this gîte in company with your patronne and Monsieur Steven. Why did you not depart with Madame Miller the next morning?’
‘It was Madame’s wish that I stay, merci au bon Dieu. Had I gone with her ...’ She made the mark of the cross on her chest.
‘You said your stepmother changed her mind regarding Madame Noiret after a phone call from your brother,’ the inspector turned his attention to Steven.
‘She said it was Steven’s idea,’ Phillip interrupted. ‘She wanted Madame Noiret to finish her work here and asked if I could call by and pick her up on my way through on Wednesday evening.’
‘That’s right,’ admitted Steven. ‘I thought Blackie could do with a day away from the ... away from the situation.’
‘Thank you,’ said Inspector de Roque. ‘You have all been helpful to my inquiry. And now, if I may ask your indulgence, I must reflect for a time on all that you have told me. If you will please excuse me.’
He stood, bowing slightly to Madame Noiret, and let himself out to the terrace. He did not glance back into the room. He gazed towards the Mediterranean for a long and thoughtful time until the glare of the warm September sun
burnt his eyes. He turned back towards the house and stepped inside to face the two young men and the woman where they sat, just as he had left them.
‘I came here today with a murder and three suspects,’ he said finally and slowly. ‘Now I have only one.’
He fumbled for his notebook in his coat pocket, flipped it open to the page he wanted, and held it up to read the names.
‘Phillip Owen Miller, I arrest you for the murder of Wendy Caroline Miller on Wednesday 17th September...’
‘Bullshit!’ bellowed Phillip. ‘I’m the only one with an alibi.’
‘Precisely,’ replied the inspector. ‘The only alibi, and such a neat one, too. You came so close to having it all, including the annuity your father left for Madame Noiret.’
The woman’s eyes flared with surprise and anger. The inspector continued.
‘That is correct, Madame. Your material comfort was taken care of, whether you continued in employment or not. I know it because I have been privileged to see certain papers. I suspect Phillip, as a law student, knows of them as well. Just as he would know that he must eliminate his elder brother to secure the total inheritance.’
It was Steven’s turn to look bewildered and angry.
‘Yes, my young friend,’ the inspector glanced towards Steven without moving his concentration on Phillip. ‘Your brother had crafted a frame on you as elaborate as those he places around his paintings. Look at the prima facie evidence. You have the motive, the opportunity, the skill with your hands. Who knows what you could be supposed to do in the darkness of that Tuesday night?’
‘And where do you suppose I was on that night?’ Phillip charged in. ‘I suppose you’ll try to say I drove all the way down here on Tuesday night, fiddled with the brakes on the car, drove back to be at Pompidou fresh as a daisy on Wednesday morning, then drove all the way back again that afternoon. Remember, inspector, I have proof I was in Paris on those two days.’
Murder by Sunshine Page 5