The Port Fairy Murders (33 page)

‘Did you know Miss Todd?’

‘Saw her at church, too. Never spoke to her. There’s the subo brother too. Selwyn. The paper reckons he went troppo and done it. Is that right? Is he locked up?’

Helen ignored the question.

‘What about Matthew’s fiancée, Dorothy? Do you know her?’

‘She’s all right. She works in the draper’s. She’s a bit stuck up, but not like the Todds. Don’t know what she sees in Matthew.’

‘Was he a bit of a gawker?’

Betty sniffed.

‘They’re all gawkers.’

‘Thanks Betty, you’ve been most helpful.’

Betty took the hint.

‘Happy to help, I’m sure,’ she said and went back behind the counter. Another customer came in. Betty said something to her, and she turned to stare at Joe and Helen.

‘The town’s had 24 hours to talk about Rose and Matthew,’ Joe said. ‘Imagine the shock when they find out about Miss Todd.’

‘Things like this can tear a small town apart. We need to find out who killed Matthew Todd before the rumour mill starts condemning innocent people.’

‘Do you want to talk to Dorothy Shipman, or should we both do it?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘I’ll talk to the priest, and see what he can tell me about the Todds. There must be someone lurking in this town who hated Matthew Todd enough to kill him.’

‘And who doesn’t have a bloody alibi.’

HELEN AND JOE
checked in at the police station before beginning their interviews. Inspector Halloran and Constable Manton had arrived, but Constable Adams had been left behind in Warrnambool. Aggie Todd’s death and its implications were discussed briefly. Manton was to visit the wharf and talk to the fishermen, if they weren’t all out in the Southern Ocean. Aggie Todd had mentioned, probably mischievously, that there were men in the Co-op who didn’t like Matthew Todd. Joe would join Manton after speaking to the priest. Inspector Halloran said that Inspector Lambert had asked whether he ought to come to Port Fairy, just as an extra pair of hands.

‘I don’t think he needs to come,’ Helen said. ‘We’re scheduled to leave on Thursday as it is.’

Feeling that she sounded miffed, she added, ‘What do you think, sir?’

‘I agree with you, Constable.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve already told him that he’d be in the way. Are you happy with that, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Any thoughts before we go our separate ways?’

‘Mr and Mrs Todd, sir,’ Joe said.

‘They’ll be here at lunchtime. I’ll talk to them. I’m not looking forward to it. Anything else?’

‘This case, sir,’ Helen said. ‘It seems so contained. It should solve itself, yet the closer we look at it, the more elusive it gets. There’s so much physical evidence, but it’s so confounding that we’re forced to work from assumptions. And what if every one of those assumptions is wrong?’

‘What are our assumptions, Constable?’

‘We’re assuming that the person who killed Rose Abbot isn’t the same person who killed Matthew Todd.’

‘Because of Agnes Todd’s evidence,’ Halloran said.

‘We’re assuming that she was lying, in which case we’re assuming she killed Rose.’

‘We do know that Matthew died hours earlier than Rose, and that he died somewhere else. That’s not an assumption.’

‘But assumptions flow from it. We’re still assuming it implies a different perpetrator. We’re assuming that all the alibis are solid.’

‘We’re not assuming that at all. However, I agree with you that none of our assumptions are safe. My own assumption is that we’re all proceeding on that basis.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Thank you for reminding us of that, and I mean it. It’s a timely reminder.’

SHIPMAN’S DRAPERY WAS
closed.

‘They’re at home, love,’ a woman said. She’d seen Helen peering through the window. ‘There’s been a tragedy in the family.’

‘Yes. Can you tell me their home address?’

‘Are you a friend of the family? I haven’t seen you in town before.’

‘Yes. I’m a friend from out of town.’ This seemed easier than declaring that she was that freakish object, a policewoman.

The Shipman house was busy with people. Women were bringing pots of food, and men were standing outside, smoking. The door was open, so Helen walked into the house uninvited. Tragedy brought strangers along, so no one challenged her. For all anyone knew, she was a cousin of Dorothy’s.

Dorothy was in the living room. She was seated, and people were moving around her. She, however, was perfectly still. She wasn’t crying. Her face looked gaunt, as if tears already shed had drained it. Helen had never seen anyone so ruined by grief. She felt nervous about talking to her, but reminded herself that Dorothy Shipman might well have had a reason to kill Matthew Todd. Had she discovered that her fiancé had tried to rape Johanna Scotney? The emotionally eviscerated woman who sat before her seemed an unlikely suspect, but questions needed to be asked. Helen knelt down in front of Dorothy and took a limp hand in hers.

‘Miss Shipman, I’m a policewoman from Melbourne. My name is Constable Helen Lord, and I know this is a very difficult time, but I wonder if I could speak to you in private.’

Dorothy looked at Helen in stupefied wonder.

‘A policewoman?’

‘Yes. I’m here to help investigate the tragic death of your fiancé, and of his sister. Is there somewhere we could talk?’

Dorothy nodded. She wasn’t quite the comatose person she appeared to be. She stood up, waved away anxious, fluttering hands that reached out to support her, and led Helen into the privacy of her bedroom. She sat on the bed, and Helen sat at her vanity.

‘Please understand, Miss Shipman, that the questions I must ask are not intended to upset you.’

‘Of course, I understand. You’ll want to know if I had any reason to murder my fiancé, and you’ll want to know where I was on Sunday night.’

‘Thank you for making this easier for me.’

‘I’m a practical person, Constable. It seems funny to be calling a woman “Constable”. I had no reason to kill Matthew. I loved him. I loved him completely. I wasn’t blind to his faults. I knew that I could fix those after we were married. Oh, they were small things.’

‘Did you see Matthew on Sunday?’

‘I saw Matthew every day. On Sunday, we went to Mass with Miss Todd, Matthew’s aunt.’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, poor Miss Todd. She doted on Matthew. This must be so terrible for her. I haven’t even spoken to her yet. She must feel so terribly alone. She must come here. She must come here now.’

Helen couldn’t withhold the truth about Aggie Todd from Dorothy, although she knew the blow would land with terrible force.

‘Miss Shipman, I’m very sorry, but Miss Todd is dead.’ She almost said ‘has passed away’. This seemed ludicrously passive when applied to a suicide.

Dorothy’s mouth opened in a silent gawp, and she fell back on the bed in a faint. Helen hurried to find her father, and he returned with her to the bedroom. They found Dorothy, white as a sheet, sweat running down her face, trying to stand. They sat her back down. Helen closed the bedroom door.

‘Miss Shipman has had a shock.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mr Shipman asked.

Helen showed Mr Shipman her credentials.

‘I’m afraid Miss Agnes Todd took her own life last night.’

‘That’s not possible,’ Mr Shipman said firmly. ‘Agnes Todd wouldn’t endanger her immortal soul by taking her own life.’

‘No, no, no,’ Dorothy said. She began to tear at her hair. ‘No! No! No!’ Her screams brought people running to the bedroom. Dorothy, in the grip of wild hysteria, began to thrash and beat at her face. Two women restrained her. They looked appalled, and admonished her not to carry on so. Dorothy began to convulse alarmingly.

‘Put her on her side,’ another woman said, ‘on the floor. We don’t want her biting her tongue.’

Mr Shipman was rigid with horror at the sight of his daughter, her dress dragged up over her thighs, her mouth flecked with saliva, and her limbs jolting grotesquely. The woman who issued the instruction to put Dorothy on her side took Mr Shipman by the arm and ushered him out of the room. This was no place for a man.

‘Someone call Doctor Marriott,’ she said.

Helen followed Mr Shipman, who was helped to the living room. The news of Aggie Todd’s suicide passed from person to person, and Helen saw several people hurry away from the Shipman house, carrying the news to the town. A large brandy was brought to Mr Shipman.

‘Mr Shipman,’ Helen said firmly. ‘Did either you or your daughter leave the house at any time between midnight and 4.00 am on Sunday night?’

It seemed such an extraordinary question in the middle of all the tumult that several people were taken aback.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Sunday night is always the same.’

Helen had no idea what that might mean, beyond its referring to an unchanging routine. She had no doubt, though, that the Shipmans were so overwhelmed by Matthew’s and now Aggie’s death that neither of them was implicated in this crime.

As Helen walked back to the police station, she berated herself for mishandling the interview. In her hurry to get out of that storm of emotions, had she made a convenient assumption? She had. Of course she had. She’d discovered nothing, and she’d come away without a firm alibi for either Dorothy or her father. She’d have to speak to them again, and she’d forewarned them that they both needed an alibi.
Please God
, she thought,
don’t let it be one of the Shipmans
.

FATHER BRENNAN’S HOUSEKEEPER
brought a pot of tea into the front room of the presbytery, where Father Brennan sat opposite Joe. The presbytery smelled of last night’s chops and cabbage. Joe had never spoken to a Catholic priest before, and he thought it peculiar that this man, when asked how he should be addressed, said, ‘Father.’ Joe tried it.

‘Father, Matthew Todd and Rose Abbot and their aunt, Agnes Todd, were members of your church?’

‘Matthew and Rose were, and Agnes is, Sergeant.’

Joe was unable to repeat the word ‘Father’.

‘I’m sorry to tell you that Miss Agnes Todd died late last night, and I’m afraid all the indications are that she took her own life.’

Father Brennan crossed himself, closed his eyes, and said, ‘May God have mercy on her soul. She can’t have been in a sane state of mind. Are you sure the poor woman took her own life?’

‘Yes, we’re sure.’

‘God will see that the deaths of Matthew and Rose, Matthew especially, were too much to bear. He will be merciful. We’ll pray the Rosary for their immortal souls. Are you a Catholic man, Sergeant?’

‘I’m Jewish.’

‘Ah. Our Lord was a Jew.’

‘You said Miss Todd would have been especially distressed by Matthew’s death. Why is that?’

‘Agnes and Matthew were very close. I think she saw him as the son she never had. Rose and she were less so. I don’t know why.’

‘Did Miss Todd confide in you in any way?’

‘Confession is a kind of confidence, I suppose.’

‘Did she tell you anything in Confession that might be of assistance in this investigation?’

‘Ah, now, Jews don’t have the blessed sacrament of Confession, do they? The seal of the Confessional can never be broken, Sergeant.’

‘This is a murder investigation.’

‘My understanding was that poor, simple Selwyn lost his mind completely, and did these things in a rage.’

‘Our investigations are ongoing.’ Still he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘Father’.

‘Was Matthew Todd a well-liked man in Port Fairy?’

‘I think he was. I can only speak for my congregation.’

‘Did the fishermen like him?’

‘He did well by the men who employed him.’

‘What about the Co-operative?’

‘There was some tension there. Men don’t like to think that other men are doing better than they are. It wasn’t a big thing. No one came to blows.’

‘Was there anyone in particular who made a noise about Matthew?’

‘Now, I wouldn’t like to name a man, but Teddy Turnbull used to mouth off in the pub about Matthew. I heard him do it myself.’

‘And where might I find him.’

‘New Guinea.’

Over the next half-hour, Joe formed the opinion that Father Brennan wasn’t very bright. For a man who heard the private anxieties of his parishioners in Confession, he had little to offer by way of insight into their characters. He knew how much each person put on the plate, and who was married to whom, and who was prone to gout. He seemed not to know how any of them thought, or how they felt about themselves or one another. ‘He was a grand man’ and ‘She was a good wife’ were as complicated as he got. They all believed, and therefore felt, the same things. Doctrine calmed the chaos of people’s thoughts. Father Brennan knew his doctrine, and he could apply it to any situation.

‘We’ll get through this terrible time,’ he said to Joe. ‘We’ll pray hard for Selwyn and for the souls of the departed. Our greatest strength is prayer.’