Wet Graves (20 page)

I left old Stan's room pretty much the way I'd found it and closed the door on his life and his life's work. I'd filled several pages of my notebook and was still riffling through them when I knocked on Lithgow's door.

“Come.”

Lithgow's room was in marked contrast to Livermore's; it had two windows which seemed to let in two hundred per cent more light and warmth. It was also very untidy. The bed was unmade and papers and books spilled across from a card table to the bed and onto the floor. Charles Lithgow was sitting on a bentwood chair at the card table, scribbling in a large bound notebook. As in Livermore's room, the bed and chest of drawers were standard op-shop issue, but the bright tartan blanket thrown over the bed gave this room a lift A head, shoulders and chest photograph of a man in military uniform was set on the chest of drawers at such an angle that the subject seemed to be in a position to survey all four corners of the room.

At my appearance, Lithgow pushed back his chair and reached down into a large leather briefcase at his feet. He held up a brown bottle with a yellow label. “Too early for a sherry, Mr Kelly?”

“When in Rome,” I said.

He laughed. “Too true. They start early around here, let me tell you. Not like in the old days of course, but the traditions linger. I'll just get a glass. Have a seat.”

I sat in the only available place, on the bed. The room had very little vacant floor space. Beside the bed was a metal toolbox with the lid open. The few tools, hammer, heavy shifting wrench and lighter spanners, clamps and screwdrivers seemed appropriate to Lithgow's strong, hard-handed grip. But he was a man of surprises; he got up and moved across the room to where a wine rack had been installed under the window ledge. I could see a dozen or so bottles in place, and an elaborate metal and wood corkscrew lying on top of the rack. Lithgow took two squat glasses from the window ledge and polished them with a tissue. He set them on the card table, cleared off the papers he'd been working on, and filled them with sherry from a bottle he selected with great care.

He handed me my glass. “Cheers.”

“Thank you.” I sipped the very dry sherry. Sherry's not a bad drink; there's hundreds of men in Sydney who'll tell you the same. “Are you a wine buff, Mr Lithgow?”

“Heavens, no. Perish the thought. I just like a good snort after work or a … well, any time appropriate, really. Did you find anything helpful in old Stan's room?”

I sipped some more sherry and turned a page or two in my notebook. “Possibly. No substitute for talking to the man himself, of course. I notice you call him old Stan, as Mrs Tracey did. Have you been in the house long, Mr Lithgow?”

“Oh, a while. Long enough to pick up the local habits, you know.”

“Mm. Were you here on the day he died?”

“I was, why?”

This was tricky ground. I couldn't reveal that I'd been at the house earlier. My only recourse was to the Betty Tracey ploy again. I grinned. “Mrs Tracey told me that there was someone else here visiting Mr Livermore. Another five dollars, this cost me. But I suppose she might have meant you?”

“No, no.” Lithgow sipped his sherry with evident enjoyment. “I was working away. I did talk to old Stan from time to time, but there wasn't much he could tell me, you know. The bridge is terribly important to the history of the area, but it's not the whole story by any means.”

I nodded. “He was obsessed, you mean?”

“I'm afraid so. And he had some followers still. In point of fact, they held a little meeting here that day and a few stayed behind after Stan left to keep his vigil. I think one of them might have arrived too late to see Stan. They're old, you see, and not always too sure of the time.”

“You know about that, the bridge at sunset thing?”

“Oh, yes.Now look, I don't want you to think I'm a terrible snooper, I'm not. But I do keep a diary and I did provide them with a bottle of sherry.” He held up his glass so that the light shone through the clear, pale liquid. “Not this stuff, of course.”

I was leaning forward eagerly, too eagerly. I tried to transfer the enthusiasm to the sherry, holding up my own glass to the light and taking a long sip. “It is very good. Do you mean you know the names of the men who were here that day?”

“Yes, I believe so. Why? Is it important?”

I improvised fast. “Well, one of them will probably become the head of the society now, wouldn't you say? If I can talk to him I can still do the story as planned.”

Lithgow frowned and drank some more sherry. ‘Yes. See what you mean. Just a minute. I should have the names in my diary. Poor old chaps quite mad, you know Quite mad.”

18

While he was rummaging in his papers I stood up and took a look out the window. I hadn't seen it at first because of the way the light fell on the glass, but the view of the bridge was breathtaking. The structure seemed to rise up almost beneath my feet, and to dominate the near and far distance.

“Wonderful, isn't it?” Lithgow said. “One of the reasons I took the room.”

“It sure is.” I turned away from the window. “How're you doing there?”

He seemed to have difficulty tearing his eyes away from the view. “Oh, I'm pretty sure I can turn it up. Hold on a minute. Another sherry?”

I shook my head and tried to curb my impatience. For all I knew, Betty Tracey might stay in some pub all day, or she might've gone to the shop for a packet of tea. I noticed a large mug sitting on the floor near where Lithgow had been working. It was red-rimmed inside.
Soup and sherry
, I thought.
Well, it's his stomach
. I examined the photograph on Lithgow's chest of drawers. There was a strong family resemblance. The soldier had the same broad, high forehead and wide jaw. His face, like Lithgow's, looked almost too big for the shoulders. Same light eyes and relaxed expression. Lieutenant Lithgow, 1st AIF. Several campaign ribbons, carefully tinted by the photographer.

“My father,” Lithgow said. “He was at Gallipoli and the Somme.”

“I had a grandfather did the same,” I said. “Then he went off and got himself killed in the north Russia campaign. How'd your father come out of it all?”

“Were you in the army yourself?”

I nodded. “Malaya. You?”

Lithgow didn't reply. He held up a card. “Here we are. The date was the 12th, right?”

“That sounds right.”

“Stan had three visitors—Perce Templeton, Harry Case and Merv Dent. With old Stan himself, I think that made up the whole of the society.”

I wrote the names down, trying not to seem overly anxious. “They were still here when Stan left?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Uh huh. Well, I wonder which of them I should see. You say one arrived late. Maybe the least keen. One of the others'd be more likely to go into the chair, wouldn't you say?”

“I really don't know.”

“Who was the late one?”

Lithgow shrugged. “I couldn't say.”

“Never mind. This is very helpful, Mr Lithgow. You wouldn't have any addresses, would you?”

Lithgow examined his card. “I believe Messrs Templeton and Case live at a retirement village in Gladesville. Mr Dent lives somewhere hereabouts. I've used him as a source. Let me see.” He went back to rummaging. “Ah, yes. Twenty-two Windmill Lane.”

I made notes. There was a drop or two left in my sherry glass. I drained them and put the glass down in front of the portrait of the soldier. “Many thanks, Mr Lithgow. Big help.” I found myself imitating his clipped speech. Definitely time to go. We shook hands, and he ushered me out as far as the landing.

I went down the stairs and out the front door quickly. No Betty Tracey in sight A few curious faces at the louvre windows, but no problems. I went to my car and located Windmill Lane in the
Gregory's
. It was a short stroll away. It was a fair bet that the pair who lived in Gladesville arrived together; that made it likely that Dent, who lived close by, was the late one. That was consistent with human nature. The late one was the most likely to have heard me talking to Betty Tracey. I knew I was drawing a long bow. Maybe the man I'd seen enter a house ahead of me in Pump Street on my first visit hadn't entered 43A; maybe he hadn't noticed me at all. Maybe he wasn't Merv Dent. Maybe Stan Livermore had simply fallen and hit his head. I took out my notes and checked through the list of names of men injured in the bridge construction. All three names Lithgow had given me appeared. I shoved the directory back in the glovebox, locked the car and headed for Windmill Lane.

At the top of Pump Street I got another angle on the bridge, different from the view from Lithgow's window. Now it looked less impressive, as if it was too big for the job it was doing. The water it spanned didn't seem to need such massive engineering to master it. Still, it was always going to be more interesting than the tunnel. I thought I could see a yellow stain in the water in the area where the tunnelling work was going on. But that might have been my anti-tunnel imagination at work. A few metres down the steep street, and the water and bridge disappeared.

Windmill Street had probably never looked so good before in its long history. The houses had been cleaned up and repainted in colonial colours; the new paving was in keeping with the buildings, and something green was growing in almost every place it was possible for something green to grow. The harmony was putting me in the wrong mood. I was possibly about to face a multiple killer; a man with an obsession that was stronger to him than the claims of human life. A twisted individual: we're all twisted, but some twists are more dangerous than others … I was trying to build up some aggression. I should have had the taste of tobacco and beer in my mouth, not good dry sherry.

As I turned into Windmill Lane, I realised that my attitude was mainly one of curiosity rather than anger. I had questions rather than accusations. What forces could prompt a man to kill repeatedly? Why had he waited so long to begin killing, or
had
he waited? The cases of death and disappearance I was confronting now—were they only the tip of an iceberg? How had the executions been managed and what justifications would the executioner have? The lane was cobblestoned in the same way as the area behind the houses in Pump Street. But here the worn-down stones were firmly set, and the gutters had been renewed where years of running water had eaten away the stone. One side of the lane was completely taken up by a succession of brick fences of varying heights. Gardening had been going on here, too. The fences were covered in leafless wisteria and other vines.

The houses were on the other side, facing towards the water. Cute, narrow terraces, very scrubbed up, with brass knockers and painted wrought iron. There were ten houses in the lane, numbering from one to ten. There was no number twenty-two, and this part of the Rocks had been untouched by developer or restorer. There never had been a number twenty-two.

As I rechecked the numbering of the houses in the lane and the streets at either end of it, certain impressions and recollections began to come together in my mind. Now that I was out of his presence, I felt some disturbing familiarity about Charles Lithgow that I hadn't felt when I was with him. It was as if I'd met him before in another context and the re-meeting had blotted this out. I struggled to remember, to place the feeling, and failed. But I started to walk quickly back to Pump Street. Had I been conned? Had it all been too easy? Something else about Lithgow disturbed me. Some irritant, something not quite right. But I couldn't locate it.

I re-entered number 43A by the back, went through the porch bedroom into the kitchen and almost fell as my feet tangled with something on the floor. I steadied myself by grabbing the doorjamb and looked down. Betty Tracey was lying on the floor. The back of her head was a dark, pulpy mess. Her grey hair was stained a dark colour near the crown and was streaked dark red for the rest of its untidy length. I felt for signs of life at her wrist and neck the way I had with Stan Livermore, and got the same result The little woman's head was turned around so that she seemed almost to be looking back over her shoulder. She was even more twisted and hunched in death than she had been in life.

I straightened up and moved quickly to the stairs. All quiet topside. I went up and saw that the doors to both Livermore's and Lithgow's rooms were open. Old Stan's room had been gone through, quickly but by someone who knew what was where. Most of the files were missing, along with some of the books and photographs. In Lithgow's room almost nothing remained apart from the furniture and the wine rack. The papers, books, photographs, tool box and other things I'd remarked were all gone. I pulled out the drawers and opened the cupboards. They were empty but might always have been so. The wastepaper basket, which I now remembered as being crammed with paper, was empty and lying on its side. There was almost nothing of Mr Lithgow remaining, except his soup mug, sherry glasses and wine rack, which contained ten bottles, none of which would sell for less than twenty dollars.

There was no way of sliding out of this one; my fingerprints were in the house, my car had been parked in the street for an hour or more, and I'd been seen at the place previously. Besides, I didn't want to make an anonymous phone call about Betty Tracey. She might have been an old sharpster, but she deserved more than that. I'd seen a killer and could identify him, although I'd have laid a hundred to one now that his name wasn't Lithgow or anything like it. I found the house telephone in Mrs Tracey's dark, musty front room and called the police. While I waited for them to come I did another quick search of Livermore's and Lithgow's rooms. Nothing in old Stan's. In the other room I found a pair of socks that had been left, under the bed. Handy if you were a sniffer dog. I gave the blankets a twitch and something dark and soft fell to the floor. The object was a woollen glove. For no good reason, I sniffed it. It smelt of the sea. For me, smell triggers recall better than any of the other senses—I remembered where I'd seen Charles Lithgow before.