The Amazing Mrs Livesey

by Freda Marnie Nicholls

  The photographer snapped another shot of the bride as Mrs Livesey saw her visitors standing in the doorway. ‘Mac! Rex! What are you doing here? Surely it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding!’ she joked, and then stopped at the two grim faces of the gentlemen in front of her.

  ‘We would like a quiet word, Mrs Livesey,’ Mac stated again.

  Ethel was taken aback by his tone, but quickly pulled herself together in front of the others. ‘Certainly, Mac, but can it not wait? It is rather an important day.’

  ‘No Mrs Livesey, it cannot,’ Mac replied. ‘We need to speak, in private.’

  ‘Right then,’ Ethel said, disengaging herself from the group, looking around the crowded flat. ‘Perhaps the bedroom would be more private,’ she added, stumbling as she went to move off. Rex, standing close by, made no effort to help. It was Ethel’s secretary who went to her aid, and steadied her.

  ‘Would you like me to accompany you, Ethel?’ Joyce asked gently.

  ‘If you don’t mind dear, I do feel a little woozy,’ she said before turning to the other ladies in the room. ‘We won’t be a moment, I’m sure.’ With Joyce’s help she walked down the short hallway to her bedroom, the men following close behind.

  Mac closed the door behind them and Ethel looked at him quizzically. ‘What on earth is this about, Mac? What could possibly be this urgent?’

  ‘Your name is Florence Elizabeth Ethel Livesey, is it not?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, looking from Mac to Rex in apparent confusion.

  ‘You changed your name by deed poll in June last year, not by marriage,’ he stated.

  ‘Oh, I can explain that,’ Ethel laughed. ‘Mr Livesey’s wife wouldn’t give him a divorce.’

  ‘You were living with a married man?’ Rex asked angrily, speaking for the first time.

  Ethel pulled back her shoulders. ‘Yes, but he didn’t love his wife.’

  ‘I thought you a moral woman,’ Rex said quietly.

  ‘I am, Rex!’ Ethel replied. She took a step towards him, but swayed and half collapsed on the bed, her secretary rushing to her side, helping her sit on the end of the bed, as she looked up at Mac and Rex uncertainly.

  ‘Your maiden name was Florence Elizabeth Ethel Swindells?’ Mac stated calmly.

  ‘Yes,’ Ethel said a little uneasily, not so sure where Mac was going with his line of enquiry.

  ‘You were married to a Mr Anderson?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘but he was already married … ’ Registering the shock on her secretary’s face, Ethel blurted, ‘I didn’t know when I married him, Joyce!’, turning to Rex in exasperation.

  ‘Your sons are not Frank and George Livesey as you told us. They have the name Anderson,’ Rex stated. ‘What else have you lied about?’

  ‘Nothing, Rex, please—I was ashamed, I had unwittingly married a bigamist!’ she implored.

  ‘Then why did you not seek a divorce?’ he demanded.

  Ethel had no reply.

  ‘We also found an outstanding warrant on fraud charges for you, Mrs Anderson,’ Mac stated. ‘From 1933, in South Australia. Do you deny Florence Elizabeth Ethel Gardiner, alias Anderson, is you?’

  ‘Where did you … ?’ She began, then stopped herself and looked imploringly at Rex, and then Mac.

  Ethel’s shoulders slumped and she seemed to sink into the bed. ‘That was me, but I was young and had been deserted by my supposed husband, and it was the Depression,’ she started. ‘I had two young boys to feed, you must understand. I am not proud of that time, but I had to get back to England and seek help from my father.’

  She saw Rex soften ever so slightly, and reached her hand up towards him, pleadingly. ‘Please, Rex, you must understand.’

  ‘Rex, on this information I must strongly suggest that you not marry this woman,’ Mac declared. ‘And I also suggest we leave,’ he added, steering Mr Beech towards the bedroom door.

  ‘Rex!’ Ethel squawked, ‘Rex, please, the wedding …’

  ‘Come on Rex,’ Mac ordered, pushing him through the door.

  Ethel turned to Joyce.

  ‘He will be back,’ she said quietly.

  Joyce laid Ethel down on her bed sobbing; still dressed in her bridal gown, Ethel was inconsolable. Joyce told her to rest as she made her way out into the lounge room, where the confused bridal party looked at her expectantly.

  ‘The limousines are here!’ Mrs Sweet, one of the bridal party, relayed excitedly. ‘They’re just putting the white ribbons on them—there is such a crowd down there, there must be a hundred people in the square.’

  ‘The wedding is off,’ Joyce announced. All the ladies stared at her open-mouthed, before Mrs Sharpe finally asked what they all wanted to know. ‘But why?’

  ‘I am not certain,’ Joyce began, looking at the other members of the bridal party staring at her so intently. ‘But I don’t think there will be a wedding today.’

  They gasped at each other in confusion as the photographer and his assistant quietly packed up and slipped out the door. ‘What should we do?’ asked Mrs Cunningham. ‘We will never get through that crowd.’

  ‘I suggest you go down and take two of the limousines,’ Joyce said, taking charge. ‘Go home, the crowd will be waiting to see Mrs Livesey.’

  She turned to Mrs Cunningham. ‘I need to telephone your husband and tell him Mrs Livesey has collapsed.’ Quickly adding as concern crossed over the women’s faces, ‘She is alright—just a little shocked I think. Perhaps, Mrs Cunningham, you would like to wait here for him,’ she suggested as Mrs Cunningham nodded her head.

  As the ladies collected their belongings and farewelled each other uncertainly, Joyce picked up the phone. While she waited for the operator to pick up the call, she glanced over at the large dining table, overflowing with wedding presents, and couldn’t help but wonder if the bride and groom would ever open them.

  Outside the Australia Hotel, a crowd had gathered, hoping to catch a glimpse of the wealthy bride everyone was talking about. Hundreds lined Castlereagh Street from 7 p.m. on that warm, early-summer evening.

  At 7.15 p.m. hotel staff rolled out the hotel’s famous red carpet, and by 7.30 p.m. the crowd had grown to enormous proportions, watching guest after guest file past in their finery—ball gowns that hadn’t seen the light of day since before the war, new gowns for those who could afford them, dinner suits, and many returned servicemen in dress uniform. The numbers waiting outside continued to swell as invitations were checked and guests were admitted.

  The guest reporter from the Daily Mirror was waiting to enter the reception with some of her old Sydney University friends. Some in her party had been responsible for a university prank several years previously, in which English visitor Sir Evelyn Wrench was ‘kidnapped’ and dropped off at the Sydney Crematorium in the dead of night, after refusing to give a lecture to the handful of students who had bothered to turn up. He had then refused to attend the vice-chancellor’s luncheon organised after his lecture, embarrassing both the vice-chancellor and the university. The students were not charged, but had to write a letter of apology; no matter, they had embarrassed the smug Pom. Now they were graduated doctors and engineers, and some had recently returned from armed service, and the opportunity to have some fun at the expense of the ‘cotton heiress’ proved too tempting. Outside the Australia Hotel they held telegrams inviting them to the reception, supposedly from the bridegroom, addressed to the likes of Sir Mompas Slayme, Mr Humphrey Bender, Prince George Toobetooa of Fiji, Lady Bolingbroke, Miss Catherine Aragon and Lady Belladonna Schnitzel.

  The crowd oohed and aahed at each new arrival, speculating on who they were—then reports filtered through that gatecrashers were trying to get in. A few in the crowd decided to also give it a go, but were quickly turfed out, to the amusement of their companions.

  Two of the bridesmaids and the flower girl arrived. The excitement in the crowd was electric as they waited for the bride.

 
Fifteen minutes later the red carpet was rolled back up, and there were rumours that the doors to the banquet room had been barred.

  The crowd became restless. Many began to chant ‘Where is the Bride?’ to the tune of ‘Here Comes the Bride’, and a police inspector and five constables were needed to control their mostly good-natured irritation.

  Inside the hotel, in the vestibule outside the first-floor banquet hall, the guests waited, with loud murmurings passing between them, wondering what was going on. Why were the doors barred? Should they go or stay? Where were the bride and groom?

  Shortly after 8 p.m., the doors to the banquet room opened and the guests were finally allowed in. The Daily Mirror reporter would later write that many openly gasped at the splendour of the feast before them, and the variety of expensive liquors on offer, all lit by candlelight and gas lamps because of the electricity restrictions still in place after the war. Chefs carved and waiters fluttered around with drinks. The orchestra tuned their instruments for the ‘Wedding March’, but by 8.30 p.m., broke into another song.

  At 8.45 p.m. Mr Baydon Johnson, the banquet manager, mounted the orchestra dais and addressed the guests.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘I have been asked to announce that the hostess will not be able to be with us.’ He stopped as gasps from the guests turned into speculative murmurings. ‘She would like,’ he said loudly, trying to get above the hubbub, ‘she would like you to carry on, as if she were here. Enjoy yourselves.’

  As he descended from the dais, the buzz among the guests in the dimly lit room became louder and louder.

  Joyce took a cup of tea in to Mrs Livesey, who was lying on the bed as if stunned, still dressed in her Molyneux gown.

  ‘Mrs Livesey?’ she said quietly. ‘Ethel?’

  Ethel turned to her and it seemed to take a moment for her to focus on her secretary standing before her with the proffered cup of tea.

  ‘Oh Joyce,’ she said. ‘Thank you, but I will get up,’ clambering to the edge of the bed and rising unsteadily.

  ‘Careful,’ Joyce urged, placing the cup beside the bed and helping her stand.

  ‘The pills Dr Cunningham gave me seem to have left me feeling a bit hollow,’ Ethel said with a crooked smile. ‘What time is it dear?’

  ‘Past nine.’

  ‘I understand,’ Ethel sighed, sitting back down onto the bed. ‘I know the wedding is off now.’

  Ethel reached for her tea, which Joyce brought towards her. Holding it with shaking hands, Ethel looked back up to Joyce: ‘I need to speak with Rex. Could you see if you can get him for me?’

  Ethel waited in vain all night for Rex to arrive.

  Finally, in the early hours of the morning, Joyce fell into an exhausted sleep on the couch while Mrs Livesey, still in her wedding dress, paced beside the windows, smoking furiously and looking out whenever she heard a car pass.

  She had to admit, it was over.

  At 4 a.m. Ethel went into her room and reluctantly changed out of her wedding dress.

  She started to worry about how much Mac did in fact know. She hadn’t thought back to those events in 1933 for a long time, but if the warrant was still valid, she knew she could be arrested.

  She dragged the telephone into her room and quietly made a call.

  After coming back from the Australia Hotel, the Daily Mirror guest reporter had spent the night making notes. She and her friends had shared a hilarious night, watching as the minions had descended on the extravagant banquet and free champagne like a plague of locusts, especially once it was known the mysterious bride was not coming.

  She had a chat with one of the bridesmaids and gleaned some details of what had occurred in Mrs Livesey’s flat earlier that afternoon, and was amused when the little flowergirl in her pink dress and silver slippers had crawled under the table and fallen sound asleep.

  She sat thinking about the woman she had interviewed, and her supposed family back in England. She’d ask her newspaper editor about interviewing someone in England for their comment on the extraordinary woman. She felt sure there was much more to Mrs Livesey than anyone had suspected.

  On Monday morning Mac went to the local police station. All through the previous days, he and the others in the wedding party had been harassed by reporters. No, they hadn’t heard from Mrs Livesey, and frankly didn’t want to.

  Later that Monday morning, two police officers arrived at Number 1 Cumberland Court to see the caretaker removing Mrs Livesey’s nameplate from the list of tenants at the entrance to the building. They made their way up the stairs, into the foyer, and knocked on her door.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked an uncertain female voice on the other side.

  ‘Police,’ they replied.

  Joyce opened the door warily. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘We would like to speak to a Mrs Ethel Livesey,’ explained one officer to the young woman before them.

  Joyce sighed and opened the door wider. ‘You’d better come in then.’

  The police walked in and stood looking around the lounge area as Joyce slowly closed the door.

  ‘She is not here I’m afraid.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Oh sorry, I’m her private secretary,’ she said. ‘Or was.’

  ‘I see,’ the officer said, bringing out a notepad. ‘And do you know where Mrs Livesey is now? We would like to talk with her.’

  Joyce shook her head. ‘No, I am sorry, I don’t know exactly—but she did leave me a note.’ Making her way to the desk, she rifled through some papers, pulled out a small note written on cream bond paper, and handed it to the police. ‘I’m just sorting through all of this paperwork, but I’m not sure where to send it, or what to do,’ she reflected uncertainly. ‘She says she is going to Melbourne,’ she added as they read the note.

  ‘Did she take anything with her?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Some suitcases, hatboxes, and a few of the letters from wellwishers, as far as I can see,’ Joyce replied, looking at the overflowing pile of wedding presents on the dining-room table. ‘I guess I had best return those,’ she added quietly.

  ‘And what do you know of Mrs Livesey?’ asked one of the officers.

  ‘What I thought I knew seems to be untrue … I thought I knew everything, but it appears I didn’t—nobody does.’

  Ethel had hired a private car to pick her up in Edgecliff before daybreak on the Sunday morning. She had the driver take her to the railway station at Moss Vale, 90 miles south of Sydney, where she told him she would connect with the Sydney–Melbourne train.

  The driver duly dropped her at the station, then helped unload her bags, six suitcases and two hatboxes, into the reception area.

  Ethel paid him handsomely in cash, thanked him, and reiterated that she would be pleased to see Melbourne again.

  Once he had driven away, she purchased a ticket back to Sydney.

  26

  POLICE WANT TO QUESTION HEIRESS

  At Sydney’s Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), a warrant arrived from South Australia for Mrs Florence Elizabeth Ethel Livesey, alias Gardiner, alias Anderson, alias Stevens, alias Lockwood, alias Pamela Pilkington, alias Gloria Grey. The warrant was for the twelve-year-old charge of fraud for the outstanding Coles & Hughes drapery case in Adelaide.

  The case was handed to Detective Constable Lance March and Constable Bill Bushby. DC March was soon inundated with information from Australia and overseas, and had also received a request to speak with Mrs Livesey from Adelaide detectives about the outstanding fraud charge, as well as another from a solicitor acting for Mr Livesey wishing to speak with her when she was found. It appeared that her wealth had been obtained through Mr Livesey, who apparently had not been her husband, but a scandalous de facto partner instead. Mrs Livesey wasn’t an heiress—that much had been established by some simple enquiries to her family back in Britain—and there were rumours of her being seen all over Australia.

  All of this information was doing DC Ma
rch’s head in. He needed to talk with the woman, and it was his job to find her.

  ‘We’ve had reports of her in Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney and even Brisbane,’ Constable Bushby said to his boss in exasperation, ‘and it’s been less than a week!’

  DC March was going through the papers on his desk. ‘The Brisbane sighting?’ he asked, without looking up.

  ‘Well, that was a bit of a red herring,’ the constable replied. ‘Mrs Livesey was booked on a train to north Queensland, leaving Brisbane two days ago, but when our colleagues up north went to the station, she wasn’t on the train.’

  ‘And what of that sighting in Sydney?’ asked DC March.

  Constable Bushby shuffled through his papers and pulled out the one he was looking for. ‘An acquaintance of Mrs Livesey states he saw her walking down George Street on Thursday,’ he read. ‘But she wouldn’t be that brazen, would she?’

  ‘Everything I’ve read so far about this woman makes me think she could be,’ replied DC March. ‘The fact is we just don’t know, but she would be hard to miss.’

  ‘Yeah, but the Vics were fooled, weren’t they?’ the constable replied. ‘They thought they had her at that swish St Kilda hotel, booked in under a false name, but it turned out to be another fat woman, using her own name! I wouldn’t want to be there when they explained why they thought she was Mrs Livesey.’

  Constable Bushby held up one of the newspapers towards his boss. ‘Did you see this one? This article reckons people should look out for her around butcher shops! Being that large, she’d have to eat a lot of meat!’ he laughed, but stopped when he saw his boss’s expression.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ DC March replied, looking at the vast array of newspapers piled in front of them, all filled with stories and speculation. ‘There is plenty of press coverage and interest,’ he said slowly, thoughtfully tapping the papers in front of him. ‘So let’s use them—let’s see if we can flush out Mrs Livesey, wherever she is hiding. My bet is she is still here somewhere.’