by Robert Gott
She knocked gently, and called out, “Miss Draper?’ She could tell that the blackouts were still drawn because the small area of the room that she could see through the crack was in darkness. She pushed the door wide open, and was met with an unfamiliar and unpleasant smell. It was more than unpleasant. It was foul. She entered the room and was puzzled by the sight that greeted her. The chair, which normally faced towards the bay windows, had been turned around, and something was sitting in it. Mrs Watson had a strange impression of white flesh, which seemed to resolve itself into the naked body of a woman. What refused to make sense to the landlady was that there wasn’t a head on the shoulders. Mrs Watson took a step forward. She tried to scream, but the only sound she could make was a hoarse croak. In the lap of the white-fleshed creature, held by its dead, carefully positioned hands, was Sheila Draper’s head. The gaping wound between the shoulders was suddenly clear. Even as she tried to cry out, Mrs Watson’s eyes swept the room. There was so much blood everywhere, but Sheila Draper’s body had been wiped clean of it. It just sat there — pale, naked, and obscene.
-9-
Inspector Lambert stood in the door of Sheila Draper’s room while Martin Serong photographed the horror within. Each flash blasted Sheila Draper’s violated corpse with a savage, merciless light. Serong knew that his brutal illumination helped force murderers out of their dark holes, so he was never squeamish about ensuring that every tear in the flesh was documented. For him, the awful clarity of his images helped to protect a dead person’s rights. This applied even if, in life, the person had had little personal integrity. Murder always shifted the balance in favour of the corpse. Titus had discussed such matters with Martin Serong on several occasions.
There were no doubts about Sheila Draper’s integrity. Titus had liked her. She’d seemed an honourable person, and someone that Mary Quinn was fortunate to have had as a friend. Now she was dead, and the manner of her death was more disturbing to him than Xavier Quinn’s had been. He had no doubt that the same person was responsible. The level of the killer’s psychopathy was stunning, and terrifying. Titus didn’t let himself imagine what had happened to Sheila Draper before she died; the autopsy would reveal that in good time. For now, he examined as much of the room as he could without stepping in the blood that had been spilled, sprayed, and splashed with ferocious abandon. Whoever did this must have been covered in blood from head to foot. How had he left the house without being noticed?
Mrs Beryl Watson was sitting, ashen-faced and still shaking, in the kitchen of the boarding house. A cup of tea was untouched on the table. A policeman stood to one side of her, and Titus sat opposite.
‘Mrs Watson, I’m Inspector Lambert from Homicide.’
‘Homicide?’ she asked dully. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a department in the police force that investigates murders.’
Mrs Watson looked at Titus and began to cry. Her shoulders heaved, and her eyes and nose streamed. Titus stood up and opened drawers in the kitchen until he found a tea towel. He handed it to her gently and said, ‘It’s very important that you help us as much as you can, Mrs Watson.’
The landlady took the tea towel and wiped her face. She calmed herself down and picked up the teacup in a trembling hand. The tea must have gone cold, but she drank it anyway.
‘It’s just that I can’t get the sight of Miss Draper out of my head,’ she said.
‘I understand. No one should have to see what you saw, Mrs Watson. However, I need to ask you some questions, and I want you to concentrate on answering them. It will help push that image away.’
Mrs Watson, who had regained her composure, shivered, and said she was sure that it wouldn’t, but she’d answer the inspector’s questions as best she could.
‘When did you last see Miss Draper?’
‘Last night. Her friend, that actress, had left in the afternoon. I had a cup of tea with Sheila at about five o’clock. We don’t either of us do anything at Christmas. I used to when my Terry was alive, but he’s been gone ten years now. He couldn’t work after the last war. He was gassed, and he was never the same. We turned the house into a boarding house just to make ends meet. But we’ve always been lucky with our boarders. We’ve never had any bad ones, and Sheila Draper was one of the best.’
‘Was five o’clock the last time you saw her?’
‘No. It was eight o’clock. She knocked on my door, and we had a Christmas sherry. It must have been a gift at some stage, from Mr Quinn.’ She stopped suddenly and whispered, ‘Mr Quinn.’
‘Did Miss Draper …?’
‘She said that he was dead, and his son, too. Mary Quinn stayed here with Sheila on Christmas Eve. She said there’d been a terrible accident.’
Titus supposed that Sheila Draper had called the deaths an accident to stop Mrs Watson from panicking, although Mrs Watson didn’t exactly strike him as a panicker. She proved him right.
‘I didn’t believe there’d been an accident, Inspector. I knew that Sheila was trying to protect me until she could explain things properly. It was kind of her, but misguided. I didn’t ask any questions. I thought she might say something over the sherry, but perhaps she thought that Christmas night was the wrong time. At any rate, all we chatted about was Mary Quinn’s radio show. That seems odd now. Sheila said her good nights at about eight-thirty and went to her room. I settled down to read, and heard nothing until about ten, when I heard Sheila go up to the bathroom and run water for a bath. I was half dozing and I didn’t think anything of it, beyond briefly thinking that it was rather late to be having a bath. I fell asleep in my chair, woke at about three, and took myself off to bed.’
‘You heard no one enter the house, or leave it?’
‘No one.’
‘And this morning?’
‘I went to the bathroom at about eight. I like to bathe in the morning. The bath was clean, and I knew it would be. Sheila was always meticulous about that. She always left it spotless. Never a ring of soap scum. I wish the girls upstairs were as thoughtful. They comb their hair over the bath, and never think to wipe around it when they’re finished. I ran a bath — no more than we’re allowed, of course. I’d noticed that Sheila’s door was ajar, and it was still ajar when I returned to my room. I didn’t check it then because I assumed that she’d stepped out for a moment.’
‘Stepped out?’
‘Well, perhaps she was in the lavatory, or hanging up some clothes in the backyard. It didn’t strike me as unusual until I saw that it was still open several hours later. That’s when I found her.’
Mrs Watson struggled to maintain her composure, and by closing her eyes and breathing gently but deeply, in and then out, she managed it. Her late husband would have been proud of her, she thought.
Constable Helen Lord sat in Titus’s office, waiting for the inspector to return. He’d telephoned ahead and asked her to be there. Part of her worried that she’d done something wrong, or rather that Inspector Lambert thought that she’d done something wrong. She hated this feeling. So, as she sat there, the worry began to curdle into resentment. When Titus came in, the expression on her face, and her general demeanour, took him by surprise.
‘Are you all right, Constable?’
‘Perfectly, thank you.’ Her tone was unmistakably curt and insubordinate. Titus ignored it.
‘Homicide needs to call on your services again, I’m afraid.’
Helen Lord looked startled.
‘You look like you were expecting a reprimand, Constable. Did you misplace Sergeant Sable this morning?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good. How did it go?’
Helen’s face flushed a faint pink, embarrassed that her assumption about Inspector Lambert had been wrong.
‘It went very well, sir. Sergeant Sable is having his first ice-skating lesson right now.’
‘Exce
llent. You must be wondering what this is all about. I need your help, and you can’t help me unless you’re fully briefed. I should warn you that the crimes we’re investigating are very ugly, so after you’ve been briefed I’ll understand if you ask not to be involved.’
He gave her a moment to take this in.
‘That won’t happen,’ Helen said.
‘I want you to know you have the option, nonetheless.’
Inspector Lambert and Constable Lord walked through the front door of the Windsor Hotel into a world that was new to the policewoman. It was three o’clock, and in the dining room they could see American army officers having afternoon tea with elegantly dressed ladies. Helen thought that many of the officers looked frankly bored, and it was apparent from the expressions on the faces of many of the women that they were there as part of the war effort.
Mary Quinn had moved into her room barely half an hour before the police pair’s arrival. Nevertheless, Titus told the concierge that he and Constable Lord needed to speak with her immediately. Equally firmly, the concierge told Titus that he was under strict instructions that Miss Quinn was not to be disturbed. Helen was glad that she didn’t have to deal with this officious little man in a uniform. But Titus simply leaned across the desk and said, ‘You seem to be labouring under the illusion that what I just said was a request. You will ring Miss Quinn’s room, and you will tell her that Inspector Lambert and Constable Lord are on their way up. You will do that as a courtesy to Miss Quinn, and when you’ve done it, I will consider not getting Constable Lord here to arrest you for obstruction — as a courtesy to you. That uniform you’re wearing would get very grubby in a police cell.’
The concierge’s hauteur barely altered, but he rang through to Miss Quinn’s room and apologised for disturbing her.
‘There’s an Inspector Lamb-something who …’
‘Yes, send him up, please.’
Mary Quinn’s immediate willingness to accept this disturbance thawed the concierge a little.
‘Room 32,’ he told Titus. ‘It’s on the next floor. It will be faster to take the stairs. You understand, of course, that it’s my job to protect our guests from unwanted intrusions.’
‘Not from the police,’ Titus snapped.
They found Mary Quinn standing outside her room, farewelling two women, who she introduced as Constance Thorpe and Dora Mansfield. Titus thanked them for understanding the urgency of Mary Quinn’s need the previous evening, and, after a few more quick words, they left. The police officers followed Mary into the suite.
‘This is Constable Helen Lord,’ Titus said.
‘I didn’t know there were such things as policewomen,’ Mary said.
Titus saw no advantage in delaying what he had to say.
‘I’m afraid we’ve come to give you more bad news. Please, sit down.’
Mary’s hand flew to her mouth and she sat in an armchair.
‘Sheila Draper was murdered last night.’
Helen took a step forward to offer assistance. Mary’s eyes were fixed on Titus’s face. She shifted them to Helen’s face, and then back to Titus.
‘I’m sorry,’ Titus said. ‘There was no kind way to tell you that.’ As he spoke, he noticed that Helen Lord was waiting for a cue from him before she spoke. He was impressed. Most officers would have been tempted to say something, to offer some small gesture of comfort. Mary’s face contorted with disbelief.
‘What?’ she said, as if she hadn’t made out what Titus had said. He let the silence grow. Mary Quinn convulsed, vomited, and fell forward onto the floor.
‘I think you might be a natural,’ Peggy Montford said. She and Joe Sable were out in the middle of the rink. He’d begun by stumbling and falling, but flattered his teacher by quickly picking up what she taught him.
‘I’ve had lessons before,’ he said. ‘The teacher was hopeless. The way you do it is just so clear and simple.’
‘It’s really just about confidence and trust.’
He sensed that she was rather chuffed by his insistence that his progress was the result of her skills as a teacher, and not his aptitude as a pupil. After less than half an hour, Joe was skating with Peggy around the outside of the rink, maintaining a convincing tentativeness as he did so.
‘It’s hard on the ankles, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You need your own skates, and lots of practice.’
‘Helen will be impressed.’
‘Your girlfriend? I thought she was a bit hard on you, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s not as if she was any better than you were.’
‘May I call you Peggy? You know, when I first saw you this morning, you looked familiar to me. Have we met somewhere before?’
Peggy Montford laughed.
‘Joe, that’s the worst sort of line. Every Yank who comes in here says that.’
‘But I mean it, and I think I know where I’ve seen you. It was at a meeting, last year, in a hall in Collins Street.’
‘Oh?’
‘I was there to hear a bloke named … what was his name? ... It doesn’t matter. I was there to hear him speak, and you were there.’
‘Was I?’
‘He was great. I wish I could remember his name. He was starting a new political party — Australia First, it was called — and I liked what he had to say. There were people there booing him, I remember that. And I remember you, or am I barking up the wrong tree and making an idiot of myself?’
Peggy kept her voice neutral and light.
‘And was I booing?’
‘Oh no, you were clapping. I was clapping, too. What he said was really good — not the usual run-of-the-mill guff.’
Joe began to worry that he’d gone too far, too fast.
‘You’ve got a good memory for faces,’ she said.
‘Some faces. Striking ones.’
She laughed prettily.
‘To be honest, I remember you because you seemed to know the speaker quite well.’
Joe was taking a chance that Peggy Montford and Mitchell Magill would have acknowledged one another at the end of the meeting. From the briefing notes, he knew that she attended many of Magill’s meetings.
‘What was that bloke’s name? I’d like to hear him speak again some time. I’ve been checking the papers for notices, but there don’t seem to have been any recent meetings. He’s the only person I’ve ever heard who’s been brave enough to tell the truth about the Jews in this country. It was you there, wasn’t it? I’m suddenly worried that I’m speaking out of turn.’
‘Yes, it was me.’
Joe felt an adrenalin rush of elation. He’d found a way to Mitchell Magill — he was sure of it. To disguise his satisfaction, he allowed one skate to block the other, and he fell onto the ice. Peggy helped him up.
‘The man’s name is Mitchell Magill,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
A housemaid was cleaning the floor where Mary Quinn had been sick. The Windsor’s doctor had been called to examine Mary, who had by this time recovered enough to protest that a doctor wasn’t necessary. But Titus had insisted, and she had submitted.
Mary sat in a chair in the bedroom of her suite, having changed her clothes, her hands trembling slightly. The doctor diagnosed shock and offered her a sedative, which Mary refused. When he left, Mary turned to Titus.
‘Poor Sheila,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t her they wanted to kill, was it? It was me. Someone knew that I’d been staying there. Who’s doing this? Who’s doing this?’
‘We don’t know yet. Whoever this person is, Miss Quinn, he’s very, very dangerous.’
‘He’s killing everyone who’s close to me, until he gets to me. This is torture.’ She was trying to keep her hysteria under control. ‘You must have some idea, Inspector. You must. You have to stop them.’
; Titus looked at Helen. He wasn’t expecting her to say anything, but he wanted her to know that she had his confidence if she did want to speak. It turned out that Helen certainly did.
‘I hope you won’t think this question is impertinent, Miss Quinn,’ she said, ‘but is there anyone who hates you sufficiently to do these things to the people you love?’
Mary stared at her blankly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you had any threats made against you?’
‘Who would make threats against me?’
‘People in the public eye sometimes attract obsessed fans.’
‘But I’m not in the public eye. Not yet. The show’s only played once.’
‘Success creates envy, even among people you trust.’ Helen said. Titus could see what she was getting at — that the murderer had no relationship to the victims beyond their closeness to Mary. This was possible, but he felt instinctively that it was wrong.
‘You agree with me, then, that they might be trying to hurt me by hurting others — that they mightn’t want to physically hurt me, but go on hurting people around me?’
Titus heard the relief in her voice. She’d grasped this straw tenaciously. Constable Helen Lord was, he thought, a very smart woman. A hysterical Mary Quinn was of no use to them, and a danger to herself. Helen had offered her a scenario that was cold comfort, but it was a whole lot better than no comfort at all.
-10-
Ptolemy Jones sat down once again at a table in Clarry’s café, and Clarry put a cup of black tea in front of him. ‘On the house,’ he said, and withdrew to his position behind the counter, from where he watched the man warily. He’d been spooked by him the previous day and had hoped never to see him again. Now here he was, sitting there like a great cuckoo. Somehow, though, Clarry couldn’t take his eyes off him. Clarry pretended to read the Truth, but every few seconds he looked over at Jones. He emanated menace.