Amy's Touch (38 page)

‘
Y
ou were robbed, Amy,’ Winnie Cohen complained to her friend as the voting results for the position of Gindaroo’s mayor were read out at the town meeting in the Methodist church’s hall. Andy Cummings had won the mayor’s position by a narrow margin.

Trying not to let her disappointment show, Amy responded, ‘Well, he had more time to campaign than I did.’ Briefly, she pulled a face. ‘I suppose I must go and congratulate him.’

‘I suppose,’ Winnie’s tone lacked enthusiasm. ‘You know, I believe that Bill Walpole tipped the balance, by publicly praising Andy to all and sundry and implying that you, being a woman, were unfit for the position because of your other commitments.’ Winnie added, ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to have rigged the voting either. Everyone knows Bill wouldn’t shy away from a little bribery.’

‘You shouldn’t say such things, Winnie, unless you have proof.’ Amy delivered her reprimand gently. Privately, though, she agreed with her friend. Once Bill had learned that she was running, he had launched an all-out effort to discredit her. She knew why: because indirectly it would hurt her husband. The man was utterly mean-spirited—even her father, who thought ill of no one, had voiced such an opinion.

‘Oh well, it’s over now, and life goes on. I just hope that for Gindaroo’s sake Andy makes a good mayor.’

‘If he does it will be a miracle,’ Winnie sniped with the sweetest of smiles. ‘He’s as lazy as…’ she tried to find a comparison and
couldn’t, ‘I don’t know what. He’s got Christine, who has her hands full with the twins and their baby girl, working long hours at Quinton’s store, while he opens his barber shop for just a few hours each day.’

‘True. Hard work and Andy don’t seem to go together, but at least I’m on the town council so I can keep an eye on what he gets up to. Most likely he’ll do whatever Bill Walpole tells him to.’

Winnie nodded. ‘Which mightn’t be for the good of Gindaroo.’

‘We’ll see. Time will tell.’ Amy, having seen and heard enough at the meeting, rose from her seat, as did Winnie, and after congratulating Andy they made their way out of the hall to Queen Street.

Standing at the bottom of the steps of the small whitewashed church, the sun warmed Danny’s back as he watched Gretel approach. She was splendidly dressed in a white gown of some filmy material, a garland of tropical flowers in her hair, and her wedding bouquet was a mixture of pink, yellow and white frangipanis. She looked beautiful as she took his arm, and for a moment or two his thoughts turned to his old friend. Abe would have been so proud to see her married today.

‘Ready?’ he asked, guessing that she was nervous. Her head gave a slight affirmative nod and together they walked up the three steps to the church’s entrance as the organ began to play Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’. On either side of the aisle all heads turned expectantly for a glimpse of the bride, while in front of the altar the bridegroom, Verne Dennison, dressed in a white suit, waited nervously.

The ceremony was short and simple, and later an informal wedding breakfast was held in the back garden of Abe’s cottage, prepared and served by some of Gretel’s native friends.

Danny’s mood was reflective as he watched the happy couple greet and talk to guests. He’d experienced a sense of satisfaction to have carried out his promise to Abe to see Gretel settled, and he was confident that Verne would be a good husband. However, as he watched everyone enjoying themselves, eating, drinking and toasting the newlyweds, a curious restlessness crept through him. He’d experienced the vague symptoms before and cured them with hard work, by expanding his thriving businesses. These days he was considered a successful Fijian businessman, which enhanced his reputation, but often, in the quiet of night, an inexplicable yearning
would invade his being. After much soul-searching he’d recognised it as a longing to see home, Drovers Way, again, and Randall and Amy and their children.

Corresponding infrequently with his brother and Amy had restored the bond he’d severed years ago, and while he wanted to go, deep inside he was also reluctant to surrender to the need. He still had feelings for Amy, and seeing her again would, he believed, even
feared
, open the scars around and within his heart. That was the main reason why he hadn’t succumbed to the idea of a trip home.

‘Danny, you look far too serious on my wedding day,’ Gretel chided as she came up and lightly smacked his arm to get his attention. ‘Aren’t you happy for me?’

Danny pushed his mental wanderings to the back of his mind. ‘I am overjoyed. It is a beautiful day, it was a fine wedding, and you and Verne are going to be very happy.’

‘But a moment ago you looked so sad.’

Gretel’s comment hit the mark. Yes, damn it, he
was
sad. Everyone he was close to, everyone he cared for, seemed happy, yet true happiness appeared to elude him. ‘I was thinking,’ he fabricated, ‘how proud Abe would have been to see you today. Him not being here to share your day is why I looked sad.’

Suddenly Gretel’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘I have been thinking of Grandfather too. I miss him very much.’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t want either of us to be sad today,’ Danny said with a smile. ‘Come on, let’s go and make a toast to Abe. He’d have liked that.’

Her smile mirrored his. ‘Yes, he would.’

M
argaret Walpole sat in the garden’s gazebo, reading, for the third time, a recent letter from her daughter Beth. How she longed to see her again, and to set eyes on Beth’s three children, but Bill had vetoed any such trip to Britain because of what some people were now calling a depression. A sigh fluttered from her lips. Folding the letter up, she put it in her skirt pocket, pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose and turned to her needlework basket to do a little more work on her latest tapestry.

The garden’s silence was interrupted by Joe, who called to her as he strode through the house, then out through the drawing room’s French doors and onto the flagstone terrace. ‘Mother, there you are,’ he said, his voice pitched higher than normal. He crossed the lawn to the gazebo and came and sat beside her.

Margaret took a good look at her son through her glasses. He looked…distressed. Normally pale, his cheeks were flushed, and his breathing seemed uneven, as if he’d been running.

‘What is it, Joe?’

He took the tapestry from her and held both her hands in his. After a deep breath, he said in a hushed tone, ‘Mother, it’s Dad. I don’t know how to say it, but…s-something terrible’s happened.’

Margaret’s eyes widened. She sucked in her lower lip and her forehead creased in a frown. Suddenly, because of Joe’s demeanour,
she began to feel very afraid, almost too afraid to ask…‘What’s happened to your father, Joe? Has he been hurt?’

Joe didn’t answer straight away. It seemed that he was trying to frame what he had to tell her in the gentlest way he could. ‘Mother, you’ve got to be strong. It’s bad. Dad has been…he’s been killed up at the weir.’

‘
What?
’ She shook her head furiously in denial and pulled one of her hands from his and held it against her breast. ‘No. No, I don’t believe you, it can’t be true. Not my Bill. How…?’

Once again Joe paused before he told her. ‘He was shot twice. Murdered by some bloody coward.’

‘
Oh, no!
’

Seeing Joe’s expression, and realising he was telling the truth, Margaret began to rock backwards and forwards in the seat. Her Bill dead! Dear God, how could such a terrible thing have happened? And murdered. Oh, it was too awful to think about. Many people thought ill of her husband and didn’t like the way he did business, but he had always been good and loving to her, even when he was in one of his bombastic, arrogant moods. A trickle of tears began to slide down her cheeks and then she began to sob as if her heart had broken.

‘Come inside. I’ll get you a brandy, then I have to ring the constable in Gindaroo.’

Joe’s index finger shook as he dialled the telephone number of Gindaroo’s police station. He could hear his mother weeping in the kitchen, but he tried to ignore the sound. She’d been crying ever since he’d ridden in and given her the news. He’d never seen her so upset, not even when his sister had left for Britain all those years ago. Christ, it was amazing, but she really must have loved the old bugger. Joe swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.

‘Constable McSweeney?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Joe Walpole. Something dreadful has happened at Ingleside. M-my father’s been shot. He…’ Joe paused to compose himself, ‘he’s dead.’

‘What?’ There was silence on the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Joe. Tell me what happened.’

Joe closed his eyes as he spoke, the memory still vivid in his mind. ‘Early this morning, after breakfast, Dad rode out to check the weir because the men had completed the repair work. I offered to go with him but he said not to bother, he had other work for me to do, and
he’d only be an hour or so. When he hadn’t come back by twelve o’clock I rode out to see what was taking him so long.’ He stopped, cleared his throat and continued. ‘Stuart, somebody’s killed him. There’s a bullet in his back and one in his head.’

For a few seconds there was no response. ‘I see. Where’s, uuumm,’ Stuart coughed noisily, ‘the body now?’

‘At the weir. I’ve got a man guarding him. God, Stuart, who could have hated my father enough to want to kill him?’ Joe’s voice thickened with emotion. ‘When I find out who did it I’ll kill him myself!’ He blinked several times to push back an unmanly display of tears. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘This is a bad business. Don’t do anything hasty.’ The constable stated the obvious. ‘I’ll come out to Ingleside straight away. Don’t touch anything, and don’t move the body. All right?’

‘All right.’ Joe hung up the telephone and went into the kitchen to comfort his mother. God, there was so much to do now that his father was gone. He squared his narrow shoulders. With Beth in Britain, his mother reduced to a pitiful wreck, and funeral arrangements to make, people to notify…So many things to do, and no one else but him to do them all. His chest puffed out with sudden, newfound self-importance. He should contact Reverend Whitton and ask his wife, Beatrice, to come and be with his mother.

An hour passed before Constable McSweeney rode into Ingleside’s front yard. Joe was waiting. He mounted his horse and led the policeman out of the yard, over the green, rolling hills, scattering sheep and cattle as they rode, down to Boolcunda Creek. Joe had already dispatched a horse and cart to the weir to bring his father’s body back to the homestead, and as he and the constable approached, the two stockmen, who’d been having a smoko a polite distance away from the body, ashed their cigarettes and came to take their horses’ reins.

Joe and the stockmen watched interestedly as the constable paced about, a notebook and pencil in his hand. He dropped to his haunches to study Bill Walpole’s body, then, standing, strode about some more, his gaze fixed on the ground. After several minutes he gave a satisfied nod and came back to where Joe waited.

‘Your men can move the body now.’

Joe gestured for his men to wrap his father’s body in a blanket and place it securely in the cart. He turned away so he wouldn’t have to see what they were doing. ‘What do you think happened, Stuart?’

The constable scratched his earlobe. ‘Looks as if he was inspecting the work on the weir. He fell forward when he was shot, most likely by rifle fire. That way the killer could shoot from a distance. It would have happened so fast that Bill probably never knew what hit him. The shot to the head killed him instantly, but the murderer wanted to make sure, so as Bill fell he shot him in the back as well.’

‘The bastard!’

‘Can’t argue with that. It’s a low act to ambush someone in such a manner. A cowardly act.’ The constable studied Joe, who was trying to keep his emotions under control but not managing to. ‘I understand how upset you must be, Joe, but I’ll need you to come to the station and tell me about the people who might have had a score to settle with your father. I’ll make a list of people to interview.’

‘There’ll be a few on that.’ Joe’s answer was surprisingly honest. ‘I’d be the first to admit that Dad made several enemies over the last twenty years. Some envied his success, others believed they had a genuine grievance against him. But Stuart, really, I can’t imagine any man wanting to…to kill him.’

‘Well, someone did, and I’m going to need your assistance to help me find the culprit.’

Joe nodded, showing he understood. ‘Of course. I want the bastard brought to justice more than anyone.’

In silence they rode back to Ingleside, and the constable took his leave and returned to Gindaroo.

Randall was elbow-deep in grease, working on repairing the tractor’s engine in the machinery shed, when Jim found him late that same afternoon.

‘Damned cantankerous machine,’ he said to Jim. ‘I’ve been working on it on and off since breakfast. I still can’t get the darn thing going.’ Usually he could fix basic pieces of machinery, but this time the engine was proving to be uncooperative. ‘I said Gunther Liszt could borrow it today, but at this rate I’m not hopeful I’ll get it going.’

‘I wondered where you were.’ Jim leaned over and peered at the engine. ‘I’ve just come from town. Big news. Someone killed Bill Walpole.’

‘What!’ Randall dropped the spanner into the engine and, grunting, had to retrieve it. His eyebrows shot up with shock as he stared at Jim. ‘Killed? How? An accident?’

Jim’s head gave a shake. ‘Murdered. That’s what Constable McSweeney is saying.’ After which he went on to detail what he’d heard about the murder while having a beer at the Royal Hotel.

‘We haven’t had a murder in this part of the Flinders for more than twenty years.’ Randall’s tone was subdued. ‘Bill was a bit of a bastard, ruthless in business and damned manipulative, but who’d want to see him dead?’

Jim shrugged. ‘According to Clem Yarborough, the constable and Joe are drawing up a list of possible suspects.’ He pulled a comical face at his boss. ‘You can expect your name to be on it.’

Randall grimaced at the truth of that and was lost in thought for several moments. ‘No doubt I’ll be at the top. Everyone in the district knows about the feud between Bill and me.’ He stared at the tractor’s engine, still frustrated because he couldn’t get it to go, but now he had something much more worrying to think about. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that he, more than anyone else in the district, had a good reason to put a few bullets into Bill Walpole. The constable only had to ask around town. Some people would be pleased to tell the policeman about Randall breaking his engagement to Beth, and the many things he’d accused Walpole of doing to Drovers, as well as the public arguments they’d had—the last one several weeks ago in Gindaroo’s main street, which Stuart had witnessed. If he were in Constable McSweeney’s size-thirteen boots he would consider Randall McLean a prime suspect.

Jim pointed at something in the engine. ‘Look, Randall, those leads for the spark plug. They’re all right but they could be better. Maybe they’re worn enough to stop the plugs from firing properly.’

‘Yes, that could be the problem, even though they’re not too old, and I’ve checked everything else.’ He reached into the engine and fiddled with the leads, trying to tighten them. ‘Seems all right.’ Moving to the battery he tightened the connection. ‘See if the motor starts now, Jim.’

Jim climbed up into the tractor, sat behind the wheel and pushed the starter button. A couple of backfires preceded the engine starting, after which it began to chug happily.

Randall shook his head in amazement. ‘Damn it! Something so bloody simple. I’ve racked my brain trying to solve the problem. It’ll go even better with a new set of leads.’ He grinned at Jim. ‘Maybe I should make you Drovers’ official tractor mechanic.’

Jim held up his disabled arm. The metal hook gleamed dully. ‘I think two good hands are needed to be a mechanic.’

‘Perhaps.’ Randall conceded the point. ‘Gunther will be pleased. Me too. Now I can scrub this grease off.’

‘See you at dinner then,’ Jim said, and turned towards the original homestead where he and Nora lived.

That evening, the conversation over dinner at Drovers centred around Bill Walpole’s murder.

‘I feel sorry for Margaret. She was really fond of Bill. She’ll miss him,’ Amy’s tone was sympathetic.

‘Don’t think too many others will,’ Mike gave his opinion. ‘If ever a man was unpopular around here it was Walpole.’

‘Even his son disliked him because he held his purse strings so tight,’ Jim said, and then he gave a chuckle. ‘Joe will be a happy man after the will’s read. I reckon old Bill would have left everything to him.’

Nora, who’d once worked at Ingleside as a maid, voiced her thoughts. ‘Knowing Joe, he’ll go on a spending spree. And if you ask me, that police constable will have a hard job finding the murderer.’

Randall tapped his water glass with his fork to get everyone’s attention. ‘I think we’ve exhausted the topic of Bill’s murder. Let’s talk about something else. Mike, how are you going with the flock, separating the wethers from the ewes?’

‘We’re getting there. With Tinga’s help I have moved half the ewes to the pasture near the first dam, where there’s good feed.’

‘Daddy, next spring can I have a lamb of my own to look after?’ Kate asked, a wistful expression on her face.

‘Are you old enough to look after a baby lamb, Kate? They take a lot of work when they’re little.’

‘I’m a big girl, Daddy, I’m sure I can,’ she replied. A serious nod of her head confirmed her commitment.

‘Well, if a lamb gets orphaned you can give raising it a try.’ Randall smiled benignly at his daughter who, to him, was growing up so fast. She had easily mastered riding the pony he’d bought her for her last birthday after the episode with the feral dogs; she could milk Crystal the cow as well as Nora or Amy could; and next year she would start school in Gindaroo.

Nora, who’d been scooping up the empty dinner plates and stacking them by the sink, asked a general question, ‘Who wants sweets?’ She smiled confidently as she spoke, already knowing the answer, and Randall grinned as everyone chorused, ‘Me!’ No one at
the table ever said no to Nora’s sweets. Like Jim and Mike, Nora was a real treasure for Drovers; as well as being a good general cook, her skill in the desserts department surpassed anything Jim or Amy could concoct. As everyone tucked into their tapioca pudding, Randall let the conversation flow around him without contributing to it. He was concerned; he’d be a fool not to be. He knew that Gindaroo’s constable would be paying him a visit soon.

In the early hours of the next morning, Randall moved restlessly under the covers as the nightmare that had haunted him for years manifested itself again, but this time with a peculiar twist. Instead of seeing the German soldier’s face seconds before he pulled the trigger, Bill Walpole’s florid features swam before his closed lids. Then he pulled the trigger and Bill’s blood was everywhere, on his uniform, on his hands and soaking into the soil.

Breathing erratically, eyes still closed, Randall sat bolt upright in bed and fought his way back to consciousness. Still in the throes of the dream, he kept wiping his hands as if there was something unpleasant on them. His body gave an almighty shudder and the next instant he relaxed. Eyes opening, he saw Amy, his ‘rock’, staring at him.