The Port Fairy Murders (14 page)

Above the fireplace, and in the direct line of Joe’s sight, was an oil portrait of Lillee. It was full length, and although it had been done by someone with great skill, it struck the only false note in the room. Joe recognised its origins. It was a copy, with Lillee’s head on the body of a man Joe knew as Dr Pozzi, and the painter of the original was John Singer Sargent. In Sargent’s picture, as here, the subject stood, dressed in a floor-length, bright red robe, one hand on his hip, the other pulling the gown together at the chest. It was the last word in swagger portraits, and Joe could see why Lillee had been tempted to have it copied. Dr Pozzi wore a beard, while Peter Lillee was clean-shaven, but there was a remarkable resemblance between the two faces. The artist, whoever he was, appeared at a distance to have done a superb job of reproducing Sargent’s virtuoso paint strokes. The hands, in particular, had been brilliantly realised. Still, Joe found vulgar the conceit of borrowing so blatantly from another artist. Nevertheless, throughout the meal, during which the conversation stayed resolutely on the Burma campaign, the best and worst of Melbourne radio, the outrageous price of peas, and the implications of meat rationing, Joe’s eyes kept lifting to the portrait. For a split second, Joe wondered if he’d spoken his thought out loud, because Peter said, ‘It’s rather brash, don’t you think?’

‘Brash?’, Joe replied, buying time.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s loud, Peter,’ Ros said, ‘but I I think it’s rather wonderful.’

‘I suspect Sergeant Sable knows what I mean.’ He smiled. ‘I noticed that every time you look at it, you look at a different part of it.’

‘It’s very well done.’

Peter laughed. Helen looked at her uncle. She was lost. Was he attacking Joe, goading him? No — there was nothing in his expression to suggest this. The smile was warm.

‘I’ve seen the original,’ Peter said. ‘I saw it in 1934, in Los Angeles.’

‘But it’s a portrait of you,’ Ros said. ‘What do you mean you saw the original?’

Peter indicated to Joe that he should reveal the painting’s origins. How had he surmised so quickly, Joe wondered, that he had an interest in art?

‘There’s a famous portrait of a man named Dr Pozzi, by John Singer Sargent. Mr Lillee’s portrait …’

‘Please, call me Peter.’

‘Peter’s portrait is based on it.’

Again, Peter laughed.

‘Based on? You’re the first person to come into this house and get the joke.’

‘Who painted it?’

‘A friend of mine — a fellow named Forbes Carlisle. He should be much better known than he is. He’s easily the equal of William Dargie, whose mother’s maiden name, by the way, was Sargent. As soon as this war’s done with, I’m determined to back him. A few really decent commissions would set him up. Do you know what he’s doing at the moment? He’s camouflaging Jeeps. Not that he minds. I think he rather likes it.’

For the remainder of the meal, the talk was about art. Peter had strong views on Dobell’s portrait of Joshua Smith. He loved it, and thought the controversy about it was absurd.

‘Smith doesn’t like it because it looks just like him. But it has much more energy than Dargie’s last two Archibald winners.’

Ros pointed out that Dobell was a friend of Peter’s, and that this might have had something to do with his enthusiasm for the Smith portrait. Two hours passed, and the four of them settled into the library for a glass of brandy. It wasn’t a misnomer, or a pomposity, to call this room a library. It was lined with books, and the one wall available for pictures was hung in the salon style with a gallimaufry of small paintings, etchings, lithographs, and drawings.

‘There’s nothing really valuable here,’ Peter said. ‘Just bibs and bobs I inherited or picked up at auctions. There’s one decent Goya drawing.’

Helen, who’d heard enough talk of art to last her the rest of the war, asked her mother if there was a pudding.

‘I hadn’t planned one,’ Ros said, ‘but I bought something recently that I’ve been wanting to try. I’m ashamed to say I fell for an advertisement in one of the papers.’

‘That’s not like you, Ros,’ Peter said. ‘You’re usually sniffy about that sort of thing.’

‘It only cost sixpence, and it promises to make us smack our lips.’

‘What is it?’ Helen asked. ‘I’m not sure I want my lips smacked.’

‘It’s called “Mary Baker Butterscotch Dessert”, and it can be made in three minutes. All you need is milk, and we have milk.’

‘Oh, I have to see this.’ Helen stood up and left the library with her mother. In the kitchen, before examining the Mary Baker box, Helen expressed her gratitude for her mother’s discretion in not asking Joe any questions.

‘I didn’t need to ask him any questions, darling. Your Inspector Lambert explained the situation to me.’

Helen looked apprehensive, as if Lambert had broken the rules by which the Kew house functioned.

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He told me enough to know that Sergeant Sable needs a safe place. I assured him that our house is such a place.’

‘How much does Uncle Peter know?’

‘He knows as much as I do.’ She didn’t elaborate on how much that was. ‘You only have to look at him to know that whatever he’s been through, apart from his flat burning down, is still raw and painful.’

Helen was caught off guard by a rush of emotion. Left to run free, it would have produced an incoherent sound, but she caught it in time to camouflage it as a cough. However, she couldn’t disguise the tears that flooded her eyes. She turned away, knowing that her mother had seen this, but knowing too that she could rely on her to leave her be. This time, though, Ros Lord confounded her daughter, and wrapped her arms around her.

‘I wish sometimes that you’d talk to me, Helen. I wait and wait, but you never do.’

Without knowing how to respond, and without knowing why, Helen said, ‘Dad …’ and stopped, appalled.

‘Your father always talked. Always.’

Helen drew gently away from her mother’s embrace. She gathered herself, forced a smile, and took one of Ros’s hands and squeezed it.

‘Let’s make that pudding,’ she said. Her usual astuteness failed her, as it always did where her mother was concerned, and she was unable to see the deep hurt she’d inflicted with those banal words.

PETER HAD TAKEN
the Goya drawing down from the wall, and handed it to Joe. He held it reverently
. It was a quick, gestural ink sketch of a prisoner bent double, his arms pinned behind him, secured by a chain that rose to a bolted ring on the wall. The face couldn’t be seen, but it didn’t need to be. The agony was contained in the twist of the shoulder and the cruel curve of the back.

‘It’s not a cheery drawing,’ Peter said, ‘but no one notices it, tucked away among the others.’

‘But it’s Goya. His hand actually made these lines. It’s wonderful.’

‘It was surprisingly inexpensive.’

Joe handed the picture back to Peter and watched him as he replaced it on the wall. He was the kind of man who changed his clothes at the end of a working day. Joe hardly ever did this. He would take off his suit jacket and tie, but he rarely bothered with a complete change. Peter Lillee probably enjoyed getting into and out of clothes, and Joe suspected that having really good clothes to get into and out of probably made a difference. There was a family resemblance to both his sister and his niece, although in Helen’s case it was only vague. Joe was suddenly conscious of the fact that he hadn’t thought about the fire, or George Starling, for several hours. When this struck him, it did so with some force; on turning from hanging the Goya, Peter saw that the colour had drained from Joe’s face.

‘You look ill, Joe.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why on earth would you apologise for being ill? We’ve all been carrying on as if everything is perfectly normal. Having your flat burn to the ground isn’t normal. I can’t imagine how that must feel.’

‘At the moment, I don’t feel anything very much. A neighbour was killed. All the flats are ruined — not just mine. I wasn’t even there, and it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been better at my job.’

Peter wasn’t good at confidences. They embarrassed him. He dealt with the world glancingly, and was unskilled at wrangling other people’s emotions.

‘I’m sure you shouldn’t blame yourself. I understand that the fire was started by some criminal.’

‘Yes, yes, it was.’ Joe felt unable to say any more. He was close to crying in front of this elegant man. He made to say something, but his voice caught. Peter, because he didn’t know what else to say, suggested that Joe might like to see his room. Joe nodded, and hoped that Peter hadn’t seen his distress.

Peter walked ahead of Joe, thereby avoiding eye contact. In another man, this might have been the result of natural discretion. For Peter, it was social squeamishness in the presence of another man’s fragility. They mounted a perfectly pitched staircase, and reached a bedroom on the left-hand side of the divide at the top. The room was sparsely furnished, a situation for which Peter immediately apologised.

‘I sold a lot of stuff — a tallboy, and a chair, and so forth. You have your own bathroom. Just a bath, no shower. There’s a boiler downstairs, so there’s hot water at the tap.’

‘A bath would be wonderful.’

Joe had regained control of his voice, and Peter Lillee turned toward him with relief.

‘Just ignore the bloody Plimsoll line, by the way. Now, I understand you have only the clothes you’re wearing.’

‘I have spare underwear and socks.’

Peter laughed.

‘And you’re hoping they’ll see you through to the end of the war, are you?’

‘You don’t need coupons for socks, so I’ll be right until I get a new ration book.’

‘If you look in that wardrobe, you’ll find a couple of shirts, two pairs of trousers, a suit coat, and a sports coat. I won’t miss them, believe me. You’re welcome to them. There’s also some underwear and socks — new, I hasten to add — in the bureau drawer. We can’t have our policemen wandering around in dirty underwear. Think what that would do to morale. Are you right for a razor?’

‘Yes. And I have a toothbrush.’

‘Excellent. I don’t want you to feel like you’re camping out.’

‘This is very good of you, Peter.’

‘Nonsense. This place needs more people in it.’

‘Didn’t they billet anyone with you when the Americans were here in full force?’

‘Oh no. I didn’t want that.’

He said this so emphatically that Joe wondered how much influence Peter Lillee wielded. Helen’s explanation that he was a businessman was too vague to account for either his wealth or his ability to keep the world at bay. Inspector Lambert might have believed that Peter Lillee would have had no choice in accepting him as a guest. But, having met him, Joe suspected that the agreement had more to do with loyalty to his niece than with an inability to resist a demand from Homicide. If he’d been able to bat military billets elsewhere, blocking Victoria Police would have been a small matter. He wasn’t with Military Intelligence. Joe had had experience with them, and they lacked Lillee’s finish. His influence was doubtless directly related to his wealth.

‘I’ll leave you to your bath.’

‘Mrs Lord’s gone to the trouble of making a pudding.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll tell you tomorrow how ghastly it was. “Instant pudding” — two words designed to strike terror into the heart of anyone with a decent palate. I blame the Americans. I bet it’s one of their exciting innovations. I’ll tell Ros and Helen that you were simply exhausted and needed to get to bed. They’ll understand. I’ll see you in the morning. If you need anything, just help yourself. It would be nice to have staff to call on, but I’m afraid I couldn’t get around that restriction. No domestic servants — what a world we live in.’

HELEN LAY WIDE
awake in her room. It was well after midnight, but her mind was alive with competing thoughts. The most worrying of these was an inchoate feeling of jealousy. She dared not consider this too closely, just as she’d never dared inquire into her uncle’s private life. She had suspicions, but she loved him and she really believed that his affairs — both professional and personal — were none of her business. She envied Joe’s knowledge of art. She would love to be able to talk to Peter with that facility, and she’d tried to educate herself. The truth was, she just wasn’t interested. This wasn’t the source of her disturbed feelings, though. She’d occasionally looked at her uncle in the course of the evening, and she’d thought that the intensity of his gaze when he looked at Joe wasn’t just because the conversation was lively. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to be sure. Was Uncle Peter looking at Joe with …? She slammed the door shut on the thought. She thought instead of the repulsive Stanley Halloran and George Starling. Starling existed for her only as a sketch and an uncertain threat. These thoughts were preferable to any others, and she took them with her into sleep.

–8–

Saturday 15 January 1944

GEORGE STARLING TOOK
stock of himself in the full-length mirror in his room at the Windsor Hotel. He’d just returned from the hotel’s barber, where he’d been closely shaved and had his hair washed, cut, and Brilliantined into disciplined shape. He was wearing a new suit, shirt, and shoes that had cost him a lot in coupons and cash. He leaned into the mirror, and thought he might encourage a neat moustache. It would grow in a matter of days. As it was, he needed to shave morning and night to keep his beard shadow in order. He turned sideways. He’d pass for a gentleman — no worries. He thought he might actually be quite good-looking. He’d never really thought about his looks before. He’d been told so often by his father that he was ugly and stupid that he’d spent most of his life avoiding mirrors. No girl had ever complimented him on his looks; not that there’d been very many girls — a couple of rough slappers, and a prostitute who’d paid with a bloody nose for calling him a hairy ape. Now, though, he thought he scrubbed up pretty well. The police wouldn’t be looking for someone who dressed like a fucking movie star and who smelled like one, too.