by June Wright
A short silence fell between them, to be broken by Marsh saying carefully: “I don’t want to disturb you by reviving unhappy memories, but there are one or two matters I would like explained. On my first night at Reliance I heard someone crying. It seemed to come from outside. Who was it?”
“I heard it too. It was Sam. I went down to his bungalow and tried to coax him into telling me the trouble. He was bewildered and distressed but he would not tell me. Evidently Jennet had threatened that I would send him away if he ever told about the snuff-box.”
Marsh nodded. “Michael said someone must have frightened him. Another thing, Dr. Kate. What did Mr Waring mean when he said that about denouncing those members of the profession who thought they had got away with mistakes?”
Katherine’s sad face lightened. “Henry was being extra pompous that night. King loved to deflate his ego.”
The girl smiled, too, before she glanced away. “I came across a scrapbook in the laboratory,” she said hesitantly. “There were cuttings in it about that inquest in which Dr. Shane was involved. At the time I thought you were connected with it.”
“I don’t blame you for arriving at that conclusion,” Katherine replied gently. “Unless you had known King well, you could not understand the queer twisted streak in his character that would cause him to retain such evidence. He used to threaten to reveal those errors—his own as mine—in order to make me stay with him. It was Larry who tried to poison your mind against me, wasn’t it, Marsh?”
The girl bowed her head, conscious of how far Laurence Gair had been successful. “Before he left, his belief in your guilt was shaken. I think it had something to do with Mr Waring’s will. All I know of that is what Mrs Arkwright let fall—that two sums of money had been left to persons she had never heard of.”
“Yes, she wanted me to try and stop those bequests, but I would not. It was conscience money that King left—to Bruce Shane and to the nearest living relative of the patient who had died. Larry must have heard King’s account of that affair, but when he learned about the bequests he began to doubt him. Do you remember trying to find that nurse we had before our partnership was broken? Yes, Marsh. I knew what you were doing. Simon told me. The money for the hospital she bought in the Western District was put up by King—hush money. She knew that patient was his.”
“Mr Morrow seems to have been a great help to you,” the girl said, and there was a faintly jealous note in her voice. When Katherine only smiled without replying, she felt a strange resentment. Although the intense strain of the past few days had been lifted, she was conscious of a vague sense of loss. Katherine, aloof and unapproachable, was someone to be worshipped. But the woman who had poured forth her intimate troubles and laid herself emotionally bare was, after all, only another human being.
Marsh did not know that this was precisely what Katherine had intended.
III
She would not allow the girl to leave Reliance until she had in some part recovered from the ordeal in the cottage. Morrow called the next morning to discuss the inquest on Miss Jennet. The verdict would probably be ‘death by misadventure’, with no mention of the circumstances leading up to their being on the premises or of the real cause of the fire.
“I have fixed it so that you need not appear,” he told Marsh. “Your trip need not be interfered with. Katherine has told me of the ambitious programme you have planned. But don’t let your career swamp everything else that is worth living for,” he added, with a mocking smile to temper the seriousness of his words.
The girl flushed with annoyance, but Katherine did not intervene. When Simon had gone she turned and said impulsively: “Don’t go, Marsh. Simon is right. A career isn’t the only thing that matters.”
Marsh felt betrayed. “That isn’t what you thought once,” she answered stiffly.
Without speaking Katherine turned back to the window where Simon Morrow’s straight figure could be seen in the distance. She did not appear to notice when Marsh slipped out of the room and went upstairs to pack her cases.
She left the following morning, Katherine and Simon standing on the verandah of Reliance together to wave her good-bye. She had not seen Shane since the night of the fire, and for some reason she could not bring herself to mention his name. All she knew was that he was staying with Simon, but had refused the offer of Morrow’s influence and reputation in establishing himself professionally.
Marsh felt a warm glow when Morrow ruefully confessed this rebuff. Unbidden recollections passed swiftly through her mind as she drove away from them without a backward glance. Shane, so brusque and impatient of quibbling. Shane helping her with Sam—mocking her in the laboratory at Reliance—holding her like a child in front of his horse. And lastly, Shane, lying across a table in his cottage, drinking to shut out the fear of disgrace and failure.
She thought of Larry and her lip curled; and of Todd with a sad and pitying kindness.
The little car was climbing the hill which overlooked Matthews when she saw the horseman reined in ahead, blocking the road. An odd little sound came from her throat as she slowed to a standstill.
Shane slipped from the saddle and came over to the car. “I only learned this morning that you are going overseas,” he said. He sounded angry. “Why keep it a secret?”
“I did not know you would be interested,” she replied, smiling.
“Do you really have to go?”
“Yes,” she said, quietly. “Try to understand. I think you will. For years I have worked and saved for this trip. It means a lot to me. Probably it won’t later on, but I can’t change my plans or ambitions overnight. We have learned a great deal about each other in a few days, Bruce, but it is not sufficient. Let me have these two years. You will want them, too.”
He was silent for a moment, frowning at the whip he pulled hard through his fingers. Then he took her upturned face in his hand gently. “Of course, you are right. I was being unreasonable. Good-bye for the present, my dear.” Turning, he remounted his horse.
Marsh started the car. For a while the rider kept pace beside her until she gathered speed. Then with a last gesture of farewell they parted.
the end
more from June Wright
murder in the telephone exchange
“A classic English-style mystery . . . packed with detail and menace.”—Kirkus Reviews
June Wright made quite a splash in 1948 with her debut novel. It was the best-selling mystery in Australia that year, sales outstripping even those of the reigning queen of crime, Agatha Christie.
When an unpopular colleague at Melbourne Central is murdered – her head bashed in with a buttinsky, a piece of equipment used to listen in on phone calls – feisty young “hello girl” Maggie Byrnes resolves to turn sleuth. Some of her co-workers are acting strangely, and Maggie is convinced she has a better chance of figuring out the killer’s identity than the stodgy police team assigned to the case, who seem to think she herself might have had something to do with it. But then one of her friends is murdered too, and it looks like Maggie is next in line.
Narrated with verve and wit, this is a mystery in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers, entertaining and suspenseful, and building to a gripping climax. It also offers an evocative account of Melbourne in the early postwar years, as young women flocked to the big city, leaving behind small-town family life for jobs, boarding houses and independence. (336 pages, with an introduction by Derham Groves)
SO BAD A DEATH
When Murder in the Telephone Exchange was reissued in 2014, June Wright was hailed by the Sydney Morning Herald as “our very own Agatha Christie,” and a new generation of readers fell in love with her inimitable blend of intrigue, wit, and psychological suspense – not to mention her winning sleuth, Maggie Byrnes.
Maggie makes a memorable return to the fray in So Bad a Death. She’s married now, and living in a quiet Melbourn
e suburb. Yet violent death dogs her footsteps even in apparently tranquil Middleburn. It’s no great surprise when a widely disliked local bigwig (who also happens to be her landlord) is shot dead, but Maggie suspects someone is also targeting the infant who is his heir. Her compulsion to investigate puts everyone she loves in danger. This reissue features an introduction by Lucy Sussex, plus her fascinating 1996 interview with June Wright. (288 pages)
DUCK SEASON DEATH
June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was just a little ahead of its time, because while it delivers a bravura twist on the classic ‘country house’ murder mystery, it’s also a sharp-eyed and sparkling send-up of the genre.
When someone takes advantage of a duck hunt to murder publisher Athol Sefton at a remote hunting inn, it soon turns out that almost everyone, guests and staff alike, had good reason to shoot him. Sefton’s nephew Charles believes he can solve the crime by applying the traditional “rules of the game” he’s absorbed over years as a reviewer of detective fiction. Much to his annoyance, however, the killer doesn’t seem to be playing by those rules, and Charles finds that he is the one under suspicion. Duck Season Death is a both a devilishly clever whodunit and a delightful entertainment. (192 pages, with an introduction by Derham Groves)
also from dark passage books
peter doyle
Peter Doyle’s crime novels, featuring irresistible antihero Billy Glasheen, brilliantly explore the criminal underworld, political corruption, and the explosion of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll in postwar Australian life, and have earned him three Ned Kelly Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
“Peter Doyle does for Sydney what Carl Hiaasen does for Miami.”—Shane Maloney
“Think of a hopped-up James M. Cain.”—Kirkus Reviews
the devil’s jump
August 1945: the Japanese have surrendered and there’s dancing in the streets of Sydney. But Billy Glasheen has little time to celebrate; his black marketeer boss has disappeared, leaving Billy high and dry. Soon he’s on the run from the criminals and the cops, not to mention a shady private army. They all think he has the thing they want, and they’ll kill to get hold of it. Unfortunately for Billy, he doesn’t know what it is . . . but he’d better find it fast.
GET RICH QUICK
Sydney in the 1950s. Billy is trying to make a living, any way he can. Luckily, he’s a likeable guy, with a gift for masterminding elaborate scenarios—whether it’s a gambling scam, transporting stolen jewels, or keeping the wheels greased during the notorious 1957 tour by Little Richard and his rock ‘n’ roll entourage. But trouble follows close behind—because Billy’s schemes always seem to interfere with the plans of Sydney’s big players, an unholy trinity of crooks, bent cops, and politicians on the make. Suddenly he’s in the frame for murder, and on the run from the police, who’ll happily send him down for it. Billy’s no sleuth, but there’s nowhere to turn for help. To prove it wasn’t him, he’ll have to find the real killer.
the big whatever
As the swinging 60s turn into the 70s, Billy’s living a quiet life. He’s in debt to the mob so he keeps his head down, driving a cab, running some low-level rackets. He may as well have gone straight, it’s so boring. Then one day everything changes. He picks up a trashy paperback left in his cab – and its plot seems weirdly familiar. The main character is based on him! Only one person knows enough about his past to have written it—Max, his double-crossing ex-partner in crime. But Max is dead. He famously went up in flames, along with a fortune in cash, after a bank heist. If Max is somehow still alive, Billy has a score to settle. And if he didn’t get fried to a crisp, maybe the money didn’t either. To find out, Billy has to follow the clues in the strange little book—and soon discovers he’s not the only one on Max’s trail.
“An absolute gem . . . a marvellous read and a truly distinctive piece of Australian crime writing.”—Sydney Morning Herald
also from dark passage books
G.S. Manson
Coorparoo Blues & The Irish Fandango
Written in the spare, plain-spoken style of all great pulp fiction, G.S. Manson’s series featuring 1940s Brisbane P.I. Jack Munro captures the high stakes and nervous energy of wartime, when everything becomes a matter of life and death.
BRISBANE, 1943. Overnight a provincial Australian city has become the main Allied staging post for the war in the Pacific. The tensions – social, sexual, and racial – created by the arrival of thousands of US troops are stirring up all kinds of mayhem, and Brisbane’s once quiet streets are looking pretty mean.
Enter Jack Munro, a World War I veteran and ex-cop with a nose for trouble and a stubborn dedication to exposing the truth, however inconvenient it is for the -powers that be. He’s not always a particularly good man, but he’s the one you want on your side when things look bad.
When Jack is hired by a knockout blonde to find her no-good missing husband, he turns over a few rocks he’s not supposed to. Soon the questions are piling up, and so are the bodies. But Jack forges on through the dockside bars, black-market warehouses, and segregated brothels of his roiling city, uncovering greed and corruption eating away at the foundations of the war effort.
Then Jack is hired to investigate a suspicious suicide, and there’s a whole new cast of characters for him to deal with – a father surprisingly unmoved by his son’s death, a dodgy priest, crooked cops, Spanish Civil War refugees – and a wall of silence between him and the truth, which has its roots deep in the past. Friends, enemies, the police – they’re all warning Jack to back off. But he can’t walk away from a case: he has to do the square thing.
“Great historical detail of wartime Australia mixed with the steady pace of sex and violence . . . keeps the pages turning.”—Brisbane Courier-Mail
“Rough and gritty, but also vital.”—The Age