A Few Right Thinking Men (4 page)

Chapter Five

Housekeeper's Suit
Against Grazier's Estate
Action for £10,610

MELBOURNE, Thursday

Alleging an oral promise to be “provided for during her life”, Maude Winifred of Mentone, spinster and housekeeper, brought an action against the trustee of the estate of John Francis Darby, of Studbrook, Birregurra, claiming £10,610
…
The late Mr. Darby, who was a grazier, left an estate valued at approximately £68,000.

The Argus
, December 11, 1931

Edna took the tray from the downstairs maid and carried it into the drawing room. Rowland was still at his easel. It wasn't difficult to see that he had not slept. The suit he had worn to the morgue was now spattered with paint. His hair, too, was streaked where he had dragged his fingers through it as he worked. Edna smiled. Rowland had always been a little chaotic in the way he painted. She placed the tray on the sideboard and poured coffee into a fine china cup.

“Here, drink this,” she ordered.

Rowland took the cup but left the saucer in her hand. He drained it in a single gulp and handed it back to her with a smile. The night at his easel had apparently lifted his spirits somewhat.

Edna looked past him, to the painting: Ryan's speech at the Domain. She was awestruck by Rowland's detailed recall. It was as if the figures had been posed before him while he painted. She saw the passion and conviction in Ryan's face as he spoke from his makeshift podium…the men in the crowd, some enthusiastic, some sceptical, and the New Guardsmen, hostile. Edna motioned Rowland out of the way and looked more carefully at the faces of the last, militant and determined, like soldiers.

“Oh my, Rowly, you're good,” she said, almost to herself.

Rowland said nothing, but he was pleased. Edna was sparing with her praise.

“Do you want any of this?” he asked finally as he poured more coffee.

She grimaced. “Heavens, no.” Edna drank only tea. This month anyway.

Rowland gulped his second cup. “Wilfred caught the train early this morning. He'll be in Sydney by afternoon—wants me to meet him at Uncle Rowland's house.”

“Why there?”

Rowland shrugged. “I guess he's got to find papers and deeds, hide the odd skeleton…that sort of thing.”

Edna stepped over a wet palette that Rowland had left on the floor. She had never met Wilfred. He preferred the country and came to Sydney infrequently. On those occasions that he did, Rowland would dine with him at the Masonic Club. She wondered if Wilfred had ever seen any of Rowland's work.

“You're finished then?” She looked again at the painting.

“Maybe.” He pushed his hair back from his face. “Sometimes it's difficult to know when to stop…What do you think?”

Edna stood back, tilting her head to one side as she considered the picture as a whole. “I think you need to put in a couple more figures.”

“Really?”

“Here, and here.” She pointed to two spots on the canvas. “You have the Communists here and the New Guardsmen facing them in opposition. But there were others there too…ordinary people who were somewhere between the two. It won't be complete without the people in the middle.”

Rowland stepped back and considered his work. The people in the middle. He thought of Alcott. Yes, she was right. “What would I do without you, Ed?”

“Nothing worth hanging, anyway.”

He grinned as he picked up his brush and started dabbing at the mess of colour on his palette.

Milton sauntered in, fussing with the cuffs of a cream jacket he had paired with a red brocade waistcoat and cravat. He carried a pale buckskin fedora with a jaunty feather stuck into its band. Where and how Milton procured his idiosyncratic apparel was a mystery to his friends. The poet had his own contacts. Rowland assumed there was an insane, colour-blind tailor among them.

“Oh, you're still at it.” Milton kept well clear of Rowland and the paint, lest his immaculate attire be spattered. He pointed vaguely toward the dining room. “Breakfast is served. Are we ready to partake, wot? Those cooks, how they pound, and strain and grind, and turn substance into accident, to fulfill all your greedy appetites.”

“Chaucer,” Rowland said, without taking his eyes from his canvas. “Tell Mary I'll eat later.”

Milton nodded. “You coming, Ed? Clyde's working too. Don't make me eat alone.”

Rowland worked through the morning. Absorbed, he didn't notice the time. Clyde came in at some stage to borrow some viridian blue and Rowland could hear Edna and Milton in the conservatory. It was where Edna sculpted the clay models she'd use to make castings for her bronzes. Despite the tragedy of the previous evening, the morning seemed almost normal.

***

It was afternoon when Rowland finally cleaned his brushes. His brother had arranged to meet him at four. Johnston, the chauffeur, was to meet the train at Central Station at two-thirty with the Rolls. Wilfred Sinclair had some business in the city he needed to attend to first, but Rowland knew he wouldn't be late. Wilfred was never late.

Rowland showered and changed, going through several shirts and waistcoats before he found one free of paint, and only then did he wander into the kitchen in search of food. Mary Brown shooed him out, sighing repeatedly, and banishing him to the dining room while she reheated the meal he'd earlier missed.

His stomach settled, he stuck his head into the sunroom where Clyde painted.

“What's your hurry?' Clyde began, tapping his pocket watch in case it had stopped. It read just half-past two and the elder Rowland Sinclair's house was not far.

“I thought I'd have a chat to Mrs. Donelly—the housekeeper—before Wil arrives,” Rowland explained. “The poor old thing might have calmed down by now and have something to say.”

“The police didn't get anything useful out of her.”

“Yes, but she knows me…has for years. She might be able to remember something if I ask her.”

“Would you like a mate?” Clyde asked, a little too eagerly.

“No. You finish your commission…the sooner you get that blasted harridan out of my house, the happier we'll all be.”

Clyde sighed. A struggling artist could hardly turn down commissions, but the wealthy subject of his current work had few redeeming qualities. The portrait was taking Clyde much longer than usual because he was struggling to balance accuracy with his artistic desire to produce something pleasing to the eye. “It's hopeless,” he said, despondent. “Its only value as a portrait is that it does actually look like her.”

“You should've painted her from behind,” Rowland grinned. “You could have said it was avant-garde—Lady McKenzie would have loved that.”

“Get off!” Clyde snorted. “From the back, I would have had to paint her hump and bristles!”

Rowland laughed. He was glad he didn't have to take commissions. “If you make sure the frame is spectacular,” he advised, “and match the colour of her dress in the painting to the curtains in her drawing room…she'll be more than happy.”

“But look at it!” Clyde was in despair. “It's almost cruel to give it to her.”

Rowland pondered the portrait. There was nothing wrong with it, except that it did depict Lady McKenzie in all her triple-chinned, buck-toothed squint-eyed glory. The woman had not one good feature that Clyde could highlight to distract the viewer from the bad ones. Indeed, having met the subject, Rowland thought that Clyde had, if anything, been kind. He remembered the hairy mole on Lady McKenzie's cheek as a good deal more prominent.

“I don't know, Clyde. She owns a mirror…it shouldn't be a great surprise.”

Clyde grunted and turned back to the portrait.

Rowland understood. He knew Clyde to be a truly decent man, more considerate than most artists. Clyde felt a responsibility to find the beauty in even cantankerous, vain Lady McKenzie. But nothing presented itself, and Clyde couldn't escape the fact that a portrait did have to look at least vaguely like the sitter.

Clyde picked up his palette. “I've put together some stretchers for you. I'll stretch the canvases this evening.”

“You don't have to do that,” Rowland replied, knowing it was useless to argue. Clyde insisted on doing odd jobs about Woodlands, and no amount of assurances that it was unnecessary would dissuade him.

Clyde waved Rowland away as he went back to work.

Rowland left the house for the old stables that now served as a garage. The Rolls was of course out, but he never drove that himself anyway. To do so would probably have offended Johnston.

He climbed into his yellow Mercedes Benz, patting the bonnet affectionately as he did so. He had brought the supercharged tourer back with him from England. The car had once belonged to a Lord Lesley, with whom Rowland had played cards at Oxford. The Sinclairs meant very little to English society. There, they were looked down upon as colonial upstarts of dubious breeding. Lord Lesley had been no exception, and made no secret that playing poker with an Australian was akin to dining with savages. The evenings were regularly peppered with barbed witticisms about convicts and bushrangers.

Rowland had found it grating, but he was playing poker. He kept his face closed.

Perhaps it was because of this that the Englishman could not simply walk away as he started losing. By the time Lesley had bet his newly acquired motorcar on a single hand, a significant crowd had gathered to look on. The triumph of the colonial upstart was a public sensation. Rowland would probably have forgiven the wager to anyone else, particularly since the car in question was German. But it was too sweet a victory. He drove the Mercedes whenever opportunity allowed, even if the distance was short enough to stroll.

The engine roared into life. Rowland smiled, satisfied, as he savoured the familiar vibrations. He pulled slowly out of the stables and into the street, and in all of three minutes he turned into the driveway of what had been his uncle's home.

Though smaller than Woodlands House, the residence was similar in style and grandeur. Its gardens were formal, framed with box hedge and kept in park-like condition by a permanent gardener. The door was opened before Rowland could knock. The Mercedes had announced his arrival. It was not a quiet car, and had penetrated even Mrs. Donelly's deafness.

“Mr. Rowly!” She was obviously pleased to see him.

“Hello, Mrs. Donelly,” Rowland replied in a strong, loud voice.

“Oh, Mr. Rowly, do come in, sir.” She opened the door wide for him.

“I am so sorry about Mr. Sinclair—he was very good to me.”

“As, I am sure, you were to him.”

His uncle's house was as it had always been: richly decorated and crammed with trinkets and other objects from his many travels. The old man had always liked to call them his “
objets d'art,
” but Rowland never quite saw them that way.

The stooped housekeeper ushered him into the dining hall, and insisted on bringing him tea.

“How are you, Mrs. Donelly?” he asked when she ceased fussing long enough for him to speak.

The housekeeper was almost startled by the question. Rowland shifted uncomfortably as her eyes become moist. He had not intended to distress her.

“I am so terribly upset, Mr. Rowly.” She sat in the chair he pulled out for her. “Last night, I was sure I was going mad….”

“It must have been terrible to find him like that,” Rowland said, his mind flickering to his uncle's body on the morgue table.

Her tears came. “Poor Mr. Sinclair. They were cowardly, beat him so badly…he was not a well man, you know…He went to see Dr. Jones every other day these past weeks…”

“They?” Rowland interrupted her. “Did you see who did this, Mrs. Donelly?”

The housekeeper clutched the silver cross that hung from her neck. “I saw something, Mr. Rowly,” she whispered.

“What?”

“It was not of this world, sir.”

“All right,” said Rowland carefully, trying to keep the scepticism out of his voice. “What was it exactly, Mrs. Donelly?”

She was now gripping her cross with both hands. She kissed it before she spoke again. “Ghosts, Mr. Rowly. Dark spirits.”

Rowland was not sure how to respond. His uncle had never mentioned that Mrs. Donelly was mad, and he had never before noticed it either. “What did these apparitions look like?” he said eventually.

“Like ghosts, sir, but they were dark…grey…” She shuddered and kissed her cross again. “I saw them leave and then I found poor Mr. Sinclair.”

“Did you tell the police this, Mrs. Donelly?” Rowland asked gently.

“Yes, I did.”

“And what did they say?”

“They brought me a cup of tea.” Rowland smiled slightly.

The housekeeper's face was distraught. “Mr. Rowly, what am I going to do, sir? I've been doing for Mr. Sinclair for so long…I don't have any other home. My nephew's out of work…he can't take me in—the poor boy can barely feed himself…”