So Bad a Death (40 page)

“Cruikshank had been playing around with some of the Holland interests. When James Holland had him up for an account of his stewardship, he tried to blackmail his way out of it by threatening to expose the old scandal of Olivia's flight. He even hinted that Olivia had had another child. Cruikshank was one of those village busybodies who always know more than is good for them. His hint was enough to send the squire off to trace this mysterious daughter. Cruikshank, on the other hand, was none too happy about the outcome of his attempted bluff, and when Ames offered him a hideout he welcomed it with open arms. Ames did not want him to spread the rumour about the daughter any more than he wanted Holland to trace his child to his very Lodge.

“Fate again was pushing him along. The telegram announcing Holland's homecoming was taken over the telephone by Harriet Ames, who withheld the exact time of arrival.

“This is where you and I came into the game. Getting the Dower was an extraordinary piece of luck for us. I am inclined to think it would never have come about if you hadn't given Holland my official card. It occurred to him how useful it would be to have the police on his doorstep and thereby under his influence. He could do a lot with the police on his side. I forbear comment on these, his probable thoughts.

“James Holland had always been dissatisfied with the verdict of his son's death. Someone must be made to pay for it.

“The plane smash could not have been a mere accident. An enemy must have organized it in an attempt to sabotage the Holland plan of life.

“Then Cruikshank spilled his story of Olivia's daughter. It came as a shock to Holland—but no more than that. He was not interested in females; not enough to make him leave all to search for his missing daughter and bring her into the bosom of the family. But he brooded on Cruikshank's information. Suddenly it occurred to him that she might consider herself heiress to the Holland fortune. This was out of the question by the ruling of his will, but this elusive daughter would not know that. Supposing she had engineered her
brother's accident, and was waiting the time to step in and claim the Holland estate.

“The longer Holland brooded, the more he became convinced that his daughter had deliberately caused Jim Holland's plane to crash. Here at last was someone to blame! Someone on whom to be revenged.

“His first move was to get in touch with me. Unfortunately I was out when he rang. Cruikshank must have had information as to where Olivia Holland went after her flight, and told this to James Holland to lend support to his story.

“The Squire went off at once to trace his late wife's movements. I think he must have dashed off a letter first, asking me to look into the matter also. Charles Ames or Harriet saw to it that I never got the note. That is the only way I can account for my name on the blotting-pad.

“That letter was the starting point from which Ames built up his alibi. It had been spread about that Holland would be home at seven. He wired to Holland in my name to call in at the Dower on his way home, hinting that I had something of importance to tell him concerning Jim Holland's death.”

“I remember that wire when I was checking messages at the Post Office,” I interrupted, with some chagrin. “I thought the postmaster was joking when he said you had sent one to the Squire.”

“I am afraid you could almost be considered an accessory too, my pet. The offer of a game of golf was your undoing. Tony didn't matter, but you had to be removed out of the Dower when the Squire called.”

“I wonder what they said to each other,” I remarked thoughtfully. “Father facing strange daughter.”

“Harriet Ames refuses to talk about it,” John answered. “But she detained him here for as long as the plan necessitated. Mindful of his dinner party and the fact that he could see me later, Holland then started on his walk through his artificial wood.

“This is where I take my hat off to Ames for his cleverness. He had to supply an alibi for himself and Mrs Ames in case of accidents—the death was to look like suicide. He allowed a minimum of time in
which to do the actual murder by setting the stage so as to avoid delay. This was accomplished by using Mulqueen's fox-trap. A silencer was affixed to the gun stolen earlier from James Holland's study, then removed, and the gun placed in the dead man's hand. The other gun of the pair Holland had bought and which Robert Ames kept at the Lodge was used to fire the shot you heard relayed over the extension telephone line between the Hall and Dower House; about which time Charles Ames was playing chess and Harriet Ames had gullible, vague Maud Cruikshank for company.

“So far, so good. In fact, it was just about perfect. The only snag was Cruikshank. Was he to be trusted? Evidently not.

“After a while Cruikshank realized he had bitten off more than he could chew. It was one thing to go pinching another man's money, but quite another to become involved in the murder of the same man. Ames kept a strict eye on his unwilling partner.”

“I saw him one night at the Lodge,” I interrupted again.

“Cruikshank's feet became colder and colder. When Ames suspected him of wanting to turn informer after his several attempts to contact me, Cruikshank had to leave the happy partnership. This second murder was clumsier than the first. It too was meant to look like suicide but it would not have deceived a child. Ames did not have the time to conceive a better plan. His alibi for that night had as many holes in it as a colander.

“He had started to consider the police easily duped. The greatest mistake is to consider the police fools, Maggie. Our methods may not be as dramatic as fiction would have them, as we don't play to an audience.

“Criminal investigation can be systematized just as much as debits and credits in a ledger. A certain amount of investigation is mainly paperwork. Items of information actual and suspect are all amassed. Unfortunately in this case suspicion was one thing and proof quite another. And that is where, though it hurts me to confess it, you did a grand job.

“I told Cornell to let you have a free hand, but always to be on guard. Your inimitable capacity for meddling helped us to set the trap.”

“Just the bait,” I commented without rancour.

We watched the leaping fire for a while in silence. It grew brighter as the daylight faded and the mist came up from the creek to end another perfect autumn day.

“And he quoted Tennyson at me,” I said. “The old hypocrite.”

“No, Maggie, you are wrong about Charles Ames. The old man really thought a new order at the Hall would be better. The Squire had corrupted enough of Middleburn.”

The door of the lounge-room opened. I sat up quickly as Yvonne, flushed and smiling, came in. Behind her was Alan Braithwaite, bearing a tray of glasses in one hand and a gold-topped bottle wrapped in a white cloth in the other.

“This has a wedding atmosphere about it,” I remarked, and saw Yvonne's flush deepen. She nodded happily, slipping her hand through Braithwaite's arm.

“Champagne always tastes like vinegar and water to me. Is there any beer?” John asked, as he took the long envelope Alan held out to him.

“This is an important occasion,” I said, frowning at him. “Yvonne and Alan are engaged. What's this?” John had taken a document out of the envelope and put it on my knee. “That,” said John, “is for being a good girl. The title deeds of the Dower House.”

THE END

AN INTERVIEW WITH JUNE WRIGHT (1996)

Lucy Sussex

I interviewed June Wright in 1996, when working as a researcher for Stephen Knight's history of Australian crime fiction,
Continent of Mystery.
At the time, she seemed a relic from another era. Of her contemporaries, the Australian crime writers active when she began writing in the 1940s: Arthur Upfield, Carter Brown, A. E. Martin, the Goyder sisters (who wrote as Margot Neville), June Wright was the only one still alive, and very much kicking. The previous month I had written to the Goyders' nephew and received a long and informative letter about his aunts. But it was nothing like meeting the living, talking writer. Here was an opportunity not to be missed.

As June Wright had not been active as a crime novelist for thirty years, I was not quite sure what to expect. It did not help that my car misbehaved on the freeway, so I arrived rather bothered as well as nervous. The lady who answered my knock belonged to the category of the elegant elderly
—
well coiffed and, as I would find, as sharp as tacks. She was instantly identifiable from the PR photos of decades earlier, although she introduced herself by saying I probably wouldn't recognise her. “I recognised your nose,” I said, not altogether tactfully. She laughed: “Horse-faced!” We got on just fine after that. I began by asking June about her background and early history.

LS: I know from an interview in the
Post
(28/3/48) with Frank Doherty that you were born June Healy. Doherty remembered you from school as a ‘shy little girl'. Was this true?

JW: Well, it's nice to be known as a shy little girl. I think I was rather a pert little girl, from memory.

I was born in 1919 and I will be seventy-seven within the next couple of weeks. Born in Melbourne, and lived most of my life in Melbourne—Malvern. I had two brothers, one sister. I was the youngest of four. My father was in the public service, in the Audit Office. I started off in the Brigidine convent in Malvern, and then we went to Adelaide, because my father was moved there. I went to the Loreto convent in Adelaide, and then when we came back I finished my schooling at Mandeville Hall.

There's been a tremendous upheaval in Australia and I've been witness to the extraordinary changes that have been taking place, from my young days to the present time. To visualise that world that I was born into and grew up in and went to school in—it's absolutely at variance with today's society.

LS: Do you recall the crime fiction you read when young?

JW: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Marjorie Allingham—the women. [Mignon] Eberhart was a favourite: she was rather a romantic crime writer, but very entertaining. There was a series called the Crime Club, either Collins or Heinemann ran it. If you went to the library, you'd look for a book with the sign ‘Crime Club Book', because they published only good crime writers.

LS: When did you start writing?

JW: I wrote my first story when I was about four . . . I think I always wanted to be a writer. One of my grandfathers, who died before I was born [Daniel Newham] . . . he was the son of the first Church of England clergyman at St Peters, East Melbourne. I came across a manuscript that he had started. It was obviously going to be the great Australian, definitive novel, but he didn't go on with it. That was an inspiration. I always thought to myself, now I'd love to be able to justify his ambition by finishing something myself
and
having it published. But I never dreamt that I
would
get it published.

LS: In the
Post
interview, you said you came across the advertisment for Hutchinson's novel competition [which closed in June 1944] in a newspaper while wrapping up vegetable scraps.

JW: It was really a stroke of luck. I'd written this manuscript and one night I was preparing the dinner—my husband and I, we lived in Ashburton—and I was putting the potato peelings and the pease
pods and things into a sheet of paper. All of a sudden there was a little paragraph. Hutchinson's of London were offering a competition for all stages and types of writing and there was a section for crime. And I thought: well, this is it! I'll have a crack at this. So I sent the manuscript over to them.

I wrote it in longhand, I can't think onto a typewriter ... I've still got the original manuscript here, actually. In those days it was wartime and it was very difficult to get anything typed, but I managed to hire a typewriter. It had a very, very faded ribbon on it, so consequently I had to bang each key terribly hard. It was very badly set out but whoever read it . . . Evidently it caught the reader's fancy. In time I had an air letter from London. It was the most thrilling experience of my life to get this letter!

LS: In the 1940s, when you began to be published, there were a few other Australian women writing crime. Margot Neville [the sisters Margot Goyder and Ann Neville Joske] turned to crime writing in the 40s. Did you know about these writers? Read them? Ever meet them?

JW: Margot Neville, I know that name. I don't remember them.

LS: Also Jean Spender, who was the wife of Sir Percy.

JW: Oh really? That's interesting, that's why she was asked ... I went to Sydney for publicity purposes. At that time—this was just after the war—there was a certain Lord Mountevans who came out here with his wife—he was Evans of the Broke, who went down to the South Pole. And Mr Spender was there, and so was his wife. I've got a photograph somewhere or other, with me standing alongside them. I didn't realise that was who she was. It was a very formal luncheon, really it was in honour of Lord Mountevans. I was alongside ... the publicist was getting a little bit of publicity for me. That was how it was. He was the star attraction.

LS: She was a very striking looking woman, from the photos.

JW [
emphatic
]: She was a pretty woman, yes.

LS: You've said that the idea for
Murder in the Telephone Exchange
came while you were working in the Melbourne exchange, because people said ‘you could write a book about this place'.