A Murder Unmentioned (18 page)

She’d hoped that the youngest of the Sinclair boys might finally have settled down into some semblance of respectability. With
the decadent morality of young people, the town needed its better families to set an example. Lord knows, her own Richard could have done with a little virtuous leadership. In Henry Sinclair’s day no one ever had cause to raise an eyebrow, but Wilfred was indulgent of his feckless younger brother. It was a crying shame!

A little grudgingly, Mrs. Sedgwick pointed the party from Sydney towards a dining room already bustling with travellers. It was well past six in the evening and the locals had departed from the public bar.

As Rowland was finalising the account, a couple came out of the dining room and proceeded towards the staircase which led to the Royal’s labyrinth of guest rooms.

“Well, what do you know,” Milton observed.

The gentleman walked past them with the jaunty confidence of a man who was sure of his evening’s pleasure. Milton nudged Rowland. “Isn’t that Senator Hardy?”

Rowland followed the direction of Milton’s gaze. The contented gentleman was indeed Senator Charles Hardy Jnr. with whom they’d had a long, and not always happy, association. In fact, it was Hardy’s speech, at the Yass Memorial Hall nearly two years previously, which had incited the townspeople to kidnap Milton in their enthusiasm to tar and feather a Communist. The young woman on Hardy’s arm was clearly enraptured with his every word and gesture.

“That’s not his wife, is it?” Milton’s grin was sly, his manner quite gleeful.

“No,” Rowland replied. In fact they had all met Mrs. Hardy. “She is not.”

“In that case, I think we’d better say hello,” Milton said, already striding over with his hand outstretched.

Clyde cursed under his breath, and they all followed—more to keep an eye on the poet than the senator.

“Senator Hardy!” Milton said loudly. “How are you, sir?”

Hardy stopped, startled. “Mr. Isaacs, Mr. Sinclair, and Mr. Watson Jones isn’t it?” He shook their hands. “And the unforgettable Miss Higgins. Good Lord! What brings you all to Yass?”

“We’re visiting Rowly,” Milton replied.

Hardy’s companion started up the stairs without him. “Don’t be long, Chas,” she purred.

“Just passing through myself, en route from Wagga,” Hardy said when she’d gone.

“Oh. You’re not staying?” Milton cast his eyes up the stairs.

“Me? No. I’ll have to head back to Canberra. But I might pop up and say goodnight to… my sister.” He slapped his forehead. “I am sorry, I should have introduced you to my sister. I have six of them you know.”

“My goodness, six!” Milton replied. “You’re a lucky man—I’m an only child myself.”

“Well, we must get on to the dining room,” Clyde said, glaring pointedly at the poet.

“Yes, we must.” Rowland took Clyde’s lead. “Good night, Senator Hardy. Please do give our regards to your sister.”

Hardy grinned. It was more mischievous than embarrassed. “I shall. Indeed, I shall.”

They left Hardy to his family reunion and continued into the dining area, finding a table which afforded a level of seclusion by virtue of its position in the ladies’ bar. Separated from the main dining hall by stained glass concertina doors, it served their needs well.

Rowland was perfectly aware that his friends had questions and so he was not surprised when Edna opened in her customarily direct manner.

“Rowly, why do the police believe you killed your father?”

“Obviously, they’re idiots.”

“You can’t shrug this off, Rowly,” Milton warned. “Why have they suddenly come to the conclusion that you shot your old man?”

Rowland frowned. “There appears to be a barrage of witnesses coming out of the woodwork, who until now have held their peace.”

“You mean Hayden?” Milton prompted.

“Clyde told you?”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Clyde said. “I was worried about you and—”

Rowland waved away his friend’s apology. “It saves me having to go into the whole ugly business again.” He loosened his tie just slightly. “It’s not only him. There’s now a maid who says she remembers I was not in my room when Father was shot, and Dr. Oliver who confirms I wasn’t sedated in any way.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they’re all emerging now, Rowly?”

Rowland thought for a moment and then shook his head. “I guess Hayden’s appearance is what made the police look into my story and hunt down the others. I don’t even remember them questioning me back then.”

“And this Hayden… why does he suddenly turn up after thirteen years?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he heard about Father’s pistol being found.”

Milton got up and checked that there was no one listening outside the door to the anteroom before he spoke. “Rowly, you know that we’re with you no matter what you did. You do know that?”

Clyde turned on the poet. “Bloody hell, Milt! What do you mean by that? ”

“We need to know the truth if we’re going to sort this out.”

“Are you out of your tiny drunken mind?”

“If I’d been in Rowly’s place,” Milton said, without taking his eyes off Rowland, “I might have shot the bast… him.”

“Well, Rowly’s not you!”

Rowland watched them argue. His face was unreadable, almost distracted.

It was Edna who intervened. “Stop,” she said. The word was softly uttered yet somehow it had the force of a slap. Both Clyde and Milton fell silent. “We’re not here to make things more difficult.” She took Rowland’s hand in hers. “We’re worried about you, Rowly.”

Rowland squeezed her hand as he met the poet’s eye. “I didn’t shoot him, Milt. Lord knows I thought about it. During all those beatings, I killed him over and over again in my mind… but someone else actually did it first.”

Milton slapped him warmly on the back. “Good, we don’t have to smuggle you out of the country to avoid the gallows, then. We’ve only been back a few months.”

Rowland laughed. If it came to that Milton probably knew someone who could oblige. “Wil’s handling it. He’s called in an army of lawyers. There’s more silk on his payroll than there is in all of China. It’ll blow over.”

Milton glanced at Clyde. “There’s really only one way to make sure you don’t go down for your father’s murder, mate, and that’s to find out who really did shoot him.”

“I didn’t kill my father—Gilbey and Angel will work that out eventually. As for who really did it,” Rowland’s bearing hardened, “I’m inclined to wish him the best of British.”

The drive back from Yass to
Oaklea
was quiet, though the silence was not strained. They had all said everything they could, or
would. Rowland knew full well now that his friends had dropped everything—abandoned Christmas plans, disappointed family and risked Wilfred’s ire—simply because they thought he needed help. They’d done so without any idea of how they could help him. He appreciated it but, as much as he trusted them, this was a family matter.

It was quite late when they reached
Oaklea
. The evening was bright under the full moon that Harry Simpson had mentioned earlier. The house was still. Rowland turned off the engine.

“If we use the back door we won’t have to wake everybody up,” Rowland suggested. “Mrs. Kendall leaves it unlocked.”

It was as they were cutting across the lawn that Rowland noticed the light in the south wing.

“Someone’s up,” he murmured. The south wing was where the nursery and the children’s rooms were located. Perhaps Nanny de Waring was engaged in some late-night duty.

He looked again. There was something odd about the light… it wasn’t steady. It flickered. And then he realised what it was.

“Fire… my God, it’s on fire!” He turned to Edna. “Quick, go to the front door, wake everybody, pull the servant’s bells—get them out!” Rowland began to run towards the glowing room. Clyde and Milton went with him.

At the window they could see into the room. The drapes and furnishings were ablaze. The fire had spread to an adjoining room. Rowland could see Ernest’s rocking horse in the flames.

“Milt—it’s spreading. We’ll need men!”

Milton nodded. “I’ll alert the managers.”

Clyde pulled a capstone free from one of the newly constructed dry rock walls. “Stand clear, Rowly!” he warned as he threw the stone through the glass. The flames, fed anew, surged greedily towards the opening. Rowland ripped off his jacket and used it to protect his arm
as he broke away jagged shards of glass. With the window broken, they could make out screams from inside.

Rowland hoisted himself in. Clyde followed.

“Where are they, Rowly?” Clyde shouted, gasping and coughing as the dense black smoke pushed into his lungs.

Rowland paused to cough and orient himself, to pick up the source of the screams. The wallpaper peeled and crackled off the upper walls as the wainscoting below scorched and split. The heat was immense.

“This way,” he said moving towards the rooms on the left. The fire had not yet engulfed the short hallway and the door at the end of it was still shut. Rowland tried the handle but the door was locked. He could hear a child screaming clearly now. Desperately, he and Clyde charged the door. It gave. The room within was filled with smoke and, when they shut the door against the fire, black.

Clyde pulled the light switch to no avail. Rowland followed the cries and discovered Ewan in his bed by the window.

“Rowly, I found the nanny,” Clyde called from the other side of the room.

Rowland opened the shutters. The moonlight faded the black marginally. Clyde held the semi-conscious nanny in his arms. She was coming round. “Ernest,” she mumbled as she revived. “Ernie?” Then she screamed. “Ernest!”

Rowland put Ewan back onto the bed and grabbed a stool, using it to break the windows. They could hear the commotion and panic outside.

“Get them out,” he said to Clyde, pulling a blanket from the bed. “I’ll find Ernie.”

“Upstairs,” the nanny said. “His room is upstairs.”

Rowland grabbed Clyde’s arm. “Can you—?”

Clyde nodded. “Go.”

Rowland gulped what air he could and opened the door, plunging back into the corridor and the burning sunroom. The fire had all but engulfed the room. Throwing the blanket over his head he made a blind dash for the stairs. The runner secured to the centre of the stairs was alight but the structure had not yet caught.

“Ernie!” Rowland took the stairs two and three at a time. The landing adjoining the first floor corridor was choked as smoke funnelled up the stairwell.

Rowland blinked, his eyes stung and watered as he tried to remember which room was Ernest’s. The first door led to a storage room.

“Ernie!”

And then he heard the sobbing, terrified cry. “I’m here. I’m here!”

Rowland pushed open the second door. The smoke was less dense here. Ernest ran into his arms and clung there. Rowland shoved the door shut behind him and tried to think. He went to the window and looked out. The lawns were now teeming with men with buckets and fire blankets. The irrigation system had been mercilessly torn up to turn against the fire.

He could see Harry and Arthur trying to prevent Wilfred from running towards the building, Kate on her knees, hysterical… and then Clyde and Ewan, thank God. With Ernest still clinging to him, Rowland fumbled with the brass window fastenings. “Chin up, Ernie, I’m here now.”

The smoke was now beginning to seep under the door and he could hear crashing on the floor below. Finally the window lifted.

A large bay window protruded from the wall directly below them. As with all the bays on this wing, the small area of its flat roof had been surrounded with a decorative wrought iron rail to define a false balcony. Rowland considered the drop from that roof. They would
still be about twenty feet above the ground but perhaps he could lower Ernest down somehow.

“Ernie,” he said into the boy’s ear, “just hang onto me, mate. Don’t let go, until I tell you.”

Ernest whimpered but he nodded into Rowland’s neck.

“Good man.”

Rowland called out to his brother then. Wilfred heard him on the third frantic shout. For a moment, he simply stared in horror and disbelief and then as Rowland climbed out, he sprinted towards the window.

Rowland lowered himself and Ernest gingerly onto the roof of the bay, only too aware that the structure had not been designed to bear the weight of a grown man. He could feel the heat rising from the burning room beneath.

“Rowly, hang on!” It was Milton’s voice. “We’ll find a ladder.”

“A rope,” Rowland gasped, coughing now. “Get me a rope.”

“Rowly!”

Rowland glanced down at his brother’s ashen face. “Ernie’s all right, Wil.”

Milton returned with a coil of rope. “Ready?”

“Yes. Toss it up.”

Rowland held onto Ernest with one arm and caught the rope with his other. The roof underfoot creaked and groaned. It took him several moments to pry Ernest from him. “Ernie, I’m going to lower you down to your father. I have to tie the rope around you.”

“No!” Ernest tried to cling to him again. “I’m scared,” he sobbed.

“Look down there, mate. You can see your father waiting for you. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall.”

Ernest looked, but to a small boy it seemed a great height and his father appeared very far away.