by Maggie Groff
Nemony was sitting at a wooden table in the shade of a massive poinciana tree, smoking a cigarette and drinking from a tall glass. I knew immediately that it was her as she was the only person in the beer garden. And she was wearing black.
‘Mrs O’Leary?’ I said as I approached.
She looked up at me, took a pull on her cigarette, blew out smoke and nodded. ‘Call me Nemony, please. And I prefer Longfellow.’
Mildly surprised, I gave her an apologetic smile. According to her elder sister, Nemony was depressed and fragile, and I planned to speak gently and follow TV’s Judge John Deed’s example and put her at ease by telling her to stop me if she needed a rest. Deed says it to distressed witnesses and it works for him.
Handing her my card, I introduced myself and we shook hands.
‘Can I get you another drink?’ I offered.
‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’ Her voice was low and slightly husky, as smokers’ voices often are.
‘Excuse me while I fetch a coffee,’ I said. Ordering tea when out is frequently a disappointment, and I don’t mind coffee occasionally.
While I waited in the restaurant area, I made covert glances at Nemony Longfellow. I knew she was sixty but I hadn’t expected her to be beautiful. Even though time had mellowed her looks, the wide-set hazel eyes, high cheekbones and full mouth told me why Mick O’Leary had singled her out for attention. She had none of the bone-thin puritanical looks of her sister, and strangely didn’t appear to bear any signs of a decades-long lovesick depression. No chewed fingernails, no slumped shoulders, no dark bags under her eyes.
Her clothing, although black, appeared more modern than Hermione’s—jeans, cotton jumper and a black scarf with white polka dots tied around a sleek brunette ponytail. A straw basket sat on the ground beside her sandalled feet. Her sandals, hey ho, were also black.
I paid for the coffee, walked back to Nemony’s table and sat down opposite her. She’d placed the photograph from the newspaper in the middle of the table and I stared at it, preparing myself for a long and painful exchange. On the way here I had envisaged a scenario where Miss Longfellow protested wildly that it was not O’Leary and I, in pantomime mode, responded with, ‘Oh yes it is.’
Nemony tapped her forefinger on the face of the man with the white patch in his hair.
‘It’s him,’ she stated confidently. ‘I’ve no doubt.’
I nearly fell off my seat. Her confirmation was the last thing I’d expected and Nemony, amused that she’d caught me off guard, smiled broadly.
Recovering fast I said, ‘Your sister Hermione told me that you denied the man in this photograph was Mick O’Leary.’
‘You’ve met my sister Hermione. Would you want her to be right?’
Unable to hide my delight, I laughed aloud and tossed John Deed out the window. This was brilliant news, and not only had the goalposts moved but the playing field with them. Mentally I screwed up the list of questions I’d prepared earlier and decided to follow my normal mantra of watch, see and decide.
‘I take it that you’re happy for me to pursue the matter and investigate how your husband engineered his disappearance?’ For the moment I was ignoring the possible amnesia angle.
She nodded slowly and lit another cigarette. Suddenly I realised why our meeting was taking place in a beer garden—there are few places left where smokers are welcome.
‘Thank you for not saying “Are you sure?”’ Nemony said. She rummaged in her basket, extracted an envelope and passed it across to me. Inside was a handful of photographs.
‘Are these of you and Mick?’
‘Yes, when we were first married.’
Flicking through the prints, I was struck by their pristine condition. Where were the creases from years of handling? They were nothing like the much-loved and battered photographs my grandmother had kept of my grandfather who’d been killed in the fall of Singapore. No one, I suspected, had cherished and wept over these photographs of Mick O’Leary.
‘Are these your only photos of him?’ I asked casually.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘He’s a handsome man,’ I said.
‘But a devious handsome man,’ Nemony added with venom. She didn’t appear distressed, and certainly wasn’t showing that she had ever had any fondness for him. It was confusing, to say the least.
One photograph showed them both sitting on a boat with Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. O’Leary’s poliosis was striking: a thick dash of white in a wild mane of black. Surprisingly it didn’t detract from his looks. On the contrary, it gave him a sort of rakish charm.
I placed the photo on the table next to the newspaper cutting. Even after thirty years I could see the likeness. And the poliosis was in the same spot, though admittedly it was less defined, having melded into his now salt and pepper hair.
‘Can I keep this one?’ I indicated the photo.
‘Sure.’
Hang on. Shouldn’t there be some sort of resistance? Wasn’t I asking for a precious memento of her one true love?
Nemony leaned forward and rested her arms on the table. ‘Hermione told me that you had her sign a waiver so you could use our information in a media story.’
Uh-oh. Here we go.
‘Where do I sign?’ she said.
I hoped my relief didn’t show. Hastily, I extracted the forms from my bag, slid them across the table towards her and looked around the garden while she read through them. A middle-aged man wearing dark pants and a brown corduroy jacket put his drink on a nearby table, sat down, unfolded his newspaper and lit a cigar. I hadn’t seen a corduroy jacket in years.
‘Do your damnedest,’ Nemony said, pushing the forms back towards me. Her signature was small and neat, unlike Hermione’s artistic scrawl.
‘Thank you,’ I said. The ease of progress was making me nervous.
‘Mick owes me a lot of money if our yacht wasn’t destroyed,’ she said crossly.
‘Do you think he faked the accident?’
‘He could have; he was an excellent sailor and a cunning devil. Not much of the yacht was found.’
‘Hermione mentioned the yacht wasn’t insured,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Not to my knowledge, but who knows what Mick did. I didn’t find any insurance documents after he disappeared.’
‘Did Mick have life insurance?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Can you recall the make of the yacht?’
‘She was a fibreglass Bombora 23 Classic. We bought her from a yacht dealer in Sydney and called her Lavender. She cost $80,000. I co-signed the cheque.’
‘Do you remember the dealer’s name?’ I prodded.
‘Not the salesman, but the place was Bosuns Marine. It was near the Spit Bridge. I’m not sure if it’s still there.’
‘When did you buy Lavender?’
‘In July 1983. We were married in March 1983. I wanted to buy an apartment with the money I inherited from Uncle Willard, my father’s brother. Instead, Mick talked me into the yacht. We planned to sail Lavender up to the Great Barrier Reef and start a charter business.’
‘So you only had the yacht about four months before the accident?’ I asked.
‘Yep. The storm came out of nowhere. A lot of yachts were damaged, but no other yachts disappeared like Lavender. Mick sent out a mayday and the air and sea rescue services searched for a couple of days. Three days after the storm a lifejacket, sail bag and parts of the yacht washed up in Sydney Harbour.’
‘So Hermione told me, but she didn’t tell me how they knew the things were from your yacht.’
‘The sail bag had Lavender printed on it. And I identified the life jacket as Mick’s. As a joke he’d put white paint splashes on all his sailing things to match his hair, and the white splash on the jacket was clear as day. It was assumed that the other bits, a broken oar, a shredded sail and a broken tiller, were also from Lavender.’
‘Am I right in assuming that none of the things washed up provided on
e hundred percent certainty the yacht was completely destroyed?’
‘At the coroner’s inquest it was stated that, owing to the storm and Mick’s disappearance, the balance of probability was that the yacht was destroyed in the storm and Mick was lost at sea. The coroner called it death in absentia.’
‘Did you keep looking for him after the authorities stopped searching?’
‘Of course I did, I’d lost my husband. I put ads in the papers and frantically called hospitals up and down the coast before I eventually gave up hope. One of the police officers who spoke at the inquest searched for a while, too.’
‘Do you recall his name?’
‘Smith. Inspector Norman Smith. Nice man.’
‘Why weren’t you on board?’ I asked.
She hesitated. ‘I’d had a miscarriage the day before and Mick said he wanted some space to grieve. He loved to sail alone. Just him and nature. So I don’t think he planned his disappearance as he couldn’t have known about the storm, or that I wouldn’t be on board.’
‘Unless he also planned to toss you over the side.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I can’t believe I said that.’ I covered my face with my hands and when I looked up she was nodding thoughtfully.
‘It’s an awful notion, but it’s possible. You know, I’ve always been sad I miscarried, but if you’re right the poor little mite probably saved my life.’
Embarrassed, I pressed on. ‘What happened to the rest of the money?’
‘We spent it on normal living costs, food and rent. We also bought a car. I got rid of it when I left Sydney. It cost $12,000 and I sold it for $9500.’
‘Who handled your uncle Willard’s estate?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘I’m not sure. I gather as much information as I can because I never know what’s useful until it is.’
Nemony took a sip of her drink. ‘Overton Siliphant. You don’t forget a name like that. He’d be very old and probably dead.’
‘Do you remember the name of the solicitor’s firm?’
‘No, but Hermione will know.’
‘When did O’Leary find out you’d inherited money from your uncle Willard?’
She smirked. ‘I didn’t tell him until after we were married. I know Hermione thinks I was a fool, but I wasn’t a total idiot.’
‘So he had no way of knowing how much you were worth before you married?’
‘Not that I can see. He knew my sisters and I owned our property in Byron Bay.’
‘It’s a valuable property,’ I remarked.
‘It is now. Not so much then, and it’s jointly owned by the three of us, Hermione, Amelia and me. We inherited it from our parents.’
‘How come the three of you were living at the farm when Mick turned up?’ I asked. It seemed strange to me that, in their thirties, they had all been living together, and indeed, still were three decades later.
‘I’ll give you the short version,’ she said, folding her arms and leaning them on the table. ‘Our father was thirty-two years older than our mother, and quite old when we children were born. After he retired, he and Mother moved from Sydney to the north coast where they bought land and planted the lavender farm. At the time, Hermione was doing a secretarial course in Sydney, Amelia had left school and was filling in time working at a bookstore before university, and I was still at school. We lived with Uncle Willard at his home in Mosman.’
Nemony unfolded her arms and lit another cigarette.
‘Before the first lavender harvest,’ she went on, ‘Father had a massive stroke, so Hermione and Amelia moved north to help with Father and the farm, and I stayed on living with Uncle Willard until I’d finished school. Then Father died and Mother went quietly mad with grief, so I moved north as well to help Hermione and Amelia look after Mother and the farm. Mother was ill for years until she eventually died of pneumonia, two weeks before Uncle Willard passed away. Not long after that Mick turned up.’
I acknowledged her woeful tale with a compassionate expression. It explained a lot, but didn’t cast any light on why she was still living with her sisters. As I didn’t want to push the issue, and as she had mentioned Amelia, I took the opportunity that had arisen.
‘I’d like to speak to Amelia, too,’ I said, watching for a reaction.
Nemony visibly stiffened. Then she looked up into the tree and said, ‘Amelia doesn’t know anything that I haven’t told you. Anyway, she’s away on business.’
This was obviously a lie, but I carried on as if I hadn’t noticed.
‘What do you know of Mick’s life before you met him?’ I asked.
‘Not much. He told me he emigrated to Australia in 1977 from Northern Ireland. Mick was thirty when we married, same as me. I know that’s true because I saw his birth certificate. He was a lapsed Catholic, which suited me as my sisters and I were brought up to view religion as a weakness. His parents were dead and he didn’t have any bothers or sinisters.’
Diverted by her amusing expression I almost missed the relevance of what she’d said. I held up my hand. ‘Sorry, Nemony, but didn’t you question that he had no siblings? It’s unlikely for an Irish Catholic.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘I never made that connection.’ She took another pull on her cigarette. ‘The rotten lying bastard.’
‘Do you still have his birth certificate?’
‘Yes, do you want to see it?’
‘Very much,’ I said. It would give me confirmation that O’Leary was who he said he was. ‘You don’t happen to have his passport as well, do you?’
‘No. He had a British passport with a resident’s visa. It got lost in Sydney, although come to think of it I never actually saw it. Mick told me he had applied for a new passport about a week before the accident, but no replacement ever came. It makes me wonder if he really did lose it.’
‘It would explain why a new passport never arrived,’ I said.
‘Mmmm.’
‘What was his profession?’ I asked.
‘A bit of this, bit of that. He did carpentry, mostly fit-outs for new shops, and some farm labouring. He was fit and strong.’
‘Did you have a joint bank account?’
‘Yes, it was one of the first things we set up. There was forty dollars remaining when I closed it in 1984.’
‘So you left the relationship with virtually nothing?’
‘Well, forty dollars from the bank account and the money from selling the car.’
‘Have you still got the bank statements?’
She nodded. ‘I’m anal about keeping paperwork.’
‘And the coroner’s report?’
‘Yes. It basically says what I told you, that Mick was lost at sea. And I’ve got the death certificate.’
‘Do you have a problem speaking to the police?’
Nemony grinned at me. ‘Like Hermione, you mean?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘No. Hermione distrusts all men in uniform. She’s sure the priests who’ve been molesting young boys for centuries got away with it only because of the authority of their vestments.’
‘She may have a point,’ I said.
‘Maybe, but I want you to find Mick and get your scoop, or whatever it is you journalists do to make the front page, so if your finding him means I have to talk to the police, I will.’
‘Actually it’s not clear to me why you haven’t already gone to the police yourself,’ I admitted, hoping I wasn’t planting a seed in her mind.
She looked around evasively, eventually settling her gaze on me. ‘We Anemone Sisters, as I’m sure you’re aware we are called, are the subject of much rumour and ridicule. I wouldn’t expect the police to take me seriously, and I don’t wish to be the subject of canteen laughter. Apart from that, Hermione, who is already objectionable, will be totally unbearable if and when there is police involvement, so the longer we put that off the better. Besides, I’ve heard good thi
ngs about you, Scout. People in town talk. Word is that you follow things through to their conclusion. You find him and then I’ll talk to whomever you want.’
‘No pressure then,’ I said and we both laughed, although silently I worried she might, on the strength of grapevine gossip, expect more than I was willing to give.
‘I’m not a private detective,’ I cautioned.
‘I know that,’ she reassured me.
We talked some more about the inquest and the storm, but there were no tangible clues. Mick’s behaviour had been normal on the day of the storm and there had been no excessively passionate goodbyes. I also learned that he had no other physical anomalies apart from the white forelock.
Nemony promised to deliver copies of the bank statements, Mick’s birth certificate, their marriage certificate and the coroner’s report to me ASAP.
Our meeting over, Nemony stood up to leave and I realised that I had one more thing to ask her.
‘If you don’t mind my saying,’ I said, smiling to take the edge off the impertinence of my remark, ‘I was expecting you to be suffering from a lovesick depression over Mick. You don’t seem . . . well, you don’t seem depressed to me.’
I saw a fleeting look of concern in her eyes before it was quickly replaced by an impish grin, as though she had suddenly remembered a secret amusement.
Without replying she picked up her bag, politely said goodbye and then walked away.
Her reaction, I have to say, left me more than a little intrigued.
Chapter 14
Our meeting had gone well and Nemony’s confirmation that the man in the photograph was Mick O’Leary had given me the green light for an investigation. If I could disregard the amnesia angle, this would be a ripper investigation.
So why wasn’t I jumping for joy? For some reason our conversation had left me feeling uncertain, and it wasn’t because of her obvious lie about Amelia being away on business, or her interesting reaction to my query about her lovesick depression. This was something else, something that didn’t feel right.
It was lunchtime and on the way into Bruns I’d spotted a café that looked worthy of a detour. Leaving the car where it was, I strolled along and ordered a soup called Sebze Corbasi and then sat down outside at a table in the sun.