A Stranger in my Street

by Deborah Burrows

  I hung my light summer coat and hat on a coat-rack behind my desk and put my lace gloves into my handbag.

  Mavis Filmer entered a little while later. She was assigned to the Solicitor General and was nominally in charge of typing. A thin woman of around fifty, she wore her greying hair in the rigidly waved style of the early 1930s. Miss Filmer did her work assiduously, left at five sharp each afternoon and went home to a ginger cat and the wireless. Rumour had it that her fiancé had been killed in France in the Great War. In the year I had been working there, I had not been asked to call her Mavis.

  The desk beside me was empty. I glanced at the clock: it was five past nine. Annie Eccles was late again and Miss Filmer would not be happy. Annie was my best friend. She worked for the Crown Solicitor, but had a reputation for unreliability. It was a good thing for her that typists were as rare as hens’ teeth these days.

  I didn’t expect Mr Goodley to arrive for another half-hour at least. He had worked very long hours in the week just past, prosecuting a case of theft of government property. After a long trial he tended to take things easy.

  Sure enough, at ten o’clock precisely, he wandered in, immaculately dressed as usual. There was a small rose in his lapel and his hat was tipped over one eye in a dapper fashion.

  Maurice Goodley was not a tall man and he was slightly built, but he had a military bearing and when he spoke he commanded attention and respect. Despite being almost sixty, his hair was still uniformly black and somewhat longer than fashion dictated. It was a major player in the arsenal of tricks he used to sway a jury, showing rage as he tossed it back, pain as he let it fall across his face, and precision of thought as he tucked it behind his ears during a summing-up.

  He had other weapons, too, of course. His eyebrows could reach astonishing heights during cross-examination. ‘See,’ they could say to a jury, ‘the witness lies.’ Or they could come together in a fearsome scowl: ‘Look. The man is guilty.’ His long fingers were also called into play, fidgeting with his pen during the defence summing-up, or flitting around to emphasise a point or make clear a difficult argument.

  It was a special treat for me to be able to watch him perform. He liked me to sit in the back of the court during an important trial and take down the cross-examination in shorthand, because I could provide him with a transcript faster than the court reporters.

  ‘We rub along well,’ he said to me after the first month or so. He liked my precision in typing and shorthand. He also liked, although he never would admit to it, my ability to rephrase his words and tone down a particularly offensive remark to a minister or another lawyer. I was well aware that I had saved his friendship with the Attorney General on a number of occasions by omitting from the typed letter some piece of clever invective that was on my shorthand notepad.

  ‘I said that, did I?’ he asked me the first time that the typed letter was not the same as the one he had dictated. His eyebrows were drawn together in a scowl and he was regarding me as if I were in the dock.

  ‘You meant to,’ I replied, meeting his gaze squarely, although I was afraid I had overstepped the mark.

  My Uncle Wilf, who had been at Gallipoli and whom I’d idolised as a child, always told me, ‘Look ’em in the eye, girl, no matter what. Look ’em in the eye and take it on the chin.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Mr Goodley had glanced at the typed letter and thrown me a sharp look. ‘I write well, don’t I?’

  As he passed my desk this morning, he asked me to come into his office when I was ready. I picked up my notebook and pencil and followed him in. I found him at his desk with his hands steepled in front of him. He peered at me over his half-moon reading glasses.

  ‘So, Meg, you found a body. How dramatic. Are you all right? Detective Munsie telephoned me this morning. He was impressed with your composure yesterday, but it must have been a terrible shock.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It was pretty ghastly, though. I knew her.’

  ‘Yes, so Munsie said.’ He frowned at the inkstand on his desk. ‘It’s the husband, of course.’

  I was startled. Not that Mr Goodley would be talking to me about it, because I knew how much he loved to gossip, but that they had already decided it was Frank Luca.

  ‘Why do they think it was him?’

  ‘His ship docked at Fremantle on Friday night. He left on shore leave at midday on Saturday and he is currently AWOL. It’ll be in the newspapers this afternoon. It’s almost always the husband in these cases.’

  ‘Do they know how Doreen ended up in the air raid shelter?’

  ‘I’ve given up trying to fathom the criminal mind,’ Mr Goodley said in a slow, ponderous voice.

  When he started talking to me as if he were addressing a jury, it meant discussions were concluded. I picked up my pad, ready for dictation.

  When I returned to the typists’ room, Annie was typing industriously. She had slunk in at nine-twenty, and mouthed to me ‘Big night’ when she sat down under the weight of Miss Filmer’s frown.

  Annie was twenty-four, with wild black hair, hazel eyes and a true hourglass figure. I sometimes wondered how we were such good friends because we were so different. I was far quieter than she was, and since Peter had died I didn’t really go out much at all. So I relied on Annie to let me know what was happening in Perth. A girl didn’t need to go out with Americans to have a good time – there were plenty of Australian, British and Dutch servicemen in Perth, too, but only American servicemen existed for Annie. She took full advantage of the many cabarets and dance halls that had sprung up out of nowhere after US troops arrived in 1942. The American ‘invasion’ of Perth was, in Annie’s view, the most exciting thing ever to have happened here.

  ‘Well, who wouldn’t think so?’ she said. ‘They are charming, they know how to treat a woman and they look so dashing. I mean, honestly, Meg, their uniforms are smooth. The Australian uniform is baggy and scratchy. Their uniforms fit. I love that even the enlisted men wear ties, not just the officers.’

  She giggled. ‘And their flies are zippers. Our boys have buttons, like they’ve just come off the Ark.’

  It was early in our friendship and I was taken aback.

  ‘Annie! Just how closely have you been examining their uniforms?’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty obvious. If you look.’

  ‘I thought your father said you couldn’t go out with Americans.’

  ‘Pops came around last week when Sammy Lewin arrived with a carton of Lucky Strikes and a bottle of whisky. He gave Mum a bunch of flowers and a huge box of chocolates. They’re fine with Americans now.’

  It soon became clear that Annie was willing to examine the American uniforms very closely indeed. She reckoned girls were stupid to hold out for love, stupid to expect it to be like it was in the movies. Men wouldn’t wait around if a girl kept saying no, she told me earnestly. There was a war on and no one had any time to lose.

  ‘Meg, if you hold out on any soldier or sailor you go out with, you’ll be dropped and you’ll miss the best time of your life,’ she insisted.

  Annie’s liaisons didn’t always end happily. She had sobbed herself sick over some unfeeling American on several occasions in the year I had known her. But on the whole, I thought she was right. Things had changed with the war. Men were gone so quickly now, off to horrors those left behind could only imagine, and who could blame girls if they were more willing to slip into bed with them? I hadn’t held out when it came to Peter and I had no regrets.

  ‘A body! Meg, how horrible! How could you not scream your head off?’ Annie said on our way to lunch.

  We were stepping out of the building, heels tapping on the stone floors, to eat our sandwiches on one of the benches in Stirling Gardens.

  ‘It must surely be the husband,’ she went on. ‘Golly, I hope it wasn’t an American. The Catalina base is very close to your street, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, she used to hang around a lot with the Americans and they all seem to carry knives, but circumstances i
ndicate the husband is the most likely suspect.’

  Annie giggled. ‘You sound like Mr Goodley. So what are you going to wear when you meet the handsome captain for a drink tomorrow?’

  ‘He’s not all that handsome. And he has a beautiful fiancée, according to the Mirror.’

  ‘So what?’ said Annie. ‘Why would he invite you for a drink if he wasn’t interested in you?’

  Annie saw life in very simple terms. If a man asked you out for a drink he was interested in you. If he had a girlfriend, or even a fiancée, it was too bad for her. I was pretty sure Tom Lagrange was anything but simple and I suspected his reasons for inviting me for a drink were not simple either.

  Six

  The following morning I dressed carefully in a hand-knitted dress of dusty pink, a favourite of mine. I had washed my hair the night before and I brushed it into a smooth shoulder-length bob, which I topped with my best hat, a small circle of brown straw with a shallow crown and a thin pink ribbon. I had borrowed a pair of new nylons from Joan and wore my best court shoes.

  I twisted around to check that my stocking seams were straight. It was considered vulgar not to wear stockings, but they were almost impossible to get now because they were so severely rationed. The problem was solved if a girl was friendly with the Americans and their seemingly endless supplies of nylons. If not, there was always Cyclax stockingless cream, which tanned the legs so you seemed to be wearing sheer stockings. You had to get a friend to draw the seam-line up the back of the leg with an eyebrow pencil, and some girls were even clever enough to paint in the little square along the heel, just like in real stockings. The cream worked perfectly – until it rained. I was lucky that Joan worked in a lingerie department and she could usually manage to find a pair for me. I always kept a tube of Cyclax in my drawer, though, just in case.

  The morning newspaper was full of the murder. As Mr Goodley had predicted, Doreen’s husband Frank was the main suspect, though the police still hadn’t found him.

  According to the paper, Frank had been drinking at the Captain Stirling Hotel on Saturday afternoon. The hotel was fairly close to Megalong Street, and it was a favourite American hangout. He was thrown out for being drunk and disorderly at six o’clock closing time, after which he turned up at the Catalina officers’ quarters, asking for his wife. Apparently he had found out that Doreen was one of the number of local women invited to attend a party there that night. The sentries wouldn’t let him through the gate, and told him they were going to call the Military Police. Frank slipped away along a bush path and hadn’t been seen since. Doreen was at the party all evening and consumed a great deal of alcohol. She had left the base just before midnight, presumably heading for home, along the same bush path.

  I knew the area well. The quickest way to get to the officers’ quarters from Megalong Street was to cross Winthrop Avenue from Park Road and walk along a rough path through about two hundred yards of bush to the gate on the highway. I wondered if Doreen had met Frank, or whoever her murderer was, on that path, before she went with him to the air raid shelter.

  I moved on to the war news. The Americans were making slow but solid progress on Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, Rommel’s Afrika Corps was on the run from the British Eighth Army in Africa, and the Red Army was doing well against the Nazis on the Eastern Front. I turned to the maps on our kitchen wall. A blue pin went on the dots that represented the Solomon Islands on the Pacific Ocean map and I placed another blue pin just to the east of Tripoli on the Africa map. I moved a red pin to the left in Russia.

  Otherwise, I ignored the map of Europe because it was so depressing. I had used black pins for each country under Axis control and the continent of Europe was now a forest of black pins with a solitary blue pin in Britain. A line of red pins delineated the Russian Front, but it was too close to Moscow for my liking.

  Nancy Gangemi was on the stairs again as I made my way down to the office later that morning, looking very upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she shook her head.

  ‘This newspaper, it says the police think Frank Luca killed his wife. That’s not right.’

  I was surprised. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘His parents live near us in North Perth. But right now, they’re both in the camp with Giuseppe. They are good people. I’ve met that boy. He didn’t kill his wife.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘It’s a mistake. She was a bad girl. Mrs Luca told me about her. There were lots of fellas. One of them must have killed her. Not Francesco.’

  As I made my way to the office I thought about what Nancy had said. I, too, found it hard to believe that Frank Luca would be capable of killing anyone, especially Doreen. He had loved her very much.

  Mr Goodley, on the other hand, needed no convincing of Frank Luca’s guilt. He was full of good humour that morning; he always appreciated a juicy murder. Especially as he knew an important fact that was not in the newspaper.

  ‘A couple driving down Winthrop Avenue at around twelve-thirty saw a woman crossing the road. The police think it must have been Mrs Luca, from the description they gave. She was walking with an unsteady gait and tried to wave them down, but they thought she was intoxicated and they didn’t stop.’

  ‘Maybe she was running away from someone.’

  ‘They say they didn’t see anyone else, but who knows?’

  ‘The paper says she left the base just before midnight, so what was she doing in the bush for half an hour until twelve-thirty?’

  He shrugged. ‘She might not have left the camp alone. Anyway, it rules out the Americans, because the sentries have verified that all naval personnel quartered at the camp were signed in by twelve-thirty.’

  If we could trust the sentries, it was looking pretty bleak for Frank Luca, whatever Nancy might think.

  At five o’clock I put the cover on my typewriter and went to the ladies’ room to powder my face and apply fresh lipstick. I combed my hair so that it hung smoothly and put on my hat, tilting it at what I hoped was a fashionable angle over my right eye. Then I washed my hands, pulled on my gloves, picked up my handbag and set off along St Georges Terrace for the Adelphi Hotel.

  The Terrace was lined with imposing buildings that had been constructed with money from the gold finds at Kalgoorlie, where I had been born. I had always felt a sense of pride that Kalgoorlie was the reason behind Perth’s elegant main street. Today, however, I didn’t have an eye for the buildings. I was too busy pushing my way through the crowds of servicemen out for a good time and the city workers trying to catch trams or trolleybuses or parlour cars home. The garish posters did catch my eye, though. A woman in overalls was imploring me to ‘Do your bit on the Food Front: Grow Your own Vegetables for Victory’. Ma had managed to grow some potatoes last year, but the beans had all died and the broccoli got mould. There was a lack of green thumbs in the Eaton family.

  The crowd surged around me, and I was feeling slightly dishevelled by the time I managed to get through to William Street. I was waiting for the policeman on point duty to wave me across when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a young American in naval whites eyeing me with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Honey, I bet you’re off to see a young man. You look mighty fine indeed. I’m sure I could show you a better time. Howsabout it?’

  I smiled and shook my head.

  The policeman waved us through and I was swept away from him, across the road with the crowd. There was a lot of rivalry between local men and Americans over us women, but I thought that Australian men could learn something from the Americans, who were always very polite and paid us nice compliments. They were also generous, as Annie informed me, turning up with flowers and chocolates and other gifts when they came to take you out. Of course, their rates of pay were around twice those of the Australians.

  That thought brought me back to Tom Lagrange. He was an Australian captain who didn’t need the money. The Lagranges were wealthy. Tom and Peter’s father was a businessman, but the family money was in sheep
and cattle stations in the north and timber in the south-west. It was funny that neither Tom nor Peter had wanted to be a part of the family business. From Peter I knew that Tom wanted to teach literature at university, although his parents were hoping that his stint at Oxford would get that out of his system.

  Peter had wanted to be a civil engineer. He had wanted a lot of things . . .

  Thinking about him brought the usual tears and my steps slowed as I blinked them away.

  The Adelphi came into view, its facade a warm yellow in the sunshine, its sharp Art Deco lines crisp and satisfying. It was one of the best hotels in Perth, and most of its rooms had been requisitioned for recreational quarters for commissioned officers of the US Navy.

  Tom Lagrange was leaning against the wall of the hotel, smoking a cigarette. Annie might love the smooth, tailored American uniforms, but I always felt proud when I saw our men in their baggy khaki. Captain’s pips shone on Tom’s shoulders. On his left sleeve, near the cuff, were three gold stripes, each representing a wound received in battle. His face was strong-featured and angular under the peaked officer’s cap. He looked nothing like Peter.

  My stomach tightened and I wondered why I had agreed to this meeting. Feeling dizzy, I stopped walking and let the crowds move around me. What was I doing? Peter had wanted me to meet Tom, whom he’d seemed almost to hero-worship. But Peter was gone. Spending time with his brother would surely just stir up all the memories and misery that I was just starting to push to the back of my mind.

  Just as I had decided to walk away, Tom turned and saw me. My confusion must have been apparent, or maybe it was clear that I was about to turn and run. He pushed himself away from the wall, threw his cigarette on the ground and made his way towards me through the crowds. There was a closed, wary look on his face. He gave me what seemed like a forced smile as he came closer. Tom put out his hand and I grasped it as if it was a lifeline.