by Robert Gott
‘Miss Draper,’ he said. ‘If you wouldn’t mind accompanying Sergeant Sable to another room, he has some questions for you.’
Sheila Draper, who looked like she would startle easily, was startled.
‘It’s quite all right,’ Titus said. ‘It’s a normal part of the routine. I need to ask your friend Miss Quinn some questions as well.’
When Joe Sable and Sheila Draper left the room, Mary Quinn raised her head to reveal a face that looked familiar to Titus, despite the way it had been puffed up by her tears.
‘Do you feel able to answer some questions, Miss Quinn?’
‘Yes. I’m too exhausted to go on crying. Now I’m just sort of numb.’
‘You found both your brother and your father?’
‘Yes. I came home at about four o’clock. We only did one taping today, so I was able to leave early. I was going to listen to the show tonight with Daddy and Xavier.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Quinn, you’ll have to plug a few gaps for me.’
‘Of course. I’m an actress — not a profession that Daddy approved of. But I’m a good actress, and I’ve got a good part in a new radio serial on 3UZ. I was sure that when Daddy heard it, he’d realise that it wasn’t a grubby profession. Of course, he’d have hated the serial itself. It is awful stuff, really, but it’s going to be a success.’
‘The Red Mask, you mean?’
‘Yes. That’s it. Their advertising must be working.’
‘My wife is keen to hear it.’
‘It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s rousing enough. It’s all about dashing heroes, wicked Nazis, and damsels in distress, essentially. It starts tonight. Oh, I’ve already told you that, haven’t I?’
‘When was the last time you saw your father and brother?’
‘This morning. Ever since Mum died two years ago, we try to have breakfast together.’
‘Did either of them seem agitated?’
‘No, everything was perfectly normal. Xavier made some joke about my picture being on the cover of The Listener-In.’
Titus realised that this was why Mary Quinn’s face was familiar. The Listener-In sat next to his wireless at home.
‘I went off to 3UZ, recorded another episode of The Red Mask, and came home. I found Daddy first. When I came in I went up to the bathroom and …’ She stumbled at the memory of it. ‘… and then I ran through the house calling for Xavier. I don’t think I’ll ever get those awful sights out of my mind. I rang Sheila, and waited outside for her to arrive. I couldn’t bear to be in the house alone with, with …’
‘You were sure that body downstairs was your brother’s?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The face is covered with blood, and is swollen. Did you look closely at it?’
Mary Quinn’s hand flew to her throat.
‘I only glanced at it, from the doorway. I didn’t go all the way into the room, but I knew that it was Xavier. Do you think it might be someone else?’
‘I’m afraid he’ll have to be formally identified.’
‘But of course it’s Xavier. Who else could it be?’
‘We have to be sure.’
Titus wanted to be gentle with Mary Quinn, but something in him failed. She sat there before him, struggling to remain composed; she’d just been exposed to two horrifying murders. And yet Titus felt that he was observing the actress and not the woman. Perhaps this was her only defence against collapse, but Titus experienced a curious dampening of his sympathy for her. He didn’t for a moment think that she’d murdered her father and brother — whoever had done that had been physically powerful — but he didn’t feel that he wanted to protect her from the hideous circumstances of Xavier Quinn’s death.
‘You can wait until the body has been taken away and cleaned up, or you can help us now,’ he said, and immediately felt guilty when he saw that his callousness had struck her a like a slap. He waited. Mary Quinn rallied, and, with a small, exhausted vestige of defiance, told him that she would go into the drawing room and identify the body. Titus accompanied her into the corridor. There were two constables there now — one at the front door and one outside the drawing room.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Titus asked her.
‘Quite sure.’
Inside the room, Martin Serong was gathering together his equipment, preparatory to photographing the bathroom upstairs. Normally, Martin would have paused to make a pertinent observation to Titus, but Mary Quinn’s presence constrained him. He shot Titus the subtlest of puzzled glances, and Titus saw Martin’s disapproval in that glance. He was telling Titus that no one who didn’t have to should be made to look at what had become of Xavier Quinn. Titus was slightly peeved by the reproach. He’d square it with Martin later.
Mary stood pressed against the wall near the door, holding a handkerchief over her nose and keeping her eyes closed. Titus watched her as she tentatively opened her eyes and looked towards her brother. He knew that it was the body’s nakedness rather than the violence that had been done to it that might lead to his being criticised for forcing this viewing.
‘It’s Xavier,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I don’t need to see his face. There’s an appendix scar and that small birthmark on his hip. It’s him.’
She uttered a choked animal sound and left the room. Titus followed a moment later and found her standing in the hallway, her face in her hands, her body shaking. Neither he nor the constable was quick enough to catch her when she fell to the ground.
In the room where Joe Sable and Sheila Draper sat, a blowfly whined and threw itself against the window. It lowered the tone of an otherwise elegant dining room. A portrait of two children — Xavier and Mary Quinn, Joe surmised — hung above the fireplace. It wasn’t in pride of place, though; it was off to one side. From a large, framed print in the centre, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour gazed down upon a highly polished table where Joe Sable and Sheila Draper were sitting. Sheila’s hands were in her lap. She seemed composed, and began answering Joe’s questions without obfuscation. Of course, she hadn’t seen the bodies. Had she seen Xavier Quinn nailed to the drawing-room floor, her composure might not have been so steady.
‘Mary telephoned you at about four o’clock — is that right?’
‘Yes, she was distraught. At first I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was sobbing, and only half-words were coming out. Finally, she managed to ask me to come round right away. I live in rooms close by.’
‘You and Mary Quinn are close friends?’
‘The closest. We went to school together. The Quinns were very kind to me when my parents were killed a few years ago.’
‘Do you mind if I ask you what happened?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was a terrible time. We weren’t rich, Sergeant. My parents had scrimped and saved to send me to a good school. We didn’t own the house we lived in. Mr Quinn found rooms for me and helped with the rent for a while. He wouldn’t accept any payment.’
‘What line of work has Manpower put you in, Miss Draper?’
‘Manpower hasn’t got its fangs into me, Sergeant. I’m a tram conductress, and proud of it. It’s so normal now, I can’t believe the fuss that people made about it at first.’
‘I suppose people were just so used to men.’
‘Are there women policemen? That doesn’t sound right, does it?’
‘There are a few.’
‘I’m not brave enough to do a job like that.’
‘You must be pretty brave to get fares out of people on those crowded trams.’
Sheila Draper smiled at Joe. It occurred to him that her friendship, for anyone lucky enough to have it, would be a fine thing.
‘I have to ask you some difficult questions, Miss Draper. To s
tart with, when you came to the house, what did Mary tell you?’
‘She was waiting for me outside. She’d calmed down a little. She said that Mr. Quinn had taken his own life and that Xavier had been murdered.’
‘Did she describe what she’d seen?’
‘No. She said she couldn’t bring herself to, and besides, she said she’d only seen each body for a moment.’
‘Had she called the police?’
‘No. She’d been too distraught. I called them, probably at about 4.30. We’d gone into the house, into the living room. I telephoned from there.’
‘And you didn’t look in either of the rooms?’
‘No. I stayed with Mary until the police arrived.’
‘You knew the family well. Do you have any idea who would want to murder Xavier Quinn?’
‘None of this makes any sense to me, Sergeant. And I simply can’t believe that Mr. Quinn took his own life.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
Sheila pointed to the print above the fireplace.
‘You can’t have missed that,’ she said. ‘Mr. Quinn was a Catholic. It is inconceivable that he would risk eternal damnation by committing suicide.’
‘Were he and his son on good terms?’
Sheila looked at Joe and narrowed her eyes.
‘It would be presumptuous of me to judge their relationship, Sergeant.’
‘I wonder if, under the circumstances, you might be so presumptuous.’
‘There was some tension between them, but I imagine that’s normal for a father and son.’
‘What happened here is a very long way from normal, Miss Draper.’
Sheila thought about that for a moment.
‘I feel like I’m telling tales or gossiping.’
‘If you know anything that might shed some light on this, I don’t think Mr Quinn, or his son, would thank you for keeping it to yourself.’
A flush rose along Sheila Draper’s throat, betraying the fact that she’d been stung by this small rebuke.
‘I went out with Xavier a couple of times,’ she said. ‘It was earlier this year.’
‘How old was Xavier?’
‘He’s twenty.’
‘Had he joined up?’
Sheila shook her head.
‘No, he did try, but he wasn’t fit.’
‘Physically fit?’
‘No,’ Sheila said quietly. ‘There was nothing wrong with him physically.’
‘You said you went out with him a couple of times?’
‘He asked me. It was strange. He took me to church, to St Patrick’s. Each time, he was agitated after the Mass. He walked me home and didn’t say anything, but he was shaking with anger. He frightened me.’
‘Was he a violent man?’
‘Why do you want me to say terrible things about him?’
‘If the truth is terrible, Miss Draper, surely the lie that disguises it is more terrible.’
Even in the midst of this tense discussion, Joe Sable thought that Titus would have been impressed by this response. It had the desired effect on Sheila Draper.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’re right. This wasn’t a very happy household, Sergeant. Mr Quinn became quite distant after the death of his wife. He was always unfailingly polite, maybe kind in a way, but his withdrawal was hard on Mary and Xavier. He didn’t want Mary to become an actress; he thought the profession was only one step up from prostitution. They quarrelled about it, but he was never going to win that one. Mary was fiercely determined. I think, though, that it was Xavier who gave him the most trouble. Soon after his mother’s death — he’d just turned eighteen — he became a bit peculiar.’
‘Peculiar? You mean he was a fairy?’
Sheila Draper gave a sharp little intake of breath.
‘No, Sergeant, that’s not what I mean. Xavier was always a religious person. He entered a seminary, but he was too strange even for them, and they sent him home. He said he saw things. He called them ecstatic visions.’
‘Why did you step out with him?’
‘I suppose I thought I could help him. But I’m not a fool, Sergeant. Whatever was wrong with Xavier, I soon realised it would take a lot more than the love of a good woman to fix. As I said, he frightened me. I only saw him occasionally after our second outing. I think he spent most of his time in his room.’
She looked down at her hands. Joe Sable followed her gaze, half expecting to find her wringing them. They were still calmly placed, one on top of the other.
‘The truth of the matter is, Sergeant, that in all the time I’ve known the Quinn family, I’ve never had a real conversation with Xavier. Even when he took me to church, he barely spoke. I couldn’t tell you what his views were about anything, and I certainly couldn’t tell you who his friends were, or if he had any. I suppose that sounds odd.’
‘Not at all. It’s possible even for people who’ve been married for a lifetime to know practically nothing about each other.’
Sheila Draper leaned forward, and Joe felt a rush of sympathy from her. He blushed, suddenly aware that she supposed he’d been referring to his own parents. Titus would have been angered by this leak from his private life. In any investigation, distance between the questioner and the questioned always had to be maintained.
‘I was speaking generally,’ he said.
‘Yes. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.’
‘You’ve been most helpful, but I should point out that we may need to speak to you again.’
‘Mary’s going to spend the night with me. She couldn’t possibly sleep here.’
‘Of course,’ Joe said. ‘The house will have to be thoroughly searched, so there’ll be people here until morning.’
‘What a horrible way to spend Christmas Eve,’ Sheila said.
Titus and Joe stood in Xavier Quinn’s bedroom. Mary Quinn and Sheila Draper had been escorted to Sheila’s boarding house. Neither of them had objected to being accompanied by a policeman, although at first the suggestion had created a mild panic in Mary.
Xavier’s bedroom window was open. Mary confirmed later that he never closed it, choosing to mortify the flesh with both hot and cold air, depending on the season. The room was crowded with Catholic paraphernalia. There were rosaries, crucifixes, and a gallery of Sacred Hearts, Perpetual Succours, and unpleasant-looking saints, all of them looking smugly ecstatic in their martyrdom. The one thing that the room had going for it was its neatness: it was crowded, but well ordered.
‘This stuff would give me nightmares,’ Joe said. ‘No wonder he hallucinated.’
‘Whoever killed him was giving all this a bit of a nod, so we can probably assume it was someone who knew him.’
Xavier Quinn’s obsessive neatness was a gift for anyone searching his room. In no time at all, Titus discovered two diaries, each filled with pages of beautiful copperplate.
‘It’s Latin,’ he said. ‘Do you read Latin, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir. Latin isn’t big in Jewish families.’
‘Mine’s too rusty to be of use. This will have to be translated as quickly as possible.’
‘Mary Quinn might read Latin.’
‘She might, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to read these at this stage, would it?’
Titus kept his tone neutral. Nevertheless, Joe was acutely conscious of having been corrected again. It wasn’t that he particularly craved Inspector Lambert’s approval, but he hated his inexperience being so apparent. Although Titus had never expressed it explicitly, Joe was aware that he hadn’t been altogether happy about being landed with an apprentice. The recently formed Homicide Division was short-staffed, and Joe’s age would have precluded him from a promotion to it under normal circumstances. However, the war meant that there was no longe
r such a thing as ‘normal circumstances’.
Titus had never asked Joe why he was a policeman and not a soldier. Maude had wondered, though, soon after she’d met Joe, if it had anything to do with his being Jewish. Jewish refugees weren’t allowed to enlist, and she thought that this ludicrous lack of trust in their desire to combat the very regime that was slaughtering their families might have made Joe reluctant to deal with the military authorities. He wasn’t a refugee, of course, but he was Jewish, and perhaps he believed that as far as the army was concerned, this was a distinction without a difference. It had been she, in fact, who’d raised the issue with Titus. However, he didn’t think it was any of his business. The job in front of him was to turn a young man fresh from Detective Training School into a detective. This wasn’t going to be possible if Joe Sable had no talent for it. Despite what many in the force believed, Titus Lambert knew that detection depended on a finely tuned instinct rather than on well-honed skills. Skills could be acquired, but you either had the instinct or you lacked it — and if you lacked it, the best you could hope for was plodding competence.
‘This is interesting,’ Titus said. He showed Joe a magazine that had been under some clothing in a drawer. It had a pale-orange cover. There was no decoration on it, apart from a small triangle in which sat an illustration of a kookaburra. The rest of the cover was simply a table of contents. The Publicist, it proudly proclaimed, The Paper Loyal to Australia First.
‘That’s ringing a bell,’ Joe said. ‘Why?’
‘Read the contents.’
Joe took the magazine.
‘Australia and the Jews, Australia’s Pacific Strategy, The Refugee Threat, Jews and the Kimberleys. I’ve heard my father talk about this, but I’ve never actually seen a copy.’
‘The people involved in this rag were interned last year.’ Titus said. ‘I don’t know much about them. I think I recall Maude saying something about one of them being a Pankhurst. But the fact that Xavier Quinn had a copy might mean nothing, of course.’