Good Murder

by Robert Gott

  His footsteps echoed as he walked towards me. The acoustics were not ideal for Shakespeare. He stopped, and turned his cap in his hands.

  ‘What if I told you I’ve changed my mind, that I thought you were innocent,’ he said.

  ‘I’d say that you’ve been listening to Annie, and that your dick and your brain have changed places. Or maybe this is a new tactic. You tell me you think I’m innocent so I let my guard down. Is this one of Conroy’s bright ideas? Get Power’s confidence. Catch him out. Whatever, I don’t believe you.’

  ‘All right. I can see that this looks transparent. I’m not denying that Conroy thinks we’ve got our man. That’s partly because he thinks you’re an arsehole. All I’m saying is that now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘About me being an arsehole, or innocent?’

  Without missing a beat, he said, ‘Innocent. If you killed Polly, there are too many things that don’t add up.’

  All I felt when I heard this was anger. Perhaps I should have been relieved, and grabbed him in a bear hug and told him all about the body of Mrs Drummond growing more putrid by the hour. I did not, however, believe him.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Stop fucking around with me. This innocent bullshit doesn’t wash. So Annie says I’m a nice guy. So what? You know nothing about me. Nothing. What’s my background? Huh? You have no idea. Maybe my past is strewn with corpses. Don’t stand there now and tell me that you suddenly have a gut feeling, or a cock feeling, that I didn’t do it. I don’t actually mind that much that you think I’m a murderer. I do mind that you think I’m a moron.’

  He looked down at the ground and fidgeted with his cap.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Will, Annie has never said that you were a nice guy. She does believe you’re not guilty, though, and she did try to convince me. It wasn’t her who changed my mind. It was Mrs Drummond.’

  That pulled me up short.

  ‘You spoke to her?’ I asked, knowing that the interview couldn’t have taken place recently.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Several times. She’s not a good witness, but she told me something that you didn’t and I wondered why. She said that the night you were there Polly and Fred had a fight, a “rip-snorter” she said. Punches, kicks, the works. Is that true?’

  ‘What if it is?’

  ‘I wondered why you didn’t mention it. All you said was that Fred was nuts. I thought Mrs Drummond might have been making it up, but she repeated it to me the next time I spoke to her. She said that you tried to break it up. Fred didn’t mention it when I interviewed him either, but of course he wouldn’t because it makes him look bad. I called on Mrs Drummond the day after Fred died, and she was rambling and said that he was being punished. I asked her what he was being punished for, but that was as much as I could get out of her. She just kept repeating, “punished … punished … punished.” Then she decided I was a papist, and starting screaming at me to get out of the house and that I would join her son in hell. I went back to my notes, and I couldn’t find anything in them about a fight in what you said, and I couldn’t figure out why until Annie said something offhand. She said that it was easy to embarrass you; that you blushed easily. It was a passing remark, but it occurred to me that the spectacle of a woman you were attracted to flailing about on the ground with her brother might be sufficiently mortifying to warrant omission. I don’t mean mortifying for you. I mean that you found it embarrassing for her. If you killed her, why would this small moment of shame still bother you enough to hide it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ I said, ‘if you believed any of what you have just said? It has such an authentic ring to it. Considered, logical, in some ways even incontrovertible. It had it all. The initial error, the regretful re-think, the revelation of innocence. I’m looking for a replacement actor. You’d be a shoe-in if you were interested.’

  ‘You’re letting your feelings for Annie cloud your judgement.’

  I betrayed the truth of his acuity by letting out an involuntary gasp.

  ‘I’m not a moron either, Will.’ He put on his cap and strode to the door of Wright’s Hall. Before he left he turned and said, ‘You were born in Ballarat. Your father was a banker, and died when you were sixteen years old. You have two younger brothers, and you had a sister who died when she was an infant. Your mother lives in Melbourne with your second-youngest brother, Brian, who is a teacher, and his wife. Your other brother, Fulton, is in the army and is currently posted to Darwin. Your mother’s name is Agnes. Her maiden name was Sinclair. Your past is not strewn with corpses.’

  With that he walked out, leaving behind the scent of Lifebuoy soap.

  ‘Arsehole,’ I said to the empty room.

  At 3.30 I was sitting in King’s Cafeteria drinking a lime milkshake and waiting for Shirley Moynahan. She still hadn’t shown up at four. I thought she must have lost her nerve, but she came in at five past four and apologised for being late. She had been dealing with a difficult customer who didn’t understand that she couldn’t just hand over coupons and be given underwear in return. This story might have been true, but she had also used the time to inexpertly apply make-up. For my benefit? Well, she wasn’t trying to impress the girl making the milkshakes.

  ‘I’m sorry about before,’ she said, ‘but I’ve been frightened of my own shadow ever since Polly was killed. I have nightmares.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘I sleep with the light on.’

  This shared intimacy, if it was intended to titillate, was wide of the mark. I could see no immediate advantage in sleeping with Shirley, and whoever eventually took up that challenge could only be aided and abetted by darkness.

  ‘Are you frightened now?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, I’m not. It was just the shock of seeing you.’ She leaned across the table and in a conspiratorial tone said, ‘I don’t believe that you killed Polly.’ She looked around, anxious that no one should overhear her. ‘I think Fred did, and then he killed himself in that plane.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I wasn’t until I met you. I’m sorry, but you had to be a suspect, Will.’ She called me “Will” with the casual air of a long-standing friend. The whole affair had become a movie for her. Who did she see herself as? Bette Davis? Barbara Stanwyck? More like Marie Dressler, I thought.

  ‘Now I know,’ she said, between slurps of her milkshake, ‘that my original suspicions about Fred are correct.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Polly was scared of him.’

  I had seen no evidence of this. Quite the contrary. Polly had launched herself at Fred with no hint of trepidation. I let Shirley go on without challenging her assertion.

  ‘Polly didn’t talk about it much. She said … she said …’ Here she faltered, as if what she was about to say might offend my delicate sensibilities.

  ‘She said that she had to lock her bedroom at night because Fred would, you know …’

  She flushed scarlet at the picture of incestuous lust she had painted.

  ‘He never did anything, but he tried once or twice.’

  ‘There’s another brother, isn’t there?’

  ‘Joe. He’s the oldest. He left a few years ago. I didn’t know him. Polly didn’t talk much about him.’

  ‘What about Mr Drummond, Polly’s father?’

  ‘There was an accident when we were about ten years old. Mr Drummond’s car hit a tree.’

  She was hiding something behind this curious construction. I guessed what it was.

  ‘Joe was driving, wasn’t he.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Just the way you said it, as though there was no driver at all. He would only have been … what? Fifteen or sixteen?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. I think he must be about thirty now.’

  I let this inf
ormation sink in. The Drummond family was unusually prone to dying violently.

  ‘Mrs Drummond went a bit batty after that. Joe had to be the man in the house. He left in the end.’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Tell me about Smelt.’

  ‘Jimmy? Why do you want to know about him?’

  I didn’t want to interfere with her certainty about Fred’s guilt and frighten her into silence. Even if Fred had killed Polly he certainly hadn’t cut his mother’s throat. Dead people have great difficulty holding things like knife handles.

  ‘It’s just that Polly seemed quite close to him.’

  Shirley laughed, and the laughter had the unfortunate effect of distorting rather than brightening her features.

  ‘She only went to that dinner with him to make Patrick jealous.’

  ‘Who’s Patrick?’

  What she said next really took me by surprise.

  ‘Patrick Lutteral. Her fiancé.’

  I cupped my chin in my hand and tried to disguise my interest.

  ‘She never mentioned him,’ I said, and remembered suddenly the deep kiss, with the promise of more, we had exchanged at her gate.

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t. It was sort of a secret. They didn’t want Mrs Drummond to find out. Pat’s a Catholic.’

  ‘Did Fred know?’

  ‘Yes. He hated Pat. Said he was a bludger and a coward. He’s a porter in the railway, and that’s a reserved industry. Not everyone can join up.’

  There was raw vehemence in her voice as she defended Patrick Lutteral. It blazed so suddenly that I suspected Shirley Moynahan of harbouring strong feelings about her best friend’s fiancé.

  ‘Does anyone else know about the engagement?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘A few people. Patrick’s mates, probably. He would have told them. Not his parents though. They wouldn’t want Pat marrying a Protestant.’

  ‘Do the police know?’

  The question unsettled her. She lowered her gaze for a moment, and then met my eyes directly.

  ‘I didn’t tell them. I suppose I lied to Sergeant Topaz.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him? It’s a fairly important piece of information.’

  ‘They’d been having rows, Pat and Polly. Polly wanted to get married right away so that she could move away from Fred and her mother. Pat wanted to wait. He wanted to soften up his parents, try to change their minds about marrying a non-Catholic. Polly said he was weak and that he should lead his own life, and who cares if they couldn’t get married in the Catholic Church. He wanted her to convert. She wouldn’t. Well, imagine her mother. She’d explode. So then she told him that if he didn’t love her enough to marry her no matter what, she’d just better look around for someone who did. That’s why she went to the dinner with Jimmy Smelt.’

  ‘And that’s why she went to the pictures with me.’

  ‘Yes, partly, but she really liked you. She told me. She came round after you’d been at the circus thing. She said you knew Cary Grant.’

  Shirley finished her milkshake and sucked up the dregs.

  ‘Did you think the police might suspect Patrick if you told them about the rows?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. And that wouldn’t be fair, because Patrick shouldn’t be a suspect.’

  Her tone was matter-of-fact — an unashamed declaration of Patrick Lutteral’s innocence. Such certainty could only arise from infatuation. I would have to meet this Lutteral and try to gauge for myself his potential for bloody violence.

  ‘Did Patrick know that Polly was going to the pictures with me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I told him.’

  She realised immediately that she had said something she would rather not have said.

  ‘I ran into him,’ she stammered, stumbling towards an explanation, ‘and he asked what Polly was doing and so I told him. What’s wrong with that?’

  This last was a little petulant, and it was obvious that she was lying. She hadn’t run into Patrick Lutteral by accident. She had sought him out and told him all that Polly had told her. It was mischievous. It wasn’t difficult to surmise that Shirley had entertained the hope that Patrick might throw Polly over and turn his gaze in her direction. She offered so much more than Polly. She was a virgin for a start. Had to be. She was Catholic, too, and she adored him.

  ‘Where can I meet Patrick?’

  ‘I don’t think you should talk to him about all this. He’s very upset. About Polly.’

  I spoke to her firmly.

  ‘Would you rather the police spoke to him? I’m sorry, Shirley, but I have to speak to him. He might know something that will help me.’

  She was quiet for a moment, turning over in her mind which way to play this. She must have known that now I had Patrick’s name and occupation it would be a simple matter to find him. If I was going to talk to Patrick, she wanted to be there.

  ‘All right,’ she said, and I sensed that I had gone down in her estimation by forcing her into this position. She agreed to bring Patrick to the side door of St Mary’s Church in Adelaide Street at 6.00 pm the following day.

  Next day’s rehearsal was interrupted by the arrival of a policeman I had not seen before. He was a man in his fifties, and he wore no stripes on his sleeve. To still be a constable so late in life spoke volumes about what happens when low intelligence meets lack of ambition. He was bald, or nearly so, and had skin as tanned as leather. His pate was dotted all over with beads of sweat which he mopped constantly.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Conroy wants to see William Power at the station,’ he wheezed.

  ‘And you are?’ I asked imperiously.

  ‘Constable Valentine.’ He grinned idiotically. ‘I’m to escort you.’

  Sending the station’s lowest-ranking and most ostentatiously unimpressive officer was Conroy’s less-than-subtle reminder of his low opinion of me. It wasn’t Valentine’s fault that he was half-witted — he’d probably been dropped on his head as an infant — so I resisted the temptation and refrained from taking the mickey out of him on our way to the station. In fact, Constable Valentine was agreeable company. Despite having a catalogue of reasons not to be, he was a happy man, and his happiness placed him beyond the reach of parody.

  When we reached the police station Conroy was unable to see me immediately. I’d expected this and was determined not to be annoyed by it. Conroy would get no satisfaction from me. He would be shown that my patience was inexhaustible, and that if he thought he could break me in this way he had another think coming. I occupied my time by quietly singing ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ over and over again, until the constable behind the desk asked me to desist. I declined.

  ‘Think of it as singing to keep all our spirits up,’ I said, and crooned, ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see,’ for the umpteenth time. Conroy passed through the outer office where I was sitting and did not acknowledge me. He spoke loudly to the desk clerk. I closed my eyes and raised the volume of my melodious rendition, and gave no indication that I was aware of his presence.

  ‘He won’t shut up singing that fucking song,’ said the desk clerk.

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Conroy said, ‘except a sound like there’s something wrong with the drains.’

  He left and didn’t return for half an hour. He then asked me the same questions he had asked previously. I gave him the same answers, but without rancour and with a considered air as if it was almost a pleasure to provide him with the information he sought.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m badgering you,’ he said snidely.

  ‘Not at all. It is one’s civic duty to assist the police, and I am pleased to perform that duty when called upon to do so. Please don’t hesitate to call me back if you think of any new questions or if there is anything you ha
ven’t understood.’

  His eye quivered in its socket as if my words were an electric prod touching the vulnerable white.

  ‘You can go,’ he said, and I admired his measured tone.

  There was no point returning to Wright’s Hall now. The cast would have left. It was almost five-thirty. Shirley and Patrick were due at St Mary’s at six. I could use the half hour to explore the church.

  The front entrance to St Mary’s was set well back from Adelaide Street. The façade was simple, with a stained-glass window set above a rather severe gabled doorway. Decorative elements on the exterior were few, which is why the unecclesiastical figure of a cockerel perched atop the roof drew the eye. Two women emerged from the church, chattering and laughing. They paid scant attention to me. They were followed by Shirley Moynahan and a young man, who, when he saw me, stopped Shirley and lifted his chin in my direction.

  My first impression of Patrick Lutteral was that Polly would have had him for breakfast. He was timid. He was good looking I suppose, but they were the soft, half-formed good looks of a boy, even though he must have been twenty. His reddish-blond hair was straight and combed neatly away from his face with the squeaky precision of an altar boy. I would not have been in the least surprised to learn that his mother had combed it for him before he left the house. His mouth was full and sensual, and it made me slightly nauseous to think that it had visited Polly’s lips, just as mine had. Shirley’s demeanour in his company confirmed my suspicions about her feelings for him. Perhaps she wasn’t wrong to have hopes in relation to this young man. He might be persuaded that her constancy and piety were adequate substitutes for the pleasures of the flesh.

  In the few seconds it took for them to reach me, I concluded that Patrick Lutteral would face two choices in his life — marriage to Shirley Moynahan and their consequent dry, joyless and procreative couplings, or the priesthood, where his boyish, rosy-hued face would decline into the jowly visage of a middle-aged monsignor, his cheeks florid with exploded capillaries and his eyes deadened by envy of the sad and harmless sexual misdemeanours of his dull parishioners.