Murder Unmentioned (9781921997440)

by Gentill, Sulari

  Bennett stopped as the door burst open. Milton and Clyde stumbled in, each carrying several canvases.

  “Where do you want these, Rowly?” Milton asked, holding up a painting of Edna.

  Bennett’s moustache bristled, as he studied the vibrant nude rendered in oil. She stood emblazoned on the canvas with her arms outstretched, beguiling, unashamed and utterly naked. The retired colonel moved his gaze systematically over the other paintings, flinching as he beheld each new nude.

  Rowland stared at his friends bewildered.

  “We’ve simply run out of space in the drawing room… we’ll have to hang these here,” Clyde said, holding a pastel piece up against the wall.

  Bennett’s face began to flush.

  “Oh hello. What are you all doing in here?” Edna walked in. She bestowed Bennett with an enchanting smile.

  Still confused, Rowland introduced his friends.

  Bennett looked from Edna’s face to the paintings.

  She laughed. “You’ve recognised me, Colonel Bennett. They’re excellent likenesses are they not? No one paints me with quite the intimacy that Rowly does. Why there’s no part of me that he does not know.”

  Bennett blustered incomprehensibly.

  Milton, Clyde and Edna then fell into a rather animated conversation about the works, recounting the arduous hours Edna was called on to spend naked as she modelled for Rowland. They reminisced about the other models that Rowland used from time to time.

  Bennett’s face was entirely red but for his lips, which were pressed into a hard white line.

  “Oh, is that the time?” Milton said suddenly, with a deliberate scrutiny of his watch. “We’d best be on our way.” He nodded at Bennett and apologised. “You’ll have to excuse Clyde and me, Colonel. Party meeting, you know.”

  It was probably then that Bennett noticed the red Communist badge pinned to Milton’s lapel. He gasped audibly.

  Milton smiled, breathed onto the badge and polished it with the velvet sleeve of his jacket. He addressed Rowland. “We’ll get this lot up when we get back, if that’s all right with you, comrade.”

  “Why this is outrageous!” Bennett exploded. “How dare you come here! Sinclair, I trust you are about to call someone to throw these… these trespassers out.”

  Rowland replied quite calmly. “They’re not trespassers, Colonel Bennett. They live here.”

  For a moment, Bennett seemed to lose his breath. “Here… under your father’s roof? Have you taken leave of your senses, boy?”

  “Woodlands is no longer my father’s house, Colonel Bennett. The gentlemen and Miss Higgins reside here on my invitation.”

  “And you will not withdraw it?” Bennett demanded.

  “Not under any circumstances.”

  “Well then, Sinclair, I regret to say that I cannot allow a man of such poor judgement, such undesirable associations, to… to marry my daughter. I will thank you to withdraw your attentions forthwith.”

  “As you wish, Colonel Bennett,” Rowland said slowly.

  Bennett seized his bowler from the desk, and slammed it onto his head. “I have no doubt that Lucy will be distressed, but surely not as appalled as your dear father would have been, Rowland. Henry was an upstanding man, a figure of decorum and respectability… as is your brother. But you, my boy, are a great disappointment!”

  The colonel pushed angrily past Clyde and stalked out of the library.

  Nobody said anything, waiting in silence as they listened to Mary Brown ushering the implacable Bennett out.

  “Well, we arrived in the nick of time,” Milton observed finally, shaking his head at Rowland. “A few more minutes and you would have been engaged!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Rowland’s response was somewhat ungrateful. “I was fine.”

  “Fine? You didn’t want to marry her, did you, Rowly?” Clyde asked, dubiously.

  “Of course not! I was just trying to find a courteous way to—”

  “You can’t do these things politely, mate. Trust me, I know.” Milton sighed deeply.

  Clyde snorted.

  “It’s much better for Lucy this way, Rowly,” Edna assured him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well having one’s father forbid an association is tragic and romantic, but it’s not humiliating.”

  Rowland considered her words. There was sense in them. The intervention of his friends had relieved him from having to tell Colonel Bennett, his sister-in-law and Lucy herself that he had never intended to propose marriage.

  “Yes, I expect you’re right.” He leant back against the desk, smiling as he recalled the look on Bennett’s face when he realised Edna was the woman in the paintings. He glanced at Milton and Clyde. “And do you actually have a party meeting?”

  “Not till tomorrow… that was just in case he was willing to forgive your scandalous paintings,” Milton replied grinning.

  “We were ready to tell him I’d converted you, if it became necessary,” Clyde added gravely.

  “Good Lord! I’m lucky he didn’t shoot me as it was.” Rowland had never before thought of using Clyde’s Catholicism as a defence against would-be fathers-in-law. The idea had its merits. He shook his head. “I still don’t believe I needed rescuing, but thank you for your efforts, regardless.”

  “Rowly darling, whatever’s the matter?” Edna asked peering down at him from over the top of his newspaper.

  “Ed… I didn’t see you,” Rowland said, shamefaced, as he lowered the broadsheet which had caused him to curse out loud. He stood hastily. “I’m sorry. I…”

  Edna folded her arms and waited impatiently for him to finish apologising. She couldn’t have cared less about the profanity. He had, after all, believed he was alone. She simply wished to know what had inspired him to use it.

  “That mad—” Rowland caught himself and started again. “Eric Campbell intends to field a party in the next election,” he said, handing her the paper so she could read the article for herself. “It seems that he was so impressed by what the Nazis have done in Germany that he’s decided to try it here.”

  Edna glanced through the news story. They had made an enemy of Colonel Eric Campbell, founder and leader of the New Guard, at a time when he was at his most powerful, and New South Wales had appeared on the brink of civil war. The association had ended particularly badly for Rowland, and though Wilfred Sinclair had intervened to broker an agreement which would keep his brother out of gaol, they all knew it was a fragile and bitter peace. Although the membership of Campbell’s movement had declined since the dismissal of Jack Lang, whose controversial premiership of New South Wales had united the establishment against him, there were still New Guardsmen keen to settle the score against Rowland Sinclair.

  Neither had Rowland let the matter rest. Indeed they’d all embarked to Germany just months before because he was determined to foil Campbell’s plans to forge alliances with the Germans and prevent him bringing Nazism to Australia. They had thought they’d succeeded.

  “I suppose standing for election is better than organising a coup d’état.”

  Rowland frowned. “We can’t be sure he’s not.”

  Edna put down the paper and fell into the wing-backed armchair in which she often posed for Rowland. The leather was softened with age and marked in places where even Mary Brown had been unable to remove a careless splash of paint.

  A life-sized portrait of the late Henry Sinclair, sitting in that same chair, glared down at the sculptress from the wall opposite. Edna tilted her head to study Rowland against that imposing, disapproving image of his father. Aside from the distinctive blue, which characterised the eyes of all the Sinclair men, Rowland and his father seemed to have had little physically in common.

  “Who painted that portrait, Rowly?” she asked as he sat down again.

  Rowland glanced back at the painting. “That’s a William McInnes.” He smiled. “Father didn’t have much time for him… thought him too young to paint well.”
r />   Edna laughed. McInnes had won the Archibald Prize six times already and was one of the country’s most acclaimed portrait artists. Still, he would have been in his early twenties when he’d painted Henry Sinclair. “It’s such a fierce painting. Is it a good likeness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he like it… your father?”

  “It used to hang in his study at Oaklea, so I presume he did.”

  “At Oaklea? Then what’s it doing here?” Edna asked, surprised. She’d assumed that Rowland kept the portrait in his studio amongst all his own work because it had always hung there. It intrigued her that he would install it himself.

  Rowland’s smile was brief. “My father always liked to keep an eye on me.”

  Edna wondered if she had misjudged Henry Sinclair. Rowland rarely spoke of his father but that need not, of itself, mean their relationship had been strained. Perhaps it was a silence born of loss. Perhaps, beneath the outward severity, Henry Sinclair’s was an artistic soul. Rowland’s talent, Edna reasoned, must have come from somewhere. “It’s a shame he didn’t live to see your work, Rowly,” she said quietly.

  Rowland frowned, his jaw tightened. “It’s not a shame at all, Ed.” He retrieved the jacket he had thrown over the back of his chair.

  “Where are you going?” Edna asked uneasily.

  “I have an appointment in the city.”

  “Rowly, I’m sorry if I—”

  Rowland stopped, realising that she believed she’d offended him somehow, that he’d been unintentionally abrupt. He moved to sit directly opposite Edna and answered the question she’d not yet asked. “My father would not have approved of my work, Ed. He would not have tolerated it.”

  “But you didn’t paint when he was alive.”

  “No, I was only fifteen when Father died. Still, I did plenty of other things he disapproved of.”

  Edna glanced up at the portrait. “You don’t take after him at all?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “To be honest, I am too.” He checked his watch. “Now, I really am late.”

  “Who are you going to see?”

  “Eric Campbell.”

  “Campbell? Rowly, I don’t think that’s such a—”

  “It’s not a private audience, Ed. He’s delivering another one of his stirring speeches,” Rowland replied dryly.

  “Even so,” Edna persisted, convinced that Rowland’s determination to personally foil Campbell at every turn was ill advised. “He’s a dangerous man, Rowly.”

  Rowland nodded. “Yes, I believe he is. And I don’t think he’s finished. I just want to know what he’s thinking.”

  “They won’t let you—”

  “I’ll be a face in the crowd, Ed. It’s been nearly two years since I crossed the New Guard… de Groot and half the executive have resigned or been expelled—no one will notice me.”

  Edna studied him for a moment, and then she stood. “Well, we’d better get going then.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  Edna retrieved her gloves from the sideboard. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than listening to Mr. Campbell give a speech,” she said grimacing. A thought occurred to her and she glanced down at her simple cotton dress. It was a little faded and a couple of seasons out of style. “Where is Mr. Campbell giving this speech, Rowly… should I change?”

  Rowland contemplated the sculptress. He had seen her nearly every day for almost three years. She lived in his house, was his model and his muse. Yet even now, just looking at her took his breath. “No, don’t change.”

  3

  SUED LEADER OF NEW GUARD

  £401 5/8 FOR ALLEGED LEGAL EXPENSES

  SYDNEY, Sept 21

  The case in which John Francis Dynon had sued Eric Campbell, leader of the New Guard, for £401 5/8, alleged to have been expenses incurred in the defence of the plaintiff and other members of the New Guard who were convicted at the Central Court of having assaulted Alderman J. Garden in May of last year, was brought to an end by the announcement of Mr. Justice Halse Rogers in the Supreme Court today that the matter had been settled out of court. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

  Kalgoorlie Miner, 1933

  The barrel-chested men who guarded the entrance to the hall were noticeably uniformed by their lack of jackets and the coloured armbands which stood out against the crisp white of exposed shirtsleeves. They stopped Rowland and Edna, silently cutting them out of the crowd of New Guardsmen and curious citizens streaming into the hall.

  Rowland cursed under his breath, grabbing Edna’s hand and turning to leave.

  “Sinclair!” One of the jacketless guardsmen smiled broadly as he barred Rowland’s way.

  “Hodges,” Rowland replied pulling Edna behind him. The guardsman was one of many Rowland had met when he’d infiltrated the New Guard. His cover was, of course, no longer intact and the New Guard knew well that Rowland Sinclair had been a spy in their midst. Many believed he had tried to assassinate their leader.

  Hodges conferred quietly with a couple of his colleagues.

  “You’d better come with me,” he said curtly.

  “I don’t think so,” Rowland replied. “We might just be on our way.”

  Hodges’ eyes narrowed. “There are three thousand right thinking men here… what do you suppose would happen if they knew who you were, that you were the Red mongrel who tried to kill the commander?”

  Rowland said nothing, furious with himself for so carelessly bringing Edna into danger. Campbell’s men were not adverse to violence.

  “Very well,” he said slowly. “But allow Miss Higgins to leave first.”

  “No, I think I’ll stay,” Edna was defiant.

  “Ed—”

  “We’re not going to let your young lady go just yet,” Hodges interrupted. “If you make us drag you, she could get hurt.”

  Rowland flared. “Touch her and I’ll—”

  “Ten seconds and I’ll announce who you are and leave you to it,” Hodges threatened.

  “Rowly…” Edna glanced back into the hall at the packed assembly of guardsmen all chanting for Campbell.

  Rowland squeezed her hand. The sculptress was right. They would have to take their chances with Hodges.

  A dozen guardsmen escorted them to an anteroom adjoining the hall. Hodges entered first, and after a brief interval Rowland and Edna were ushered in. Eric Campbell stood before a full-length mirror, grooming his moustache.

  “Sinclair,” he said coldly, regarding them first in the mirror. He turned. “And your charming fiancée… or has Miss Higgins become Mrs. Rowland Sinclair since we last had the pleasure?”

  “No,” Rowland said curtly. He was fairly sure Campbell knew that Edna had never been his fiancée. “What do you want, Campbell?”

  “I could ask the same thing of you,” Campbell said turning back to the mirror to adjust his tie. He didn’t wait for Rowland to respond. “This is a day of significance Sinclair, an historic day. Today we will take the first step towards smashing the corrupt machine of party politics from within. Democracy has had its chance. Australians deserve a better system.”

  “This won’t work,” Rowland said. “Not here.”

  “I met some gentlemen in Germany who might disagree,” Campbell replied. “Mr. Hitler’s government worked within the system to deliver the change the German people wanted… I see no reason why the Centre Party supported by the New Guard can’t do the same here.”

  “You can’t seriously be looking to emulate the Nazis!” Rowland said angrily. “For God’s sake, man, Hitler is—”

  Hodges pushed him back. “Shut your Red trap, Sinclair.”

  Rowland might have thrown a punch then and there if Edna was not still holding onto his hand.

  “You’ll find, Sinclair,” Campbell said, with restraining grip on Hodges’ shoulder, “that there’ll be no receptive ear for your Bolshevik slander here.”

  Edna trie
d. “Mr. Campbell, you don’t understand. We were in Germany…”

  “So was I, Miss Higgins. And let me tell you I was impressed. In orderliness and cleanliness, the Germans have no equal! They are happy and content and prosperous.”

  “And what about the German Jews, Mr. Campbell—are they happy and content?” Edna asked.

  Campbell’s reply was smooth, practised. “The only Jews I saw were eating in restaurants… fat, well-dressed people who scoffed at notions that they were persecuted in any way!”

  Rowland shook his head. “Don’t bother, Ed. The man is an idiot, too vain to recognise what’s in front of his nose.”

  Campbell’s face hardened. “What’s in front of my nose, Sinclair, is a spoiled Red sympathiser, a traitor!” He took a step towards Rowland. “You are not welcome here amongst the noble and decent men of the New Guard, comrade. Go back to your shirking Commie mates and wait for the judgement day that’s coming to you!”

  “I won’t be waiting quietly, Campbell,” Rowland’s voice was thick with contempt. “You go ahead and follow Mr. Hitler’s plan, copy his every move, but you’ll find it won’t work in Australia!”

  Campbell smiled. “You might care to watch yourself. Some of the lads quite earnestly believe you got off too lightly last time we crossed paths. They may decide to deal the justice that most loyal, right thinking men believe you deserve.”

  “Rowly, let’s just go,” Edna said before he could respond. She grabbed his arm. “Rowly!”

  Rowland nodded slowly. They’d already pushed their luck.

  Four guardsmen, including Hodges, escorted them out of the anteroom, accompanying them down the street, well away from the crowds gathered around the hall in which Eric Campbell’s parliamentary ambitions would be launched.

  “Right, Sinclair,” Hodges snarled. “Get lost!” He half turned away and then changed his mind.

  “Rowly!” Edna screamed as the guardsman swivelled and swung.

  Rowland ducked, pushing Edna back with his left arm whilst he led with his right. Of course, there were four New Guardsmen, and they closed in.