Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club

by Julian Leatherdale

  ‘He’s not like that, Bill. We’ll lunch soon, I promise—but right now I have a favour to ask.’

  ‘What is it, Joanie?’

  ‘Have the medical examiners released the autopsy report on Ellie yet? I was hoping you might have seen it by now.’

  There was a short silence on the end of the phone. ‘I read the preliminary report this morning. It can’t be released to the public while the police are still investigating.’

  ‘Please, Bill, I need to know what it says.’

  ‘Look, love, it’s natural for your imagination to dwell on unpleasant—’

  ‘Please don’t, Bill. I have good reasons.’ Joan sounded irritated and she was.

  Again, there was a pause. ‘Alright, love, have it your way. I’m doing this just because it’s you, Joanie. But not a word to a soul or I’ll get it in the neck, promise?’

  ‘Of course, I promise.’

  A silence fell on the other end of the line; no doubt Bill was searching for the report on his desk.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said finally. ‘The autopsy found that her death was caused by strangulation and then having her throat slashed by a sharp instrument, probably a razor. Her face was mutilated by multiple wounds most likely from the same instrument. The frenzy of the attack suggests a high level of aggression towards the murder victim.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Joanie?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Bill cleared his throat. ‘She was not raped or sexually interfered with in any way. There was evidence of contusions over the left eye consistent with a punch to the face. There was also a great deal of cocaine and alcohol in her system. The contents of her stomach indicate a small meal eaten around six o’clock that evening. Time of death is estimated at about ten-thirty. What else did you want to know?’

  ‘Any idea if there might be an inquest?’

  ‘Not until the police have exhausted all their leads or decided to lay charges.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill.’ Joan had calmed down and was genuinely grateful. ‘I mean it: thank you.’

  Bill did not respond straightaway. ‘Now come clean, Joanie—you’re not getting yourself mixed up in any kind of trouble, are you? Snooping around playing detective?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bill,’ Joan said with a laugh that sounded unconvincing even to her own ears. ‘You must think I’m mad.’

  ‘Well, we went out together for seven months, don’t forget! I think I know something about what makes Joan Linderman tick.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Bill. I have to move flats in the next week or so, but I’ll give you a call about lunch after that …’

  Bill jumped in just before she hung up. ‘Hey, Joanie, promise me something. If you do get yourself in a tight corner, give me a bell. I won’t judge.’

  Joan hung up then and walked, slowly and with enormous effort of will to stop herself breaking into sobs, towards the postal clerk behind the curved brass grille at the desk. She had looked into the butchered face of poor Ellie and seen the copious quantities of blood sprayed on the wall and pooled around the body. But somehow the cold, detached language of the autopsy report awoke an even more bitter sadness in her.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Stamp for a letter to Willoughby, please. And one for Tempe.’

  The clerk affixed stamps to both envelopes. ‘Will that be all, madam?’

  Joan mumbled, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and handed over her money. She then headed outside. There was nothing quite like the satisfaction of dropping a letter into the mouth of a postbox, thought Joan. She enjoyed the finality, the irrevocability of it.

  Had Hugh sent their blackmail letter to Gordon yet? she wondered. That too would be irrevocable, she thought with a frisson of excitement. If Gordon took the bait, the plan was to hand over the incriminating note and collect the payout at a meeting on Friday. ‘We must strike while the iron’s hot, Joanie,’ Hugh had advised. ‘The last thing Gordon needs right now is a police investigation. He’d probably be asked to step down as a New Guard commander. And it would damage his legal practice, whether he’s guilty or not.’

  The letter to Tempe was addressed to Mrs Dawson, Ellie’s mother (Joan had copied the address from the notepad on Bernie’s bedside table). Please accept my deepest condolences. I was a friend and neighbour of your daughter Eleanor. I understand how reluctant you must be to have someone intrude upon your grief at this time, but I sincerely hope you might consider meeting me. I am not a police officer or a journalist, however I do have information that may throw light on the circumstances of Eleanor’s death and I am determined to learn the truth. Though I have a modest income, I will do whatever is within my means to help you and Greta.

  Joan calculated that a combination of curiosity (‘Information that may throw light on the circumstances of her death’) and the hint of financial compensation (‘I will do whatever is within my means to help’) might tempt Mrs Dawson to agree to the meeting. Given her situation, she had nothing to lose and possibly something to gain. Joan had no idea what she would say at this meeting or what she hoped to learn, but inside her head her fictional Lillian Armfield insisted that it had to be worth a shot. In fact, Joan suspected that she would still be following in the real Armfield’s footsteps, just as she had done last night when she spoke to Mavis.

  The other letter was, of course, to her mother Gloria, letting her know that Joan would be visiting the family on Sunday after lunch. ‘After lunch’ was Joan’s attempt to forestall her mother cooking up a storm in honour of the occasion, given how hard up they were, but she had already resigned herself to that eventuality. Joan was excited by the possibility that, if matters turned out well on Friday, she would come bearing a very handsome late Christmas present for her parents and Richard.

  Was it wrong of her to think this way? Was she just trying to buy her way back into their affections? All she really wanted was to see them happy, to be accepted by them and, most of all, to feel their love. The death of Ellie and the precariousness of Joan’s own life these last few days (who could she really trust?) had focused her thoughts on family again, as the only safe refuge in a dangerous and heartless world.

  The two letters dropped from her hand and she heard them land with a soft thud in the depths of the postbox. There was no going back now.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Just as Joan was about to shuffle exhaustedly up the stairs of Bomora after work that evening, she was accosted by Arturo. He was in an excitable state, waving a piece of paper in her face. ‘Miss Joan, tomorrow night we have big meeting, eh? All tenants. About eviction. Seven o’clock, our place. You and Bernie, you must come. Very important! Sì?’

  Joan nodded her assent and kept climbing. The day had been exhausting not so much as a result of physical labours but rather the great tidal movements in her soul. Being back at work had at first been a calm pool of normality in which she could float quietly. But then there had been the encounter with Zora which, while it had inspired her to keep slogging away, had also churned up murkier depths around her own self-esteem as a writer. How would she ever make Reg Punch’s deadline and, even if she did, was there any likelihood that he would accept her story for publication? There had also been the phone call with Bill, and his recitation of the horrible dead language of the autopsy report. Further disturbances to her equanimity followed with the mailing of a letter to a woman whose only child had just been murdered and a second to her psychologically friable mother. All in all, the day had been taxing in the extreme.

  ‘Bernie!’ Joan scrabbled about for the door key in her handbag. One of the first signs that she was not coping was her misplacement of everyday things. ‘Bernie, are you there?’ Joan banged on the door with her fist.

  Velma opened the door of her bedsit and stuck her head out. ‘You lost your key, love?’

  ‘I seem to have misplaced it. I was hoping Bernie would be home by now.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’ve got the spare you gave us. Don’t want you shimmying up thos
e drainpipes or taking a tumble off the ledge, do we now?’ Such things did happen in Kings Cross regularly, often with fatal results. ‘Why don’t you come in for a refreshing cuppa?’ Velma suggested. ‘You look bushed.’ By a ‘refreshing cuppa’ Velma meant, of course, a finger or two of sherry.

  ‘Thanks, Velma, I will. Just a quick one, though.’ Joan loved her neighbours’ flat, bursting museum-like with mementoes from their glory days as singers at Harry Rickards’s Tivoli on Castlereagh Street, which had finally closed its doors only two and a bit years ago to be replaced by a cinema. An upright piano with nicotine-stained keys like smoker’s teeth dominated the main room, its walls smothered in yellowing playbills for Houdini, Marie Lloyd, Little Titch and Chung Ling Soo. For lack of space, Velma and Iris slept together in a creaky brass bed surrounded by beaded dresses, mannequins with feather boas, wig and hat stands and a stuffed toucan in a cage. Everything had a story.

  But what immediately struck Joan as she entered now was the steamer trunk near the door, spilling over with clothes, and other boxes of all sizes scattered about. ‘You’ve started packing already?’ Joan couldn’t disguise the emotion in her voice. This eviction was really happening: the tenants of Bomora were to be disbanded.

  Velma poured her a sherry and she and Joan clinked glasses. ‘To better days!’

  Then the older woman explained that, while she and Iris were sad to be leaving Bomora after the best part of ten years, they had always known the artist’s life was that of a gypsy. ‘We go where the wind blows. Which is Harris Park it seems. At least until we find our feet again. Iris has a sister there, recently widowed. This lot’—Velma waved her hand at the flat’s prolific contents—‘will have to be stored. Except the piano. If we can’t sell it, it stays. So what are your plans?’

  ‘Well, Bernie and I have an appointment tonight to look at something.’ Before Joan had left for work that morning, Bernice had told Joan her news of a tip-off about a small bedsit down in Woolloomooloo. ‘One of the actors, Donald, told me about it. A bit on the small side and no view. But beggars can’t be choosers, right? I’ll talk to the landlady and we can take a squiz tonight.’ She’d arranged for the two of them to inspect it at six-thirty, which was why Joan was expecting her. ‘If we can’t find anything, I might have to move back home.’ That was another good reason for Joan to see her family this Sunday: to prepare them for the possibility of her (strictly temporary) return. What that would mean for Joan’s future—with Bernice, with Hugh—was anyone’s guess.

  Bernice … Joan was careful to conceal her deep unease, but she had been aware of watching Bernie the previous evening and that morning for any tell-tale signs of evasiveness or guilt, anything in her behaviour that Joan might have missed before. It was so easy, once you opened a chink of doubt in your mind, to interpret everything as suspicious. Bernie seemed to have her eyes fixed on the future: the opening of her play, a new bedsit. Why was she not grieving more for Ellie? Why was she not more worried about what had happened to Jess? Because she already knew?

  According to Bill, the autopsy had estimated that Ellie had died around 10.30 pm. So if her flatmate was telling the cops the truth, it was probable that Ellie was already dead before Bernie left Theo’s Club on Saturday night. It would be easy to check the time with someone at Theo’s. And a talk with Ruby Dawson could well throw light on her daughter’s state of mind. Dear God, listen to yourself, Joan scolded. Sounding like a pulp fiction detective. This is Bernie you’re talking about, your best friend, the closest thing you have to a sister. The woman you have lived with for the last four years.

  As these troubling thoughts occupied Joan’s head, she heard Velma still talking and Joan’s attention snapped back to the present. ‘Arturo wants to hold a meeting, have you heard?’ Velma was shaking her head. ‘I’m worried he’s going to kick up a fuss. There’s no point in fighting it. The owners have the law on their side. And the police. What can we do? Nothing. Most of us have already made plans. Poor Mary told me she’s heading back home to Dubbo. Not cut out for the big smoke.’

  Velma offered Joan a second nip of sherry. ‘The police lady told me they were still looking for Ellie’s killer. Such a horrible business. How is that poor lass Jessie doing?’

  Before Joan had a chance to answer, there was a knock at Velma’s door, which she had deliberately left ajar.

  ‘Joan, are you in there?’ It was Bernice. ‘Sorry I’m late. Got caught up at the theatre. We’d better go.’

  Joan finished her sherry and apologised to Velma for having to hurry off.

  ‘No problem, dear. Good luck. I hope it works out for you girls.’

  ‘I couldn’t find my key,’ Joan said as she joined Bernice on the landing. ‘I just need to freshen up a bit. Won’t be a minute.’

  Bernice fished her key out of her jacket pocket and Joan slipped inside. As she came back out, she could hear a furious rumpus from downstairs, people shouting in angry voices. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked Bernice. The argument seemed to be happening at the foot of the staircase.

  ‘It’s that bitch, Moxham, having a go at Arturo.’

  The two women began their descent, hoping to avoid getting involved, but the landlady was blocking their way.

  ‘Stop putting stupid ideas in people’s heads! It’s all coming down and there’s nothing you can do about it!’ Mrs Moxham was ripping one of Arturo’s meeting notices into pieces.

  ‘You don’t seem too worried, Mrs Moxham,’ Arturo retorted. ‘The owners have taken good care of you, eh? Nice little place somewhere? No worries for you.’

  Mrs Moxham’s voice dropped into a lower, more threatening tone. Joan and Bernice were close enough now to hear every word she hissed into Arturo’s face. ‘If you hold this meeting and start making trouble, I’m gonna call the cops and report you!’

  ‘Yeah? Report me for what? Protecting my rights?’

  ‘You got no rights, you filthy faggot.’

  Arturo’s face drained of colour. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You think I’m stupid? That I don’t know about you and your “brother” Vincent?’ Mrs Moxham barked a nasty laugh and her eyes narrowed to menacing slits. ‘You think I don’t know about your parties? All those boys you invite for just one thing. Turning my place into a bloody molly house, you are! I can testify to the police what I seen through that very keyhole, you shameless bugger!’

  ‘Mrs Moxham, please—I never think you are stupid.’ Arturo sounded fearful now. A conviction for sodomy could lead to a sentence of one or two years of hard labour. ‘I thought we had an understanding.’

  Arturo and Vincent must have bought the landlady’s silence with sly-grog, Joan speculated.

  Mrs Moxham obviously resented the reminder. ‘An understanding?’ she exploded. ‘I’ll tell you about an understanding! That whore who was murdered knew what was going on, didn’t she? Tried to blackmail you for a bit of extra dosh. And look how she ended up!’

  ‘You’re out of your bloody mind!’ Bernice shouted at Moxham.

  ‘Who had a spare key to her flat in case she locked herself out, eh? This bugger, that’s who. Drowned out her screams with his bloody opera cranked up to full volume. I heard it!’

  Arturo’s face was ghostly white now, his lips trembling. Joan, too, was shocked. Had the landlady voiced her outrageous accusations to Lillian Armfield when she’d interviewed her the night before? No, Joan reasoned; if she had, someone would have returned to interrogate or arrest Arturo and Vincent. Mrs Moxham was bluffing about the murder. But she could all too easily ruin Arturo and Vincent’s lives by informing the police about their homosexuality. The Vice Squad coppers took a perverse pleasure in raiding private parties and nightclubs to arrest mollies and cross-dressers.

  Bernice, meanwhile, was so incensed by Mrs Moxham’s behaviour that she threw herself into the fray. The dispute grew ever more heated as the landlady and Bernice exchanged insults and several other tenants, including Velma and Archie, gathered to bear witness. T
he argument only ran out of steam when Vincent informed the other Bomora residents that they would not be holding a meeting after all, and he and Arturo would be leaving like everyone else. ‘There’s no hope. No hope at all. I wish you all good luck.’

  As a result of the scene, Bernice and Joan were nearly forty-five minutes late to their appointment in Woolloomooloo, which won them no favours with the landlady who had been waiting for them in her front parlour. Not that it made any difference, as the room on offer was so dark, cramped and putrid that Bernice and Joan took less than a minute to agree that they could never live there.

  On the way home, they stopped off at a delicatessen on Macleay Street where Joan dug a little deeper into her nest egg to shout herself and Bernie some smoked ham and pickled onions for their supper, to be washed down with a cheap bottle of plonk she purchased at the back door. Was this generosity that she could barely afford intended to assuage her guilt over going behind Bernie’s back, she wondered, or even suspecting her friend was capable of a crime? Perhaps. But it was also an acknowledgement that the time they had left at Bomora was precious and, given their uncertain future, could be one of the last times she and Bernie shared a meal as flatmates.

  ‘Zora came into the office today,’ Joan said as she poured the wine. ‘She invited us to have lunch with her in Glenbrook. As soon as we get settled in a new place we should go up for a visit.’

  ‘That’s a splendid idea,’ Bernice replied. ‘Maybe we could even drop in on Norman and Rosa at Springwood if they’re back from overseas. I have a story I think he could be interested in illustrating.’

  How easy it is to take for granted all the good things one has, thought Joan. She had been so happy at Bomora, enjoying the bohemian writers’ life for which she had to thank Bernice’s loyal companionship and inexhaustible optimism. The two women raised their glasses, drank a toast to Arturo, Vincent, Velma and Iris, and the other Bomora residents, and reassured each other that something better would soon turn up.