by Robert Gott
‘How do you feel about nudists?’
If the police commissioner were ever to discover that Maude Lambert was regularly being given access to material that wasn’t for public consumption, Titus would lose his job. Even so, it was a risk he was prepared to take. He didn’t think of it as his job — it was their job.
Titus left Maude alone in his office with Martin Serong’s ghastly photographs, and then sat at Joe Sable’s desk and waited. He hadn’t yet summoned Constable Lord from her usual post downstairs, so there was no risk that Maude would be interrupted. Not surprisingly, she didn’t linger over the photographs. When she emerged, her face was drained of colour.
‘You have to catch this monster,’ was all she said.
Titus nodded.
‘I knew the photographs would be terrible, Titus, but I had no idea how terrible. It’s hard to believe that one human being could do that to another human being.’
‘What comes across most strongly, do you think?’
‘I don’t believe these killings have very much to do with revenge. I think the motive is pleasure, and I’m worried now that you’ll only catch him by accident, or by good luck.’
‘You think Australia First is a red herring?’
‘I do. You think so, too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but I know I’m missing something. You’re right about the pleasure taken by the killer, and I can’t make that fit with a political motive.’
‘Unless he’s a psychopath for hire, but there was something in the photograph of Xavier Quinn that makes me wonder about that. Who was he looking at?’
Titus’s face showed undisguised admiration for his wife.
‘Helen Lord asked me the same question. She’s certain there was a second person in the room.’
‘I agree with her, but would a hired killer bring a friend along? I imagine paying two people would increase the risk of discovery, wouldn’t it? Of course, an accomplice could always be disposed of.’
Maude let that observation sit for the moment it took Titus to catch up with her.
‘Sheila Draper?’ he asked.
‘These are outlandish crimes. Shouldn’t we entertain even the most outlandish possibilities? Did she have a motive for wanting to hurt the Quinns?’
‘John Quinn was good to her, especially financially.’
‘In small ways, maybe. Perhaps resentment about her circumstances outweighed her gratitude. Or perhaps there was a price to pay for John Quinn’s generosity. She could have hired someone who then didn’t trust her to keep quiet about it.’
‘You have a devious mind, Maude. I have to confess that that awful possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.’
‘I’m always happy to complicate things, Titus. And now I’m ready for lunch.’
There was a cafeteria in Russell Street, not far from police headquarters, that Titus frequented — not because it was any good, but because it was close. The owner was an Italian, and he and his wife had given up trying to convince their customers that Italian food, however remotely connected to the real thing, was edible. Economics had forced them to reproduce the dull, bland food that tasted familiar on the palates of their clientele. Shortages and rationing hadn’t improved matters at the Apollo.
Helen, Maude, and Titus took the last available table. Giorgio, the owner, came to them immediately. He looked harried. The last time Titus had eaten here, Giorgio had mentioned that he and his wife had been spat at in the street. There’d been a recent campaign demanding that all Italians be interned, and that their shops and businesses be turned over to decent Australians. There’d even been furious correspondence in the newspapers about ‘dagoes’ getting rich while Australian businesses struggled without their menfolk to run them. According to these patriots, buying anything from a dago was the same as buying something from the enemy. Part of the reason Titus came to the Apollo was to quietly reassure Giorgio and his wife that the police didn’t share the sentiments that had resulted in more than one broken window in Italian houses and businesses. He knew that Giorgio would never be entirely convinced that the police could be relied upon. In 1940, a baying mob had gathered in Exhibition Street and invaded shops and cafés, and smashed them up. The police had done little to prevent the vandalism or to prosecute the offenders.
Having spoken briefly to Giorgio, Titus did an appalling impression of someone who’d just remembered a prior engagement. He apologised to Giorgio, and to Maude and Helen, and left. The women ordered a pot of tea, and then vegetable soup. The vegetables, Giorgio said, were from his own garden.
‘Your husband is a very bad actor,’ Helen said.
Maude laughed. ‘Right now, he’ll be congratulating himself on a seamless exit.’
‘Is it normal practice for the inspector’s wife to interview members of his staff, Mrs Lambert?’
Maude wasn’t fazed by the sudden sharpness in Helen’s tone.
‘Has what is normal practice in the police force done you very many favours so far, Helen? And please, call me Maude. Mrs Lambert makes me feel very old.’
‘I’m not sure I like being auditioned in this way.’
‘You’re not being auditioned. You’ve already got the role.’
‘So why have we been so clumsily thrown together?’
Maude realised that anything other than the truth wouldn’t go down well with Helen. There was a risk that she’d bridle at any attempt to discuss her private life, but Maude was prepared to accept her response, whatever it was.
‘Titus knows next to nothing about you, apart from the fact that you’re a bloody good, instinctive detective. You should know, having been brought into Homicide, that he isn’t much interested in normal practice. He is, however, old-fashioned about some things, and he doesn’t feel comfortable asking you personal questions. I, on the other hand, am quite comfortable with invading people’s privacy — it’s not one of my best qualities, and it has got me into trouble in the past. Of course, you’re not obliged to answer any of my questions, which I’d originally intended to weave cleverly into our conversation.’
The soup arrived, and neither woman spoke as Giorgio fussed with the cutlery.
‘Vegetable soup,’ he said.
‘Minestrone,’ said Maude.
‘If I called it that, signora, no one would eat it.’
‘It smells delicious. Thank you.’
Giorgio withdrew.
‘Do you disapprove of a woman working in Homicide, Mrs Lam … Maude? Or of a woman being in the police force?’
‘The answer is “No” to both questions. Quite the contrary.’
‘And Inspector Lambert?’
‘That’s a strange question, considering that he took you into Homicide. Titus likes people who are good at what they do. A person’s sex doesn’t determine a person’s competence, but I know you’re surrounded by people in your line of work who think that it does. My husband isn’t one of those people. He didn’t ask you to join the investigation because he’d reached the bottom of the barrel.’
‘All right, I’ll put all my suspicions about this on hold. What’s your first question?’
‘What makes someone like you take a job and stick at it when every day she’s treated like dirt by oafs with half her intelligence?’
Helen looked up from her soup at Maude, and, to Maude’s relief, she smiled.
‘I was expecting something like, “Where were you born?” to start with.’
‘That’s probably on a file that Titus can read. This isn’t an interview you can fail. You’ve already succeeded. Why did you join the police force?’
‘I grew up in a police station, or next to one. My father was one of the local coppers in Broome. He was a good copper, but there were others there who weren’t. Even as a child, I knew that — I used to hear him and Mum talking. He died when I was fourteen.
He drowned at Cable Beach. There wasn’t anything suspicious about it, although, God knows, I’d love to blame the bastards he worked with. He was swimming with some mates. Mum and I were on the beach, but he went under before anyone realised he was in trouble. When they brought him back to the beach, he was covered in welts, and there were still some jellyfish tentacles sticking to him. The coroner said later that the poison must have been too much for him. He had a heart attack, and then he drowned.’
‘I’m so sorry. Were there just you and your mother?’
‘Yes. She took me to Perth, but she couldn’t find any work there, so we came here, to her brother’s house. He’s much older, and he lived on his own in a house that was much too big for one person. Mum became his housekeeper and general dogsbody, and he paid to send me to a decent school. I’m twenty-eight years old, and I still live with my mum and my uncle, who has never been anything but kind to me; I’m not married, and I joined the police force four years ago. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed it, because mostly I’ve been seen as little more than a secretary. Russell Street makes no distinction between fully sworn female officers and auxiliary staff. I’ve stuck at it because I see no reason why my uncle should have to go on supporting me when I’m perfectly capable of supporting myself.’
She paused. ‘Now my soup is cold.’
Clarry Brown hadn’t slept well — not because he felt any guilt about what he’d done, but because his body was alive with adrenalin. This feeling of elation lasted until well into the following morning. When he arrived at the café, he decided to spruce it up a little. He swept the floor, and was even cleaning the windows when Ptolemy Jones came in. He hadn’t spoken to Fred, and he wanted to know what had happened at the Jews’ house. Clarry was careful not to exaggerate his role or his actions — Jones would check his account against Fred’s anyway. He gave Fred full credit for directing things, and he admitted to having been afraid at first. He told Jones that it had felt good to swing the fence paling, and that afterwards he was proud of himself, and he was sure that he could do it again if necessary. Jones nodded solemnly and said, ‘Good, good,’ and Clarry felt absurdly happy.
‘There’ll be no meeting tonight, Clarry. Fred and I are going to Daylesford for a couple of days. There are people up there who could be useful to us.’
Clarry made a small noise to indicate his agreement, as if he were already one of Jones’s intimates. It had been a long time since he’d felt this good about himself.
The next day, he served two customers before 10.00am — an unheard-of rush. He’d seen neither man before, so they might or might not have been directed to the café by Jones. They ate his greasy mutton sandwiches without complaint, and didn’t speak any further to him. In fact, they barely spoke to each other.
-13-
Mary Quinn went into the studios at 3UZ, despite Constance having assured her that she could take all the time she needed before returning — another actress could read her lines until she felt able to rejoin the cast. But Mary wanted to work. What else was she going to do? She couldn’t just sit in her room at the Windsor and worry. The Red Mask was a life-saving distraction, she said. The other cast members knew that Mary had suffered a great tragedy, although the details were hazy. There’d been a small paragraph tucked away in the previous day’s Argus, but it gave little away beyond the fact that John Quinn and his son, Xavier, had been found dead in their house on Christmas Eve. It was Mary’s leading man, Jack Ables, who’d spotted it. It had been the subject of conversation before Mary arrived, but discretion descended upon them when she stepped into the studio.
The cast of The Red Mask was an unusually affable one. There were six of them: Mary Quinn; Jack Ables; the ingénue Annette Smith; a journeyman character actor, Wilson McCormick; and Andrew Harris, an actor with a vocal range that enabled him to play multiple roles, including completely convincing female ones. They were all grateful to be working and to have been granted exemption from war jobs. Animosities, so common among actors, had been suspended for the duration. Any resentment that Mary Quinn came from money was kept well hidden; and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she was untalented. She had earned her place in the cast.
Mary was immediately conscious of the atmosphere of studied normalcy, and put the cast out of their misery.
‘My father and my brother were murdered on Christmas Eve, and my best friend was murdered on Christmas night. I don’t know what’s happening or why.’
She began saying this matter-of-factly. There was a moment of silence after she’d spoken, and then she gulped a mouthful of air and began to sob. Jack Ables was the first to reach her, and he took her in his arms unselfconsciously. She clutched at his shirt. The others gathered around, eager to be included in the drama. Constance, who’d been in the production booth, hurried in to comfort her leading lady. A chair was brought over, and Mary was gently helped into it.
Constance felt torn between her sympathy for Mary’s distress and a guilty annoyance at the possibility that the recording might be held up. Mary had insisted on coming in, but what use was her presence if all it meant was disruption to an already-crowded schedule? 3UZ had put a lot of faith and money into The Red Mask. They wanted it to be a success nationally, and had therefore committed themselves to recording each episode. Acetate was expensive, so recording did not mean they had the luxury of making mistakes; the cast had been well drilled on the need to get it right the first time.
With two 15-minute episodes to be recorded each day, there was no time for discussions about the scripts. The actors simply spoke the words as written by Dora Mansfield, whatever they thought of them. The rehearsals, which were disciplined and focussed, were mainly technical — to get the sound effects right. They were managed by a man in his sixties named Mike, who worked in a corner of the studio with a range of objects that were a mix of the perfectly ordinary and the arcane; with these, he could reproduce anything from an explosion to a footfall. He saw his job as the equivalent of the percussionist in an orchestra.
Fortunately, Mary Quinn’s collapse didn’t last long. With the cast around her, she was acutely conscious of her need to get on with it and begin the recording. But she didn’t feel as well prepared as usual. She’d managed to read her scripts the previous evening, despite the shocking news about Sheila Draper. She hadn’t memorised them, though, which she liked to do. She thought radio actors who read their parts were lazy, and she could always tell when an actor was under-prepared.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Please, let’s start work.’
She stood up, smiled grimly, thanked Jack Ables for the use of his shoulder, assured Constance again that she was up to it, and took her position behind the microphone.
Afterwards, with two episodes of The Red Mask secured on acetate, everyone agreed that she’d been marvellous, a real trouper, and that work was the best thing, the only thing, to distract Mary from her almost unimaginable grief. Constance seemed not quite as effusive in her support, and later she would say to Dora that there might be something hard in Mary Quinn, something that compromised her ability to grieve.
It was close to seven o’clock when the cast of The Red Mask left the 3UZ studios. Jack Ables suggested to Mary that they have dinner at the Menzies Hotel. It was, he said, one of the last bastions of decent cooking in Melbourne, somehow managing to turn out respectable food despite the restrictions imposed by rationing and the austerity regulations. Mary hesitated, but agreed.
The maitre d’ at the Menzies made it his business to know who was who in Melbourne. He harboured fantasies that the Menzies was an outpost of the Dorchester or Claridges. Consequently, he recognised Mary Quinn from her picture on the cover of that week’s Listener-In. He knew Jack Ables, of course. Who wouldn’t recognise the handsome face that had been appearing on the cover of radio guides and in newspapers for a couple of years now? Jack Ables was the object of another of the maitre d’s fantasies — one he ke
pt very much to himself.
‘Good evening, Miss Quinn,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Mr Ables.’
Mary Quinn was surprised, and very pleased. This was the first time a perfect stranger had recognised her, and it gave her a lift. They were shown to a table in the crowded room. Like everywhere else in Melbourne where money mattered, American men in uniforms were prominent. Here, it was the officers. Their companions were either other officers or well-dressed women — a cut above the shop girls who enjoyed the attentions of GIs in the picture theatres. At a table close to where Jack and Mary had been seated, two women watched the room. Jack thought they might be prostitutes, although there was something rather clumsy about their predatory air. It was more likely that they were bored housewives who’d been successful in the past in picking up Yank brass in need of company.
Menus were brought to the table. Mary said that she didn’t feel up to unpicking the pretentious French, and that Jack could order for both of them. Neither of them felt like wine, which was just as well, given the narrowness of the choice and the ludicrous expense involved. Jack ran his eye over the menu. Hors d’oeuvres had been proscribed, and in order to bring everything in under five shillings, fare such as lobster wasn’t available.
Jack ordered Consommé Celestine and Lapin au Saupiquet.
‘The maitre d’ knew my name,’ Mary said. ‘How strange.’
‘You might have to get used to that, Mary. It looks like The Red Mask is going to run.’
‘What’s it’s like, Jack, to have people stare at you?’
‘They’re staring at us now. I think the maitre d’ has passed the word around.’
It was true that people were staring, although it was mostly the women, and they were staring mostly at Jack.
‘It really doesn’t happen that often,’ Jack said. ‘Sometimes after a promotion, but I think people are more familiar with my voice than with my face.’
Mary looked at his face, which she’d never examined closely before. It was familiar, because it had appeared so often in various publications. If Australia had a movie industry, she thought, that face would be staring down at audiences from the silver screen. Jack wasn’t conventionally handsome, and he gave every appearance of not being vain about his looks, although this might have been a conceit. He had beautiful eyes, which were blue and strangely faceted; Mary thought he resembled Richard Barthelmess. He wasn’t married, and there’d been no gossip about affairs, so she assumed he was queer, which was fine by her. She liked the company of homosexual men, although she harboured a secret contempt for them when the mood took her.