Digging Up Dirt

by Pamela Hart

  ‘Fozina?’

  ‘Him, yes. And he told me the heritage subcommittee was meeting this afternoon. So I invited them to inspect the site personally and receive a report from Alain and me.’

  I gaped at him. ‘And they agreed on such short notice?’

  He grimaced. ‘I think they couldn’t wait to get a look at the crime scene.’

  I was flooded with gratitude and maybe something a bit stronger. Tol had gone out of his way to organise this—I knew from Annie how busy he was trying to deal with Julieanne’s work as well as his own—to get me my house back.

  When he opened the door, there was not only Alain, there was Marco Fozina, the brown cardigan guy from the council (in a green cardie this time), the mayor, and two other councillors, who clutched their clipboards as though they expected to use them as defensive weapons. The mayor entered first, as if she never did anything else, and the others followed. I smiled hello at Alain and he smiled back, but the others were too busy looking at the pit to notice me.

  ‘Is this where—’ the mayor said delicately.

  ‘Yes, that’s right!’ Tol said, loudly and cheerfully. ‘That’s the site. The bones have all been removed, of course, but we think we can still identify traces of where the killing took place.’

  The subcommittee looked uneasy and shocked, not sure exactly which killing he was referring to, and I realised that Tol had done that deliberately. I won’t say he was actually enjoying the situation, but by the gleam in his eye it did spark his sense of the absurd. More than likely, he was trying to distract himself from memories of Julieanne. I fought down a smile and addressed the mayor very seriously indeed.

  ‘This is Dr Lang, mayor, from the Museum of New South Wales, who wrote the report, and this is Dr Parkes from the University of Sydney.’ Introductions were made all around, and then I went on. ‘Dr Lang—’

  Someone knocked on the door lightly. Alain went to open it. It was Boris, beaming and flourishing his hammer.

  ‘We’s back in, eh, miss?’ he said. ‘I can put in the post, now?’

  The mayor scowled at me. ‘Have you arranged work to be done on this site in defiance of our order forbidding it?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ I said, in a shocked tone. ‘That would be most improper.’

  Boris was looking from me to her with some puzzlement. ‘So, miss, what you want me to do?’

  ‘Just wait a bit, Boris,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s up to the subcommittee whether we can do the work.’

  He subsided, the hammer falling to his side, and went to sit on the stairs. I took a deep breath. Calm, Poppy.

  ‘Dr Lang and Dr Parkes are very sure that this site is not of historical significance,’ I said.

  ‘Historical interest,’ Alain said judiciously, ‘but not significance.’

  ‘But we have so few sites of historical interest in this country!’ cardigan man exclaimed. ‘We should preserve all of them!’

  I cast a look of entreaty at Tol.

  ‘Do you live in the area, councillor?’ he cut in smoothly.

  Cardigan man nodded. ‘Of course!’

  ‘Well, I’m sure if we dug under your house—or yours, mayor—we’d find something of historical interest. That’s the way with these inner-city sites. They’ve been in constant use since European occupation, and there’s always something to find.’

  They digested that and clearly didn’t like the idea of someone digging up their floor.

  Alain cleared his throat. ‘It’s just a few old mutton bones,’ he said. ‘The kind of thing you’d find at the back of any old butcher’s shop. Early breeds, yes, but not so early as to be exciting.’ His tone suggested that this was all a waste of their time, and the mayor nodded.

  Marco Fozina, seizing the opportunity to get a piece of paperwork off his desk, stepped forward and presented her with his clipboard. ‘If you’ll just sign here,’ he said, ‘that’ll cancel the heritage order.’

  She reached out slowly and took the clipboard, looking at cardigan man for a kind of permission. He shrugged. The mayor took the pen Tol held and poised it over the paper just as someone thumped loudly on the door. The mayor jumped and dropped the clipboard.

  I only just managed not to swear as I pushed past the mayor and yanked the door open. ‘Yes?’

  It was Samuel Stephenson.

  ‘Matthew asked me to come,’ he said.

  I stood back and he strode in. He cast a quick look around, surprised at the number of people in the room, all spread out against the walls on the remnants of the chipboard floor. His gaze lingered for a moment on the bearer where Julieanne’s blood had been. Which was interesting, because I had scrubbed it clean, the pit had been enlarged since then, and there shouldn’t have been any reason he would know the exact spot where she had fallen.

  I saw Tol follow his gaze and his lips tightened. He moved between me and Stephenson. It was a lovely, instinctive response, and it warmed me, but I couldn’t see Stephenson’s face, so I moved a little sideways. That brought his eyes back to me.

  ‘Matthew thinks you know where Patience is,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ No nice guy now. The round tones of the church elder were gone, and I could hear the accent of his youth underneath. He’d been born in Erskineville, I think, a working-class suburb at the time.

  ‘If I knew where Patience is,’ I said, ‘I would probably have promised not to tell her family. Now, as you can see, we’re a bit busy here.’

  ‘You interfering little bitch,’ he said.

  Boris leapt up. ‘You don’t talk to her like that!’ he said menacingly, hammer held high.

  Stephenson looked at Boris as if he were a freak in a circus.

  I wanted the mayor to sign that piece of paper, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Alain pick up the clipboard and give it back to her. But she was riveted by the conversation between me and Stephenson. I had to take him into the kitchen, give Alain and Tol a chance to close the deal, so to speak.

  ‘It’s all right, Boris.’ I turned to Stephenson. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ It surprised everyone except Stephenson. It was what he expected women to say.

  ‘No,’ he barked.

  ‘It won’t take a minute,’ I said, as though he were refusing out of politeness. ‘Come on through.’

  I edged past Fozina and the other councillors and led the way out to the space that would be the kitchen, where the kettle and tea-making paraphernalia perched on a milk crate. I filled the kettle from the bathroom tap and turned it on. Stephenson followed me and stood just inside the doorway.

  ‘No milk, I’m afraid,’ I said.

  ‘Stop playing for time,’ Stephenson said. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘According to the police,’ I answered, ‘she is safe, she is clean, she is warm, she is well fed. She is also over sixteen, which means that she doesn’t have to come home if she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘That girl’s a troublemaker!’ he growled.

  ‘Patience?’ I said. ‘Puh-leese.’

  ‘You’re all troublemakers.’

  ‘Women?’ Tol said, appearing in the doorway. He leant against the frame, somehow emphasising both his considerable youth and his height compared to Stephenson. ‘I haven’t heard that kind of talk since I came back from the Middle East.’

  ‘Better be careful, Samuel,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to sound like an Islamic fundamentalist.’

  I looked a question at Tol and he raised his eyes skyward—the mayor hadn’t signed yet. I made a shooing motion—Get back in there and get her signing!—but before he could, the others crowded—and I do mean crowded—into the doorway.

  ‘Milk and two sugars,’ said cardigan man.

  ‘I take mine black,’ the mayor said.

  ‘I like strong,’ Boris shouted from the back. ‘Lots of milk.’

  Now if I had a normal family, I wouldn’t have had enough mugs to go around and I could explain that and make them all go away. But I have a large, tea-drinking family who like to inspect whatever is
happening and have a cuppa while they do it. Which meant that about twelve mugs were lined up on the kitchen windowsill in full sight.

  ‘There’s no milk,’ I said.

  ‘I go get some,’ Boris said helpfully, and headed out the door, leaving it open behind him.

  I made tea and put sugar into one mug, stirred it, and handed it to Stephenson. He took it, but didn’t drink.

  I gave a mug to Tol. He slid down quickly and put it on the floor. Wanted his hands free. That was a good idea if Stephenson was a murderer, but I preferred to have a mugful of scalding water I could throw in his eyes.

  ‘There are people in the church who will look after Patience,’ he said, trying to sound reasonable, trying to ignore the spectators. ‘If she’d turned to them in the first place—’

  I made tea for the mayor and handed it to her, passing it over Stephenson’s shoulder. He took a sip from his mug and frowned, but I don’t think it was the quality of the tea that was bothering him.

  ‘Her friends at the church—’

  ‘Would have taken her straight back to her father,’ I cut in. ‘And her mother. Who, apparently, may be a murderer.’

  A small smile curved the very edges of his mouth. He drank to cover it up, and I rejoiced. Take another sip, Samuel, I urged him silently. Leave lots of lovely DNA all over my nice clean mug which my mother, God bless her, had washed only the day before.

  ‘Really?’ the mayor said. ‘That girl who was missing? Her mother’s the murderer?’

  All the councillors craned in, eyes agog.

  ‘There’s no evidence of that,’ Stephenson said automatically. ‘What are these people doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I am the mayor of this municipality,’ the mayor answered, icily. ‘I have every right to inspect any work which may affect the historic heritage of this area.’

  ‘We are the heritage subcommittee,’ cardigan man added, wanting to claim some of the glory.

  Someone came in the front door. Boris with the milk? That was fast.

  ‘Poppy?’ It was Chloe’s voice.

  Her natural authority worked wonders—the council party moved back into the dining alcove to let her come through to us. The mayor even smiled at her. Chloe summed them up with one glance and then ignored them. Stephenson took another swig of tea while they sorted themselves out, as though he needed strength.

  It wasn’t just Chloe. It was Chloe and Martin and Samuel Stephenson’s sister, Ruth. I must have looked surprised, because Ruth jumped into speech with a flurry of breathy phrases.

  ‘I went with Eliza. And Matthew said Samuel had come here. So instead of making the detectives take me all the way home, I thought Samuel could—I mean, I thought we could meet Samuel here. I didn’t think you would mind. I saw you at the office …. You seemed like a nice young lady and … It’s such a long way out there and—and—oh, dear …’

  She ran out of steam in the face of her brother’s glare, and only then seemed to see the others. She looked at them, bewildered. I felt sorry for her and irritated at the same time. But this was a great opportunity, and I couldn’t pass it up.

  ‘Were you at the meeting with Matthew Carter the night Julieanne was killed, Samuel?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ his sister squeaked.

  ‘No,’ he said at the same moment.

  There was a silence in which Detective Chloe and Martin both turned slowly and looked at Stephenson.

  ‘I was at the meeting,’ he amended hastily, glaring at his sister. ‘You can ask Matthew. But I left early.’

  ‘Why?’ Chloe asked.

  In the same moment, Ruth said, ‘But you weren’t home until quite late, Samuel.’

  Stephenson cast a quick look towards the pit. He seemed to weigh his options. ‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘I followed Eliza Carter.’

  So he was throwing Eliza to the wolves. But, of course, she might deserve it.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘She’d been … agitated … that day at the electoral office. I made my views clear to the others and then I went to talk to her. If they picked Weaver, I wanted Eliza to accept it with grace.’

  ‘Because you were supporting her?’ I asked. Weaver. Not Julieanne, not Dr Weaver.

  Chloe said nothing, just watched.

  ‘She was a good candidate,’ he said defensively. ‘She proved that in the TV debate.’

  ‘What did Eliza say?’ Martin asked.

  ‘She didn’t say anything!’ Stephenson said, almost triumphantly. ‘When I got to their house, she was just driving away. She looked upset. So I followed her.’

  Of course he did. Such a normal thing to do.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t want her to get into trouble. I thought she might, um—’

  ‘Kill Julieanne?’

  ‘No! Of course not. I just thought any confrontation between them was best avoided.’ The rounded tones were back in full. He’d rehearsed this, planned out his answers. He was also aware, as I was, of the interested faces at the open dining-room window, which, being at a right angle to the kitchen window, gave quite a good view in. I noticed that the mayor had secured prime position. She looked meaningfully at the closed kitchen window. What the hell, I thought, and opened it so they could hear properly.

  ‘So what happened?’ That was Martin.

  I looked at Tol. He was staring at Stephenson with a peculiar intensity. His hands were clenched. I felt my stomach drop. He didn’t look—safe.

  ‘Eliza drove here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. I had no idea what this house was. I knew it wasn’t Weaver’s home. I assumed Eliza was here on church business. We do a lot of welfare work, you know. I waited. After a while, Eliza came out. She seemed upset. She sat in the car for a minute, then drove home. I—er, I made sure she got there safely, and then I went home.’

  ‘And the next day?’ Detective Chloe’s voice was smooth. ‘When Weaver’s death was announced? It didn’t occur to you to inform us?’

  He hesitated, glancing at his sister as if for support. She was staring at him with a troubled frown. Not used to thinking of him as anything less than perfect.

  ‘I confess—I thought that if I came forward and Eliza was arrested … I thought it would ruin the election.’

  ‘So you protected a murderer for political gain,’ Chloe said. ‘That makes you an accessory after the fact.’

  He didn’t even blink. He’d thought this through and done his research. He smirked and crossed the kitchen, put his almost empty mug down on the milk crate and then moved back to stand next to his sister. I suppressed a smirk of my own.

  ‘I don’t think so, detective. I had no real knowledge of what happened in this house. I still have no real knowledge. All I know is that Eliza Carter visited here on the night in question. I hardly think that makes me an accessory.’

  ‘We could charge you with hindering a police investigation,’ Martin said.

  From the dining room, a voice came from one of the councillors who hadn’t spoken before: ‘I’m a solicitor, Mr—er, and well, I’d be happy to represent you.’

  Stephenson just glared.

  ‘Of course, I don’t do a great deal of criminal law, but I know the basics …’ the solicitor trailed off.

  Stuff this. He would never have just sat in that car and waited. He’d have had to know what she was doing in here. If he’d followed her, which I doubted. He’d come to meet Julieanne. Eliza was just a coincidence.

  ‘It still makes a great story for the news,’ I said. They all blinked, even Tol. They’d forgotten who I really was.

  ‘You can’t report this!’ Stephenson said.

  I laughed. ‘Try and stop me! A conversation in my own house in which I participated? No one said “Off the record” that I heard. What about you, Tol? You hear anyone say “Off the record”?’

  He shook his head, a grim smile on his face.

  Chloe just watched.

  Faintly, I heard the councillor
talking again: ‘She’s well within her rights, you know …’ and the mayor shushing him. I pushed down the desire to giggle. It was like a Gilbert and Sullivan show, with a little chorus.

  ‘Nope. It’s a great story,’ Tol said. ‘Not as good as the real one, but certainly newsworthy.’

  There was a small silence. Go on, I thought. Someone has to ask.

  It was Ruth.

  ‘Real story? I don’t understand.’

  ‘The real story is a little more complicated,’ I said. ‘The real story is that Julieanne Weaver was having an affair with your brother. She got pregnant.’

  There were gasps from the dining room and I took a deep breath. If I was wrong, Stephenson had a lot of witnesses to slander.

  ‘Samuel?’ Ruth asked, voice quavering.

  ‘You’ll never prove that!’ he said.

  I moved to the milk crate, picked his mug up and tossed the dregs out the back door onto the garden.

  ‘No? Why, Detective Constable Martin, I think my coffee mug may have on it the DNA of someone who was in the house that night. You had better test it.’

  From the dining room came the faint sound of clapping. Someone appreciated my sense of drama, anyway—probably Alain. I handed the mug to Martin, who accepted it blankly, then shot a glance at Stephenson and bit back a smile. He took an evidence bag out of his pocket and slid the mug into it carefully. For a minute, Stephenson looked as if he would grab it back, but he controlled himself. He was sweating a little now, and his composure seemed forced.

  ‘Well, Mr Stephenson?’ Chloe said. ‘Will we find that Julieanne Weaver’s baby was yours?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Stephenson snapped. ‘She was a whore to her bones!’

  ‘But the possibility is there.’

  He looked at his sister. Ruth had taken a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket and pressed it to her mouth as though she felt sick. I didn’t blame her.

  ‘We have a witness who saw you getting into her car,’ I added.

  ‘All right!’ he said. ‘I had—relations with her.’

  ‘Aha!’ said the mayor.

  ‘Samuel …’ Ruth whispered, not accusingly but with great sadness. ‘How could you?’