Death Delights (23 page)

•

Jeffrey Saunders greeted me and glanced at my ID. I wondered for a split second if this was the man who’d stolen my sister, snatched her from the street, made off and murdered her. Until I realised he would have been aged about ten at the time.

‘Is this business or pleasure or do you want to buy a painting?’ he joked, indicating that I should follow him into the house. The Glebe cottage he lived in seemed too small to accommodate him with his belly and beard and the plump jowls and neck that go with too much wine and food, filled as it was with paintings, framed and unframed, stacked against the walls. The smell of oil paints was especially strong in the room into which he now ushered me, and I saw that he’d made this front bedroom with the large bay window into his studio because of its good light.

‘
Murdered Girls
’, I said, as I walked in behind him. ‘Where did you get the models from?’

He looked bewildered at my question. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘I know my work’s a bit confronting. Not very PC. People like roses and sunsets. But don’t tell me someone’s complained?’

‘I’m not interested in your work at all,’ I said, more sharply than I’d meant. ‘And no one’s complained as far as I know. I’m here because I want to know about the middle girl, Rosie McCain. I want to know where you got her from.’ I swallowed hard. ‘And how you know she was murdered.’

Jeffrey Saunders was taken aback. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you come barging in here flashing some sort of police identitification—’

‘I haven’t started barging yet,’ I said. ‘Rosie McCain is…was… my sister. I want to know how you knew about her. Why you painted her. What model you used. You must have got her from somewhere.’

I could see he was shocked. The bluster fell out of him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I had no idea. It must have been distressing for you. To see your sister like that.’ The angry energy between us changed.

‘I recognised the other two girls,’ I told him, ‘and I know where you got their images from. I was actually involved in the investigation into Amanda Smith’s murder. And Tiffany Jo Bentley’s photos appeared in the newspapers, too. But that’s not the case with Rosie. I remember the photo used for her in the press. And it wasn’t anything like the image you’ve come up with for your masterpiece. I want to know where you got it.’

Jeffrey Saunders started rooting through trays and boxes of half squeezed oil paints, and plates used as palettes and daubed in mixes of colour. Unlike me, he was a messy painter, with old rags everywhere and paint on the floor. ‘Somewhere here,’ he said to me over his shoulder. ‘They were here last time I noticed them.’ I came over behind him and my heart sank. The mess in the corner he was searching was chaotic.

‘I used to live in the Blue Mountains,’ he said. ‘I remember there was a piece on your sister in the local newspaper some years ago about unsolved mysteries.’ Furniture had been pushed into the corner to make space for his easel and boxes, and trays of old, dried tubes and brushes were layered like an archeological dig. Jeffrey Saunders started unstacking some chairs so as to get close to the mess in the corner. ‘The unconscious is a funny thing,’ he was saying. ‘I just started copying the middle girl in and it took me a while to realise that I knew her face already from the newspaper article.’

‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

‘For Rosie,’ he answered. ‘She was here. In a whole box of others.’

‘Other whats?’ I said.

But he didn’t answer me directly. Instead, he reached in behind a pile of canvases and I could hear him grunting with the strain of stretching. ‘I’m always buying these,’ he said, ‘in secondhand shops. They’re full of stories and lives. Full of the past.’ Finally he turned round and I could see now that he had hold of a shoebox filled with old postcards and photographs. ‘I got this whole box for thirty dollars. She was in here,’ he said. ‘Just smiling out at me in her pretty summer dress.’ He passed me the box. ‘She was the one whose face I wanted in the middle. I didn’t even know who she was until I was almost finished.’

I looked at him and saw that his face under the beard was soft and that his eyes were gentle. You’ve touched him, too, Rosie, I thought, and he’s had to paint you. I’m doing the best I can, I told her. I’m following every lead you lay down.

Saunders put the box down. ‘Damn it. She’s not in there.’ He looked around, remembering. ‘I had her stuck up here with a thumb tack while I was painting her.’ He looked dejected and I wondered if this was another wild goose chase. But he suddenly lurched forward in front of me. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there she is.’ And he reached over to the wall and took a black and white photo from a corkboard on the wall. He handed it to me and I stared at it.

There she was, my little sister, Rosie, standing somewhere in the November sunlight, smiling straight at whoever was taking the photograph, her brow clear of the anxiety that usually furrowed it. For a moment, I thought
I might
disgrace myself. I felt an almost overwhelming cry at the back of my throat. Instead, I turned the photo over and looked at the back. There were no distinguishing marks, no brand names. This looked as if it had been developed in someone’s private darkroom.

‘Can you remember where this box came from?’ I asked.

‘Most certainly,’ he said, pleased to be helpful. ‘I bought that batch in a little olde worlde shop at Blackheath. The one opposite the pub, just off the highway. There’s always lots of stuff in that place.’ I nodded, knowing the shop he meant, a rambling warehouse filled with old things. The sort of place where Genevieve could have happily spent half the day.

‘You see,’ I said, ‘that necklace she’s wearing. I’d given that to her only three days before she went missing. No one in our family took that photo.’

‘Can I get you a stiff drink?’ Jeffrey Saunders offered.

I shook my head. ‘But thanks, anyway,’ I said. ‘I’d like to take this box away with me. See if there’s anything else that might be related.’ I looked again at my radiant little sister. There was something so like Jacinta in her expression. Two beautiful girls. One dead, one fighting to live and my life haunted by the two of them.

‘Please do,’ Saunders was saying.

I took the box from him, regretting my earlier rudeness. ‘I paint a bit,’ I said, ‘but not as well as you. Mostly watercolours.’

‘You sure I can’t get you a drink? Anything else?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I have to go.’ And I did. Another moment, and I think I would’ve broken out crying.

I was aware of him watching me with concern as I made my way back to the car. I put the shoebox on the passenger seat and sat there a while. Eventually, I drove away and found myself parked at the end of my street where the land rose, staring out at the blue expanse of the sea, watching the long swell coming in through the bay beneath the swirling gulls. I propped up the photograph of my little sister against the dashboard and stared at it. There was a stone wall behind her and the shadows of trees across the foreground and behind her seemed to indicate late afternoon. I started going through the contents of the box. It was a jumble sale of postcards, some with names and addresses from all over Australia, others grubby but unused, old photos and the occasional greeting card. Halfway through, I grew dispirited and put them all back with Rosie on top. Another box to add to the growing collection at my house. I glanced at my watch. I needed to start preparations for my date with Iona Seymour. I drove home.

As I made a sandwich, showered, shaved and patted on a discreet amount of a cologne I didn’t know I had, the haunted feeling I’d had at Jeffrey Saunders’ place lifted somewhat. The money under the floorboards was still worrying me. It wasn’t a safe place. I was too closely connected to Jacinta.

My mobile rang and it was Bob.

‘I’ve found a photograph of Rosie,’ I told him. ‘She’s wearing a necklace that I gave her. Someone took this photo in the three days before she was abducted. It looks to me as if it’s been developed at home.’

I heard the silence on the line as Bob took all that in. ‘Any idea where it was taken?’ he asked.

‘That’s my next step,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the whole box of cards and photos it came with. There might be something else in there. Something I can identify.’

‘Have you heard anything from Staro?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Is there any talk on the street?’

‘You know he’d been trying to clean up his act,’ said Bob. ‘One of his confrères thought he might have gone up the coast. There’s a rehab place somewhere up Wyong way. A farm of some sort.’

I found it very hard imagining poor old Staro living the clean farm life, milking cows and gathering eggs. ‘I think he’s gone to ground,’ I said. ‘He’s always been looking over his shoulder. You know how it is with informers.’

Then, because I was thinking about my pending visit to Iona, I said something to Bob that had been on my mind ever since she had denied making those phone calls. ‘Bob,’ I said, ‘I’ve wondered a lot what the woman who left the message about Jacinta was originally going to say before she changed tack. She started off saying’—and I quoted the words to him that I knew by heart—‘“I want to talk to someone in charge of the investigation dealing with those two” and then she broke off and her voice changed completely. Do you remember?’

‘I do,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve been thinking about this. It was just after the first murder—Warren Gumley—that she rang the police. Early in the morning. And her second call was made the day of Nesbitt’s murder.’

I paused to catch my breath. ‘I’m wondering,’ I said, ‘if she was originally intending to say, “I want to talk to someone in charge of the investigation dealing with those two
murders”.’

There was a silence on the line, but I could hear Bob’s presence in it. There’s a quality to deep listening, even on the phone, that makes the silence rich. ‘If that’s the case,’ said Bob finally, ‘then we should be taking more of an interest in this woman.’ We were silent together for what seemed a long time. ‘And furthermore,’ said Bob slowly, as if he were thinking aloud, ‘if that
is
the case, and she then runs on to mention your daughter, then there’s also some connection, in her mind at least, between those killings and Jacinta.’ He was right. I had been trying hard not to make that connection myself.

‘That’s the part I really hate,’ I said to him. ‘That’s the part of this business that I can’t stop worrying about. Even though it’s impossible.’

‘Nothing’s impossible in our game,’ Bob said. Again, I knew he was right. ‘And she denied making those calls,’ he said. ‘There’s definitely something going on with her.’

Bob paused a moment. ‘I’ve got the PM results on Jeremy Guildthorpe,’ he said. ‘I’ve also found out a few more things about the late doctor. Just give me your impressions of that crime. Off the cuff.’

I considered for a moment, my imagination back in that expensive house, studying the body on the Persian rug. Outside, I could hear the shrill whistling of a gang of honeyeaters gathering nearby.
‘Quick! Quick! Quick!’
they urged.

‘In comparison with the earlier three killings,’ he added.

‘Bob,’ I said, ‘every single thing was different. He was killed at home. He was a wealthy man, not a man with a battered suitcase living in a rented room. He had no form for sexual crimes. He hadn’t done time and he hadn’t just been released from prison.’ I paused. ‘And,’ I continued eventually, ‘even though there were serious injuries inflicted to the groin, he still had his penis and balls. Plus, there was a head injury that none of the others had. Looked like he’d been bashed, maybe rendered unconscious.’ Again Bob waited, but that was all I wanted to say at this stage.

‘So you won’t be surprised,’ my erstwhile colleague said, ‘to hear that it was a different knife that was used. The wound measurements indicate a bigger, one-sided blade. The injuries are different as well. Many more stab wounds. Bradley used the word “frenzied”.’

‘There are too many differences,’ I said finally. ‘What else?’

‘The housekeeper has made a statement for us,’ said Bob, and I remembered the woman in blue who’d called me “sonny boy”. ‘She told me that Dr Guildthorpe used to sometimes bring young men home, for private studies.’

‘Real private,’ I said.

‘And sometimes,’ Bob continued, ‘young men would be let into the house at odd hours.’

‘Fancy that,’ I said.

‘When I heard that,’ said Bob, ‘I started asking around the right places and would you believe Dr Jeremy Guildthorpe was a very active man around town, and had a particular circle of friends who were quite unknown to his good lady wife.’ Bob sometimes uses that sort of Rotary men’s language for effect.

‘That’s often how it goes,’ I said, remembering other widows weeping over things they’d found in bottom drawers.

‘So Bruce Geldorf and Crime Scene turned that study and the rest of the house upside-down. The whizz kids copied everything on his hard disc.’ Bob paused on the line. ‘They found heaps of jpg videos, porn websites, dirty emails. Beats me where these blokes get the energy.’ He paused a moment. ‘Not to mention the bloody time.’

My mind processed the new information and I considered the Guildthorpe murder again. I was about to ring off, when Bob spoke again.

‘Iona Seymour,’ he said. ‘Do you want to get on to her? I could bring her in to have a chat about something.’

‘You needn’t bother,’ I told him. ‘I’m having afternoon tea with the lady.’

•

I pulled up a little way away from Iona Seymour’s house and took my time walking up to it. Despite its general air of neglect the front garden seemed tended, with several flowering rose bushes and petunias in terracotta tubs standing near the front steps. Something about the set-up reminded me of the house of my childhood. The driveway, just as ours had been thirty years ago, was in danger of being blocked by climbing roses whose wild canes curved over from the fence and, in some cases, touched the side of the house. It would require axes and chainsaws if anyone wanted to clean the place up. On the black and white tiled front veranda, hemmed in by rusted wrought iron, the ramblers and climbers had grown rampant and apart from an opening cut to allow passage off the veranda, almost all the railing was hidden from view, while vines sent winding tendrils across the chequerboard squares to curl around slim wrought-iron pillars supporting the top balcony. I pressed a doorbell that made no audible sound so then I knocked and stepped back. Nothing happened, so after a while I stepped back down and started walking round the other side of the house, ducking rose canes and stepping over knee-high summer grass.

Then I heard her voice calling me from the front, and hurried back to find her, flushed and flustered, standing on the doorstep, smoothing her dark hair.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Please come in. I was doing something upstairs and didn’t hear you straightaway.’ She stepped aside to let me pass and I caught her scent, sandalwood and something deeper. ‘Have you been here long?’

I had the distinct impression that she knew exactly how long I’d been here. ‘Only a minute or two,’ I said. I followed her down the central hall, past several closed doors on either side until we came to a large double room, divided by tall wooden doors that were now folded back against the wall. Dark old furniture lined the room, worn tapestry covered armchairs and there were redwood tables and a heavy cedar sideboard. A dark green wallpaper had once been handsome. Now there were water stains that indicated a roof leak at one stage. Heavy Regency-stripe curtains in green and cream kept the room cool and dim and the Victorian furnishings seemed original.

‘It’s very good of you to change our meeting place at such short notice,’ she said, indicating a deep armchair, her voice warm and rich. I sat uneasily on the edge of it and it was then I noticed afternoon tea spread out on the dining table under a transparent cloth and jugs with beaded covers. It reminded me of long past teas with my grandmother. The room, the woman, the spread in front of me, seemed to belong to another age. ‘I asked you here instead because I’m finding it harder and harder,’ she said, ‘to go out of the house.’

‘There’s a word for that, isn’t there?’ I said, playing dumb.

She nodded. ‘Agoraphobia. It’s awful.’

‘I went through the opposite of that,’ I said, remembering that we had the Fellowship in common and that intimate disclosures were not at all out of place. ‘I couldn’t keep still or stay home for about three years. I walked all over Sydney all hours of the day and night.’

‘Did your partner have a problem?’ she asked. I shook my head. ‘
I
was the problem,’ I said. She seemed not to want to go any further than that and instead lifted the cloth off the table. I was touched to see that she’d made sandwiches and there were also little iced cakes.

‘I made cucumber and tomato sandwiches,’ she said, ‘and some cup cakes.’ She passed a plate to me and I took a sandwich. I’d never had a cucumber sandwich in my life.

‘This is a feast,’ I said, more to break the silence than anything.

Suddenly, she was sobbing—heartbroken, terrible, anguished sobs that shook her from head to foot. ‘I’m sorry,’ she kept gasping when she was able, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She took out a hankerchief. It was automatic that I got up and went straight to her and put my arms around her. She neither responded nor resisted, just stood there shaking, blowing her nose with her elbows squashed close to her body because I was holding her. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she sobbed. ‘I feel so stupid. But you seem to be a kind man.’ It was a long time since a woman had found me ‘kind’ or indeed to have any redeeming quality.

‘I know you’re suffering,’ I said. ‘Tell me what it is. I may be able to help.’

She stepped out of my arms and turned away, back to the afternoon tea things, pocketing her handkerchief. ‘No one can help,’ she said.

I remembered her prayer. I reminded myself that this woman knew a good deal more about two of my investigations than she was letting on. I thought that to calm her as well as give me more access, a bit of Twelve Step program-talk might be in order. ‘You know what they say,’ I said, ‘that we’re only as sick as our secrets. Isn’t that why you go to the meetings? To deal with things you’ve never spoken about?’

‘I don’t know why I go to the meetings,’ she said. ‘A friend of mine said they might help.’

‘Iona,’ I said, and it was the first time I’d called her by her name. ‘I’ve been through a lot of life. I know we’ve only just met, but we have a fellowship in common that brings people back to life by such simple methods.’ She raised her dark eyes to mine and I thought I saw something desperate in her face. ‘Life can be good,’ I said.

‘Come upstairs,’ she suddenly said. ‘Yes. Now. I want to show you something.’ This was so unexpected that I followed her up the staircase, wondering what she could possibly be going to show me. There was a moment when I was seized with terror that she’d come at me with a knife, but I calmed myself, knowing that I could easily overpower her.

‘Come in,’ she said, holding a door open, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

I walked in and heard her close the door behind me. I looked around. It was her bedroom. I stood still in the middle of the wide, elegantly furnished room. Curtains in deep green and blue shades hung from ceiling to the floor all along the wall opposite the door, the dim light penetrating their heavy fabric indicating where the french windows gave onto the upstairs veranda. Was Iona Seymour about to seduce me? Had I been so blinded by my own need to know what was going on in her that I couldn’t see a seduction in progress? I stood in the centre of the room at the end of her large double bed, taking in her subtle fragrance, the heavy cedar wardrobe, the creamy rugs on dark polished timber floors, her dressing table with its three mirrors in front of the rich curtains, reflecting me back in triplicate, the old-fashioned silver-backed brush and mirror set that lay on the polished surface. Seeing myself three times in the bevell-edged mirrors brought to mind the
Murdered Girls
triptych. I looked at the paintings on her walls. Dark oils in heavy frames from the early nineteenth century, and an oval-framed portrait of a beautiful woman with Iona’s colouring and eyes hung on the wall next to the door.

I was wondering if I should leave when the knob turned and Iona stepped into the room, wearing only a silky robe. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘if a man could find me desirable.’ She let drop the robe and I made sure my practised professional mask was firmly in place. Her body was beautiful, toned and strong, but an angry red scar ran horizontally across the top of both girlish breasts.

‘Who did that?’ I said. ‘What happened?’ But she ignored my questions and came closer, putting her arms around me, looking into my eyes with the same look I remembered in my little daughter’s eyes.

‘Could a man still want me?’ she asked, ‘even with this?’ She brushed her fingers lightly across the length of the scar. It was hard to determine how old the injury was, because now that I could see it more clearly, and despite its angry hue, it didn’t look recent. ‘Just tell me that,’ Iona was saying. ‘I’m asking you because I feel I can trust you.’

Iona, I thought, the feeling is not mutual. And this is not a good idea for other reasons that I can’t express to you right now. I was about to step back but she’d already lifted her face to mine and was kissing me, soft lips parting. I was startled and immobilised. I couldn’t have drawn back from her then. And, after a frozen second or two, I kissed her back slowly, deeply and fully. Her personal scent was very sweet and I remembered hearing that it is only meat-eaters who can be rank, remembering that she was vegetarian. ‘You’re a very beautiful, desirable woman,’ I said when I could speak. ‘The scar is simply an extra’—I groped for the right thing to say—‘embellishment.’