A Time of Secrets (34 page)

‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ I said, my voice loud in the silence of that room. ‘It’ll be here soon. Just hang on, Violet.’

My hands were sticky. I looked down and shuddered to realise that they were covered in Violet’s blood. Fighting nausea, I went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. A pale wash of Venetian red flowed from my hands into the drain. I used her soap and I scrubbed until no trace of blood remained. There was blood on the tap where I’d touched it. I got the flannel and scrubbed at the sink and the taps, scrubbed frantically until they were clean.

I hated to leave her, but I couldn’t face waiting for the police alone, so I raced across to our flat. Eric was standing in the kitchen. I hesitated in the doorway and made a sound, a small sound like a whimper. He said nothing, asked nothing. He opened his arms and I ran to him. His arms closed around me and I thought I could face anything, if only Eric was there too.

Thirty

E
ric waited with me in that bloody bedroom, watching Violet struggle for breath, until we heard the ambulance siren whining in the distance, growing louder. It was joined by a second siren that rose and fell in surges of sound. I looked at Eric.

‘The police?’

He nodded. We were only a mile from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Commercial Road, and I’d expected the ambulance to arrive quickly, but not the police.

‘I’ll let them in,’ I said. ‘Please wait with her.’

I dashed out, away from the blood and horror of the flat, and ran down the stairs. My hands were damp and I rubbed them on my skirt; the cold turned them to ice as soon as I emerged into the front yard. I glanced at my watch. A quarter to eleven. The sun was high now and shadows lay on the grass. The air had the bright anticipation of a fine day and in the sky there was more than enough blue for a Dutchman’s trousers. I blinked back tears.

The ambulance had pulled up outside Avoca. Two black police cars parked on the other side of the road, by Fawkner Park. A couple of ambulance officers emerged as four policemen, two in dark suits and two uniformed constables, crossed Toorak Road at a run. I beckoned them all inside with an arm that was shaking feverishly and they followed me upstairs in a great thumping noise of boots, past Mrs Campbell, who had an interested expression, and Ada Beatty, who was scowling.

‘Here,’ I said, gesturing at Violet’s front door. ‘She’s in the bedroom.’

The ambulance officers and the detectives entered the flat, leaving a police constable to guard the door. Against what, I wondered. Me? Ada? Mrs Campbell? I remained on the landing, heart thumping.
Please don’t die, Violet. Don’t die.
Eric’s deep, calm voice could be heard, explaining.

Shortly afterwards the ambulance officers emerged with Violet on a stretcher and carried her downstairs.

‘Do the detectives want me to go inside?’ I asked the constable, who shrugged and said nothing.

He was a young man, and he regarded me with the sort of stony expression I’d come to recognise all too well a few years ago in Sydney. One that said it was not his business, that he was a constable who wanted to make sergeant one day and he’d make no independent judgments, but wait for orders. ‘Yes, sir,’ they’d say, those constables just like him, with one eye on the senior constable and one eye on Frank, and no glance to spare for me. ‘We understand. Husband-and-wife dispute. We’re sorry that the neighbours made such a fuss.’

The older detective came out of Violet’s flat and looked me up and down. He was a heavy-set man, well into his fifties. His dark overcoat was unbuttoned, despite the cold. I thought he was a bit of a dandy, because a scarf made of fine woven silk in shades of red was around his neck and a red carnation was in the buttonhole of his suit jacket. A dark homburg completed the picture. Behind the round, dark-rimmed glasses his eyes were small and shrewd.

‘Miss Aldridge? The one who telephoned? You found the victim?’

‘
Sergeant
Aldridge,’ I replied with a glance at the chevrons on my jacket sleeve.

‘Inspector McGurk. Come inside, we’d like to ask you a few questions.’

Eric was sitting uncomfortably on the couch. He looked up as I entered and threw me a wan smile. McGurk nodded at the other policeman. ‘Detective-Sergeant Browne.’

Browne was a thin man of around forty. He’d removed his hat to reveal a head of sparse white-blond hair. His long face was lined and pouchy, so that he had the appearance of a blond basset hound. Bristly white eyebrows were his liveliest feature. He watched me sadly and I had the urgent desire to comfort him, tell him not to worry, because all would be well.

Instead I sank down onto Violet’s couch next to Eric and felt the comfort of his leg resting against mine, as McGurk pulled a couple of chairs away from the dining table and positioned them in front of us. He sat in one, and Browne sat beside him with a notebook on his knee, pencil poised.

‘Tell me everything you did and heard this morning,’ said McGurk.

‘I live in the flat next door. Flat 4.’

He glanced at Eric. ‘Sergeant Lund lives there with you?’

I felt Eric flinch, and I flushed. I looked up and held the inspector’s gaze. ‘No. Staff Sergeant
Lund was there with me last night, though.’

‘What time did you get in last night?’

‘We were out dancing and we got back to my flat around one.’

Browne took it all down in longhand.

‘At around ten this morning I went onto our back stairs to empty the tea leaves from the pot. I noticed that Miss Smith’s door was open. I thought it was odd, because it was so cold this morning. So I called out and when there was no answer I went into her kitchen.’ I swallowed, hesitating as I remembered the scene. Eric took hold of my hand and squeezed it gently. ‘There were red stains on the kitchen floor and wall. I . . . I went into her bedroom and . . . I found her. Then I called an ambulance and the police.’

‘After you got –’ He glanced at Eric. ‘You called the ambulance after you got Staff Sergeant Lund?’

‘I called the police and the ambulance
before
I told Staff Sergeant Lund about finding her.’

‘You knew Miss Smith well?’

‘Quite well. We’d meet socially.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘Yes. An army lieutenant, Lance Cole.’

Browne wrote assiduously.

McGurk didn’t take his eyes off my face. ‘Did you hear anything last night?’

‘No. Nothing at all.’ I couldn’t help blushing again, at the thought of what Eric and I had been doing while Violet had been attacked, while she was lying there, close to death.

‘Did you touch anything inside this flat?’

‘After I’d called the ambulance I pulled Miss Smith more onto the bed. She was almost hanging over the side and I was worried about her being able to breathe. I . . . I had blood on my hands and washed them in her bathroom basin.’

‘Used her flannel? It’s wet.’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, pursing his lips and staring at me as if what I’d just said had been of the utmost importance.

‘Tell me about Miss Smith.’

I stared at him. ‘I wasn’t keeping her under surveillance. She’d go out often, I assumed to dinner and dancing. Sometimes we’d hear her singing in the flat, entertaining. She was a singer, you know, as well as being a WAAAF. She’d sing in Service concerts. When she wasn’t singing she was a clerk, I think.’

We were all startled by a knock at the back door. McGurk looked up with a frown as Rob Sinclair walked into the lounge room, closely followed by Ross. I wondered how they’d found out about Violet so quickly.

Eric leaned into me. ‘I called Rob,’ he whispered. ‘He must have got Nick.’

‘And who are you two?’ McGurk’s query was like an angry bark.

‘Sinclair. Allied Intelligence Bureau. This is Lieutenant Ross, Sergeant Aldridge’s commanding officer. As this may concern a matter of national security, I’ll be sitting in on any interviews with service personnel and I expect to be kept informed of your inquiries.’

‘Expect all you like,’ said McGurk. ‘It’s not happening.’

‘Feel free to make the necessary inquiries.’ Sinclair’s voice was confident and ever so slightly supercilious.

McGurk didn’t reply. He reached into his breast pocket with an abrupt movement that made me start, and pulled out a wooden pipe and a tobacco pouch. A metal-cased pencil was retrieved from the opposite pocket.

Sinclair cleared his throat lightly. ‘Do you want to see my papers?’

There was silence as McGurk spent some time pushing tobacco into the pipe bowl and tamping it down with the end of the metal pencil. Only then did he look up into Sinclair’s eyes.

‘Show me your papers,’ he said.

Sinclair obliged him, and as the inspector examined the documents, I examined Ross. He was holding his mouth tightly, so tightly that it was white at the sides. His hands were shoved deeply into the pockets of his trousers and his shoulders had a tight, guarded look to them. He was not looking at me or Eric, but at a point somewhere near the ceiling on the other side of the room.

McGurk handed the papers to Sinclair.

‘How is she?’ asked Ross. His voice was sharp, peremptory. ‘Violet Smith?’

McGurk ignored him.

Ross’s voice hardened. ‘How is Corporal Smith?’

Browne answered. ‘She’s alive.’

Ross swallowed and some of the tension left his shoulders.

‘She’s on the critical list, though,’ said McGurk. He gave Ross a quick frown and, for the first time, really looked at him. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘She’s . . . I know her.’ He shook his head, then straightened his shoulders and swept McGurk with a cool look. ‘I took her out a few times.’

‘I was told she was seeing someone called Cole.’ He gave me a glance with more than a hint of suspicion in it.

‘She was seeing Lieutenant Cole before we started seeing each other. She went back to Lieutenant Cole last week.’

McGurk’s eyes narrowed. ‘That must have annoyed you.’

Ross had recovered his usual sangfroid. ‘Not really. The relationship had run its course.’ There was a glimmer of a smile on his face. ‘I don’t take an axe to the women who’ve stopped seeing me.’

‘Why do you say it was an axe?’

Ross gestured towards Eric. ‘He told Sinclair it was an axe attack. Sinclair told me.’

‘There’s been too much talking about it altogether, in my opinion. This is a police inquiry. Please do not discuss the circumstances of Corporal Smith’s injuries with anyone.’

He pulled out a box of matches, struck one and applied the flame to the tobacco in his pipe. His cheeks moved in and out as he sucked at the pipe. It took, and a rich tobacco smell filled the air.

He nodded at Ross. ‘Where were you last night?’

Browne nudged him and glanced at Eric and me. McGurk’s world-weary expression changed to one of annoyance.

‘What are you still doing here?’

‘No one asked us to leave,’ I replied, a little indignantly. ‘May we leave?’

He seemed to consider this. ‘No. I’ve got a couple more questions.’ He turned to Sinclair and Ross, glanced at Eric. ‘You can all wait outside on the landing.’

Rob Sinclair’s expression didn’t change. He shook his head. ‘I’ll be sitting in when you interview service personnel.’

There was a staring match between the two men. Eventually McGurk stood. ‘Is there somewhere I can talk to Lieutenant Sinclair in private?’ he asked me, and bit down hard on the pipe stem.

‘There’s a spare bedroom to the left through there,’ I said, gesturing towards the vestibule. He and Sinclair disappeared and Eric and I sat uneasily in Violet’s lounge room with Ross and Browne. We all avoided eye contact.

When McGurk and Sinclair returned they both seemed more at ease, as if matters had been settled between them.

McGurk turned to me. ‘Is your flat empty?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll conduct preliminary interviews there. Sergeant Aldridge first.’

I sat in our lounge room with McGurk, Browne and Sinclair and told them all I knew about Violet. Then I told them all I knew about Violet and Cole, including what I’d overheard, late at night.

‘So he was beating her?’ McGurk’s expression indicated that he’d seen it all, none of it surprised him, and he was rarely happy about it.

‘I think so. That’s what it sounded like.’

McGurk grunted. I assumed he was thinking, as I was, that it was a long way from beating your girlfriend to finding an axe, taking it to her flat and chopping at her head. He sucked at his pipe, leaned back in his chair and puffed out a perfect smoke ring. It floated in the air between us, alien, beautiful. He sat up straight and stared at me.

‘So you never actually witnessed him abusing Corporal Smith?’

‘No.’

‘Or saw bruises or other evidence of abuse?’

‘No. He hit me once, though.’

That caught his attention.

‘Tell me.’