The Holiday Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘How could we, sir? We didn’t even know Jones existed.’

  Titus ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

  ‘Yes, but in concentrating on the dead in this case, we missed the importance of the living, and now Tom and Mary …’ He stopped himself. ‘Go home, Sergeant, and get some sleep.’

  -21-

  Ptolemy, Fred, Frank, and Mark sat in Clarry’s café. Frank and Mark were drunk, and they weren’t happy when Clarry told them there was no alcohol on the premises. This wasn’t true, as it happened. There were a couple of bottles of beer out the back, but Clarry had decided that he’d had enough of supplying these people with free booze. If it had been just Jones and Fred, he’d have produced the beer, but he’d be damned if he’d give it away to Frank and that blond moron, Mark.

  Clarry had been in his café since ten o’clock, hoping that Jones would see in the New Year there. Jones and his mates had turned up at 12.30, when Clarry had been about to leave. Despite his admiration for Jones, it still irked him that he seemed to expect that Clarry’s café would be at his disposal at all hours, and without notice. And he never expressed any gratitude. This time, though, Clarry’s irritation was instantly quelled when Jones put his arm around his shoulder and said, ‘Tonight is a big night, Clarry. We make a big noise tonight, and you’re a part of it.’

  Clarry was pleased, but his pleasure was diminished somewhat by the presence of Frank and Mark. Before he lost his nerve, he took the flyer from his pocket and put it on the table in front of them.

  ‘A woman copper showed me this, this arvo. She’d been showing it around to shopkeepers.’

  Jones looked at it.

  ‘This arvo?’

  ‘Yeah, about five o’clock. She said this person had been seen in the area and that he might be able to help with their enquiries. She didn’t say what the enquiries were about.’

  Jones and the others seemed surprisingly unconcerned to Clarry.

  ‘Sable?’ Fred asked.

  Jones shook his head.

  ‘Maybe that actor. He saw me at the Windsor. I almost had him. That’ll make dealing with him a double pleasure.’

  Clarry had no idea what they were talking about. It was clear to him, though, that he could forget his fantasy of implicating Mark in some sort of betrayal of Jones.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jones said, and pushed the sketch away. ‘Something like this would’ve been all over town tomorrow anyway, which is why we make our move tonight — the first of January 1944.’ He looked at each of the men in turn. ‘The first of January 1944. This will be our home-grown Kristallnacht.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Clarry asked. Mark giggled at his ignorance, and Clarry wondered if he could find a way to kill him that night — or morning, as it now was.

  ‘Kristallnacht was the night Germany knew that the Third Reich had begun,’ Jones said. ‘It was back in 1938. There wasn’t a Jew in Germany who felt safe after that. They were all on notice, and the people loved the Fuhrer for it.’

  Clarry didn’t press for further details. Whatever had happened on this Kristallnacht, clearly it involved Jews, and Jones’s enthusiasm suggested that it’d been good for the Fuhrer and bad for the Jews. In a rush of blood he blurted out, ‘I killed a Jew on Wednesday night, in Toorak.’

  Mark laughed, and Frank joined in. The laughter became infectious, until they were all doing it. Clarry’s face turned red with a mixture of embarrassment and rage.

  ‘I fuckin’ did! I told Ptolemy already!’

  The laughter subsided, and Jones said nothing. No one asked Clarry for any details. Whether his claim was true or not was of no interest to them. All Clarry’s actions were inconsequential because Clarry was inconsequential. He realised that this was how he was seen, and how he’d always be seen, and the realisation hit him with enough force to propel him almost involuntarily away from the table and back behind the counter, where he watched the four men with mounting disgust. Only his feelings about Jones remained unchanged. Jones wouldn’t have laughed if it weren’t for the others. Jones called Clarry back to the table.

  ‘You’re part of this, mate. I’ve got instructions for you.’

  That was all it took. Ptolemy Jones called Clarry ‘mate’, and Clarry came back to the table.

  ‘After tonight,’ Jones said, ‘the government will know that Our Nation is a force to be reckoned with, and the momentum will carry us eventually to the point where we’re a viable, alternative government. This can happen.’ As he said this, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the postcard of the painting, In the Beginning Was the Word. He carried this with him everywhere now. He placed it reverently on the table, and everyone leaned in to look at it. ‘This will happen.’

  He let that sink in. Fred smiled — it was the first time that Clarry had seen a change in his expression.

  ‘No deaths tonight,’ Jones said. ‘I don’t want any bodies.’

  Mark looked disappointed.

  ‘The synagogue in St Kilda Road will be torched tonight.’

  Mark grinned.

  ‘That’s near where I killed the Jew,’ Clarry said.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Fred said.

  ‘The synagogue will light up the sky,’ Jones said. ‘And, on top of that, we’ll deal with the purveyors of propaganda filth called The Red Mask. It’s a sink of lesbians and homosexuals, and it spreads vicious lies about National Socialism all over this country. We’re going to shut it down.’

  He took two pieces of paper from his pocket. He handed one to Mark, and one to Frank.

  ‘The lesbians who run the show live there,’ he said, as Mark read the address. ‘You and Clarry are to go there now, and let them know that their perversion is unacceptable. It has no place in a clean world. How you do that is up to you, but I don’t want them dead. You got that, Clarry? If Mark gets a little over-enthusiastic, your job is to stop him. Mark can’t help himself sometimes. When you’re done there, I want you to torch the synagogue. There’ll be real fireworks.’

  Mark chortled happily, and his hand went automatically to his groin, where he unselfconsciously moved his tumescing cock into a more comfortable position.

  ‘Frank, you’ll be on your own. You won’t need any help. That’s the address of an actor, a filthy queer by the name of Jack Ables. Women reckon he’s good-looking. When you’ve finished with him, he won’t be good-looking anymore.’

  Frank nodded and pulled a razor from his pocket.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘he won’t be good-looking anymore.’

  ‘Fred and I have got an appointment with a copper, only he doesn’t know it. ‘Sergeant Joe Sable,’ Fred said. ‘And, best of all, he’s a Jew boy.’

  Jones placed both hands on the table, and pushed himself to his feet.

  ‘We’ll meet here tomorrow afternoon.’ He paused, and then barked, with a fierceness that made Clarry jump, ‘Zieg Heil!’ and delivered a Nazi salute. Everyone stood and returned it. It was the first time that Clarry had performed the salute. It felt good to him, despite the rank sweat that drifted from Mark’s armpit when he shot his hand skywards.

  After Joe Sable left Inspector Lambert’s office, Titus paced the room. Nothing about this investigation had been satisfactory. The Quinn family had few connections that were useful. John Quinn had had acquaintances — clubmen who rarely, if ever, visited the house — but no close friends, apart from his mistress, and she was beyond the reach of Homicide. His closest relationship had been with a priest who, if he’d learned anything in the confessional, wasn’t going to break its seal. The son, Xavier Quinn, had had no friends at all. He’d been unstable and, Titus thought, if he hadn’t been murdered, he would quite probably have taken his own life at some point. When compared to her father and brother, Mary Quinn was a paragon of common sense and healthy socialisation, although there wasn’t much
that was healthy about her hatred of her father. At least that hatred was explicable, rooted as it was in John Quinn’s adultery, and in the premature and miserable death of Mary’s mother.

  In despair, Titus thought they were too late, that they’d missed something which would have exposed Ptolemy Jones earlier. He felt no satisfaction in knowing that his instinct about the motive being personal, rather than political, had been correct. He wasn’t even sure of that yet; and anyway, that instinct had produced no results, had uncovered nothing. Whatever the outcome of this investigation might be, Titus would feel that he’d failed. And if Tom Mackenzie became another victim, the depth of Maude’s grief would be unbearable.

  The telephone rang. It was the sergeant of police at Daylesford, reporting that Mitchell Magill and Peggy Montford were in the Daylesford watch house, and that Magill wasn’t a happy man. There’d been no one else at Candlebark Hill when the sergeant and his constable had knocked on the door at 12.30am. He would have appreciated it, he said, if they’d been told to expect to find the suspects in the nuddy. Magill, as a protest against what he called unwarranted harassment, had refused to get dressed, and consequently was sitting in his cell stark naked. His companion, Peggy Montford, had been more cooperative; she was fully clothed. Magill had seemed genuinely surprised when the sergeant had informed him of the charges that might be laid against him — being an accessory to rape, assault, and possibly murder. He and Miss Montford had been visiting friends in Castlemaine for the last couple of days, and had arrived back that night, New Year’s Eve. Who, Magill wanted to know, had been raped and assaulted?

  ‘I told him to put a plug in it and that he’d find out soon enough. I think he twigged that I was just about as much in the dark as he claimed to be.’

  ‘I’ll send someone to collect the two of them tomorrow, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’ll have to charge him with something.’

  ‘Charge him with indecent exposure, Sergeant. Just don’t let him go.’

  Clarry and Mark said nothing to each other as they walked towards the Manchester Unity Building. Neither of them was pleased to be in the other’s company.

  ‘Listen, mate, I’ll decide when I’ve taught these bitches a lesson,’ Mark said abruptly. ‘If you try to stop me, I’ll push your balls up inside your body. Got that?’

  ‘Mr Jones said …’

  ‘I didn’t hear him say anything, and neither did you. I’ll decide when I’ve had enough fun.’

  Clarry remained silent. He had no weapons, and he didn’t know what Mark was carrying. There’d be knives in this flat they were going to — a nice, sharp one of those would sink smoothly into Mark’s fat neck. But how would he get rid of Mark’s huge body? It was unrealistic to imagine he could do it and get away with it. Still, it was pleasant to think about, and it took Clarry’s mind off the task at hand.

  Mark had already decided what he was going to do. He’d go to the flat with this Clarry turd, but he wasn’t walking back with him. No fuckin’ way. He’d find a dark alley when they’d finished, and then kick the shit out of him. Stomp him to death, and torch the synagogue on his own. He’d tell Jones that Clarry had come on to him, that he’d tried to touch him up.

  It was close to 2.00am. Melbourne’s streets were empty — whatever celebrations had taken place, they were long since over, and people had gone home — and there was no one in the foyer of the Manchester Unity Building. They got into the lift, and Clarry immediately felt intimidated by its stylish and expensive finish. Mark hoiked up a gobbet of phlegm and spat it against a wall, where it slid towards the floor. He pushed the button for the level they wanted. The smell that came off Mark was so sour and rank in the confined space of the lift that Clarry held his breath. They stepped into the corridor, and found the flat that corresponded to the number on the piece of paper that Jones had given Mark. Clarry put his ear to the door, but Mark pushed him aside and hammered on it.

  ‘Police! Open up!’ They waited.

  Mark hammered on the door again, and tried the handle. Clarry’s guts churned with fear — and something else, very like excitement. As adrenalin began to pulse through him, Clarry thought that perhaps Mark was a useful bloke after all. Maybe he’d learn a thing or two by watching how Mark dealt with these two disgusting women.

  ‘Is that you, Inspector Lambert?’

  The female voice didn’t sound timid.

  ‘Yes,’ Mark said. He listened for the sound of the lock being turned, and as soon as he heard it, he pushed the door open and shouldered his way into the flat.

  Constance Thorpe was knocked to the floor by the force of the door. When Clarry came in behind Mark, he found him standing astride a crumpled pile of silk dressing gown and pyjamas. The pile moved as Constance tried to stand up. She was dazed from the fall, and her eyes hadn’t yet become accustomed to the bright hall-light. She could make no sense of what had just happened. If she felt anything, it was embarrassment that she’d fallen over in front of Inspector Lambert. She was about to speak when Mark’s boot came down on her sternum, and her head crashed into the floor again.

  ‘You get the other one,’ Mark said, ‘and bring her here.’

  As he spoke, he unbuckled his belt and worked his trousers down around his knees.

  ‘We’re goin’ to take this nice and slow,’ he said. ‘At first.’

  Clarry moved past Mark, noticing in spite of himself that Mark’s erection was unimpressive. The woman’s face showed no fear yet, just incomprehension. That would change. These were rich people, Clarry thought, as he looked around the lounge room. They had good furniture. There was some small stuff, knick-knacks, which he could steal. Some of it looked valuable, like it was made out of silver. Then he heard the woman say, ‘No,’ and he turned to see Mark pulling at her clothes, tearing the fabric away from her body. He should have taken his trousers off; they were hampering his movements. He clawed at her flimsy nightdress with mounting frenzy. Clarry wanted to watch him fuck her, but he had to get the other lesbian out of the bedroom first.

  He turned and took a step towards the corridor that led away from the lounge room. A young woman stood there, and Clarry smiled at her. For some reason — perhaps it was the dim light in that part of the flat — he didn’t immediately notice that she was holding a gun. In the split second between the flash of the gun firing and the crashing of the bullet into his chest, Clarry had no time to understand that this was the moment of his death. He fell to the floor, and Dora Mansfield calmly stepped past him to where she could see Mark clumsily straddling Constance. He was trying to stand, and was pulling his trousers up over his knees. His head was bent to the task as Dora fired a shot that tore into the top of his skull. She didn’t see his idiot face until after he was dead.

  Constance crawled away from his heavy body, and Dora embraced her.

  ‘He didn’t manage to get it in,’ Constance said with steely calm. ‘He didn’t manage to rape me.’

  ‘I know, Dora said. ‘I know, darling.’

  It took Frank more than an hour to walk from Clarry’s café to Jack Ables’ house in North Melbourne. It was a small place, with a large garden, and the garden had several people in it. From the general level of noise coming from the house, it was obvious that Ables’ New Year’s Eve party was still going strong. This was a problem for Frank, because he didn’t know what Ables looked like. He’d been expecting to find him home alone. Frank stood in the portico of the church opposite and thought about what to do. After half an hour, he decided that there was no point in hanging around. The party would go on until after dawn, and Frank didn’t have the patience to wait it out. Jones wouldn’t be happy, but that was too bad. Frank headed back to his room in Fitzroy. Ables could wait.

  When Joe Sable got home, he sat for a while trying to read. He wasn’t tired, and his mind was racing. Images from the film intruded on his thoughts, and they agitated him so much that h
e began pacing the room. Where were Mary Quinn and Tom Mackenzie right now? The question made him feel ill. Returning home had been a mistake. Even though he and his colleagues were all now waiting for information they could act on, Joe decided to go back to Russell Street. There, at least, he would feel useful.

  The jangle of the telephone interrupted his ruminations. It was Inspector Lambert, with the news that Mitchell Magill and Peggy Montford were in custody in Daylesford, and that there was no one else at Candlebark Hill. He told Joe that Magill claimed to have been in Castlemaine for the last couple of days and had no knowledge of crimes committed on his property. They’d know more when Magill arrived in Melbourne in a few hours’ time.

  ‘Should we telephone Constable Lord, sir?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. Constable Lord is no doubt sound asleep, as are her mother and uncle. Nothing would be gained by disturbing them, and it would be useful if one of us had a clear head in the morning — later in the morning. We’re closing in on this Jones person, Sergeant.’

  ‘I hope we get to Miss Quinn and Tom in time, sir.’

  ‘I think we should prepare ourselves for the worst on that score. Two living victims would be inconvenient for Jones — too hard to handle.’

  Joe was about to answer when there was a knock on his door.

  ‘There’s someone at the door, sir.’

  ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning. Are you expecting anyone?’

  ‘No, sir. Perhaps Constable Lord …’

  ‘Be careful, Sergeant. Don’t hang up the telephone.’

  Joe put the receiver on the table.

  ‘Yes?’ he called.

  There was no verbal reply, only a gentle knocking once again.

  ‘Who is it?’