The Autumn Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘We were hoping to leave you in peace, Tom, but moving back to Brunswick will have to be postponed.’

  ‘Starling really is a kind of monster, isn’t he?

  ‘No, Tom. He’s not a monster. He’s just a man. A nasty one, I grant you, but he’s just a man, and he can be stopped.’

  ‘So he actually urinated in your living room?’

  ‘If he’d done it in one place it would have been revolting, but manageable. It’s impossible to sponge him away.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to drive us out of our house, but he has forced us to redecorate. Everything in the room is going: all the furniture, the carpet, and the curtains. And we’re repainting, including the ceiling. That is, if we can get paint.’

  ‘Surely he didn’t piss on the ceiling.’

  ‘I’m not taking any chances that any trace of him remains.’

  ‘I really did see him that night, didn’t I?’

  ‘I never doubted you, Tom.’

  ‘I doubted myself.’

  ‘Nightmares don’t have bladders that they empty in other people’s living rooms.’

  INSPECTOR LAMBERT CALLED Joe into his office and placed the damaged scrapbook in front of him.

  ‘I presume this belongs to you, Sergeant. You can pick it up. It’s been dusted for fingerprints.’

  Joe didn’t need to pick it up.

  ‘Yes, sir, it’s mine.’

  ‘It’s been damaged, and we both know who did the damage.’

  ‘I thought it had been burned in the flat.’

  ‘I read the articles, or most of them. I’m afraid I had to stop reading them, and I’m ashamed to say the extent of this hadn’t registered with me.’

  ‘It isn’t registering with anybody, sir.’

  Lambert felt unable to offer anything that might pass for solace. The accumulation of details in the articles in Joe’s scrapbook defied belief. Titus hadn’t been able to transmute the words into images. His imagination failed, because despite his knowledge of how bleak human behaviour could be, this seemed to belong outside the human realm. He’d seen bodies mangled, mutilated, and violated, but he was unable to multiply this by one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million. Who could imagine this and still be able to speak? The images that had refused to come to him hadn’t failed to form for Joe Sable. Lambert was sure of that. Joe’s loathing of George Starling and other trumped-up National Socialists and Hitlerites must be extreme. Why was it Joe who had had to see Kevin Maher shoot Watson Cooper? Lambert wondered if he would break under the strain of what Joe Sable was carrying.

  ‘As you know, the body of a Nazi sympathiser and twenty-four-carat nutter was found in Warrnambool early on Sunday morning. We’d assumed that Starling might be implicated — and he still might be — but how did he get from there to here in time to piss in my living room on Sunday night, or early this morning?’

  ‘He must have a vehicle.’

  ‘And if he has a vehicle, he must have money to buy petrol on the black market.’

  ‘He feels close, sir.’

  ‘I hope that’s not because some of his stink has stuck to me.’

  ‘No, sir. I just feel it.’

  ‘It is absolutely imperative, Sergeant, that as few people as possible know your current living arrangements.’

  Lambert had said this before, and it didn’t need to be repeated. It made Joe think that his presence in the Kew house put everyone there at risk.

  ‘We have to lay a trap for him, sir. We can’t just wait for him to make another move. We have to control this.’

  ‘If you’re offering yourself as bait, Sergeant, it’s out of the question.’

  ‘Why?’

  Titus didn’t want to say that Joe had done enough, that to ask any more of him would be inhuman. Joe would hear such an explanation not with gratitude, but with a terrible belief that Lambert thought him weak and incompetent, and no reassurance would change that. Titus knew Joe well enough to be sure of this.

  ‘I’m not putting the lives of any of my officers at risk to catch George Starling. He’ll come out into the open. He can’t help himself.’

  Joe thought this was a disappointing answer. The reality was that Starling was in Melbourne for one reason, and one reason only: to kill Joe. He was prey. Well, if Inspector Lambert was reluctant to make use of this fact, he and Tom Mackenzie would construct a trap of their own devising.

  ‘I’d like you to get to Kew before dark, Joe. Helen Lord has a right to know that Starling is in Melbourne, and you have my permission to tell her. Vigilance is everything now.’

  Joe stood up to leave.

  ‘Do you want your scrapbook?’

  ‘No, sir. George Starling has touched it.’

  12

  WHEN JOE LEFT police headquarters he waited on the pavement for a full minute before heading for Flinders Street Station. He stood close to the gutter and scanned the other side of Russell Street. There were a lot of people about. There was no stationary figure leaning against the wall of the Magistrates’ Court, or sitting on its steps. He looked to the left and the right. He wanted Starling to be there. He wanted this to be over.

  By the time Joe reached Peter Lillee’s house — he had to stop thinking of it as Peter Lillee’s house — he’d checked his surroundings dozens of times. There was no Starling, and as far as Joe could tell, no policeman who’d been deputised to beat him up. He was back in Kew well before dark and discovered Guy Kirkham trimming shrubs in the front garden.

  ‘It’s busy work,’ he said. ‘They have a gardener, but I couldn’t sit around all day doing nothing. I got on the roof and cleaned the gutters, too. At least that needed to be done.’

  ‘Six o’clock is sherry time in the house. Put your shirt on and join us.’

  ‘I stink.’

  ‘You’ve got time for a whore’s bath.’

  ‘Joe, no one has said anything, but did I have a nightmare last night?’

  There was no point lying.

  ‘Yes, you did. Not a bad one, but I heard you.’

  ‘And so did Mrs Lord and Helen?’

  ‘I presume so.’

  Guy shook his head. ‘I’m embarrassed.’

  ‘No one else is, so don’t worry about it.’

  The six o’clock sherry wasn’t really a fixed tradition, and it had only been observed when Peter Lillee was home. Tonight, Joe intended to ask Ros Lord if sherry could be served in the library. He had an idea and he needed the shot of courage that alcohol might provide in order to put it to Ros and Helen.

  Joe found them both in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal. The radio was on. Helen was shelling peas, and Ros was trussing a chicken.

  ‘Mrs Anderson, two doors down, gave us the bird,’ Ros said. ‘Her son had brought down two from Lilydale, and she said she didn’t need two chickens and that it would spoil. What a shame we don’t have anything to celebrate.’

  ‘Uncle Peter loved chicken, but even for him it was an extravagance, so let’s call it a commemoration. Clara Dawson is coming for dinner tonight. She’ll be here any minute. We thought we’d have sherry in the library.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Clara for ages,’ Ros said.

  ‘She’s never liked this house, although she likes the people in it.’

  ‘She’s rather marvellous, I think,’ Ros said as she pushed the chicken into the oven. ‘Smart as a whip. Will Guy join us, Joe?’

  ‘Yes. He’s gone upstairs to clean himself up.’

  ‘He did the gutters for us. He clambered up on the roof, and my heart was in my mouth. In the end I couldn’t watch. He was balanced on the tiles, so close to the edge. He said he wasn’t afraid of heights.’

  Joe had felt awkward when his assumptions about Guy’s jumping off the pier had prove
d wrong. Now he wondered if he’d been right and Guy’s jaunty assurance about his intentions had been a cover for a last-minute failure of nerve. Why would he engage in the reckless folly of climbing high onto a roof when he might slip into brief unconsciousness at any moment? Perhaps that was precisely why. It wouldn’t be suicide, would it, if he passed out and fell?

  ‘He used to be afraid of heights,’ Joe said. ‘He must have grown out of it.’

  ‘He had a bad night last night.’

  ‘I think he has a bad night every night.’

  There was a knock on the front door.

  ‘It’s all set up in the library,’ Ros said. ‘It’s so nice to have people here.’

  Joe went through to the library with Ros while Helen attended to the door.

  ‘I suppose this house is a bit of a mausoleum,’ Ros said. ‘It feels less like a home now that Peter is gone. He loved all his pictures, but without him here to talk about them or move them around, it does have the air of an art gallery.’

  ‘I think this is an absolutely beautiful room, Mrs Lord. It feels homely to me.’

  ‘Rooms need people as much as people need rooms, don’t they?’

  The door opened just as Ros said this, and as Clara crossed the carpet towards her, she offered, ‘I always said, Mrs Lord, that if you were in a room, the wisest person was in attendance.’

  Ros laughed.

  ‘This is Joe Sable,’ Helen said. She knew she could rely on Clara not to reveal or even hint at the feelings she’d expressed to her about Joe.

  ‘Oh, you’re the detective who Helen used to work with.’

  Helen could see that conversation would be awkward unless Joe knew that Clara had been told certain things about the incident in Port Fairy.

  ‘Clara knows about George Starling, and she knows that you’re staying here, Joe, and why.’

  ‘And you’re a doctor,’ Joe said.

  ‘I am. Please don’t show me a troublesome rash, unless it’s so spectacularly hideous that I can turn it into an anecdote.’

  Guy had entered the room without anyone noticing.

  ‘What about a parasite that might be new to science,’ he said. ‘I’m just back from New Guinea. I warn you, though, you’ll need a torch.’

  Clara laughed, and so did everyone else.

  ‘This is Guy Kirkham,’ Joe said.

  ‘Do you have a torch, Mrs Lord?’

  ‘All right, all right. There is no parasite.’

  ‘Oh, I think we’re all a little bit disappointed,’ Clara said.

  They drank sherry and talked for over an hour. Joe thought that it had probably been a very long time since so much laughter had echoed through the house. The conversation flowed easily. Joe had never seen Helen so unguarded and witty, and Guy, who had anyway a natural capacity for charm, seemed more the Guy Kirkham who Joe had known before the war.

  When Ros and Helen left the library to prepare the meal, Clara, Guy, and Joe, under the warming influence of sherry, began to discuss the pictures on the walls.

  ‘They all meant something to Peter,’ Joe said. ‘I think he was guided by sentiment rather than value.’

  ‘Really?’ Clara said. ‘I’m always sceptical when art collectors make that claim. Mr Lillee didn’t get rich by being sentimental. Besides, there are some good pictures here. That’s a Goya drawing for a start.’

  Guy was impressed. ‘Well spotted.’

  ‘No. I’m cheating. Mr Lillee pointed it out to me a few years ago when I’d come round for tea.’

  ‘It didn’t cost him very much,’ Joe said.

  ‘He might have told you that to discourage you from stealing it,’ Clara said.

  Joe had no quick comeback. He wasn’t skilled at banter. Guy was, but he was closely studying a Lloyd Rees drawing. Clara looked at Joe and tried to see what it was about him that had caused such a tangle of emotions in Helen. He was sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently amusing, sufficiently intelligent, and well turned out, though he could take no credit for the latter given that the clothes were Peter Lillee’s. Everything about him was sufficient. There must be something she wasn’t seeing. In Clara’s experience, sufficiency in people never grew into something more; it only declined into something less.

  Guy Kirkham, on the other hand, was a different kettle of fish. The problem with Guy, though, for all his wit and charm, was that there was something wrong with him. Clara saw that immediately. Even though he seemed relaxed, she noticed the tremor in his hands, which he tried to disguise by keeping them in his trouser pockets. There was something about his face, too. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Perhaps it was a muscle jumping, or how he stopped smiling when he thought no one was looking. She was interested because she was drawn to him, and decided to observe him over dinner.

  They were called into the dining room. Clara offered Guy her arm, which he took. This small gesture, from which he was excluded, made Joe realise that something had happened to him. Was it possible to fall in love with someone in just one hour? Joe tried to dismiss the sensation as ludicrous. It was difficult, however, to dismiss the sudden and appalling self-consciousness that side-swiped him. How was he going to get through dinner without Clara thinking him a clumsy simpleton? And now he was sweating.

  NO ONE AT the table knew anything about wine. Ros had pulled a bottle of red at random from Peter Lillee’s cellar. There was no doubt that it would be a good wine, but its virtues were lost on the assembled palates.

  ‘I suppose it’s quite nice,’ Clara said.

  ‘Uncle Peter would be appalled by our ignorance.’

  The chicken was a little dry, and Clara suggested that perhaps Mrs Anderson had slipped them a rooster. A second bottle of wine was opened, and as people became comfortable, the main reason for Clara’s presence was revealed.

  ‘Clara and I went down to the river this morning.’

  Joe looked at Ros, trying to judge the effect these words had on her. She leaned forward with interest.

  ‘Afterwards, we went to the council offices.’

  ‘The council offices?’ Mrs Lord said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Clara is a genius.’

  ‘It was the dead fish,’ Clara said. ‘I believe the Americans have an expression, something about left field. I remembered that, as a child, we visited an aunt in Sydney, near the Lane Cove River. I remember days when the air stank of rotten eggs, and on the day before we left to come back to Melbourne, dead fish started surfacing and collecting near the banks. Apparently, this had happened before. Even at eleven years old, I knew that the rotten egg smell was hydrogen sulphide, but that’s as much as I knew. My aunt said that she’d been writing to the council about the smell for years, but nothing was ever done. It made some people quite ill. I know now that hydrogen sulphide in dense concentrations can kill you.’

  ‘I had no idea where this was leading when Clara outlined it to me,’ said Helen, ‘but we went to the council and asked if there’d been any recent complaints about a bad smell or fish kills. There had been. The council had sent someone to investigate, and the best he could offer was that the river was polluted because industries had been pouring waste into it for generations, and in that part of the river in Kew raw sewage was a problem.’

  ‘I’m lost,’ Joe said and immediately wished he’d waited for either Guy or Mrs Lord to make that admission. Clara looked at him, and Joe interpreted the look as a confirmation that she thought he was a dolt.

  ‘I didn’t know what it might mean either,’ Clara said. ‘I just had this vague idea that it might mean something, and to be honest, I’m still not one hundred per cent sure, but I have a theory that might be worth taking to the coroner, depending, of course, on the autopsy report.’

  ‘Inspector Lambert received that this morning,’ Joe said.

  ‘You’ve waited until now to mention that?’ Hel
en snapped.

  Joe looked stricken.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joe. That was unfair.’

  He rallied. ‘I haven’t read the report, Helen, and if I had, I don’t think discussing its contents over sherry would have felt right.’

  There was an awkward silence, and Clara could tell that Helen was struggling to absorb this public chastening.

  ‘Did Inspector Lambert mention anything at all, Joe?’ Clara asked, and discreetly placed her hand on Helen’s knee under the table. Joe, unaware of the effect his words had had, said, ‘There was nothing conclusive. He mentioned something about Mr Lillee’s blood being a purplish colour, which is consistent with some kind of poisoning.’

  ‘My God, Helen. I think I might be right.’

  ‘Are you saying you know how Peter died?’ Ros asked.

  ‘I think I do, Mrs Lord, but there are a few gaps in my theory, and a whole lot of things would have had to come together perfectly for it to work. I do believe, however, that it’s possible.’

  ‘You have our full attention,’ Guy said and put down his wine glass to underline the point.

  ‘I’ll try to keep the chemistry to a minimum. River mud, especially in areas of high pollution, can hold large quantities of hydrogen sulphide. If the conditions are right, it can escape the mud in the form of hydrogen sulphide gas. We all know what that gas smells like, rotten eggs. It’s disagreeable, but in high concentrations, it’s also poisonous. In very high concentrations just breathing it in will stop the heart. It’s also heavier than air. Now, this is where the conditions on the morning of Mr Lillee’s death would have had to freakishly align. And this is critical: he would have had to have been lying down at the time of his death.’

  ‘Uncle Peter could easily have lain down to look at the stars. I’ve seen him do that here, in the backyard. It was perfectly still that night.’

  ‘Here’s where it gets complicated. There must have been an eruption of sulphide gas somewhere not too far upstream of where Mr Lillee was lying.’