The Port Fairy Murders (15 page)

He picked up his new hat — a beautiful, soft grey fedora — put it on, and tilted it. A good brothel would be more than happy to admit the man he saw in the mirror, and he intended visiting one that evening. For now, though, he’d go down to the dining room, order breakfast, and read the papers. The fire in Princes Hill would surely be reported, and that would be a good start to the day.

In the dining room, he was subject to a deference he’d never experienced before. It gave him pleasure, but the pleasure was tempered with anger. All it took was tailoring, a good barber, and a splash of cologne, and the lickspittles buckled under. His waiter, an effeminate young man — rejected, no doubt, if he’d ever applied, by the army on the basis of deviant tendencies — made obsequious enquiries as to whether sir would care for a pot of tea. It took considerable self-discipline to subdue the malevolence in Starling’s eyes, and even more not to slam his fist into the nance’s face. He wondered idly if the boy had ever taken a beating by someone as well dressed as Starling. Maybe he’d surprise him later and smash those pursed lips into the back of his throat.

A copy of that day’s
Argus
was folded on the table. He ran his eyes over its pages quickly. Where was the good news about Sable’s flat? There was plenty about the bushfires. Cheltenham, Mentone, and Beaumaris had been hit. As many as 100 homes had been razed, but this was of no interest to Starling. Still, there was enough in the articles to make him laugh:

When the fire in the Beaumaris district was found to be out of control of the regular firemen, appeals for volunteers were broadcast. Among the first to respond were batches of soldiers from a general transport company who hastened out in trucks from their headquarters near the city with supplies of fire beaters made of uppers from old army boots attached to broom handles.

How ridiculous they must have looked.

Hundreds of women and children were evacuated to the safety of Beaumaris Beach and Ricketts Point. Many assisted to carry furniture and other household belongings from homes threatened by fire.

Starling closed his eyes. What a sight that must have been — tables, chairs, sideboards, and counches, standing in the sand with the sea behind them, and a wall of flames before them.

‘Your tea, sir.’

Starling opened his eyes. He cocked his head on one side and smiled. The waiter made the mistake of smiling back.

‘Maybe you’d like a drink after work,’ Starling said.

‘That would be very nice.’

I don’t think you’ll find it very nice at all
, Starling thought, and an involuntary laugh escaped him.

‘I finish at five,’ the waiter said.

‘I’ll meet you out the front, but down the street a bit. Maybe you know a place we could get a decent drink.’

‘I know a place.’

Starling ran his eye over the menu.

‘I’ll just have the toast. Is there butter?’

‘Of course. The sausage is very good.’

‘Just toast. I don’t like sausage.’

‘I’ll see you at five,’ the waiter said, and headed towards the kitchen. Starling was filled with loathing and disgust. It felt right, and it felt good.

MATTHEW TODD SAT
in the shade in the backyard of his Aunt Aggie’s house in Port Fairy. She’d brought him the paper, a pot of tea, and a plate of scones. He’d brought some cream, eggs, new potatoes, leeks, and carrots, all from Rose’s farm. He’d taken them without asking. Aggie was suitably grateful — not to Rose, but to Matthew. Selwyn hadn’t come out of his shed. Normally, he’d have already left to take up his position in Sackville Street, but Matthew had arrived just as he was about to leave. He’d become wary of Matthew, so rather than risk the blow he’d receive on walking past him, he’d remained in the sweltering heat of the shed.

‘He’s scared of me,’ Matthew said. ‘He should be scared of you, too, Aunt Aggie. You could control him better.’

‘I can control him all right. All I have to do is say your name and he does as he’s told. “Don’t make me get Matthew round here,” I say to him. It works like a charm.’

Matthew liked his Aunt Aggie. She was dry old thing, definitely a virgin, and he couldn’t recall her ever saying anything amusing. Still, she doted on him, and Matthew loved being doted on. Dorothy was in love with him. She’d said so, and he supposed that he might be love with her, although he might not be, too. He didn’t really know. She annoyed him, and she argued with him. That would have to stop. Aunt Aggie never argued with him. She agreed with everything he said, and she was interested enough to listen as well. Dorothy had been known to criticise him for going on about some things. He wanted to be married, though. Marriage was a kind of arrival into adult life. Dorothy would do — that’s what it came down to. After they were married he’d be less patient with her. No wife of his was going to turn away when he was speaking, like she did sometimes. Not after they were married, she wouldn’t.

‘The paper’s there for you,’ Aggie said. It was the previous day’s — Friday’s —
Argus
. Melbourne papers never made it to Port Fairy on the same day. ‘There’s nothing in it.’

‘That saves me the trouble of reading it.’ He laughed. Matthew rarely read a newspaper. They reminded him that a war was being fought, and that there was more to it than rationing, austerity, and inconvenience. They reminded him that he wasn’t in it. He did an important job, of course, as his aunt frequently told him. She had the idea that he was ultimately responsible for the success of the Port Fairy catch. ‘Where would all those fishermen be without you to sell their catch?’ she often said.

‘Dorothy should be here in a minute, Aunt Aggie. Can we shift Selwyn before she gets here? I don’t like her having anything to do with him.’

Aggie had long ago stopped feeling any need to defend her simple brother. She agreed with Matthew that he was little more than an unruly domestic animal. He was toilet trained; but, as Matthew rightly said, you could teach a cat to use a sandbox, so teaching Selwyn to shit in the toilet wasn’t exactly evidence of high intelligence. She’d gone beyond being disgusted by Selwyn. She’d become inured to even the worst of his physical habits.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘Father Brennan’s always at me to bring Selwyn to Mass. Can you imagine it? He knows perfectly well it’s impossible.’

‘Has he ever actually met Selwyn?’

‘Oh, only in Sackville Street, and Selwyn just scratched away on his slate and giggled and drooled. You’d think they’d had some sort of conversation, from the way Father Brennan talks about it.’

‘I’m sorry, Aunt Aggie. I know he’s a priest and all, but the man’s a fool.’

‘I think he drinks. He’s often rather florid.’

‘Maybe it’s all those sins he hears in Confession. Maybe he gets overheated.’

Only Matthew could get away with that sort of talk. Aggie would have felt compelled to express strong disapproval at any aspersions cast upon the priest by anybody else. Conversation with Matthew was a delicious conspiracy. She lied to Father Brennan in Confession — she’d never confessed her feelings about Selwyn — but she never lied to Matthew.

‘Father Brennan must know a lot of dark secrets, don’t you think?’ she said.

‘If people are silly enough to tell him things.’

‘Oh yes. People want absolution, Matthew.’

‘Would it shock you to know how long it’s been since my last Confession, Aunt Aggie?’

‘No, don’t tell me. I’d worry.’

And Aggie would worry because, despite her low opinion of the priest at St Patrick’s, she believed absolutely in the power of Confession. She was an obfuscatory penitent, but she never took communion without absolution.

‘You should go to Confession, Matthew. An eternity in Hell is a very long time.’

‘Where will Selwyn go when he dies, do you think? All that self-abuse must be racking up the mortal sins.’

‘Father Brennan seems to think he’ll go straight to Heaven, without even a short stay in Purgatory. Imagine that, if you please. He commits a mortal sin every day of his life, sometimes twice a day, and he’ll get a free ride to Heaven.’

‘While you suffer in Purgatory. It seems unfair, and somehow typical of the Catholic Church.’

‘Matthew! Besides, my dear, I have no intention of spending any time in Purgatory. I’ll have a priest at my bedside to administer Extreme Unction.’

‘If it’s the last thing you do?’

Aggie laughed. She didn’t laugh often, and it was usually Matthew who provoked it. It was Matthew who brought a quantum of joy into her life.

‘If you slip into the house for a moment, I’ll get Selwyn out through the back gate.’

‘I could just drag him out, if you like.’

‘No. I couldn’t bear the noise. I have a bit of a headache.’

JOHANNA SCOTNEY DIDN’T
like snakes. She didn’t have a horror of them; she just didn’t like them, which was why she said no when Timothy Harrison suggested they take a walk through the mutton-bird rookery on Griffiths Island. She said that she’d prefer to walk the other way, go over the bridge across the Moyne River and saunter through the Botanical Gardens, or the remnants of them. The gardens had fallen on hard times, without a full-time gardener available to tend them. They’d been damaged, too, by floods. And yet, somehow, the presence of many trees — the almost ubiquitous Norfolk Pines mainly, and even ragged hedges — managed to create the illusion of a garden. Johanna’s mother had told her that there’d once been a lover’s walk in the Botanicals, and that proposals for several marriages, including her own, had been made there.

Johanna and Timothy met as arranged at lunchtime outside the courthouse in Gipps Street. The wharf opposite wasn’t as busy as it had been before the war. Many of the boats had been requisitioned by the armed forces, and now, instead of dropping lines for sharks, they moved supplies and ammunition along the New Guinea coast. There weren’t as many fishermen either. Even though sharking was a reserved industry, many men had enlisted. The army was a break from the gruelling, dangerous, and poorly paid life of a fisherman. Her father’s couta boat, old and too small for military use — it was barely a 20 footer — wouldn’t be tied up at the wharf now. He’d left at his usual time of 3.00 am to drop lines ten miles out from shore. Shark numbers had fallen, and Mr Scotney added to his meagre income by smoking a portion of his barracouta catch in a smoker he’d made himself in the backyard of their house in Corbett Street. He had steady orders from locals for his smoked couta.

Timothy knew nothing of this world. Like most people in Port Fairy who weren’t fishermen, he had a fairly low opinion of them. They kept to themselves mostly, because townspeople thought them crude and rough. No one doubted their courage, or that the work they did was dirty, hard, and perilous, but they weren’t welcome in clean parlours. Most people ate fish only occasionally, even reluctantly — Catholics ate fish on a Friday, of course — and they weren’t particularly interested in the lives of the men who toiled to provide for them. If push came to shove, they could do without fish altogether. This certainly couldn’t be said of lamb or beef. Johanna was, by degrees, changing Timothy’s mind about fishing. She tried to convey to him what life was like on a fishing boat, although she’d never been far beyond the mouth of the Moyne in her father’s couta boat. Tom Scotney wasn’t willing to expose his daughter to the open sea, not even on the calmest of days. Freak waves had overwhelmed couta boats before, and had drowned the most experienced of men. Fishing was not for women; he wouldn’t budge on that.

‘Did you know,’ she said as they walked towards the bridge, ‘that the fish you get at the fish-and-chip shop in town is shark?’

‘It’s Sweet William, isn’t it?’

‘Sweet William’s just a nice name for shark.’

‘Ugh. I’m not sure I like the idea of eating shark.’

‘It tastes nice, doesn’t it, and it’s got no bones.’

‘No bones, that’s true. I’ve never really thought about it.’

‘Dad catches shark mostly. He gets a better price for it than couta.’

‘How do you get a shark into one of those boats?’

Johanna hit him playfully on his shoulder.

‘They’re not huge man-eaters. They’re gummy sharks. Dad says the worst thing about them is that when you cut them open you breathe in a whole lot of ammonia, and it makes your face go bright red. Imagine breathing that in all day.’

‘My dad was gassed.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Johanna was embarrassed, and felt as if she’d done something wrong. ‘I didn’t mean to compare …’

‘No,’ Timothy said quickly. He was now embarrassed in return, and neither of them could find a way out of the clumsy moment. They walked in silence.

‘I’d like to meet your mum and dad,’ Johanna said.

‘Dad doesn’t say much.’

‘My dad doesn’t say much either, and when he does talk it’s always about fish.’

Johanna stole a sidelong glance at Timothy. He was just a few months younger than she was, but she felt so much older, and it wasn’t just that the boy wasn’t quite yet the man. Her life had been protected, but not sheltered. A childhood spent on the wharf, surrounded by the unguarded conversation of men, had ensured that there wasn’t an obscenity or blasphemy she hadn’t heard. No one had ever turned abuse on her or done anything as vile as Matthew Todd, though. Tom Scotney would have killed the man who outraged his daughter. This was partly why she hadn’t told him about Matthew’s actions. Tom Scotney would go to Todd’s house, and God help Matthew then. He’d gut and fillet him. Timothy’s life had been sheltered. Johanna had never heard him utter a curse. He looked unused. Yes, that was the word — unused, as if he was yet to know how ugly the world could be. He’d grown up with an invalid father, but perhaps Mr Harrison was one of those men who never spoke of the horrors he’d seen. Timothy turned his head, caught her eye, and smiled. Johanna felt a rush of affection for him, and as if he’d sensed it, he did something extraordinary. He kissed her, right there in Gipps Street, just before the bridge. He leaned down and put his mouth on hers, and she didn’t pull away. To the astonishment of each of them, the kiss was warm and smooth, with no hint of clumsiness. They drew apart and began to walk across the bridge towards the Botanical Gardens.