The Gilded Madonna

by Garrick Jones

  “No need, Clyde,” Tom said. “Already did that. My first job before I joined the police force was as a copy room hack in the Toukley Tatler, our local rag.”

  I didn’t hesitate, my hand shot out as quickly as a furball from Baxter’s mouth. “Six quid a week, a desk of your own, flexible hours … what do you say, Tom?” He hesitated, biting his lip. “And I’ll call your mother and tell her I’ve selected you to be my personal assistant out of hundreds of qualified men.”

  Tom rolled his eyes, but smiled and shook mine and Harry’s hands in turn.

  “When do I start?”

  “How about right now?”

  I looked at Harry, who chuckled and then agreed.

  “Any priorities for you, Harry?” I asked.

  “Not until I get the ball rolling myself. I’ll have to get a bit of groundwork sorted before Tom and I can start to talk about my end of the business, so no, Clyde, you go ahead if you’ve got ideas.”

  “I suppose what we need to sort out is how to manage phone calls if they’re to be routed through to the desk in Mr. Kovacs’ old office.”

  “The easiest way is for me to apply to have his old telephone line switched into my name,” Harry said. “It doesn’t matter what the number is for the time being. It would make sense if you and I used the same answering service, so once I’ve registered the number to my business, I’ll speak with the service you use, Clyde—Brenda Brighteyes is always very professional when I leave messages with her for you.”

  “Here’s an idea,” Tom said. “We used to have this system at the newspaper, because the boss ran a costume hire business as well—”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind, Clyde, it’s beside the point. But, I think if you both have registered business names, you can get a small console for the desk in the reception area—it’s a bit like a miniature switchboard—so I’ll be able to tell which of you incoming calls are for.”

  “Leave that to me,” Harry said. “We’ve still got to the end of February before the investigation winds up. I’ll call into P.M.G. sales office in Bondi Junction later on today and have a look at what’s available. If they say it’s going to take forever to transfer Mr. Kovacs’ old number and get a desktop switchboard installed, I can always flash my Army Intelligence identification card and say it’s a matter of urgency, but I’m not at liberty to explain why.”

  “My mother would call that queue jumping, Mr. Jones,” Tom said, but with a cheeky grin.

  “Well, Tom, we could always be generous with the truth and say that if anyone is looking for either Clyde or me for anything to do with the investigation board, that our joint personal assistant could be the first port of call …”

  Harry was a far better businessman than I was, and, before long, I found myself sitting back and agreeing to everything he suggested. He and Tom had connected quickly, their minds seemed to work in the same way, and they’d figured out a progression of what needed to be done in a far more logical and time-saving way than I could ever have done. While I listened, nodding occasionally and replying to questions aimed at me, I flicked through the mail. I also made occasional notes on their whys, whens, and wherefores, while I tried to sort out, from return addresses, which were bills, work offers, or fan mail.

  “Clyde?”

  “Yes, Harry? Sorry?”

  “Tom and I are going up to the used furniture shop at Peter’s Corner. We’ll have a look for some office furniture. I won’t need much in here: a few filing cabinets, a large work table, and perhaps a desk and half-a-dozen chairs for talks to prospective clients to prepare them for a weekend in the bush.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I mumbled.

  “Are you coming?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll just pop Baxter in his basket and leave him downstairs with Miss Evans in the employment agency while we’re away.”

  “What were you looking at?” he asked as I closed the office door behind me.

  “What are you talking about, Harry?”

  “You were a million miles away staring at that one envelope for ages. What was in it?”

  “Nothing, Harry. Nothing at all.”

  Nothing had been in it, and that was the problem. An empty envelope with a stamp on it, pushed through the letter slot at the bottom of my office door. No postmark, no address, just my name on the front written in green ink, in elongated capital letters.

  “Nothing” was all comparative in my world.

  *****

  I had to hand it to Tom, he had a powerhouse of a work ethic. I’d remembered Sam had told me Tom liked to put his head down and get stuck into it. I’d been impressed with his attitude on the only case I’d worked on with him, but hadn’t had time to get to know him because he’d been donged on the noggin and hospitalised not long after we’d been introduced.

  By the end of the day, he’d sorted through my mail and had used Mr. Kovacs’ still-connected telephone to retrieve my messages from Brenda Brighteyes. It had made me smile and feel good when I’d heard him introduce himself to her over the telephone as my new personal assistant. He had a great telephone manner; I tended to grunt down the phone.

  “There are three piles, Clyde,” he explained. “This one is fan mail and letters in reply to your newspaper reviews. The middle pile is requests for information about ongoing investigations—as you can see it’s the smallest—and this last one is mostly advertising and inappro­priate correspondence.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Lonely women and crackpots I suppose?”

  He nodded. “Mostly, but there’s this one here, I didn’t know what to do with.”

  I checked the envelope first, turning it over to read the return address. It was a G.P.O. post office box number.

  “Before you ask, no such post box exists, Clyde. There are none that start with a nought.”

  I have to admit I was more than a little impressed he knew that, but the feeling soon changed to shock as soon as I opened the envelope and found what was inside.

  “No letter?” I asked. “Nothing else? Just this?”

  “Just the photograph,” he said. “Nothing else … Clyde? Are you all right?”

  “I just need to sit for a moment, sorry, Tom. You can close up and go home if you like.”

  “Vince will be here in half an hour. Have you forgotten?”

  I shook my head, although that wasn’t the truth. I had totally forgotten I’d told him to pop in after work to get me up to speed on the Bishop case, and to see how I could help him.

  “I didn’t want this to be part of your job, Tom, but would you mind popping down to the milk bar across the road and grabbing us something to keep us going until it’s time for dinner?”

  “I don’t mind at all, Clyde. What would you like?”

  “Hamburger, egg, and bacon, no beetroot. Share a small portion of chips?”

  “You betcha,” he said and then refused the brown ten-shilling note I took from my wallet.

  I’d wanted Tom out of the road for fifteen minutes while I got my head around what was in the envelope. It was, as he said, a photograph. A photograph taken in 1941 in North Africa only a few months before I’d been taken prisoner in Italy where I’d spent three years in a P.O.W. camp near Macerata. Four smiling boys in khaki shorts, sitting on a captured German motorbike, all giving cheeky grins to the camera. My pal Johnny Edgar up the front, me close up behind him with my arms around his waist, and then Billy Tancred behind him. Finally, pretending to hold up the motorbike at the back, was Sonny Mullins.

  “No holes barred”, we’d called our group, due to our shared nocturnal, and sometimes diurnal, activities. Only Billy and I had survived the war.

  I stared at the photo, my eyes misted with tears and a lump in my throat. I couldn’t help myself, I stroked each of my friend’s faces with a finger until I could bear it no longer. I crossed my arms on my desk and lowered my head into the crook of one elbow and ground my teeth, fighting back tears.

  Billy would never send m
e anything like this. Sonny’s father had died in Changi and his mother now lived in Perth. Johnny was an orphan. I’d never seen a copy of this particular photo—there were others, and I had one or two myself, despite wartime prohibition of taking personal photos in an area of engagement. My hand hesitated over the telephone. Billy would be home from work by now, and I didn’t want to call in case Sam answered. I still couldn’t bring myself to speak to him about anything other than work-related stuff.

  I slipped the photo into my jacket pocket and had just rinsed my face in the men’s lavatory room when I heard Tom’s “cooee”. I decided I’d think about it later tonight when I got home.

  We sat on the floor of the empty office, our backs against the reception desk, while we tucked into what for most normal people might have been considered a meal. However, my metabolism still worked as though I was Tom’s age; I could eat for Australia in an Olympic competition and still not put on any weight. I’d have dinner at whatever time I got home. I’d imagined in advance my evening meeting with Vince would take a few hours, at least.

  Before leaving this morning, I’d phoned Trixie my … I didn’t know what to call her … cleaner, housekeeper, cat minder, cook … and had asked her to pick up ingredients for a shepherd’s pie on her way to my house. She’d offered to cook it for me, and I’d readily accepted. I kept a jar at the back of the pantry with about ten quid in notes and coins for emergencies. I’d told her to help herself if she was ever stuck, but she never had. She was far too proud to ask for help. I’d never once noticed in ten months she’d been “doing” for me that there wasn’t a penny less than what she’d used to buy cleaning products and food, and she had always left a receipt in the jar for what she’d spent.

  “This is the list of telephone messages from Brenda Brighteyes, Clyde,” Tom said, licking his fingers clean and then retrieving his notebook from the breast pocket of his shirt. “I’ve used coloured pencils to mark those that belong together. I’ve grouped them slightly differently than your mail. A red line under the name of the person calling means it’s about investigative work. Orange pencil lines are messages from the newspapers or people who should be calling the police, not you, and the green lines are personal messages.”

  I leafed through the twenty or so messages, only two were green. One was from a person who asked me if I was related to the Smiths of Annandale—the answer was no—and the other was from my mate, Craig Whitcombe, who I’d known since I was a kid, and who owned the men’s sea baths at the other end of the beach.

  “I’ll sort these out in the morning, Tom.”

  “You see the blue star on the right of the messages, Clyde? Well they’re the ones I can take care of. Unless you want to check them out first and then …?”

  “Nah, she’s apples, Tom,” I replied. “You’ve got the hang of being a P.A. without me even knowing what you should be doing.”

  “Well, I was running around like a chook with its head cut off for Dioli after he arrived, and before him I did a lot of dog’s body work for D.S. Telford, so …”

  “Sam didn’t treat you badly?”

  “No, of course not, Clyde. He was terrific actually, even brought in morning tea once or twice.”

  I didn’t know how to react to that. Maybe Sam had turned a corner? We barely spoke these days except when we had to. I couldn’t forgive him for cheating on me behind my back and lying to me about it. I wasn’t proud of the way I’d arrived at his flat and had spat in his face, punched Billy in the jaw, and had lost my temper when I’d found out they’d been carrying on for months in secret while Sam and I were supposed to be, I don’t know what … a couple? Too strong a word for what we’d had.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “You’re right, Tom. No harm done.” I opened my wallet and handed him two red twenty-pound notes. “I went to the bank this afternoon. This is a month’s advance on your wages, and sixteen quid on top to use as a deposit for a flat of your own—you’ll need money to get the gas, electricity, and telephone put on. What’s left out of it, buy something nice for yourself. Maybe one of those portable radiograms, something for yourself as a housewarming present.”

  “Clyde—”

  “You can’t camp out on Vince’s front veranda forever, Tom. Just pop in to see Mr. Llewellyn at Lowry’s and tell him you’re working for me. He’ll show you around the flats in the area, unless you want to move closer to town?”

  “No, I love the beach. I hated the police single men’s quarters so much I can’t tell you. I wasn’t unhappy about being told to pack my things when I handed in my resignation.”

  “I don’t know how anyone could live there, if it’s anything like what it was when I first got a posting here and while I was still doing basic training for the police force. I remember that rabbit warren, all tiny rooms, dirty, smelly communal bathrooms and food not fit for a dog. Anyway, Tom, find somewhere nice, big open rooms with windows that will let the night air in. Living in your own digs for the first time in your life is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life, mate.”

  “Well, I’m not sure my mother would allow me to accept this, Clyde …”

  “Who’s working for me, you or your mother, Tom? Leave it to me to sort out your mum. I’ve already told you I’d phone her. If it’s going to keep you awake at night, you can pay me back at five bob a week. Or, if we start getting a lot of investigative work, we can talk about a commission for you on top of your wages and then you can pay me back in dribs and drabs.”

  “Gosh, Clyde, I don’t know what to say—”

  “Hello, anyone there?”

  Vince had arrived and was standing in the doorway of my office. From where I was sitting on the floor of Mr. Kovacs’ former premises I could see the back of his head.

  “In here,” I said.

  “Well, what on earth?”

  “Pull up a seat, Vince,” I said, patting the floor next to me. “There’s a lot to tell you.”

  *****

  “And you said Dioli just scrapped Sam’s plan?”

  We’d gone to my flat to discuss Vince’s case. Baxter was hungry and tired of not being in his own space—he loved the chair in my study more than any spot in his other temporary homes. He didn’t mind the office, but he’d been back and forth to Harry’s house so often he’d started to grumble. Besides, he was a bossy cat. He liked his poached chicken breast right on the dot of seven in the evening.

  Fortunately, Trixie had made enough shepherd’s pie for the three of us. We’d prepared vegetables while we were discussing the case.

  “He always made some off-hand remark about ‘new policing’ whatever that might be,” Tom said.

  “His new policing seems to be licking the new chief super­intendent’s arse, if you ask me,” Vince added.

  I’d been making notes while we ate. The shepherd’s pie was an Italian version of the traditional Aussie regular, Monday night dish that thousands of families made, to use up the leftovers from the Sunday roast. My recipe included minced onion and garlic, tomato paste and fresh basil, with some parmesan grated through the mashed potato. I’d had to stop Tom throwing the pea shells in the garbage—I’d make a nice thick potato soup with those, which was delicious cold with a little cream stirred through it.

  “If I’ve got this right, Mrs. Bishop sent the kids to the shop in Coogee Bay Road to buy a threepenny bag of broken biscuits, is that right?” I said.

  “Yes, Clyde. She stood at the gate of their cottage in Byron Street and watched them walk down the street hand in hand until they got to the corner, then she went inside.”

  “How long did she wait before she went looking?”

  “Oh, about twenty minutes. She thought they might have run into her sister, who lives in Carrington Road and might have popped into the shop and had been talking to them. But as the minutes ticked past, she started to get anxious and went down to ask the shopkeeper. He said they’d never arrived.”

  “That’s a busy street dur
ing the day. Half past three in the afternoon and no one noticed anything?”

  “There was a man in the phone box at the top of Powell Lane where the stairs go down from Coogee Bay Road. He said he saw the kids standing outside the shop patting a dog and then his call answered and he turned his back.”

  “You have this man’s name?”

  “Yes, I interviewed him,” Tom said. “It was as he said. He rents a room in Medina Court, that block of flats on the other side of the road, and was speaking to his lady friend. And yes, I checked with her too.”

  “But why did he notice the kids?”

  “It wasn’t so much the kids, but the dog.”

  “And?”

  “He said he was amused. The dog was as big as the little boy and was licking his face. The man remembered smiling at how pleasant the scene was.”

  “The dog owner?”

  “No, Clyde. No one else even noticed the dog or its owner.”

  “Did you check the butcher shop next door to the grocer’s?”

  “Yes, he was busy with customers and didn’t see a thing.”

  It was puzzling Mrs. Bishop didn’t immediately ring the police, but went home to fetch her hat and purse and then caught a tram to the Randwick depot, where her husband worked as a fitter and turner. It was he who’d called it in.

  “What time was that?”

  “Close to half past four.”

  “An hour?”

  “She only had enough money in her purse to get to Peter’s Corner, Clyde. She had to wait ages for a tram, bought a threepenny ticket, and then had to walk a mile down the tram cutting to get to her husband’s workplace.”

  I shook my head. Even in 1956 people were still doing it tough. What was a tram ticket from Coogee to Randwick Racecourse, the closest stop to the tram depot? Fourpence? Sixpence?

  By nine o’clock, Tom had started to stifle yawns. I’d made pages and pages of notes, so I told Vince to take Tom home. I suggested we’d all catch up on Saturday and make a day of it when Vince had the day free. He, Tom, Harry, and I could perhaps spend the morning at the beach, have lunch in the pub, and then watch the cricket in the oval opposite my flat in the afternoon. Perhaps we could all cook dinner together? It was something I’d learned in Italy, immediately after the war. Preparing food together in a group tended to loosen people up; it gave them something to do with their hands, think about the finished product, and to throw ideas around while engaged in a relaxed, comfortable activity.