A Time of Secrets

by Deborah Burrows

  ‘It wasn’t him,’ said Ross. ‘He’s suggested we investigate Major Stanford Randall.’

  ‘Dolly Harper’s major?’ He dropped into the chair Tuck had just vacated and ran a hand through his fair hair. ‘Maybe. He’s the jealous type and he can buy just about whatever he needs.’ He watched Ross light another cigarette and laughed a little, without any humour. ‘Times like this I wish I smoked.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m just back from police headquarters. They called me in again. They’re convinced it was me.’

  The room felt colder. I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry.

  ‘What’s changed?’ asked Ross. ‘What makes them so sure?’

  ‘Someone saw Cole on Toorak Road just before midnight, about to cross Park Street. The police think he used the lane to approach Stella’s place from the back. They think I caught him as he was about to go up the back stairs, killed him quickly and cleanly.’ He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. ‘They’ve not quite worked out how I got him to where Stella found him. There was some suggestion that we transported him in your car.’

  ‘Cripes,’ said Ross. ‘You’re bloody good, aren’t you? Doing all of that in the dark without making a sound or being seen.’

  A smile touched the corner of Eric’s lips. ‘It’s the damn propaganda. We’ve both had commando training. Ordinary policemen stand in awe of us. Apparently we’re almost superhuman.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Rob?’

  ‘He was there. I wouldn’t talk to them without him there.’

  ‘And he says –’

  ‘Says there’s not enough evidence to hang me, but possibly enough to charge me.’ He took a breath. ‘Rob laid down the law to them. He pointed out the problems with the case and they didn’t charge me. Not yet, anyway. They’ll want to speak to you again, Nick.’

  My voice was creaky. ‘Where was Cole heading when he was seen, do you think?’

  Eric finally looked at me. ‘That’s the problem. Where would he have been going, other than to Avoca?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘He didn’t come to Avoca. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘Could you have fallen asleep?’

  ‘No. I was awake all night. He didn’t come.’

  Ross said slowly, ‘So somewhere between Park Street and Avoca – something like eighty yards – someone intercepted Cole and killed him with a commando move. And then that someone dumped his body near Goodwood, two hundred yards away, without being seen.’ He almost smiled. ‘It’s pretty clear why you’re the favoured suspect.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to work out who it really was,’ I said to Eric, ‘because we know it wasn’t you.’ My voice was brisk and no-nonsense, but it cracked at the last words.

  Eric reached over to hold my hand.

  ‘Assuming it wasn’t a stray lunatic,’ said Ross, ‘we should start with motive. Who wanted Cole dead?’

  ‘Stanford Randall?’ said Eric. ‘I can ask Rob to look into him.’

  ‘De Groot?’ I said. ‘Dolly thought it might be him. And he’s had commando training.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’d place much credence on Dolly’s feelings about de Groot.’ Ross leaned back in his chair and looked at Eric. ‘You know him better than I do – what do you think?’

  ‘He’s a good man in a scrap. Thinks before he acts. But why would he want Cole dead?’

  ‘Dolly told us that Cole gambled,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with that.’

  Ross nodded. ‘He owed money to Harry Lewis.’

  ‘Lewis has a bad reputation,’ said Eric. ‘Could he have ordered the killing?’

  Ross made a slight grimace. ‘He adds complexity to the already complex situation.’

  Eric stood. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘It’s after five. Let’s get an early dinner, Stella. You look done in. And I’m ready to call it a day.’

  Ross crossed his arms as he looked at us from under his thick lashes. ‘Heading off to a cosy little cafe you both love, tucked away in a back street in Montmartre?’

  ‘What?’ Eric looked at him, confused.

  My face became warm. I didn’t reply.

  ‘I’ll see you both tomorrow, then,’ said Ross, and turned away to look at some papers that were lying on the desk.

  Forty-one

  The telephone rang at seven the following morning. I groaned and tried to ignore the sound. It kept ringing and I opened my eyes. The little bar heater, which was the only light in the room, shone orange light on Eric’s skin. My face was resting against the smooth softness of his neck, in the hollow of his shoulder.

  ‘Want me to get it?’ he murmured.

  ‘I’ll go. It might be work.’

  I pushed aside the bedclothes, found my dressing gown, shrugged it on, and stumbled along the dark hallway. The phone was still ringing when I reached it. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Stella? It’s Rob Sinclair. I’ve just had word that the police are going to arrest Eric this morning.’

  It was as if time had slowed. I could hear the slow ticking of the clock in the lounge room, and the faster thud of my heart. The receiver had become a heavy weight in my hand.

  ‘Why are they doing this now?’ I sounded querulous, so I tried to moderate my tone. ‘They didn’t charge him yesterday.’

  ‘Another witness came forward. Saw an Australian soldier, a man of Eric’s height and build, pushing a wheelbarrow along Toorak Road in the early hours of Wednesday morning. A wheelbarrow that was reported missing from the flats next to yours was found in a slit trench in Fawkner Park. They think that’s enough.’

  ‘Is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘It’s not enough for a conviction. Not if I’m his counsel, anyway. Look, Stella, is he with you? I need to talk to him.’

  My stomach felt as if it had become a tight knot. After Eric had talked to Sinclair, I managed to cook him some breakfast. We ate in silence, watching each other, not talking.

  Rob Sinclair and Ross arrived twenty minutes later to drive Eric to police headquarters. Rob thought it would be better if he turned up voluntarily, rather than wait for the police to arrest him.

  I gave him a quick hug as he got in the car. I didn’t cry. I waved as they drove away with him to Russell Street. I didn’t break down until I was back in the flat.

  Later, as I walked to Goodwood along Toorak Road, I tried to imagine the man, the Australian soldier who was Eric’s height and build, wheeling Cole’s body in the wheelbarrow. He’d taken a terrible risk in doing so, even if the streets were deserted early in the morning and the streetlights had been turned off at midnight.

  Police tape was still around the spot where Cole’s body had been dumped. I wondered why the killer put the body there. It was when I walked on a few steps that I realised. If you went a few steps on you could see the sentry box outside Goodwood. The sentry box was manned all night, and it had a low light inside. The murderer must have seen the sentry box and panicked. He’d dumped Cole’s body and pushed the empty wheelbarrow across Toorak Road to dump it in the slit trench.

  But why was he taking Cole’s body along Toorak Road at all? To get it away from Avoca? To make the police think he’d been killed somewhere else? I sighed, walked over to Goodwood, showed my pass and went in, still trying to make sense of it all. I could understand why the police thought that Eric had killed him. It made sense. Eric had motive, opportunity and, with his training, he also had the means. Only Eric hadn’t done it. He swore he hadn’t killed Cole and I believed him. So who could it have been?

  It was when I walked up the stairs and saw the door to Cole’s office that a thought, wisp-like at first, entered my brain. It gathered strength as I entered my own office. I locked the door behind me, went to the desk and picked up the phone. When the operator answered I asked to be put
through to Lieutenant Commander Boon of the Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service.

  *

  Ross arrived at Goodwood just before lunch and called me into his office. He was holding his mouth tightly and tried for a brittle kind of insouciance that didn’t match the wounded look in his eyes. He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth and struck a match.

  ‘He’s been formally charged with wilful murder,’ he said, and seemed to freeze as the import of those words really hit him. The match’s small flame had burned almost to his fingertips before he shook it out.

  ‘When can Rob get him out on bail?’

  ‘There’s no bail for a charge of wilful murder. He’ll be kept in custody until trial.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘Don’t worry, Stella.’

  ‘Of course I’ll worry! We need to find out who did this. Now.’ I glared at him. ‘I favour de Groot as the murderer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think Cole found out he was a German spy.’

  Ross put back his head and laughed.

  I said, slowly and carefully, ‘De Groot used a German word to describe Mary. He called her liebling. It means darling.’

  ‘It’d be a Dutch word, surely.’

  ‘No, I checked. It’s German. The Dutch equivalent is lieveling.’

  Ross laughed again.

  ‘You can’t mean you really think that de Groot’s a German spy because he mispronounced a word. You’ve been listening to too many of those serials on the wireless.’

  ‘That was the first thing that made me wonder. It’s not only that,’ I argued. ‘The more I’ve been thinking about him, the more I realise that there were many things about him that made me suspicious. Put together they all add up.’

  ‘What else?’ asked Ross.

  ‘He’s always asking questions. He asked me several times about Eric’s mission. At a party I heard him practically interrogating Mary about how she came to work for APLO.’ I paused. ‘Actually, I think he may have befriended her to get information. She’s rather indiscreet.’

  Ross raised an eyebrow.

  ‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘The tenth of July was the day that Dolly had her bridge party. And it was the day that Perth sent the warning about Destro. Mary was upset because of Faye and Jim Pope.’

  Ross looked up to examine the ceiling. ‘Is there a point to this?’

  I flushed. ‘Of course there is. I took Mary up to my room at lunchtime to talk things over and I vividly recall seeing Sam de Groot coming out of Lance Cole’s office. He seemed flustered and I thought it was because he’d seen Mary.’ I hesitated, then said slowly, ‘Dolly said that she left the transmission on Cole’s desk because he was out. What if Sam took it before Cole saw it? It would explain why Cole didn’t act on it.’

  Ross shook his head. ‘Cole didn’t act on the transmission because he was a fool. He didn’t want to believe it because he had so much riding on the success of Destro.’

  I ignored him. ‘And it’s odd that Sam de Groot was Cole’s alibi for the night that Violet was attacked. Would they really spend all night working together?’

  ‘Maybe they were trying out Tuck’s lifestyle,’ Ross said derisively, and I blushed again.

  ‘There’s more,’ I said. ‘I went to see Lieutenant Commander Boon this morning. It’s awfully strange how Sam came to be in APLO.’

  Ross’s expression was no longer scornful. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Lieutenant Commander Boon was very helpful. Did you know Sam de Groot was the coast watcher who saved your friend Tom Lagrange when he escaped from the Japanese in September last year?’

  Ross nodded. ‘De Groot found him, nursed him and arranged for a pick-up. The Japanese were breathing down his neck and so he asked to be evacuated with Tom.’

  ‘The records from Dutch New Guinea are scant. Importantly, there’s no photograph of Alexander de Groot on file anywhere from before he arrived in Australia. No one in the Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service in Melbourne had ever met him. According to Lieutenant Commander Boon, de Groot was famously reclusive, even before he was a coast watcher. A loner with few friends, who was abrasive and actively disliked. That simply doesn’t sound like the Sam de Groot we know. He’s quiet, but also affable, friendly –’

  Ross’s look was disparaging. ‘Perhaps he likes Australians, hates his countrymen. This is fantasy, Stella. It’s not helping Eric.’

  I rubbed my lips together while I thought about how to explain. ‘What if the Japanese captured the real de Groot just before they captured Captain Lagrange, and decided to use Captain Lagrange to get the false de Groot – a German spy working for the Japanese – into Australia? Maybe Captain Lagrange was tricked into thinking that he’d escaped from the Japanese and been rescued by Sam de Groot, but it was all a ruse. You said that de Groot asked to be evacuated back to Australia with Captain Lagrange and he was drafted into intelligence work once he was in Australia. If that was the Japanese plan, then it worked brilliantly.’

  Ross shook his head. ‘It’s impossible to learn to speak Dutch like a native. If anything he’d have to be a rogue Dutchman.’

  ‘Not necessarily. The Germans held north-eastern New Guinea as a territory until Australia took it off them during the Great War. Sam’s what? Thirty-odd years old? He could have been born in German New Guinea and lived there until he was ten or so. His parents may have moved to Dutch New Guinea when Australia took over the German territories. He would have learned Dutch when he was a child, but he’d still be a German.’

  I reached across the desk and took hold of his hand, squeezing it hard. ‘Nick, I know this is all wild surmise, but it’s still worth considering. We have to do something.’

  He looked at my hand holding his. Embarrassed, I snatched my hand away and sat down opposite him.

  Ross lit a cigarette. ‘Let’s consider what we have against de Groot,’ he said, in an oddly careful voice. ‘De Groot referred to Mary Massey by a German word. He asks a lot of questions. His identity has never been fully established, but on the other hand, no one has ever even contemplated disputing it because he’s done nothing to bring it into question. He was working with Cole and was often in and out of his office. You saw him coming out of Cole’s office on a day an important message was delivered, and never acted upon.’

  Put like that, it all sounded very slight.

  ‘He’s Eric’s height and build,’ I said, with some desperation. ‘And it’s strange that he was Cole’s alibi for the axe attack on Violet.’

  Ross looked at me. His eyes seemed very dark, more brown than green; I couldn’t see the golden lights in them, or the hint of red.

  ‘It’s not enough, Stella.’

  ‘If you won’t help me, I’ll look into it myself,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t understand. It’s not enough yet. We need more evidence.’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks, Nick.’

  He reached his arms above him in a stretch; his body was as lean and hard as Eric’s. He’d undergone the same tough training that Eric had undergone. I’d wrongly assumed that Nick Ross was a soft officer who’d messed up his chance at fieldwork and now sat behind a desk, far removed from the blood and bravery and terror of the war. In reality, he was a highly trained fighter, tough and analytical, who agonised over decisions that affected men’s lives and used his particular skills in the best way he could. I wondered if everyone apart from his close friends underestimated Nick Ross.

  ‘Sam de Groot’s lodgings are in a boarding house in St Kilda,’ he said. ‘It’s been requisitioned by the army for the duration and they’ve filled it with non-commissioned officers who work in intelligence.’

  ‘Is there any way we could search his digs?’ I asked.

  As he leaned back in his chair and thought about it I was struck again by how attractive he was. Since our talk i
n Dolly’s room three days ago it was as if Ross had allowed the barriers between us to fall. The tricks he used for protection – sarcasm, flirtation, coldness, anger – were still there, but muted, now I had been admitted to his inner sanctum.

  Dolly had said he was crazy about me, but I found that hard to believe. I knew he liked me; in fact, I strongly suspected that I was the only female friend he had. But he had never behaved romantically towards me. Not really. A few stolen kisses, a couple of drunken propositions and groping me that night in Dolly’s bed meant nothing to a man like Nick Ross. He’d always try his luck with a woman, even one he saw as a friend, because he used sex as a weapon; it gave him power. Anyway, all that had been before our talk, before we accepted that we were friends. Surely Dolly was wrong about his feelings for me.

  ‘They won’t let us simply waltz in there and search de Groot’s belongings,’ he said, after a short silence. ‘And I don’t see him keeping a transmitter in that place anyway. Too dangerous. If he is a spy, then he’s cool-headed and very smart. He must keep it somewhere secret.’

  ‘Would he keep it here? At Goodwood, I mean?’ I said slowly. ‘Any transmissions he made would be masked by our own. In many ways it would be the perfect place.’

  ‘It’d be damned cheeky,’ said Ross. He threw me a boyish smile. ‘Let’s look.’

  Goodwood was set in half an acre of grounds. The old stables at the back housed the radio transmitters and you got to them along a path from the kitchen through the overgrown back garden. The problem was how to conduct a search without de Groot seeing us and working out what we were doing.

  ‘Yes, just get him out of here for an hour or so.’ Ross had telephoned Rob Sinclair. ‘I don’t care. Whatever you can think of.’ He hung up the receiver. ‘Rob’ll get him out of our way,’ he said.

  ‘What’ll we say we’re looking for in the garden?’ I asked.

  Ross considered this for a few seconds. ‘You saw an injured kitten come into the garden and are worried about it. So we’re looking for it.’

  My look was incredulous. ‘No one will believe that Lieutenant Nick Ross would spend time looking for an injured kitten.’