Babylon South (9 page)

“Did you ask the housekeeper about it?”

“Ye-es. She didn't know anything about it. Then I told Venetia—she didn't know anything about it, either.”

“And none of you were worried about a gun being stolen from your house?”

“Of course we were!” She sounded suddenly snappish; Malone imagined he heard her false teeth click. “But then we got the news about Walter . . .”

“You said it went missing a week ago.”

“Well, a week, three or four days ago—I dunno.” All at once she was flustered, the guileless mind caught up in an attempt at deceit. “We're all knocked off our feet by the news . . .”

Malone decided not to press it for the moment; let Alice Magee get her story straight and then knock it down in one blow, preferably in front of another witness, such as Venetia Springfellow. He had his own guile, born of experience.

“Can we always find you here if we want you?”

“Most of the time. I'm a bush girl at heart. I like to go down to my daughter's property at Exeter. Keeps me outa mischief.” She had regained her bounce, or some of it. Malone waited for her to
wink,
but she didn't. “Good luck. I suppose you coppers need it.”

“All the time,” said Clements.

They went down the driveway, nodded to the surly security guard, waited for him to let them out of the big gates, then crossed the street to a slightly smaller house, also approached by a driveway. Sir Archibald's son, the father of Walter, Edwin and Emma, had built this one in 1915, the year he had returned from Gallipoli minus half his right arm, and married the daughter of another prominent Mosman family. This house, too, had wide verandahs and narrow windows; its windows were still narrow, like the viewpoint of its present chatelaine, Ruth Springfellow, Edwin's wife. Its garden was not as elaborate as the one the two detectives had just left, but it was just as ordered. Nothing grew wild in Mosman, not even weeds.

The door was opened by Emma Springfellow. Malone introduced himself and Clements and she looked at him as if puzzled they should be on the doorstep. “Yes?”

“We'd like to talk to you and Mr. and Mrs. Springfellow, if they're at home. It's about your brother Walter.”

He had forgotten that he had ever met her. All he saw now was a dark-haired woman, with a single broad streak of grey along one temple, who might once have been on the way to being beautiful but had decided, of her own free will, against it. He did not see the inner woman. She was secretive, without even the phlebotomy of gossip. She had chosen loneliness and now couldn't find her way out of it.

“Who is it, Emma?” Edwin Springfellow came into the hall behind his sister; behind him was his wife. The three of them stood stockstill, like statues waiting to be moved around in the museum that was their home. “Police? Do come in, please.”

The house was indeed a museum; everything in it seemed older than its occupants. It was all quality and in its day had probably been expensive; it had not been neglected and the timber of the tables and chairs shone with years of polishing. If there was a television set, that icon of today, in the house it was not in evidence. People, like pets, sometimes are owned by their homes and take on their appearance. The Springfellows were all quality and polish but suggested the past.

Malone
and Clements were asked to sit down; the Springfellows arranged themselves on chairs facing them. It could have been a seance, though a medium or even a spirit would not have been admitted to this house without the best of credentials.

Edwin and Ruth looked more brother and sister than husband and wife; Ruth seemed more out of the same mould than did Emma. Both were grey-haired, had thin patrician features, looked at the world with the same superior eye. They brushed each other's hair every night and, when the occasion demanded, did the same with each other's ego. Yet Emma, self-contained, feline, was not out of place with them.

“Mr. Springfellow,” said Malone, plunging straight in, “would your brother have been the sort of man likely to have committed suicide?”

There were gasps from both women, as if Malone had accused Sir Walter of bestiality. Edwin's expression did not change.

“No,” he said in a clipped voice that sounded more English than Australian. “He certainly would not have done anything like that.”

“What was his attitude towards guns?”

“They were for sport, not suicide.” Edwin's tone was polite but cold, “If that's what you are getting at.”

He's too well prepared, Malone thought. He could be a lawyer instead of a stockbroker. “Everyone seems to think we're
getting at
something. Your sister-in-law had the same idea. Don't you want to know how your brother died?”

“Of course we do!” Emma leaned forward; Malone waited for her to spring out of her chair. “But we're not going to have his name besmirched!”

Besmirched:
he had heard that word only from learned judges in libel cases. But perhaps it was part of the vocabulary one would hear in a museum like this. “We don't want it—besmirched, either. But let's face it—this case is one of Australia's biggest mysteries. I worked on it originally for a few days—it was front-page stuff in every newspaper in the country when he disappeared.”

“
I remember it.” Emma looked as if she might spit. “Reporters! Trying to turn our life into a goldfish bowl!”

“It's started again,” said Ruth Springfellow. “We have an ex-directory number, but somehow or other they've discovered it and are ringing all the time, day and night. Whatever happened to respect for privacy?”

“We're living in the past, sweetheart,” said her husband and, without irony, looked around the museum.

Malone tried another tack, walking on hollow eggs. “This is a delicate question—” Both women looked at him with apprehensive anticipation; but Edwin looked offended in advance. “What were relations like between your brother and his wife?”

Edwin and Ruth were shocked; but Emma leaned forward again. “There were arguments. I always said they were an ill-matched pair.”

“Emma!” Edwin raised an open hand as if he intended to clamp it over his sister's mouth.

“It's true. We all want to know what happened to Walter—” She faltered for a moment and her face softened; she looked a different woman, one capable of love. Then she hardened again. “What's wrong with the truth?”

“Nothing,” said Malone, getting in first. “It's the only way we'll solve anything.”

“By dragging up the past?” said Edwin.

Malone gave him a steady look. “Yes, Mr. Springfellow. That's the only way we're going to do it.”

“Why not just let Walter rest in peace?” said Ruth, it's what he would have wanted himself.”

“No,” said Emma. “He wouldn't have wanted it that way at all. You know as well as I do, he wasn't a man to let things rest, not even as a boy. He was like me, we always were. Let's have the truth. It's what he would have said.”

“Can any of you remember anything of the day he disappeared?”

“Nothing,” said Edwin at once and Ruth, after a glance at him, shook her head.

“
I can,” said Emma, looking at neither of them, “I was living here then with Edwin and Ruth—”

“Where do you live now?” said Clements. Malone always left it to him to take notes.

“At The Vanderbilt in Macquarie Street. I've lived there for twenty years.” She said it bitterly, as if south of the harbour were another country where she was a remittance woman not wanted at home.

Malone said, “What do you remember of that day?”

“How can one remember exactly what happened all that time ago?” said Edwin.

Emma ignored him. “Walter was very upset. I saw him for a moment before he left for the airport that morning—”

“What did he say?”

“It wasn't what he said—I just
knew.
Walter and I were so close—we didn't need to say things to each other. He just kissed me on the cheek and told me not to worry. Then he told me not to go near his wife.” The last word had a dagger through it.

“And did you? Go near his wife?”

“Not till the news came through that he was missing. The ASIO men came to see us, and some policemen—”

“I was one of them,” said Malone.

“Really?” She looked at him with sudden sharp interest. “And you never found anything?”

“Nothing. We're having to start all over again.”

Edwin stood up. He had a certain dignity that was natural to him; old families sometimes bequeath other things besides money and a name. “I think that's enough for today, Inspector. We are still upset by yesterday's discovery. I should have been at my office if it weren't for this . . .”

“We haven't finished—”

“Yes, we have, Emma. The inspector will understand. Perhaps we'll be in better shape to talk to you, Inspector, after the funeral. For the moment we'd rather be left alone.”

Emma glared at him, then abruptly stood up and without a word stalked out of the room. Ruth, as dignified as her husband, said, “Please forgive her, Inspector. She and Walter were very close. Even after
all
these years she has never really reconciled herself to his disappearance. She has always believed he was still alive. And now . . .”

Edwin took her hand and once again they were as still as statues.
You will get no more out of us today,
their stillness said. Malone, who knew when to wait for another day, said goodbye. Edwin, moving stiffly, showed the two detectives to the front door. When he closed the door behind them, Malone waited for the sound of bolts being shot; but there was none. The door, however, was as stout as a castle gate. Neither it nor the family behind it would be easy to break down.

Going down the driveway Clements said, “Emma was in love with her brother.”

Malone looked sideways at him: Clements was not usually given to such wild guessing. “You reckon? I didn't think they went in for that sort of thing in Mosman.”

“I don't mean incest. But I saw it once before, when you were overseas on that High Commissioner case. Only it was the other way around, the brother was in love with the sister. He killed her because she married someone else.”

Malone stopped at the front gates. “Are you saying Emma could have killed Walter?”

“I don't know,” said Clements, chewing his lip. “I'll give you half a dozen who could have killed him. Including ASIO.”

“Keep your mouth shut on that one or you're headed for Tibooburra.” That was a one-pub town in the far north-west of the State, the NSW Police Force's farthest outpost. “Just think it, don't say it.”

Clements grinned. “Let's get at the truth, as Emma said.”

3

I

THE SPRINGFELLOW
Corporation was headquartered in a thirty-storey building overlooking Circular Quay. The first five floors were occupied by the Springfellow Bank; the next two by Springfellow and Company, stockbrokers; the next eighteen floors by outside tenants; and the top five floors by divisions, subsidiaries or affiliates of the Corporation. The very top floor was given up to the boardroom, a dividing office and reception lobby and the office of the Chief Executive Officer and Chairwoman of the Board. The Corporation's PR chief, a woman versed in anti-sexist jargon, had tried to persuade her boss to call herself President and Chairperson, but Venetia had squashed her with, “President has come to mean someone who's a figurehead—that's not me. Chairperson is sexless—and that's not me, either.”

Venetia sat in her office gazing out of the large picture-window at the ferries creeping into the quay, seeing them but only as on a memory screen; this had been her view for five years, ever since she had built Springfellow House. She had come an hour ago from the inquest on Walter. She felt at a loss, though of what she was not sure. She had long ago got over the physical loss of Walter; her widow's weeds had soon turned floral. In those days she had worn a variety of colours. There had been the shock two weeks ago of the discovery of Walter's
skeleton
(thank God they had not asked her to identify his bones), but she had recovered from that. The inquest this morning had been short, almost cold-blooded, and it had not upset her; she had been more concerned for its effect on Justine, who had accompanied her and who several times had shivered as if she were suffering from a chill. Then the coroner had declared that the remains were those of Walter Springfellow and that the deceased had died from a gunshot wound inflicted by a person or persons unknown and that the remains should be released into the care of the
next
of kin, namely Lady Springfellow. Up till then she had been calm, all her resources gathered together in her usual way, life (and death) put together as if according to the strictest of management principles.

Then, after dropping Justine off at her office on the floor below, she had come up here, come into this big room, closed the door and sat down and wept, something she had not done in more years than she could remember. She had at last dried her eyes, repaired her make-up and now sat staring out at a day she was blind to, wondering what was missing from her emotions. There was no grief, that had died long ago; no lost hope, for she had given up hope of Walter's return years ago; no anger at his murder, for she could not, after all this time, whip up the urge for revenge against a person or persons unknown. Her eyes cleared, she saw the familiar scene beyond the window, and at that moment her mind cleared. She turned back to her desk, deciding that it was love that was missing. She had lost count of the men who had been her lovers; but Walter had been the one she had married and, Until now, she had always told herself she had loved him. In her fashion, maybe; but it had been a deeper feeling than she had ever felt for any other man. With possibly one exception.