Good Murder

by Robert Gott

  ‘Must I? Fred was a possibility, but I thought at first that you were a better one, until more information came in. You were never a possibility for Mrs Drummond. That was way outside your pathological potential.’

  ‘You make that sound like an insult.’

  ‘That’s because you always put your ego before your common sense. Most people would be happy not to be called a psychopath. You feel slighted, as if a skill of yours is being impugned.’

  ‘Boys, boys,’ said Annie. ‘Let’s go and have a drink, for Christ’s sake.’

  Annie and Peter Topaz walked arm in arm. I fell back, but Annie looped her arm through mine and we walked thus, the three of us linked. Occasionally Annie threw her head back and released a peal of laughter. An observer might well have thought that we were a jaunty trio.

  The Ladies’ Lounge of the Royal Hotel was busy. Well-dressed women wearing clothes that fell far short of the austerity restrictions drank gin slings at two shillings a pop, while their husbands drank beer in the main bar. We sat at a table, and Topaz offered to pay for the first round.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Annie. ‘Let me. To celebrate.’

  ‘What are we celebrating?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t told you yet. I’ve got a job on 4MB. Advertisements and doing the Women’s Session in the morning.’ She dipped her chin and added, sotto voce, ‘It pays incredibly well and it’s only half an hour a day, so it won’t interfere with rehearsals.’

  I mustn’t have been smiling.

  ‘You’re not cross are you, Will? It just sort of fell in my lap. The producer was at dinner the other night, and we got talking and he said he needed an actress and that I’d be perfect, especially as people already know me. And just think, I’ll be Johnny-on-the-spot if anything comes up for you.’

  Topaz turned to me and said, ‘And if you fall over on radio, nobody can see you, so that’s got to be a good thing.’ He smiled broadly and slapped me on the back.

  ‘I’ll have a whiskey,’ I said, choosing the most expensive spirit from the list.

  ‘A pink lady for me,’ said Annie, and handed Topaz the money. He went to the bar to order.

  ‘When do you start?’ I asked, struggling to keep any peevishness out of my voice.

  ‘I’ve already recorded three commercials, and the first Ladies’ Session is next week. Do try to be good about it, Will. A girl needs an income.’

  ‘The company pays you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, but three pounds a week, Will. Really, it’s not a king’s ransom, is it?’

  ‘It’s all we can afford at the moment.’

  Topaz came back with the drinks. He had decided on a whiskey, too. He nodded to several women on his way across the room.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what shall we talk about?’

  ‘Anything except the war,’ said Annie. ‘It’s bad enough having to hear about it on the radio day in and day out.’

  Topaz reached across and clasped her hand.

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine. If he wasn’t, you would have heard.’

  ‘You’re sure who’s fine?’ I asked.

  ‘Annie’s brother, John. He’s flying with the RAF in England.’

  ‘Please,’ said Annie, ‘let’s talk about something else. We’re supposed to look like we’re enjoying ourselves.’

  I was frankly amazed by this little nugget of information. I had never thought of Annie in any sort of family context, but then I didn’t think that way about anybody in the company. I suppose they all had siblings tucked away somewhere.

  Topaz raised his glass in a toast and said, ‘To your new job.’

  I followed automatically, raised mine, and said graciously, ‘Yes, Annie. Well done.’

  It’s astonishing, when one recalls events, how momentous occurrences are set in motion by the smallest of actions. Whenever I now hear the clink of glasses, raised and touched in celebration, I associate it with the horrifying consequences of my meeting Mrs Charlotte Witherburn. I had just sipped my whiskey when a woman wearing an extremely well-cut outfit — it must have cost her at least 50 guineas, perhaps more — came to our table, leaned down, and kissed Topaz lightly on the cheek.

  ‘Thank you for speaking to Harry. I think things are better than they were.’

  ‘Let me know if they get worse.’

  Clearly there was an understanding between them to which we were not to be privy.

  ‘These are friends of mine,’ he said. ‘Annie Hudson and William Power. Mrs Charlotte Witherburn.’

  I stood up.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Miss Hudson, the actress. How lovely. And Mr Power. You’re with the circus, I think someone mentioned.’

  ‘No. I’m an actor. My company is in town preparing a play. Shakespeare.’

  ‘Bringing culture to the barbarians.’ Her mouth formed the arc of a smile. There was no laughter in her eyes, and I didn’t think there had been laughter there for a very long time. She looked in her late thirties, with dark hair carefully and artfully curled. Her skin was pale, but not pallid, simply protected from the devastating desiccation of the Queensland sun. She had once been very beautiful and, although she was still remarkable, there was something in her face suggestive of decline. There was a great sadness about her that I found intriguing and erotically charged.

  ‘Won’t you join us?’ I said.

  Our eyes met and I felt a kind of spasm, deep in my brain, almost like a short circuit. I stopped breathing.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt your conversation,’ she said, in a voice that had had money spent on it. ‘And I have left a friend at a table. Thank you, but I must go back to her.’

  Charlotte Witherburn returned to her table, but before she had sat down I had undergone a shattering transformation. When I now looked at Annie Hudson I saw a charming, amusing, rather coarse woman who bore a striking resemblance to Greer Garson, but who aroused nothing in me. Nothing. She was as sexless as a sister, her attractiveness noted, acknowledged, but disempowered. I did not now see Peter Topaz as a rival, but as a copper who was in the unfortunate position of having to publicly support a suspect he did not like. I experienced a rush of affection for him. It may have been the whiskey, which I had finished in one gulp.

  ‘Will, are you all right?’

  Annie’s voice called me back from the abstracted plateau of sudden infatuation to the reassuring banality of the Ladies’ Lounge of the Royal Hotel.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine.’

  We sat for an hour, chatting inanely but comfortably. Topaz asked about the company, how it worked, what plays we had performed. All the while I kept an eye on Charlotte Witherburn. When she and her companion got up to leave she looked across and waved a farewell.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked, and I could not entirely disguise the eagerness in my voice.

  ‘She’s married to Harry Witherburn.’

  ‘Should that mean something?’

  ‘Timber and sugar. He’s probably the richest man in Maryborough.’

  ‘She seems unhappy.’

  ‘She is unhappy.’

  That was as indiscreet as Topaz was prepared to be, while he was sober at any rate, although I couldn’t imagine that he would ever get so drunk that he would drop his guard.

  ‘I have to go,’ said Annie. ‘I’m recording this afternoon.’

  She kissed Topaz, patted my arm, and left, her departure watched by many pairs of eyes.

  ‘I think it’s time we were seen in a less salubrious pub,’ Topaz said. On our way out, he stopped at two tables and chatted briefly. At each of them he said, ‘This is a friend of mine, William Power.’

  At least two of the women raised their eyebrows in mild surprise, but shook my hand without compunction. As we set off for the Engineers’ Ar
ms in March Street, I said, ‘Listen, Peter. I want to apologise. I’ve been a prick.’

  ‘Is that the whiskey talking, Will?’

  ‘Fair go. I’ve only had two. I realised in there that you really were sticking your neck out for me and that there’s nothing in it for you.’

  ‘I’m not a knight in shining armour, Will. There’s plenty in it for me. Conroy’s transfer for one thing.’

  ‘Still, I am grateful. I know I don’t seem very grateful, but I am.’

  ‘I understand your distrust, Will. I’ve never had someone accuse me of being a murderer to my face, but if I had, I wouldn’t take to it too kindly.’

  ‘Can I trust you, Peter?’

  He stopped walking and faced me.

  ‘No. I am not your friend. I’m a copper. If I learned anything to your disadvantage, I’d use it. You should keep that in mind. You can trust me in this, though. I’m not laying a trap for you. You didn’t do it.’

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘You know who did. Don’t you?’

  He continued walking. At the door of the hotel he said, ‘I don’t have any evidence.’

  ‘And what’s Conroy’s view on this?’

  ‘He said that the smart money was on that fucking nancy-boy actor. I think those were his exact words.’

  He smiled and pushed open the door. I followed him into the bar.

  The Engineers’ Arms was crowded and noisy. There weren’t many uniforms in here. Topaz had chosen it because it was a pub favoured by locals, most of whom worked up the road at Walkers Engineering. A few of them greeted him. A few others turned away, obviously unhappy to have a walloper, even an off-duty one, in their bar. We stood against a wall, exchanged a shouted word now and again, and performed a reasonable impression of two mates socialising.

  ‘I need a piss,’ I shouted.

  I followed my nose to the urinal and, having relieved myself into the evil-smelling trough, stepped down and was about to leave when a man blocked the doorway. There was a belligerent air about him that was familiar.

  ‘Gedday,’ he said, and in an extraordinary feat of compression managed to gorge the word with menace. He detached himself from the doorway and stood at the urinal.

  ‘You’re that actor,’ he said as he released a stream of beer-induced urine into the trough. At least he hadn’t accused me of being with the circus. I looked at his broad back, the shoulders rounded as he emptied his bladder.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ I said.

  He swivelled, took one hand off his cock and offered it to me. His hand, that is.

  ‘Mal Flint,’ he said.

  I raised my hand and gave him a sort of half wave, rather than clasp his recently occupied paw.

  ‘William Power,’ I said.

  He finished, did up his flies, and said, ‘We have met. You were with Polly Drummond that time in the street and Fred was beating you to a pulp when I stepped in.’

  ‘I suppose I should thank you then, Mr Flint.’

  ‘Nah. I wasn’t rescuing you, mate. I was getting Fred, is all. It was good that he was distracted. Made it easier to lay the little bastard out.’

  Violence hovered around Mal Flint like a force field. I could see that his solution to any problem would be a vicious one. Someone gets up your nose? Thump him, stomp on him. A sheilah steps out of line? Give her a backhander, show her who’s boss.

  ‘I understand Fred owed you money.’

  ‘He owed me fifty quid, the little prick.’

  I wanted to get out of the toilets, away from the acrid smell of ammonia, but Mal Flint wasn’t moving.

  ‘The coppers have been to see me,’ he said. ‘Your mate in there. He came round askin’ questions. Now how would he know Drummond owed me money unless a little bird who overheard something told him?’

  ‘If you haven’t done anything, you don’t have anything to worry about,’ I said lamely.

  Between clenched teeth he said, ‘I don’t want any coppers stickin’ their fuckin’ beaks into my business, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll tell that cunt Topaz to back right off. It’d be a pity if your other arm got broken, wouldn’t it. How’d you wipe your arse?’

  He shoved me with the flat of his hand, not forcefully, but as a kind of physical exclamation mark.

  When I returned to the bar, Topaz was nowhere to be seen. The barman, who saw me looking around, indicated that he’d gone outside, onto the pavement. He was talking closely and quietly to a young man of about eighteen or nineteen. When they saw me, the young man pulled away from Topaz and walked quickly up March Street. The speed of his departure was so singular that I asked Topaz who he was.

  ‘Just a bloke,’ he said.

  ‘He ran off like a startled rabbit.’

  ‘No one likes being seen talking to a copper.’

  ‘Except me, apparently.’

  ‘It’s a topsy-turvy world,’ he said, and laughed briefly.

  ‘I’ve just had an extremely unpleasant experience in the urinal,’ I said. He raised his eyebrows and turned his head to one side.

  ‘It’s not what you’re thinking. I had a run in with an ape named Mal Flint. Know him?’

  ‘Ape is a bit flattering for Mal Flint. I wouldn’t have thought he was one of the higher primates. I know him.’

  ‘He threatened me. Said that he’d break my other arm unless I told you to back off. Oh, and he called you a cunt.’

  ‘Mal Flint is a brainless thug. Stay out of his way.’

  ‘Fred Drummond owed him a lot of money. Fifty pounds. Why?’

  ‘Flint runs a two-up game and dog fights and God knows what else. Fred was a big loser.’

  ‘Is it possible,’ I said, ‘that the two murders are not connected? I can’t see why Flint would kill Polly, although he’s strong enough to take her up that ladder. But what if he went to the Drummond house, looking for his money, and was disturbed by Mrs Drummond? Would he be capable of cutting an old lady’s throat?’

  ‘Listen, Sherlock,’ Topaz said. ‘Don’t start playing amateur detective. You’ll get into all sorts of trouble. You could get yourself killed. I don’t think our culprit, whoever he is, is particularly squeamish about how he deals with people who get in his way.’

  ‘I’m right though, aren’t I? About Mal Flint. You think that’s a possibility. That’s why you went round to see him.’

  ‘Since Polly’s death I have spoken to dozens of people. Do you really think I’ve been sitting on my arse doing nothing? Flint was just one of them.’

  At that point, Flint himself came out of the pub. He passed by us and spat on the ground.

  ‘He’s a dangerous man, Will. Don’t go poking around Flint.’

  I watched Flint’s retreating back. He looked over his shoulder once, and the malevolence in his eyes made me think that severing a human head would cause him no more concern than decapitating a chook for the Sunday roast.

  Buoyed by whiskey and beer, I was not affected by Walter Sunder’s surly presence in the kitchen during preparation for dinner. He sliced carrots and chopped onions, and shot me the odd, sideways glance. At six o’clock Tibald turned on the radio to hear the BBC news. As a crisp voice calmly enunciated that Stalingrad was expected to fall, I went in search of Augie Kelly. He was in the dining room, with Adrian, and laying the tables. I asked to speak with him privately.

  Augie had a small office, not much more than a cupboard under the stairs, but it sat two people comfortably. It smelled of new paint, and was either feminine or military in its neatness.

  ‘What do you know about Mrs Charlotte Witherburn?’

  ‘She’s rich. Wouldn’t be seen dead here. Not grand enough.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  ‘
Now where would I meet a woman like that?’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about what she thinks for someone who’s never met her.’

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘She’s a looker. Am I right? Or am I right?’

  I did not dignify this with a response.

  ‘What about her husband? What do you know about him?’

  ‘I’ve heard talk at the bar. He didn’t get rich by being nice to people. He’s got enemies, and the word is he’ll fuck anything in a skirt. I’ve never met him either. Seen him, though. Strutting around the place. Looks like a bulldog. If she’s a looker, she married him for his money, not his looks. Why all the questions?’

  ‘I met her today, with Annie and Topaz. At the Royal.’

  He looked a little hurt.

  ‘Well, the Ladies’ Lounge here isn’t up and running yet. Maybe Mrs Witherburn will come here for a drink when it is. She’ll give the place a bit of class, Augie.’

  ‘And you’re going to get her here, are you? You don’t think she’s a bit out of your league?’

  The sudden hostility in his voice was unexpected.

  ‘I’ve barely spoken three words to the woman. What are you so pissed off about?’

  He calmed down immediately.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, as the blush of anger which had stained his cheeks receded. ‘I can’t stand those sorts of people.’

  ‘I had no idea you were such a volcano of class resentment. I thought she was charming.’

  ‘That’s nice. But what did she think of you?’

  He ended the conversation by returning to the dining room. I said aloud to no one, ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  The melancholy figure of Charlotte Witherburn floated in and out of my dreams that night. I woke with no specific memory of these dreams except for the discordant image of a creature, half man, half bulldog, mounting her. There was no excitement attached to the image, I hasten to add, only loathing.

  It was Annie who raised the subject of Charlotte Witherburn, at breakfast that Sunday morning.

  ‘Will and I met the richest woman in Maryborough yesterday,’ she said. ‘Charlotte Witherburn. Her husband’s a stinker, apparently.’