Mavis Levack, PI

by Marele Day

  She almost had him convinced. Full of bravado she walked towards the door. ‘I’m off then. Bye-bye,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ bellowed Mr Levack. ‘No wife of mine is going to a club like that by herself.’

  ‘How many wives do you have, Eddy?’

  ‘Enough of your cheek, Mavis, you’re not going to that club by yourself and that’s that!’ Mrs Levack glared at her husband. ‘I’m going with you,’ he announced grandly.

  This was a twist to the plot. ‘But, Eddy . . .’

  ‘No buts about it, I’m going with you.’

  ‘But you haven’t got the appropriate clothes,’ she said, dismayed.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Mavis Levack, don’t you worry about that.’

  He heaved himself up out of the chair and went into the bedroom. Mrs Levack saw him pull down his old army duffle bag from on top of the wardrobe, then he pushed the door to. She’d always wondered what he kept in that bag, not that it was any of her business. She had tried to look in it once but the knots were too tight. And she’d almost fallen off the chair, bringing the duffle bag down with her.

  ‘Mavis.’ Eddy had opened the door a fraction and was poking something out. ‘Is this your hairspray?’

  ‘What do you think it is, a Molotov cocktail? Yes, dear,’ she said. What was he going to do with it? He hardly had any hair to spray.

  Ten minutes later, Mrs Levack knew exactly what he had done with it. He’d hairsprayed a wig! A wig that made him look like Lana Turner—well, actually he was a long way from looking like Lana Turner, but that was the first thing Mrs Levack thought of. As for the rest of him, there were more feathers than you could poke a stick at. He looked like a chook that had been in a fight, except that chooks didn’t usually wear silver lamé skirts with the zipper undone to accommodate their fat bellies.

  The person at the door reminded them that this was a gay bar but Mr and Mrs Levack had no trouble getting in. Mrs Levack twirled the little black umbrella, said she was Frankie’s mother and she’d been here a thousand times. ‘And your girlfriend?’ enquired the doorperson, looking at Eddy. ‘She’s my husband,’ replied Mrs Levack.

  Once inside it was a different kettle of fish. You couldn’t see that much, not only because it was dark but also because there was this flashing light that made the whole thing look like the television when it goes on the blink. But in the glimpses that you caught it was very risqué indeed. Mr and Mrs Levack didn’t look a bit out of place, except that they were about forty years older than everybody else.

  Eddy went to get drinks. There was nowhere to sit down, the bar stools were occupied and there weren’t any tables and chairs like at the bowling club. Mrs Levack hoped her feet weren’t going to start playing up. She wished she’d brought the Homypeds, but that would have meant a plastic bag as well as the handbag. She was hoping someone might recognise the handbag and she didn’t want anything detracting from it. Also, she’d rather taken a liking to it. Such a big roomy bag, even with the gun in it.

  Eddy came back with a Campari and soda in one hand, and a can of Fosters in the other. ‘Gawd, the price of drinks nowadays. How can they afford to get drunk?’

  ‘They’re on drugs,’ said Mrs Levack in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Where’s the Reschs?’

  ‘Sorry, Mavis, the bloke didn’t even know what I was talkin’ about when I asked for Reschs. You don’t mind the Fosters, do you?’

  ‘That’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Take the top off for me, will you, Eddy?’

  Eddy obliged. They stood around sipping their drinks and trying to tap their feet to the house music. ‘Well,’ said Eddy after a while, ‘what do we do now?’

  Mrs Levack wasn’t sure what they should do now. She was hoping someone might say something to her and she was looking for Orson Welles. She felt sure he had something to do with all this, he looked just the type. ‘Suppose we should mingle. I’ll go and make myself more visible and you . . .’ She looked him up and down. ‘You shouldn’t have too much trouble.’

  Mrs Levack moved about in the crowd. Mostly young men with moustaches like New Zealand cricketers, some young women and some in between. Occasionally she spotted an older chap. If anyone looked at her, and lots of them did, she smiled back. ‘Enjoying yourself, Gran?’ said a man with a moustache. ‘After some rough trade?’ said another. ‘Love the outfit. Do you think your mother would make me one, too?’

  Mrs Levack said yes to everything, even though she suspected they were talking in code. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of Eddy through the crowd. He was at the bar talking to a grey-haired gentleman wearing a polo neck skivvy. The grey-haired gentleman was wearing lots of rings and was smoking through a cigarette holder. Despite the wig, feathers and lamé skirt, Eddy was leaning on the bar in a very masculine stance. They were talking as if they were old mates.

  No-one seemed to be commenting on her handbag so she started to make her way back towards Eddy. It looked like the gentleman was pointing something out to Eddy. Just before Mrs Levack got to the bar the gentleman headed off in the direction he’d been pointing. Mrs Levack watched him disappear through a door in the back wall. You couldn’t tell it was a door at all, it looked the same as the wall. In her mind’s eye Mrs Levack marked the spot with an X.

  ‘Mavis, there you are,’ he said, sipping his second Campari. This one had the Big Boys umbrella on the edge of the glass. The gentleman must have bought it for him, thought Mrs Levack. Eddy wouldn’t be drinking with such gay abandon if he was paying for it himself. ‘You’ll never guess what, I’m standing here minding me own business when who taps me on the shoulder but Bobby Watergate.’

  ‘Very interesting, Eddy.’ She had no idea who Bobby Watergate was but guessed it must have been the grey-haired gentleman.

  ‘We were in the army together, he was one of the boys. You wouldn’t remember him, but you would remember Frank Carmody. Remember Frank?’

  Mrs Levack had never met Frank Carmody but she’d heard all about him. In the early days it had been Frank this and Frank that. Bit of a lad, Frank was, if she could believe all Eddy’s stories. Getting up to all sorts of shenanigans.

  ‘And guess what, Mavis?’ said Eddy slapping his thigh through the lamé skirt. ‘Frankie runs this place!’

  Mrs Levack hadn’t seen her husband so excited since the wet T-shirt competition at the Bondi Diggers. Frankie. Well that set the jelly, didn’t it?

  Then Mrs Levack noticed that Eddy was twirling something between his fingers. It was a silver rose.

  To say that Mrs Levack had a flashback would be putting too fine a point on it. It was hardly a flash. More like a grope through a long dark tunnel. To another silver rose.

  The one lying beside the corpse at the Opera House.

  ‘What’s that, dear?’ she said, with no hint of emotion in her voice.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘What you’ve got in your hand.’

  ‘Oh that. Bobby gave it to me. It’s like membership of a club. The Rosebud Club. If you’re a member, you get to take part in club activities, you know, like at bowls.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at it, shall we?’ It didn’t sound like Mavis’s voice at all. It sounded like a doctor.

  ‘You wouldn’t like it, Mavis, just us boys hanging around chewing the fat.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I would like it but that’s hardly the point. I have a mystery to solve. I’m dressed like one of the boys here so I could slip in unnoticed.’

  ‘But, Mavis,’ protested Eddy, ‘it’s exclusive. Most of the blokes here don’t even know about it.’ Mavis had her lips pursed and Eddy knew what that meant. Wild horses wouldn’t budge her. ‘Look, tell you what, I go in there first, have a word to Frankie and get them to let you in.’

  Mrs Levack thought about it for a minute. ‘All right.’ Mr Levack looked relieved. He started to walk away. Mrs Levack felt strong and confident, the sort of feeling that comes from having a gun in your handbag. ‘Not so fas
t, Eddy, I’m coming with you.’

  It seemed to Mrs Levack that she had spent hours outside that door in the wall. She’d seen the door open a fraction, heard Eddy say ‘Rosebud’, then watched him disappear.

  She squinted at her watch in the dull light. Only ten minutes had passed but it seemed long enough for Eddy to have chatted to the boys and gotten her an introduction.

  She tapped on the door the way Eddy had. After another eternity it opened a fraction. ‘Rosebud,’ she said, but the door didn’t open any further. In fact it started to close. Mrs Levack rammed the handbag in the door so it couldn’t close completely.

  ‘I am Eddy Levack’s wife and if you don’t let me in I am going to start screaming.’ Mrs Levack pushed her way into the inner sanctum.

  Despite her excellent eyesight, she couldn’t believe what she saw.

  Eddy was hanging from a noose. Standing underneath him was a man. She couldn’t see his face because a hangman’s hood was covering it, but she recognised the shape. It was Orson Welles. He had a whip in his hand. He was torturing Eddy!

  Without giving it a second thought, Mrs Levack whipped the gun out of the handbag and aimed it at her husband’s tormentor. Eddy started making gurgling noises and waving his hands. ‘Hang on, Eddy, I’m coming!’

  ‘Drop it, c’mon, drop it,’ she said to the man with the whip.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’ve made a mistake—’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Levack, ‘you’ve made a mistake. First that one at the Opera House and now my husband. You won’t get away with it, you know.’

  ‘Look, it’s not what you think.’ He took a step towards her. Mrs Levack closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  In that instant she found out that the gun was loaded. So did Frank Carmody.

  When Mrs Levack opened her eyes she saw his body lying on the floor. When she looked up she saw Eddy grunting and gesticulating wildly. He wanted to say something and he wanted to say it badly.

  She dragged a chair over, took off the shoes that were by now killing her, and climbed up on it. A knife, thought Mrs Levack frantically, I haven’t got anything to cut the rope with. ‘I’m sorry, Eddy, I’ve got to find a knife. Will you be all right for a minute?’

  She climbed down off the chair again. Eddy was grunting and pointing at the chair. ‘Yes, Eddy, the chair, what about it?’ He was very red in the face now, he kept pointing at the chair, then at himself.

  Finally Mrs Levack got the message. ‘Of course, Eddy, what a silly duffer I am, the chair, of course.’

  She slid the chair under his feet so he could stand on it. He loosened the noose and stood on the chair catching his breath before untying the knot, the same kind of knot as he used on the duffle bag.

  Eddy stepped down off the chair and examined the body. ‘You’ve flamin’ killed him,’ he roared, ‘you flamin’ killed him.’

  ‘But . . . I saved your life, Eddy,’ she said in a bewildered voice. ‘He was torturing you.’

  ‘It was just a bit of fun, like we used to get up to in the old days. I told you you wouldn’t like it, Mavis, but you had to come and stick your nose in it, didn’t you? Can’t a man have a bit of fun with some old mates without his wife interfering?’

  Mrs Levack looked around the room. The walls were painted black and strung around them were all sorts of strange contraptions. She couldn’t really see the fun side of it at all. Plus now she had another dead body on her hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eddy, I was only trying to help, really I was . . .’ She started to cry.

  ‘There, there.’ Mr Levack put a comforting arm around his wife. ‘Don’t upset yourself. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,’ he said philosophically.

  ‘What a strange thing to say, Eddy. You always like your eggs boiled.’

  • • •

  Eddy brought her in a cup of tea and the newspaper. He was good like that. Not that she got sick much, but if ever she did Eddy would always be there with the cups of tea. He’d wanted to call Dr Mackintosh but Mrs Levack thought it wasn’t really necessary.

  ‘Couple of items in the paper that might interest you, dear,’ he said emphasising the ‘dear’.

  One item stated that the police had charged an Adelaide man with the murder of his wife, whose body had been found on the steps of the Opera House. Mr Robert Watergate, the dead woman’s uncle, had informed police that she had left her husband and come to Sydney looking for work.

  In another unrelated incident, Frank Carmody, proprietor of the Big Boys Club, had been shot dead. The murder weapon had not been found and police were asking anyone with any information to come forward.

  ‘That should be an easy one for you to solve, Miss Marple. You already know who did it. Shall I call the police for you?’

  Mrs Levack picked at her blue crocheted bed jacket and slunk down further under the blankets. ‘Please, Eddy, I’m not in the mood for jokes. I’m feeling a bit off-colour.’

  Emoh Ruo

  It was just on dusk when the Levacks arrived at Camelot Caravan Park, Mermaid Spit. It was a busy time of year for caravan parks and most had their No Vacancy sign lit up. Mavis and Eddy were on their way back from their holiday in Queensland. They’d had a good time, apart from the sandflies, they’d caught a lot of fish, drunk a lot of Bundaberg rum, but it was nice to be back in New South Wales again. A day or two at Mermaid Spit, then back to Bondi. It was always good to go away, to experience the heady thrill of not knowing where the breeze might blow you, but there was nothing like sleeping in your own bed.

  ‘Lucky last,’ said the caravan park manager, a cheery grey-headed chap with Kevin embroidered on his shirt pocket. ‘We’ve only got one campsite left.’ He pointed out where it was—up the road and under the trees. ‘S’pose you’ll be doing a bit of fishing, mate?’ said Kevin.

  ‘Yes, we will,’ piped up Mrs Levack. ‘First thing in the morning.’ To tell the truth, she was getting a little bit sick of fishing day in, day out, and was running out of creative ways of cooking the piscine creatures, but she thought it only fair to subtly let Kevin know that it was a tiny bit sexist to assume the husband would be doing the fishing and not the wife.

  They found their campsite, put up the tent, then went to bed, lulled to sleep by the soft moaning of the surf and the couple in the tent next door.

  In the morning the smell of frying fish hovered over the caravan park like the mushroom cloud of an atomic explosion.

  ‘Well,’ said Eddy, yawning and stretching his arms. ‘We’d better go and catch our breakfast too. Nothing like freshly caught fish first thing in the morning.’

  Doesn’t anyone around here eat meat? thought Mrs Levack.

  They had a quick cup of tea, gathered their fishing gear together, put on their Nikes, and started walking towards the kiosk. What a lovely location. They hadn’t really been able to get a good look at their surroundings last night but now they had time to take it all in. They were only metres away from the ocean and the breakwater. There were magpies perched high up in the trees and seagulls moving in on the barbecue areas where the fish were being fried. Mrs Levack noticed also that Camelot had a couple of excellent amenities blocks with all the facilities—showers, toilets and laundry. There were even clothes lines.

  ‘Oh, isn’t that lovely,’ exclaimed Mrs Levack. ‘What a neat little garden. Fancy being able to grow all those things in pots.’ They had strolled out of the camping area into the mobile home section of the caravan park. ‘Look, Eddy,’ she said tugging his sleeve, ‘garden gnomes. Aren’t they sweet?’ Mrs Levack was quite fond of garden gnomes but didn’t have any of her own, living in an upstairs flat with no garden or even a balcony. Gnomes were outdoor creatures, it wasn’t fair to have them cooped up inside.

  Mavis and Eddy continued down the aisle of mobile homes, saying hello here and there in a neighbourly fashion and occasionally stepping aside for a motorised wheelchair. Funny them being called mobile homes, because with the little aluminium garages
for the car, verandahs with shadecloths and outdoor furniture, birds in cages, driftwood, potted plants, and even garden beds, it looked very much like they were staying put.

  Mavis and Eddy nodded hello to a couple sitting on their patio doing the crossword. Further along the way two old codgers wearing shorts and thongs said, ‘Nice day for it,’ and Mavis and Eddy agreed. Near the main amenities block a woman, also wearing shorts and thongs, was hanging out her washing. She gave them a nod hello, unable to speak because of the pegs in her mouth. Everyone was so friendly, Mavis and Eddy practically felt part of the community.

  ‘More gnomes!’ cried Mrs Levack with delight. There were three around a birdbath, others peeping out from behind shrubs. Big ones, little ones, ones with hats and pointy ears, ones with beards and rosy-red cheeks. And one . . . Could it be? Mrs Levack bent down for a closer look. Yes, it was.

  ‘Eddy,’ Mrs Levack called to her husband, who was examining a nearby sign which said ‘Trespasser today, Rottweiler shit tomorrow’, a strange sign to find in Camelot, where no dogs were allowed. ‘I say, Eddy,’ said Mrs Levack. ‘I’ve found Norman.’

  Norman. Eddy scrolled through the names of all his mates at bowls, of everyone he and Mavis had ever met in their lives. No Norman. ‘Just jog my memory, dear, I’m having a lapse.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing into the garden.

  What on earth was she on about?

  ‘Norman the gnome.’ Eddy still had a blank look on his face. ‘Freda’s gnome,’ his wife prompted. That rang a distant bell. There had been a gnome in Freda and Bill’s front garden, right next to the letter box. And it had disappeared. Freda had gone up and down the street asking about it, while Bill and Eddy made jokes about the infamous gnome kidnapper striking again. ‘Next thing I’ll be getting a ransom note,’ Bill had said, tapping the letter box.

  ‘I don’t recall that gnome having a beard.’