CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Wednesday morning mail brought Joan three short notes. The first was a reply from Ellie’s mother agreeing to a meeting the following day at five. She had enclosed a tram timetable to help Joan plan her trip. It was only a short note but the neat handwriting, correct grammar and formal tone told Joan that Ruby Dawson was a woman of some education. The second note was from her mother, expressing her excitement at seeing Joan after so long. She asked Joan to please come for lunch on Sunday and reminded her that Hugh was most welcome. The third was a quick scrawl from Hugh confirming their meeting the next morning. Joan responded immediately to the first two notes and posted her replies on her way to work on Thursday morning.
In the previous two days Joan had put in a herculean effort. She had culled all the reader submissions for ‘Between Ourselves’ and edited nineteen she thought fit to print. There were also two poems that looked promising, depending on how much room the final layout allowed. She would submit all her copy to Mr Lofting that afternoon and looked forward to receiving his edits first thing on Friday. Satisfied that she would meet her deadlines, Joan imposed on Mr Lofting’s kindness to beg for an early mark that day and an hour or two on Friday, explaining that she needed to find new accommodation urgently. To her relief, he assented.
Just before lunch, she slipped out of the office and hurried over to Mockbell’s coffee palace in Angel Place. Hugh was sitting over a fourpenny tin jug of coffee at one of the marble-topped tables towards the back. Ignoring the stares of the male coffee-drinkers around her, she slid in beside Hugh on the leather-upholstered seat against the wall. Out of the smoky gloom, in which little fireflies of electric light glimmered through mock-Moorish copper filigree screens, a waiter wearing a fez appeared to take Joan’s order and then left them alone.
They kissed and Joan stroked Hugh’s face, so pale and handsome today. How she missed the physical loveliness of him! He had suffered another night of broken sleep with nightmares and a terrible bout of panicked choking which left him looking as gaunt and ethereal as a saint. She felt such tenderness for his vulnerability but at the same time such trust in the strength of his moral conviction and his air of confidence in how things should be done. Joan had decided to say nothing about Bernice and Mavis and her upcoming visit to Ellie’s mother. There seemed no point in distracting Hugh from their plans and as yet she had found no hard evidence. Best stick to the business at hand.
‘He’s taken the bait, Joanie,’ Hugh told her. ‘We’re on for tomorrow. You all set?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Joan could hardly believe that they were actually going to attempt this elaborately stage-managed deception. No matter how convincingly Hugh framed it as an act of justice that would, in a small way, right the wrongs of capitalism, there was no shaking off the fact that blackmail was a crime. If Joan and Hugh were caught, they could face a prison sentence. Natural justice had nothing to do with it. She thought of Arturo and Vincent, victims of a law that sanctioned a hateful prejudice. She thought of Eleanor and Jess, bullied by pimps and police alike. In an unfair world, there was no appealing to a higher court.
‘You okay?’ asked Hugh. ‘It’ll be easier than taking candy from a baby, I promise.’
Joan nodded and kissed him again even more fervently, hidden from public view in the shadowy depths of the cafe. Her desires had been reawoken by her encounter at the Big House and she craved Hugh’s touch, the musk of his sweat, the thrill of his flesh and muscle. Hugh seemed to be aroused as well, perhaps by the adrenaline rush of the dangerous game they were about to play.
‘I love you,’ Joan said breathlessly, but what she meant was: ‘I want you.’
And Hugh, with what sounded like a sob torn from his chest, replied, ‘I love you too.’
Joan finished work at a quarter past three and hurried to the tram depot on Broadway. She had bought some groceries at the Cross before she left for work that morning and had her hands full as she boarded the tram for her appointment with Ruby Dawson in Tempe.
Joan quite enjoyed the tram ride through Newtown and then down the Princes Highway to the Tempe tram depot. There were not too many people travelling at that hour, and the musical hum and rattle of the carriage and pleasant distraction of the passing scenery soothed Joan’s nerves, which jangled excitedly from the prospect of her fieldwork as a private detective.
Thankfully, the late afternoon was cool and it was only a short walk from the tram depot to Mrs Dawson’s cottage on Nicholson Street, within strolling distance of the Cooks River. The humble house looked like so many of the cheap, Federation-style fibro cottages that had sprouted in the new suburbs of Sydney after the war, with their bullnose iron verandas, liver-brick balustrades and shingle roofs with decorative ridge cappings and finials, all sitting behind a white timber picket fence and a garden overgrown with hydrangeas and philodendrons. Joan noticed the house was in dire need of a lick of fresh paint, and the front lawn could do with weeding and mowing. She mounted the front steps and tapped on the flyscreen door.
‘Hello, Mrs Dawson? It’s Joan Linderman. I hope I’m not too early.’
Joan heard a little girl’s voice calling from inside, ‘There’s someone at the door, Grandma!’
The girl—who must be six-year-old Greta—appeared behind the wire-mesh screen. She had a crude bowl haircut that made her ears stick out and her face, angelically pretty like her mother’s, had a dusting of freckles. Joan took in that the girl’s checked dress was patched in a few places and her bare feet had not seen a bath in a day or two.
‘Hello, my name is Joan. Is your grandma in?’
A woman appeared out of the shadows and placed her hands protectively on the child’s shoulders. ‘Please come in. Greta, what do we say?’
‘Hello, miss. And welcome.’
As Joan stepped inside, the little girl bobbed a quick curtsy.
‘Now,’ said her grandmother, ‘go outside and play until I call you, there’s a good girl.’
‘Okay, Grandma. Nice to meet you,’ piped Greta, and she skipped down the front stairs and off into the unkempt garden. ‘You can hang your overcoat here, if you like,’ said Mrs Dawson, pointing to a coat stand in the hall. ‘We can talk in the kitchen.’
They passed through the front parlour, furnished with a brocaded-silk three-piece suite and a small octagonal side table. A framed reproduction of Constable’s The Hay Wain took pride of place over the mantelpiece. The decor was unmistakeably middle class but everything had seen better days, including the drapes and wallpaper. Indentations in the carpet suggested that some items of furniture—a display cabinet, perhaps, and another side table—had been removed, possibly to be sold. The musty room looked as if it had not been used in some time.
In the kitchen, Joan handed Mrs Dawson the bag of groceries she had purchased before leaving the Cross. ‘I brought a few things I thought you might find useful. I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t want to turn up empty-handed.’
Mrs Dawson’s face clouded. She was a thin, bony woman, probably in her late fifties, but decidedly aged by the hardships of the last few years. Up to this point, she had avoided making eye contact and her voice had been little more than a low murmur. But now she looked Joan straight in the face and spoke firmly. ‘We are not in need of anyone’s charity, thank you!’
It was obvious Joan’s gift had hurt Mrs Dawson’s pride. ‘I … I’m terribly sorry,’ said Joan, flustered. ‘I promise you, it was not intended that way. I was just trying to be a good guest, Mrs Dawson.’
This apology seemed to mollify the older woman, who pulled a cake of soap, a bag of apples and a jar of strawberry jam out of the grocery bag. ‘Well, that was very thoughtful of you. Please, call me Ruby.’ Mrs Dawson proceeded to make a pot of tea and put out what looked to Joan like her best set of cups and saucers. ‘So, how did you know my Eleanor?’
Joan explained that she was Bernice Becker’s flatmate and Eleanor’s neighbour. ‘We were not close friends, but I did
have supper with her a few times. I liked her very much.’
Ruby took a seat opposite Joan at the drop-side kitchen table and poured two cups of tea. ‘Your friend Bernice is a very fine woman. She came here with Ellie a couple of times. Made a big hit with Greta. It was good of her to tell me the news in person last Sunday, before the police came.’
‘When did they come?’
‘That afternoon. A police lady. Asked some questions and had a look around the house.’
‘Well, I’m not a policewoman, Ruby. But I am still determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Eleanor.’ Joan sipped her tea. ‘How is Greta taking the news?’
Ruby shook her head. ‘I haven’t told her the truth yet. She thinks Mummy is in hospital from an accident. Which explains why the police came and why … why I am so upset.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Joan could not imagine how one might explain to a six-year-old that her mother had been murdered. She guessed that poor Ruby was clearing the path to eventually telling little Greta that her mother had passed away from an illness. ‘And where is Greta’s father? Does he know what’s happened?’
Joan knew the bare bones of the story of Ellie’s marriage to Private Robbie Fletcher. Only six months after his return from France, Robbie had found a position as a clerk in a shoe-manufacturing firm in Sydney. He and Ellie had met and tied the knot four years later and, with the promise of a bright future, purchased the cottage in Nicholson Street, Tempe and furnished it on credit. Ellie lost her first baby in childbirth and was, of course, overjoyed when Greta was born six years ago. All looked like plain sailing for the happy couple until the Great Crash of 1929. Within weeks, the shoe firm was forced to let Robbie go. Still unemployed two months later, he got some susso relief work digging ditches for Tempe Council. But the work was so severely rationed, Robbie did not earn anywhere near the basic wage. Terrified of having their house repossessed by the bank, they moved Ellie’s widowed mother in to take care of Greta while Ellie took up a part-time job as a factory hand in Ashfield.
Three years ago, threatened with having his susso cancelled, Robbie was forced to join a relief worker’s camp out west. In the meantime, Ellie lost her job at the factory and, desperate to keep up the mortgage payments, was lured into prostitution. She moved in with Jess to take on more shifts. Ruby knew what was going on but Ellie had sworn her to secrecy: Robbie must never know. She even used her maiden name, Dawson, for fear he might find out. ‘I had to do whatever it took to keep the house,’ Ellie had explained to Bernice and Joan. ‘Once we lost that, we would be homeless. End up in Happy Valley or one of the other shanty towns with nothing to our name. If we kept the house, we could hopefully start again when the whole nightmare was over.’ Ellie’s income did save the house from repossession and for a while it looked as if, in the not too distant future, their family might be reunited under one roof.
But then, Ellie told them, Robbie had stopped writing. His last few letters were so bitter and disillusioned, Ellie was convinced the marriage was over. Forget about me, I am not the man you married. There is no future for us. The last Ruby and Ellie had heard of Robbie, he was on the track, moving from town to town with other swagmen. They had not received any correspondence or money from him for at least the last twelve months.
Ruby shrugged in resignation. ‘I’ve sent a telegram addressed to him at the relief workers camp. And I’ve asked for a message to be passed on to the country police stations next time he drops in with his food coupons. But so far I’ve heard nothing.’
Joan was stunned to think that Robbie might still not know his wife was dead. Maybe he no longer cared about his family, so consumed was he with shame and despair; it was not an uncommon story. What would happen to Ruby and Greta now? Joan did not have the heart to ask the question which hung in the air between them.
Ruby broke the silence. ‘You said you might know something about Ellie’s death?’
‘Well, possibly. Did Ellie ever mention a man she was involved with? Not a client. Nothing to do with her—you know—work.’
Ruby sighed deeply and wiped her face with her hands. ‘She didn’t say much. She knew how upset I was about poor Robbie and the marriage. A little girl needs her father. But, yes, she did mention a special man. “Not like the others,” she said.’
‘Did you ever meet this man?’
‘No.’
‘Did she ever tell you his name?’
‘Yes, I’m sure she did. But only once or twice. I can’t remember it.’
Joan almost groaned out loud. To think that Ruby had actually heard the name but had now forgotten it.
As if sensing Joan’s frustration, Ruby, in a slightly defensive tone, offered more. ‘She said he’d served in the war. An officer, I think. Said he was good-looking. And generous with money. She often came with ten, twenty pounds in her purse to help with the mortgage. Or an expensive gift that I could sell at the flea market or hock at the pawnbrokers.’
‘Old or young?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘How long was she involved with this man?’
Ruby shrugged. ‘From about last November, perhaps? I’m not too sure.’
‘Did she say how they met?’
Another shrug. ‘Maybe at her work? I don’t really know.’
‘Did you mention this man to the policewoman who came on Sunday?’
‘No. She asked me if there was anyone I could think of who would want to do Ellie harm, but I couldn’t think of a soul—apart from that gangster Frankie Goldman.’
‘So the policewoman didn’t ask if she was involved with anyone?’
‘I know this will sound strange,’ said Ruby, ‘but the way Ellie talked about this man, it was as if he was a close friend, someone who wanted to help her, not a lover.’
Joan was taken aback. This did not sound like the typical sugar daddy who expected sexual favours for his largesse. A friend who wanted to help her? Really? A knight in shining armour indeed!
‘Did she ever mention them arguing?’
Ruby gave Joan a look of alarm. ‘Are you suggesting this man killed Ellie? I thought it was that brute Frankie. Isn’t that what the police think?’
‘The police are following a few leads.’
‘So what makes you think it could have been this man who killed her?’
Joan sighed. ‘I don’t know if this man killed her or not, Ruby. But from what I’ve been told, someone hit Ellie and bruised her left eye, possibly on the night she died. It could have been a lovers’ tiff.’ Joan hated that expression, which was little more than a euphemistic shorthand for bashing women, but it was the first phrase to pop into her head.
Ruby looked shaken and confused. ‘I … I don’t know. I …’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Dawson … Ruby. I didn’t come here to upset you. I just thought you might know something more about this gentleman. Ellie told her friend Jessie that he was her knight in shining armour.’
At the mention of Jessie, Ruby became agitated. ‘That Jessie was no friend to my daughter, believe me. She stole money from Ellie and resented her for being Frankie’s favourite, for getting the best clients and the biggest tips. And she told lies about her.’
This was unexpected. Joan had never seen any tension between the two women.
‘What kind of lies?’ Joan probed.
Ruby blushed, appeared reluctant to speak. Finally she whispered, ‘She said that Ellie preferred being with women.’
Joan coughed to cover her own awkwardness. ‘Sexually?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yes.’ Ruby could not disguise the shock and anger on her face.
‘How did you hear about this?’ Joan asked, thinking that Jessie was not so much a liar as indiscreet. Assuming that she had told Joan the truth at the party last Sunday, that was.
‘Ellie complained to me. Said that Jessie had been spreading lies about her.’
Joan checked her watch. There were so many more questions she would like to ask Ruby, but she would have t
o leave soon to catch the tram back into town.
‘When was the last time you saw Ellie?’
‘The weekend before she died. She seemed happy, if that’s what you want to know. She was proud to be able to keep a roof over our heads. And she seemed hopeful about the future. “Don’t you worry, Mum, it’s all going to work out,” she told me.’
Ruby’s face became overcast with grief; she struggled to hold back a sob. ‘She was so proud. She handed over thirty pounds that day! Said it was another payment for this job she’d done for some crazy rich lady.’
Joan’s ears pricked up at that. Another payment? She knew Olympia had paid Ellie for her services to the Ladies’ Goddess Club, but another payment? This seemed to suggest that Ellie had been paid an extra instalment—but for what? Blackmail?
A thin girlish wailing unfurled like a ribbon in the yard outside and grew louder as Greta came hurrying up the front steps. ‘Grandma, Grandma, I bunged up my knee!’
‘I should go,’ said Joan. ‘Thank you so much for your time. And for answering all my questions. If you think of anything, please don’t hesitate to write to me. Or ring.’ Joan handed over her work phone number. ‘I promise I will do everything I can to find out the truth.’
Greta came rushing into the kitchen, trailing tears, her mouth a wide O of indignant woe. ‘Look, Grandma!’ She had indeed scraped her knee. To think that such a small hurt could cause this child so much misery when tidings of inconceivable and endless sorrow awaited her just offstage. The pity of it clutched at Joan’s heart.
‘I’ll put some Dettol and a band-aid on it in a jiffy, darling,’ Ruby told her. ‘But first I have to say goodbye to this lady, okay?’
Greta sniffled but nodded bravely and gave another little curtsy. ‘Bye-bye, miss.’
In the hall, Ruby handed Joan her coat. ‘Thank you for the groceries. That was very thoughtful. It must have been such a bother carrying them here on the tram.’ As if the proverbial penny had just dropped with a thundering clunk, Ruby looked up at Joan in wide-eyed wonder. ‘I just remembered something! The man, he brought Ellie here in a car once. He didn’t come in. Just dropped her off. She had a whole lot of shopping bags. Too many for the tram.’
Death in the Ladies' Goddess Club Page 12