The Holiday Murders (7 page)

‘When you say you need someone inside Australia First, are you suggesting that that person should be one of my detectives?’

‘Not suggesting, Inspector — insisting. If necessary, we have the authority to second that person. He will, of course, be subject to the Crimes Act, as will you.’

‘Did you have anyone in mind?’

Tom Chafer turned the pages of his notebook and read:

Joseph Sable, age 25, born 15 February, 1918. Parents David and Judith, both deceased. Exempted from national service for health reasons — a heart murmur. Completed detective training 1942. Accepted into the newly formed Homicide division 1943.

‘As you see, Inspector, we don’t let the grass grow under our feet.’

Joe had no qualms about jumping in before Inspector Lambert could raise any objections to their demand. He wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to do something to bring Australia First to book. Here was a chance to ease the disgust he’d begun to feel at his own complacent belief that the atrocities in Europe had nothing to do with him. Such horrors couldn’t, he’d thought, happen here. Nazi Germany was a world of black-and-white newsreels, and newsprint. Nazism was an exotic foreign disease that couldn’t survive the disinfecting power of the Australian sun — it couldn’t flourish under such blue skies. He’d begun to see how naïve he’d been, how childish.

‘A secondment won’t be necessary, sir,’ Joe said to Titus. ‘I’m willing to volunteer. But I’d rather work from here than from Victoria Barracks — if that’s all right with Intelligence.’

‘We’d have no objection to that,’ Tom Chafer said. ‘But you have to understand that in this matter you answer to us first, and Homicide second. You also have to understand that this may place you at some risk.’

‘It’s a risk we’ll endeavour to minimise,’ added Dick Goad. ‘We’ll give you as much support and information as we can. We hope that your involvement will end this matter in a very short time.’

‘Can you keep the Quinn murders out of the press?’ Titus asked.

‘No, but we can muzzle them — and that includes
Truth
— and get the story buried with a minimum of detail, and without salacious speculations. Even newspaper editors are reluctant to be interned for the sake of a good story.’

‘So where do I begin?’ Joe asked.

Tom Chafer pulled a photograph from between the pages of his notebook. ‘You begin with this man,’ he said. ‘His name is Mitchell Magill, and he was very gung-ho about setting up a Victorian branch of Australia First. We had him under surveillance for a while, but we had to drop it. Bigger fish to fry. He sees himself as something of a Brahmin. He’s got money, and he lives in a flash house in a flash street in Hawthorn.

He reached into his satchel and withdrew a yellow envelope.

‘It’s all here: his address, his known associates, where he likes to drink, and where he likes to eat — and he eats out a lot. There are also briefing notes on key people in Melbourne whose affiliations with Hitlerism have come to our attention. You may find that information useful. How you contrive to meet Magill is up to you.’

Tom Chafer handed Joe Sable the envelope, and smiled. The smile had as much warmth in it as the Ross Ice Shelf.

‘Is this Magill a naturist, by any chance?’ Titus asked.

‘A what?’

‘A naturist. A nudist. A gymnosophist, as I now know they like to call themselves.’

‘That is a very odd question, Inspector, and I haven’t a clue what you mean by it.’

‘Along with
The Publicist
, we found many copies of naturist magazines — mostly in German, but some in English.’

‘We know nothing about those,’ Goad said, ‘although nothing would surprise me when it comes to the enthusiasms of Nazi Party followers. Southern Command has quite a file on a crackpot named Mills. He’s a solicitor here in Melbourne, and he’s a keen National Socialist. He published a newspaper back in ’36 called, unambiguously,
The National Socialist
. He’s also a dedicated pagan. He worships Odin. Seriously. It would be amusing if his views on racial purity weren’t quite so disturbing. He formed something called ‘The Odinist Society’, and they engaged in all sorts of rituals up in the Dandenongs — lots of bare-chested dancing around bonfires. He’s interned, of course, but unrepentant. I think his personal, philosophical cocktail of Nazism and Odinism embarrasses his mates. The thing is, he’s not a fighter. None of them are — they’d like to see National Socialism up and running here, so long as someone else does all the messy bits. The naturism stuff is new to me, though. Perhaps Quinn was the naturist. Everyone has secrets.’

‘Not according to his daughter,’ Joe said. ‘There was one in Xavier Quinn’s bedroom as well, which I think supports your idea that he purloined it from his father’s room, along with
The Publicist
.’

‘There’s no mention of naturism in any of John Quinn’s reports,’ Chafer said. He redeployed his chilly smile. ‘Whatever it all means, Sergeant Sable here will doubtless discover the truth for us.’

After Chafer and
Goad left, Titus and Joe sat for a moment in silence. Eventually, Titus asked, ‘You have a heart murmur, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Titus made no further comment, for which Joe was grateful. His heart was a weakness that he was reluctant to discuss with anyone. Occasionally it fluttered so severely that it made him nauseous, but mostly it sat inside his chest benignly.

‘What did you make of those two?’ Titus asked.

‘Chafer came across like a little Napoleon. Goad seemed all right.’

‘Chafer has tickets on himself, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Ayers Rock. Goad must have come out of retirement. I can’t see how Chafer would outrank him otherwise. They inhabit a whole other world, Sergeant.’

‘You needn’t worry about where my allegiances lie, sir. A few minutes in Chafer’s company was enough to inoculate me against whatever attractions Intelligence might offer. Homicide is where I want to be.’

‘I don’t doubt that, Sergeant.’

‘I’ll be answering to you first and foremost, whatever Chafer says.’

‘So what are you planning to do? How do you plan to approach it?’

‘Frankly, I have no idea. I’ll have a good look at the stuff Chafer gave me, and somehow contrive to meet this Mitchell Magill character. I wish I was a better actor. I’m a Jew, so pretending to be a disaffected fascist will be a stretch. My instincts will be to punch the clown in the face.’

‘Speaking of acting, I’d like to re-interview Mary Quinn, at the Quinn house. The bodies have been removed, but she’ll have to organise cleaners at some stage. Before I talk to her again, I’d like to have a look at her bedroom.’

There were no
police posted outside Number 1 Clarendon Street. The neighbours knew what had happened, of course. They’d been door-knocked the previous evening and Christmas morning — but the visible presence of a policeman would have provoked the sort of prurient interest from passers-by that was contrary to the need for discretion. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. At two of the large neighbouring houses, the door had been opened by a person who was clearly a live-in servant. Such servants were against the government regulations that had put Australia on a war footing, so Manpower would soon be paying these people a visit. Murder, it seemed, was inconvenient in unexpected ways.

It was two o’clock when Titus and Joe arrived. A constable had been sent to Sheila Draper’s rooms, with instructions to bring Mary Quinn to her home at three. This would give them an hour to search her room. Mary wasn’t officially a suspect. In fact, Titus said, she wasn’t a suspect at all. However, the first casualty, after the victims, in any murder investigation is privacy, and Titus had learned long ago to suppress any compunction he might have had about such matters. Even if Mary wasn’t a suspect, she was an intimate part of the investigation, and her room might reveal something of interest — something that she herself might not recognise as useful or pertinent.

The bedroom wasn’t as neat as either her brother’s or her father’s had been. The closed, hot room smelled oppressively of a cloying perfume that doubtless had been sweet when first applied. Titus and Joe set about their search carefully, looking in all the drawers, under pillows, and behind pictures. There was nothing one would not expect to find in a young woman’s bedroom. There were two copies lying about of
The Listener-In
with Mary’s photograph on the cover, taken by someone who clearly knew his job. Beautifully lit, it was a subtly enhanced version of her.

‘Wow,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t realise that this radio serial was such a big thing.’

‘Apparently,’ Titus said, ‘Miss Quinn is on the cusp of stardom, which is one more reason why she doesn’t strike me as a likely suspect.’

There were several film magazines on a dresser and on a bedside table, along with scripts for
The Red Mask
. Flipping through one, Titus found notes and words underlined. Presumably, these were jottings of Mary’s that she’d made to help her say her lines effectively — where to put a stress and where to pause.

Despite the clutter, Titus thought that the room was strangely anonymous. There were no letters, or diaries, or notebooks in it, and the only photograph to be seen was the one of Mary herself on the cover of
The Listener-In
. The pictures on the wall were old-fashioned engravings of famous paintings.

‘I think she slept here, Titus said, ‘and that’s all. It’s as if she were just a visitor in her own house. There are no family photographs.’

‘Maybe it’s an actress’s conceit — she doesn’t exist outside her roles, that sort of thing.’

‘Maybe, but if it’s a conceit, who gets to see it in operation? I don’t think Miss Quinn feels a strong attachment to this house. I’d like to know why.’

Titus and Joe came downstairs a few minutes before Mary Quinn was due to arrive, and they checked the room where Xavier Quinn had been killed. Although the body had been removed, the room hadn’t been cleaned, and the rank smell of rotting blood assailed them.

‘I just want to remind myself,’ Titus said, ‘that what happened here was deeply, viciously personal. We can’t lose sight of that.’

‘Personal and political?’

‘Both, possibly. I can’t see politics behind Xavier Quinn’s torture. His father’s death? Intelligence might be on the right track there. I hope Chafer and Goad aren’t holding something back from us. I’d hate to think that they’re knowingly sending you into a very dangerous situation.’

‘They did warn me, sir.’

‘Yes, I know, but there’s danger, and then there’s the threat posed by the person who crucified Xavier Quinn.’

A knock on the front door signalled Mary Quinn’s arrival. Titus and Joe met her in the hallway. Sheila Draper was with her, but she understood immediately that she wasn’t needed, and asked if she might make cups of tea for them. Titus said that that would be appreciated, but that Miss Quinn would be occupied with them for at least an hour.

‘I’ll go home, and come back,’ she said.

Joe caught her eye, and he thought again that she was a remarkable woman. He doubted she’d ever been told that she was beautiful, and yet this hadn’t lessened her sense of herself in any way. Joe found her self-confidence remarkably attractive. When all this was over, he’d get in touch with her, even if the protocols surrounding murder investigations proscribed such contact.

Mary didn’t look like she’d slept much the night before. She sat opposite Titus in the living room, in the same chair she’d sat in the previous day, and wrung her hands absent-mindedly.

‘I’m sorry this has to be done on Christmas Day, Miss Quinn.’

‘Call me Mary. And the day means nothing. It won’t mean anything ever again.’

‘I’m afraid you might find some of the questions I’m going to ask difficult, even offensive.’

‘Nothing you ask me could be more offensive than the sight of my brother’s body, Inspector.’ She looked at Titus, and he saw in her eyes that she’d reflected on his subtle insistence the day before that she identify Xavier
in situ
, and that she disliked him intensely for it. Her general demeanour had changed overnight. Yesterday she’d been shocked, but something of the carefree, young actress had remained. Now it was as if she was reading from an altogether different script. She was frightened, but there was resolve, too, in her manner.

‘We haven’t had time to talk to any of your father’s acquaintances yet. But in any case, before we do, I need to understand how things stood inside the house.’

‘I’ve already told you, Inspector, that none of us got on.’

‘Yes, of course. However, there’s a difference between not getting along, and active hostility.’

‘We weren’t actively hostile.’

‘You were about to spend Christmas without exchanging a single gift.’

As soon as Titus said this, Joe realised that there was indeed no evidence in the house that Christmas was about to be celebrated. He hadn’t noticed this before, probably because Christmas had never been a part of his upbringing.

‘We haven’t celebrated Christmas since my mother died.’

‘Why not?’

‘She liked to pretend that we were a happy family, even though she knew perfectly well that my father kept a mistress. I’m sorry to use that mediaeval term. My father was a whited sepulchre, Inspector. He cheated on my mother; he cheated on us. He’d commit his grubby adultery, and then run off to his tame confessor at St Patrick’s and get absolution.’