A Time of Secrets
Page 25
Love,
Dolly
I stood in the doorway, wrapped in my greatcoat, and watched Eric fry bacon and tomato. He broke a couple of eggs into the pan and they made a satisfying sizzle. A delicious smell filled the air and my stomach gurgled.
His head was bent over the pan and he was absorbed in cooking. I thought that Eric would always concentrate on the job at hand, whether it was designing a home for a fiancée who’d dropped him, or sketching a girl he’d met at a dance hall, or getting his men safely out of a Japanese ambush, or extricating Nick Ross from a stoush with marines.
Eric had pulled on his vest and woollen army underpants but his legs, shoulders and arms were bare.
‘Don’t you ever feel the cold?’
I wasn’t complaining, because he was pleasant to look at, but I was surprised at his fortitude.
He twisted around and threw me a grin.
‘Softie. It’s not so cold, not really. I did most of my training at the Prom – Wilsons Promontory. In winter. Now that’s cold.’
Bread was sliced and toasted, and tea was made in virtual silence. I had no idea what to say, and Eric had described himself correctly: he really wasn’t much of a talker. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. I wasn’t much of a talker either. He piled the breakfast onto two plates and handed me one.
‘Want to eat this in bed?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, shivering. The heater was still in the bedroom.
I put on my khaki pullover and draped a shawl across my shoulders to eat my breakfast, propped up against a pillow. The plate was balanced on my knees.
When I finished the last of the toast I lay back with my empty plate still balanced on my knees and I gazed at him. Eric had a lovely body: tanned smooth skin over round, well-defined muscles. He’d make a wonderful subject for a life study. Nudity didn’t worry me, I’d done many so life drawings. I’d even earned extra money as a life model in Paris, which was something I’d never revealed to Frank. I thought of posing Eric, naked, and drawing him.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What does that smile mean?’
‘May I do a life drawing of you some time?’
A burning look came into his eyes, and I felt my pulse quicken.
‘If you’ll return the favour.’
‘Of course.’
‘Finished?’ he asked.
At my nod, he took my plate and put it on the side table. I quaffed the rest of my tea and he put my cup on the table as well. He pulled the shawl off my shoulders and dropped it onto the floor by the bed. I took care of the sweater myself.
*
While Eric was showering, I picked up the teapot. It was heavy with the dregs of the breakfast tea. I peered out the window and saw patches of blue among the clouds. At school in England we’d ask, ‘Is there enough blue sky to patch a Dutchman’s trousers?’ I looked again. Just enough blue, I thought. It looked like it might be a fine day.
Dolly and I made a habit of tossing the used tea leaves into a large pot of geraniums that stood on the narrow wooden landing outside the kitchen, because they didn’t seem to do the geraniums much harm and it was somewhere to put the slops other than the sink or over the rails into the garden.
The cold air hit me like a blow as I stepped through the kitchen door, even though I’d shrugged on my greatcoat over my uniform. I walked carefully, because the wooden planks were wet from last night’s rain and slippery. As I tossed the tea leaves onto the geraniums the sound of a door opening downstairs caught my attention. Mrs Campbell’s back door had opened and a small cloud of dust preceded her ‘girl’, Ada Beatty, as she emerged, wielding a broom with determination. Ada’s hair was hidden under a large cotton scarf she’d knotted around her head and she was wearing a faded cotton pinafore.
‘Good morning, Mrs Beatty,’ I called out.
She looked up at me. ‘It is so far,’ she said. She seemed affronted that I was still at home at ten in the morning. I smiled at her. Last week she’d arranged for her son-in-law to change Mrs Campbell’s locks. Ada held a key and the other keys were held by Mrs Campbell and me.
As I turned around I saw that Violet’s back door was also open, just slightly.
‘Good morning,’ I called out. Violet had to be nearby, because it was too cold to leave the door open for any length of time.
Silence, which was unusual. Violet had a habit of turning on the wireless in the mornings, although sometimes she sang. It was late for her to still be home. I called again, more loudly.
‘Morning, Violet.’
Nothing. The silence pressed around me. No birds or wind or traffic, no wireless or Violet singing. A rhythmic sound came from below. Ada had draped a small rug over the stair rail and was beating it with the broom. Dust puffed out in little clouds with each thwack on the rug.
I put down the empty teapot next to the geraniums and walked the few steps to Violet’s back door. It was only just ajar. I wondered if someone in a hurry – perhaps Cole leaving last night or early this morning – had pulled it to, but had not checked that it had shut properly behind him. That would be just like him, I thought. I wondered if I should close the door. I peered through the window into the kitchen. Empty.
Feeling foolish, I called out, ‘Violet, the back door’s open. Do you want me to close it?’
No response. Perhaps Violet had gone to work early, had left by the back door and hadn’t pulled the door shut by accident. There was no reason to feel so apprehensive about an empty kitchen and an open door.
Without thinking too much about it, I pushed the door open more fully and entered Violet’s kitchen. It felt odd to be in someone’s home uninvited and I stood absolutely still, conscious of a vague discomfort. I listened. There is never silence, not really. The clock on the small pine dresser ticked, the electric refrigerator whirred, and the muted thumping continued from below.
The kitchen was neat, but there were stains on the lino floor. Red smudges, large enough to be footprints or shoeprints, and a smear of red on the wall by the door into the vestibule. Venetian red, I thought. It was a light pigment, a brownish red, darker than scarlet, derived from almost pure ferric oxide. The colour of blood.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. I licked my lips.
My voice was tentative as I called out again. ‘Violet?’ It was a small sound, the sound of someone who was afraid.
I took a breath and squared my shoulders. Steady on, Stella. In for a penny, in for a pound. I couldn’t leave now; I had to know that Violet was all right. So I slowly picked my way past the bloody shoeprints. In the mystery novels they said not to disturb a crime scene. Was this a crime scene? I walked into the small vestibule off the kitchen. The door into Violet’s bedroom was ajar.
‘Violet?’ My voice was louder now. ‘Are you all right?
I went inside.
She was still half under the covers, but one white arm was lying outstretched. Her torso was twisted so that her head was off the pillow towards the side of the bed and her hair hung down. Rust-red stains daubed the pillow, the sheets and the bedspread, and there was a spray of red on the wall. Blood had pooled on the floor. Blood had matted her dark hair.
She must have been asleep when he struck at her, chopped at her head. She must have been pulled out of dreams into pain and terror and, finally, oblivion.
Every instinct told me to flee, to get out of that charnel house as quickly as I could. To get Eric, who was trained to handle such things. My mouth was dry and my skin was painful under my clothes, my face felt raw where cold air touched it. I forced away nausea and I walked towards her. It was only when I was very close, close enough to smell the sweet, metallic scent – it was only then that I realised the blood in her hair was still wet and I heard the rattle in her breath. I turned and ran, through the vestibule into her lounge room, stumbling on the carpet where it met the floorboards.
I hung up the phone and dashed back to Violet. As before, she was unconscious and her breathing was merely a rattle in her throat. I had no idea what to do, whether I should leave her as she was, or put her on her left side as we’d been taught in First Aid, or help her to lie upright on those bloodstained pillows. I suspected that I should move her as little as possible, but she looked so uncomfortable in that contorted position that I tossed her pillows onto the floor and clumsily pulled her more into the centre of the bed, so that she was lying on her left side. Throughout my grim manhandling she made no sound at all. When she was as comfortable as I could make her, I stepped back, away from the smell of blood, and I prayed that she’d keep breathing, just keep breathing.
‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ I said, my voice loud in the silence of that room. ‘It’ll be here soon. Just hang on, Violet.’
My hands were sticky. I looked down and shuddered to realise that they were covered in Violet’s blood. Fighting nausea, I went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. A pale wash of Venetian red flowed from my hands into the drain. I used her soap and I scrubbed until no trace of blood remained. There was blood on the tap where I’d touched it. I got the flannel and scrubbed at the sink and the taps, scrubbed frantically until they were clean.
I hated to leave her, but I couldn’t face waiting for the police alone, so I raced across to our flat. Eric was standing in the kitchen. I hesitated in the doorway and made a sound, a small sound like a whimper. He said nothing, asked nothing. He opened his arms and I ran to him. His arms closed around me and I thought I could face anything, if only Eric was there too.
Thirty
Eric waited with me in that bloody bedroom, watching Violet struggle for breath, until we heard the ambulance siren whining in the distance, growing louder. It was joined by a second siren that rose and fell in surges of sound. I looked at Eric.
‘The police?’
He nodded. We were only a mile from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Commercial Road, and I’d expected the ambulance to arrive quickly, but not the police.
‘I’ll let them in,’ I said. ‘Please wait with her.’
I dashed out, away from the blood and horror of the flat, and ran down the stairs. My hands were damp and I rubbed them on my skirt; the cold turned them to ice as soon as I emerged into the front yard. I glanced at my watch. A quarter to eleven. The sun was high now and shadows lay on the grass. The air had the bright anticipation of a fine day and in the sky there was more than enough blue for a Dutchman’s trousers. I blinked back tears.
The ambulance had pulled up outside Avoca. Two black police cars parked on the other side of the road, by Fawkner Park. A couple of ambulance officers emerged as four policemen, two in dark suits and two uniformed constables, crossed Toorak Road at a run. I beckoned them all inside with an arm that was shaking feverishly and they followed me upstairs in a great thumping noise of boots, past Mrs Campbell, who had an interested expression, and Ada Beatty, who was scowling.
‘Here,’ I said, gesturing at Violet’s front door. ‘She’s in the bedroom.’
The ambulance officers and the detectives entered the flat, leaving a police constable to guard the door. Against what, I wondered. Me? Ada? Mrs Campbell? I remained on the landing, heart thumping. Please don’t die, Violet. Don’t die. Eric’s deep, calm voice could be heard, explaining.
Shortly afterwards the ambulance officers emerged with Violet on a stretcher and carried her downstairs.
‘Do the detectives want me to go inside?’ I asked the constable, who shrugged and said nothing.
He was a young man, and he regarded me with the sort of stony expression I’d come to recognise all too well a few years ago in Sydney. One that said it was not his business, that he was a constable who wanted to make sergeant one day and he’d make no independent judgments, but wait for orders. ‘Yes, sir,’ they’d say, those constables just like him, with one eye on the senior constable and one eye on Frank, and no glance to spare for me. ‘We understand. Husband-and-wife dispute. We’re sorry that the neighbours made such a fuss.’
The older detective came out of Violet’s flat and looked me up and down. He was a heavy-set man, well into his fifties. His dark overcoat was unbuttoned, despite the cold. I thought he was a bit of a dandy, because a scarf made of fine woven silk in shades of red was around his neck and a red carnation was in the buttonhole of his suit jacket. A dark homburg completed the picture. Behind the round, dark-rimmed glasses his eyes were small and shrewd.
‘Miss Aldridge? The one who telephoned? You found the victim?’
‘Sergeant Aldridge,’ I replied with a glance at the chevrons on my jacket sleeve.
‘Inspector McGurk. Come inside, we’d like to ask you a few questions.’
Eric was sitting uncomfortably on the couch. He looked up as I entered and threw me a wan smile. McGurk nodded at the other policeman. ‘Detective-Sergeant Browne.’
Browne was a thin man of around forty. He’d removed his hat to reveal a head of sparse white-blond hair. His long face was lined and pouchy, so that he had the appearance of a blond basset hound. Bristly white eyebrows were his liveliest feature. He watched me sadly and I had the urgent desire to comfort him, tell him not to worry, because all would be well.
Instead I sank down onto Violet’s couch next to Eric and felt the comfort of his leg resting against mine, as McGurk pulled a couple of chairs away from the dining table and positioned them in front of us. He sat in one, and Browne sat beside him with a notebook on his knee, pencil poised.
‘Tell me everything you did and heard this morning,’ said McGurk.
‘I live in the flat next door. Flat 4.’
He glanced at Eric. ‘Sergeant Lund lives there with you?’
I felt Eric flinch, and I flushed. I looked up and held the inspector’s gaze. ‘No. Staff Sergeant Lund was there with me last night, though.’
‘What time did you get in last night?’
‘We were out dancing and we got back to my flat around one.’
Browne took it all down in longhand.
‘At around ten this morning I went onto our back stairs to empty the tea leaves from the pot. I noticed that Miss Smith’s door was open. I thought it was odd, because it was so cold this morning. So I called out and when there was no answer I went into her kitchen.’ I swallowed, hesitating as I remembered the scene. Eric took hold of my hand and squeezed it gently. ‘There were red stains on the kitchen floor and wall. I . . . I went into her bedroom and . . . I found her. Then I called an ambulance and the police.’
‘After you got –’ He glanced at Eric. ‘You called the ambulance after you got Staff Sergeant Lund?’
‘I called the police and the ambulance before I told Staff Sergeant Lund about finding her.’
‘You knew Miss Smith well?’
‘Quite well. We’d meet socially.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘Yes. An army lieutenant, Lance Cole.’
Browne wrote assiduously.
McGurk didn’t take his eyes off my face. ‘Did you hear anything last night?’
‘No. Nothing at all.’ I couldn’t help blushing again, at the thought of what Eric and I had been doing while Violet had been attacked, while she was lying there, close to death.
‘Did you touch anything inside this flat?’
‘After I’d called the ambulance I pulled Miss Smith more onto the bed. She was almost hanging over the side and I was worried about her being able to breathe. I . . . I had blood on my hands and washed them in her bathroom basin.’
‘Used her flann
el? It’s wet.’
‘Yes.’
He nodded, pursing his lips and staring at me as if what I’d just said had been of the utmost importance.
‘Tell me about Miss Smith.’
I stared at him. ‘I wasn’t keeping her under surveillance. She’d go out often, I assumed to dinner and dancing. Sometimes we’d hear her singing in the flat, entertaining. She was a singer, you know, as well as being a WAAAF. She’d sing in Service concerts. When she wasn’t singing she was a clerk, I think.’
We were all startled by a knock at the back door. McGurk looked up with a frown as Rob Sinclair walked into the lounge room, closely followed by Ross. I wondered how they’d found out about Violet so quickly.
Eric leaned into me. ‘I called Rob,’ he whispered. ‘He must have got Nick.’
‘And who are you two?’ McGurk’s query was like an angry bark.
‘Sinclair. Allied Intelligence Bureau. This is Lieutenant Ross, Sergeant Aldridge’s commanding officer. As this may concern a matter of national security, I’ll be sitting in on any interviews with service personnel and I expect to be kept informed of your inquiries.’
‘Expect all you like,’ said McGurk. ‘It’s not happening.’
‘Feel free to make the necessary inquiries.’ Sinclair’s voice was confident and ever so slightly supercilious.
McGurk didn’t reply. He reached into his breast pocket with an abrupt movement that made me start, and pulled out a wooden pipe and a tobacco pouch. A metal-cased pencil was retrieved from the opposite pocket.
Sinclair cleared his throat lightly. ‘Do you want to see my papers?’
There was silence as McGurk spent some time pushing tobacco into the pipe bowl and tamping it down with the end of the metal pencil. Only then did he look up into Sinclair’s eyes.
‘Show me your papers,’ he said.
Sinclair obliged him, and as the inspector examined the documents, I examined Ross. He was holding his mouth tightly, so tightly that it was white at the sides. His hands were shoved deeply into the pockets of his trousers and his shoulders had a tight, guarded look to them. He was not looking at me or Eric, but at a point somewhere near the ceiling on the other side of the room.