The Orchard Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘It bothers me that he knows where you live, Clara. He must have followed you, returned to the hospital, waited for Dr Matthews’ shift to finish at 6.00 pm, and then ambushed him. The time of death is estimated to be between 8.00 and 10.00 pm, on Friday. What was Matthews doing in the two hours between the end of his shift and his death? Was he with Bussell all that time?’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet. He’d been struck in the back of the head with something heavy but blunt. The skin wasn’t broken, but the skull was. That would certainly have rendered him unconscious. Martin Serong suggested that he may have drowned.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  ‘He was face down in a deepish puddle of muddy water. If someone held his head, it’s entirely possible that he breathed in the water and drowned. We won’t be sure until the autopsy.’

  ‘Kenneth Bussell was lean, but he was strong.’

  ‘He gave no personal details? No address?’

  ‘If he’d been admitted he would have filled out the forms, but he wasn’t admitted. I was with him for maybe ten minutes when I assessed him.’

  ‘Did he strike you as disturbed?’

  ‘Only in retrospect. He was calm. But he’d been in some sort of fight, so he’s no stranger to violence. I feel strangely responsible for all this, Titus. And Matthews has a wife and children.’

  ‘Adelaide Matthews is coming here. In fact, she should be here now. She wanted to come. She said she didn’t want to be at home on her own. The two children are at boarding school, apparently. I’ll take her to formally identify the body.’

  ‘Christ, Titus. It’s all so fucking awful.’

  ‘We have to find Kenneth Bussell, Clara.’

  ‘I have to get Pat to lock the fucking front door.’

  Before ending the interview, Titus asked after Helen and Joe. Clara wasn’t able to tell him much, except to assure him that Helen’s investigation into the Fisher murders had begun and that, as far as she knew, some progress was being made.

  ‘Helen is very happy, Titus. Leaving the police force is the best thing that’s happened to her.’

  ‘It’s not the best thing for us, Clara.’

  IN THE FOYER of police headquarters, Clara observed a well-dressed woman asking the receptionist for Inspector Titus Lambert. On an impulse — an impulse she might have resisted, had she thought about it — she approached the woman.

  ‘Mrs Matthews?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Mrs Matthews.’

  It was an educated voice, a voice Clara associated with her teachers at the Methodist Ladies’ College, where she’d completed her final year. She took in how Adelaide Matthews’ hair had been artfully peroxided and cut short, with soft curls rolling back over her ears.

  ‘I’m Dr Clara Dawson. I was a colleague of your husband’s.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m afraid my husband didn’t consider you a colleague, Dr Dawson. He used to refer to you as “the unfortunate anomaly.”’

  Adelaide Matthews’ tone had no acid in it.

  ‘I was aware that he didn’t approve of me.’

  ‘He didn’t altogether approve of me. I wonder if we could have a cup of tea, or something stronger, after my meeting with the policeman? Do you have time?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Clara said, and realised that curiosity might have smothered her common sense.

  ‘Oh, I just realised that I have to identify my husband’s body. Perhaps you could come later to my house.’

  Clara knew that grief was often suppressed initially to allow the practicalities around death to be dealt with. Even so, Adelaide Matthews’ measured response seemed peculiar. It wasn’t cold, exactly, but Clara didn’t suppose this woman’s grief would ever amount to uncontrollable sobbing. She accepted the offer, and Mrs Matthews jotted her address in Drummond Street in Carlton on a piece of paper.

  ‘I’ll be home by three o’clock.’

  Clara wondered what Titus would make of this coolly elegant and composed widow.

  CLARA HOPED THAT Helen Lord was at her office in East Melbourne. She wanted to see her. She didn’t want to take a taxi to Kew. It was expensive, and anyway there were fewer and fewer of them about, as worn tyres became impossible to replace. She telephoned Helen Lord and Associates, and Joe Sable answered. Helen was there. It would take Clara 15 minutes to walk from Russell Street.

  ‘Tell Helen to put the kettle on. I have much to discuss.’

  When Clara arrived, Joe opened the door to let her in, and not for the first time she examined him and pondered the mysteries of attraction — or, more specifically, Helen’s attraction to him. He wouldn’t turn heads when he walked into a room. On the other hand, once he’d been noticed, people might agree that he was pleasant enough to look at. For Joe’s part, Clara’s presence continued to make him regress into awkward boyishness. He knew perfectly well, because Guy had made no secret of it that he, Guy, intended to pursue Clara. Joe had said nothing, and had managed to dampen the mean jealousy he felt.

  Clara kissed Joe on the cheek in greeting. Their shared experience at Peter Lillee’s wake had made such an intimacy possible and unremarkable. Helen came out of her office and embraced her friend.

  ‘Joe said you had much to discuss.’

  ‘I have just been called “an unfortunate anomaly”. I can’t tell you how thrilling that is.’

  Clara and Helen went into Helen’s office. Joe interrupted them to bring them tea. They didn’t stop talking when he entered, and he caught the tail end of Clara’s story.

  ‘Stay, Joe,’ Helen said. ‘You should hear this.’ She then précised what Clara had said.

  ‘We need to find this Kenneth Bussell,’ Helen said, ‘and you should come and stay with us at Kew until we do.’

  Clara refused, saying that she couldn’t just leave Susan and Pat in the house.

  ‘And no, Helen, they can’t stay at Kew. Your poor mother. It’s a house, not a hotel for strays.’

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realised her faux pas, and Joe’s deep blush confirmed it.

  ‘Oh, fuck. Clearly, present company excepted. I …’

  ‘It’s okay, Clar, Joe knows he’s not a stray.’

  The colour of Joe’s face indicated that this was not entirely true. To cover the general embarrassment, Helen hurried on.

  ‘Kenneth Bussell must live somewhere. And he was well dressed, you say?’

  ‘Well, he was clean. I don’t really notice men’s clothes. He didn’t smell, and he’d shaved that day, I’d say. He had decent shoes, I remember that. And good teeth. He didn’t smoke. There were no tar stains on his fingers or his teeth, and there were no scars on his body. He was fit, but he wasn’t living a hardscrabble life. Finger and toenails were clipped and clean. I could describe his genitals for you, but it doesn’t seem relevant at the moment.’

  ‘You’re a marvel, Clar.’

  ‘I wish I was better at noticing clothes. All my training is about the body underneath, though.’

  ‘It’s what’s inside the head that is disturbing,’ Joe said.

  ‘The police artist is knocking up a likeness.’

  ‘That might be useful, if it’s good,’ Helen said. ‘I wonder if Inspector Lambert would give us a copy.’

  ‘I can’t see why not,’ Joe said. ‘What really worries me, Clara, is that this Bussell bloke has been inside your house and knows which room is yours.’

  ‘Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that. He knew which door to leave the wallet near. It wasn’t just a lucky choice, was it?’

  ‘No,’ Joe said. ‘Somehow he’d discovered which room was yours. Was he inside the house already when Susan and Pat came home, so he saw them enter their rooms?’

  ‘That gives me the creeps.’

  ‘It’s more likely,’ Helen said, ‘that he was waiting outside, saw th
at a light was on in your room, and then saw Susan and Pat come home and turn the lights on in their rooms.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Helen, we haven’t got around to taking the blackouts down.’

  Joe’s theory, however unsettling, now seemed the most likely.

  ‘It makes me shudder to think about it, but at least it might indicate that he doesn’t intend to do me any harm.’

  ‘He went to a lot of risk and trouble, Clar. He’s going to want something in return, surely.’

  When Clara told them that she intended calling on Gerald Matthews’ wife, they each expressed surprise and disapproval.

  ‘It’s just a courtesy visit.’

  ‘Oh, Clar, I don’t believe that for a minute. It has the whiff of prurience about it.’

  ‘I don’t think you can smell prurience, Helen, but you’re right of course. I am interested in finding out about Gerald Matthews. I know it’s awful, but he’s more interesting dead than when he was alive. You can’t talk me out of it. I’m due there in an hour. I was invited. I didn’t inveigle an invitation. After all, what’s so peculiar about it? A colleague has died, and I’m visiting his wife.’

  Both Joe and Helen folded their arms in an act of coordinated scepticism. Clara laughed.

  ‘Anyway, I’m going. Perhaps you won’t be interested in what I find out.’

  ‘You have got to come around for dinner, Clar.’

  Clara declined that offer, saying that she needed to sleep, but promised to telephone if she learned anything of interest.

  ‘In a novel,’ she said, ‘it would turn out that Adelaide Matthews and Kenneth Bussell knew each other.’

  THE MATTHEWS’ HOUSE in Drummond Street was handsome. It was double-storeyed, with an ornamental fountain set in the path to the front door. Adelaide Matthews opened the door to Clara’s knock.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.

  The front room where they sat contained an eclectic mix of modern and Victorian furniture. There was, Clara thought, a controlling hand behind the mix so that it was aesthetically pleasing rather than chaotic. Clara suspected that that hand was Adelaide’s.

  ‘Would you mind if we bypassed tea and went straight to brandy? Good brandy?’

  Clara would have preferred tea, but accepted brandy. Clearly, Adelaide Matthews preferred not to go to the bother of boiling water.

  ‘I know your husband didn’t like me, Mrs Matthews.’

  ‘Adelaide, please.’

  ‘Adelaide. But I’m genuinely sorry for your own loss.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know your first name.’

  ‘Clara.’

  ‘I did love my husband, and of course this is devastating for the children. I don’t think the finality of his death hit me until I saw him lying there in the morgue.’

  Clara was listening for any querulousness in Adelaide’s voice that might indicate deep emotion, but she couldn’t detect any. Adelaide was obviously conscious of the discrepancy between her words and her feelings.

  ‘I must seem rather detached,’ she said as she poured brandy into balloons that looked expensive. ‘The truth is, I feel rather detached. I should be throwing myself on the ground and tearing at my hair, but somehow those emotions just won’t come.’

  ‘Everyone deals with these things differently, Adelaide. There isn’t a correct way.’

  ‘Yes, I know. My children are coming home tomorrow. I need to be strong for them. You see, Gerald wasn’t an easy man to love. He wasn’t warm, or particularly loving, but he did love me, and he certainly loved the children. He could be demanding and short-tempered, but he wasn’t a violent man, which makes the way he died so awful. I can understand that people didn’t get on with him, but who would hate him enough to kill him? Who would hate him enough to rob two children of their father?’

  Clara sipped her brandy and wished her palate was more sophisticated. Should she tell Adelaide about Kenneth Bussell? No. There couldn’t possibly be a connection between them. That idea was ludicrous. They belonged in different worlds, and besides, Bussell’s appearance at the hospital had been entirely random in its timing. But should she warn Adelaide that this man was out there? What if Bussell turned up at the Matthews’ house? But why would he?

  ‘The man who killed him might have been a stranger, Adelaide.’

  ‘The police said his wallet was found some distance from his body, but that no money had been taken from it.’

  So Titus hadn’t been specific about where the wallet had been found. He must have had a reason for withholding this information from Adelaide. Clara was glad she hadn’t mentioned Kenneth Bussell.

  ‘I think whoever took Gerald’s wallet must have panicked and thrown it away,’ Adelaide said. She poured more brandy into her balloon. ‘I’m very grateful that you came, Clara. I wanted to meet the female doctor my husband railed against. He was old-fashioned. Women were nurses. Men were doctors. He had firm ideas about the limitations of the female brain. Women were too emotionally unstable to make safe and reliable diagnoses. He used to say that. Our biology is against us, apparently. We’re good at other things, like childbirth, but too prone to mood swings for science. I stopped arguing with him years ago. It was out of boredom, really, not acquiescence, although that’s how it must have appeared to him. I’m sorry, I’m prattling on.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Adelaide, Dr Matthews wasn’t the only male doctor to consider me an unfortunate anomaly — which, by the way, has become an immediately favourite expression.’

  Adelaide managed a small laugh.

  ‘Gerald would have been disappointed that you’re not offended by it. Of course, it says more about him than it does about you, doesn’t it?’

  It didn’t seem to Clara that Adelaide was in any need of consolation, but she reassured her that Gerald wouldn’t have endured prolonged suffering, although she couldn’t be certain of this herself.

  ‘So,’ Adelaide said, ‘no reckoning made, but sent to his account with all his imperfections on his head.’

  Clara recognised the quote from Hamlet, and assumed it meant that Gerald Matthews had been a religious man.

  ‘Was your husband Catholic?’

  ‘No. We’re nominally C of E, but Gerald didn’t care for institutional religion. If he worshipped anyone, it was Norman Lindsay.’

  Clara knew very little about Norman Lindsay, beyond the fact that he was an artist who produced rather louche pictures.

  ‘I’m not sure what that means, Adelaide.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Gerald used to carry on about him so often I sometimes forget that he’s an acquired taste.’

  Clara hadn’t noticed until this moment that the walls of the room had no pictures hanging on them. Scuff marks indicated that art of some sort had until recently hung from the picture rail that ran around the room. Adelaide noticed Clara’s eyes moving around the walls.

  ‘This used to be the Lindsay room.’

  She gave no indication when the pictures had been taken down. Surely not in the last 24 hours? Would stripping the walls of Norman Lindsay pictures be the first thing Adelaide Matthews did after being told that her husband had been murdered?

  ‘What was it about Lindsay’s art that so intrigued Gerald?’

  ‘It wasn’t the art so much, although he did love that. Inexplicably. I think it’s frightful and vulgar. My opinion didn’t count, though. Mr Lindsay didn’t much care for the opinions of women. Feminine minds are only half-formed, you see. Half-minds, that’s what we have. Half-minds.’

  Clara couldn’t suppress a cough of disbelief.

  ‘Let me show you something.’

  Adelaide stood, and despite having downed two generous brandies, left the room without any hint of a stagger. She returned quickly and handed Clara a book.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘was Gerald’s Bible.’
/>   Clara took the book and turned it towards her so she could read the title. Creative Effort: an essay in affirmation. Adelaide poured herself a third brandy.

  ‘It’s all in there — Gerald’s rules for living a good life. It poisoned his mind. It made it impossible for him to be happy. Nothing in Gerald’s life lived up to Mr Lindsay’s aesthetic ideals.’ She paused for a moment and then indicated the walls. ‘I took all the pictures down an hour after I’d been told that Gerald was dead. That must seem callous, but some instinct made me do it, and somehow it helped me cope. I can’t explain it. I wasn’t trying to expunge him from my life, not completely, just the worst of him, and that’s what those big-breasted Amazons represented — the worst of him. He was essentially a good man, Clara. I wonder if you can believe that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume to judge your husband, Adelaide, although it would be dishonest of me to pretend that I liked him. I never saw the best of him.’

  ‘But there was a best part of him. That’s why I wanted you to come here. I think you must know how he felt about you.’

  This had already been declared, and Clara had no wish to return to it. Adelaide, however, continued.

  ‘He loathed you, Clara. I mean, he actively loathed you. He thought you were a danger to the running of the hospital.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because I think it must have made you hate him, but you see, he was envious of you, which is a sort of perverted admiration, isn’t it? I’m not explaining this at all well.’

  ‘Adelaide, it doesn’t matter what your husband thought of me. All that matters is that you’ve lost him, and that the children have lost their father.’

  Adelaide emptied her brandy glass, but didn’t refill it.

  ‘I need to put some pictures up before the children get home.’

  Clara took this an indication that she should leave. After a warm farewell and invitation from Adelaide to call in again at any time, Clara left. As she made her way back to her room in East Melbourne, she rehearsed what she would say to Helen when she telephoned her. The meeting with Adelaide Matthews felt more peculiar with each step she took. It had been pleasant enough, but what had it been about? Adelaide’s desire to rehabilitate Gerald Matthews’ character was odd, and it lacked conviction, although Clara reminded herself yet again that people’s emotions were unpredictable in times of great stress. She imagined that having to welcome two children home to a world that no longer had their father in it would disrupt normal behaviour.