Babylon South (35 page)

“All right,” he said, not looking at Clements. “She can go home with Lady Springfellow tonight. But we'll want her at Number One Magistrate's Court tomorrow morning at nine sharp, on the dot. We'll be asking for top bail, the surrender of her passport and that she report to the local police twice a week till the committal proceedings.”

“Emma is being buried tomorrow,” said Alice, who had been silent up till now.

“I'm sorry, she will have to miss the funeral.” He could not afford to appear too lenient in front of Clements. These people would be out of his life within six months at the outside; he would have to go on working with Russ Clements for God knew how many years yet. If he lasted so long . . .

Venetia was not insensitive; she grasped that there was some conflict between the two policemen. She tried for grace, but found it difficult: “Thank you, Inspector. My daughter and I will be at the Magistrate's Court. I'd just ask one more favour—do the media have to be there waiting for us?”

“Sergeant Clements and I are not publicity hounds. If they're there, it won't be us who'll have brought them.”

“You're human after all,” said Alice Magee.

Malone sighed, smiled at her. “It's an effort sometimes.”

When the Springfellow women and Brownlow had gone, Clements sat back in his chair, bit his lip and said, “That's the first time I've been kicked in the arse by a mate.”

“I'm sorry, Russ.”

“Yeah, you could be. You look it. But it doesn't explain why.”

“Trust me.”

Clements chewed his lip again, looked away down the long room. It was empty now, all the detectives gone home for the night or out on cases. Only the duty officer sat at his desk near the door. The room had the emptiness that comes much more late at night, as if the darkness beyond the windows had drained it of life. It would not remain like this all night: soon the night duty men would be returning
with
yet another homicide suspect.

It seemed that Clements felt the emptiness of the big room because when he looked back his big broad face seemed empty, too.

“I guess I'll have to trust you. But it's something I never expected you to ask me.”

II

Venetia lay in her big bed staring sightlessly at the sunlit window. The bed this morning felt empty, yet she had had no man in it with her since Walter had disappeared; all her affairs had been conducted elsewhere. Justine, when she had lived here in the house, would come in in the mornings and get into bed with her; but that no longer happened, not since Justine had moved to her own place in The Wharf. Alice never got into bed beside her: she would sometimes come in and sit on the end of the bed, but there was always something that held them back, each of them, from the warm intimacy of mother and child. That had not happened since the Cobar days and Cobar, now, had been left behind for ever.

She closed her eyes, felt the tears inside her lids, fought against the temptation to let herself go. She sat up abruptly, reached for the phone and opened the grey suede-covered book beside it. Then she began calling for, demanding, pleading for help. She called the State Attorney-General, who owed her favours: not sexual ones but financial ones. She called Premier Hans Vanderberg, who owed her no favours but had more power here in this State than she could ever even aspire to. She made other phone calls, getting some men out of bed, interrupting others at their breakfast, getting some in their cars on the way to their offices; but all to no avail. Suddenly all her wealth, all her connections, all her
power,
meant nothing. All the men she had called would, in other circumstances, have come to her aid; but not in the circumstance of murder. Even over the phone she had seen them drawing away from her. Their scruples in politics and business, she knew, were paper-thin; but murder, it seemed, especially a murder in the family, was a different thing. She put down the phone on the last call, utterly defeated. The one man she had not called was John Leeds.

III

Justine was granted bail of $100,000, her passport was surrendered, she was ordered to reside at her mother's home and she had to report to the Mosman police twice a week. She and Venetia did not attend Emma's funeral; the media cameramen attended, but decided there was no one worth wasting film or tape on. Edwin and Ruth were there, and Alice Magee and Michael Broad; but they weren't considered newsworthy, not at a funeral, and so Emma was buried without fuss, as she would have wanted. Edwin and Ruth wept, but Alice and Broad remained dry-eyed. Malone did not attend, but sent Andy Graham instead.

The newspapers, who went to their morgues for pictures of Justine and Venetia, spread the story of Justine's arrest across their pages as if she were Mary Magdalene resurrected and back in her original business. Reporters and cameramen camped in Springfellow Avenue; retired Mosman couples on their daily constitutionals extended their walks to come to the end of the street and watch the circus. It was a decorous circus, of course: Mosman was not like the eastern suburbs, where the rich were often raffish and the media were encouraged rather than discouraged. Neither Venetia nor Justine appeared in the three days that the circus was in the street, but Alice came to the front gates and, in a tone very restrained for her, made a statement that said Lady Springfellow and her daughter asked only that their privacy be respected and that, because the matter was
sub judice,
a phrase Alice had a little trouble with, nothing could be said at the moment. The media men and women grumbled, but eventually gave up and went away. The local spectators, left exposed once the circus had gone, also went away. One had to show good manners, no matter how much one was bursting to be otherwise.

Malone and Clements, their relationship still a little stiff, kept their investigation simmering. A week after Justine was granted bail Andy Graham came to Malone's desk.

“I've got nowhere trying to trace any other diaries by Emma. But the doorkeeper at The Vanderbilt says he now remembers that about six or eight months ago, Emma had some stuff moved out of the basement. All he can remember was that there were some pictures, but there was some other stuff. It wasn't much, it went into a small van.”

“
Where did it go?”

“He doesn't know. But I thought it might be worth asking her brother Edwin.”

“Try him.”

Graham was back in the afternoon, lugging a heavy leather suitcase. “He was pretty upset, at first he didn't want to answer any questions about whether Emma had sent him any stuff. His trouble is, he's decent and honest.”

“You're learning,” said Malone.

Graham blushed, as if he had been accused of being too just towards an ordinary citizen. “He really is. This job would be no strife at all if everyone was like him. Anyhow, finally he said yes, he had a suitcase full of Emma's diaries. This is it.”

It was the sort of suitcase that, in these days of air travel, one never saw. It was solid leather, battered and scuffed but still strong. The labels on it were symbols of another age, of travelling not cruising: P & O stickers, Cunard, Matson; Emma, or her parents, had travelled sedately and in style. Andy Graham opened the suitcase and there were the diaries, leather-covered, some of them freckled with mildew, all with her initials stamped in gold on the covers. They were not loose, but bound in bundles of five by rubber bands, the years marked in a neat hand on strips of faded pink cardboard inserted in the rubber bands. Emma had arranged everything meticulously in her life, except her death.

Malone looked up at Clements, who had joined them. “You and Andy take the last five years, up to 1986. You may come up with something you can cross-refer to in the one you have for this year, the unfinished one.”

“What about all the others?” Clements said.

Malone fished through the bundles. “They go back to 1938. She'd have been—what? She was sixty-five when she died. So she started these when she was sixteen. I'll skip through the early ones, then I'll start at 1966 to „70, when Walter disappeared, see if she has anything interesting to say.”

The three of them settled down to read Emma Springfellow's life. Malone felt a certain guilt, as if he had crept in on the woman in her bedroom. She had had one or two affairs, but the entries on them
were
discreet; only initials were mentioned and there were no comments on the men as lovers. She had lost her virginity at nineteen to someone named L.; it had been a disastrous event in her life and L. was never mentioned again. W. appeared on almost every second page, though not as a lover; but a stranger, reading the diaries, might never have suspected that W. was her brother. Incestuous love must, of course, be kept in the family, but never in the family history.

The diary for 1966 was full of woe for the lost W.
Has she had him killed? Where has my beloved W. gone?
It was like glancing through a Victorian melodrama and Malone missed a lot, as if he were reading it with averted eyes.

He finished the 1966 diary, having skimmed through it looking for names. Then he went back to read it more carefully. Phrases had caught his eye, but hadn't registered; now they started to come up like invisible writing that had been treated. There was an entry for March 24, the Thursday before Walter disappeared.

I spoke to a young man standing outside W.'s gate this afternoon. He looked suspicious to me; he had been standing there for some time. He said he was looking for Lady S. He had an accent. He went into the house after I spoke to him. When he came out he was carrying a briefcase. Who was he?

The entry for the Friday said:

I mentioned the young man to W. this evening—how I miss him during the week while he is in Melbourne!—He appeared disturbed, but then told me not to worry. But of course I do worry! How can he be happy with that whore?

Malone began to take notes. He found the diary depressing and irritating; Emma's bitterness got beneath his skin. Why had she stayed so close, just across the street, to the situation that was so obviously ruining her life? But Malone, unlike most men, knew a woman's capacity for masochism. One doesn't need whips for self-flagellation.

He opened the diary for 1967. September of that year brought a spate of entries on the one subject:

She
can't wait to get at W.' s money . . . Already she is borrowing against his estate
. . .
She has bought a country radio station! What next? .
. .
How will she bring up the child, whose ever it is?

He closed the diary, feeling soiled: one shouldn't have to face such private venom. “You fellers come up with anything?”

Clements had been making his own notes. “She had it in for Venetia just before Venetia started the takeover bid. Evidently she was thinking last year of letting the NCSC know that Venetia had done something fishy in putting a deal together. She must have forgotten the idea because there's no more about it.”

“Anything about Justine?”

“She calls her a whore, like her mother.”

Malone looked at Andy Graham. “Anything in yours?”

“Nothing that will help us much. In November of this year—” he held up the diary: it was for 1985 “—she evidently had a real donnybrook with Alice Magee. They actually hit each other.”

“I didn't think that was allowed in Mosman. Any more references to Mrs. Magee?”

“Occasional ones. She doesn't seem to have a good word for anyone who lived on the other side of the street. She doesn't have much time for Ruth Springfellow, either. They fell out occasionally. She calls Ruth a hypocrite, but doesn't say why.”

“What about Edwin?” There had been references to Edwin in the 1966 diary, but they had been non-committal. He could have been a brother in name only. Had he been a widower or a bachelor, she might have shown more concern for him: he would have profited by being Ruth-less.

“He just seems to annoy her. She thinks he's too cautious about everything.”

“Any fights with him?”

“None in here. She says at one point—” Graham riffled through the pages. “Here. April 21.
Why does Edwin always walk away from a fight? Nothing is ever won by turning the other cheek”

“She sounds like a rugby league coach,” said Clements. He re-opened the 1986 diary. “There's
something
here about J. That would be Justine—she only used initials all the time, I guess.”

“It's only initials in mine,” said Malone, and Graham nodded.

“She writes:
J. threatened me today, told me that some day I'd go too far. Too far to ruin them or to get rid of them? How could I go too far?
Emma was asking for trouble.”

Malone nodded. “But not to be murdered. She was a real bitch, but we've got to forget that. Let's have another look at the 1987 one.”

Clements opened his desk drawer, ferreted beneath his murder box, then handed the unfinished diary to Malone. The latter flipped through it, stopping at random pages. Then he saw the initials NCSC. “Here she is again, thinking about the Companies and Securities Commission. You said she did that in 1986?” Clements nodded. “Righto, listen to this for October 15 this year.
Someone
—no initial—
should be reported to the NCSC. How do these people get away with such swindles?”

“That was probably Venetia, trying to tie up things before the takeover went through. Justine probably knew what Emma had in mind when she went to see her. That was why she killed her, or one of the reasons. She didn't want her mother to go to gaol.”

Malone threw the diary back to him and stood up. “I've had enough of this war between women. I'm going home. First thing tomorrow, before I come into the office, I'm going over to see Venetia about her husband. You two start getting everything together on Justine's case. I want it watertight.” He didn't, really: he would have preferred it to look like a sieve, one that he could have presented to John Leeds as a gift. He had no sympathy for Justine as the murderer, but he had less sympathy for Emma as the victim. And that troubled him.