The Holiday Murders (14 page)

‘Yes, it was me.’

Joe felt an adrenalin rush of elation. He’d found a way to Mitchell Magill — he was sure of it. To disguise his satisfaction, he allowed one skate to block the other, and he fell onto the ice. Peggy helped him up.

‘The man’s name is Mitchell Magill,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

A housemaid was
cleaning the floor where Mary Quinn had been sick. The Windsor’s doctor had been called to examine Mary, who had by this time recovered enough to protest that a doctor wasn’t necessary. But Titus had insisted, and she had submitted.

Mary sat in a chair in the bedroom of her suite, having changed her clothes, her hands trembling slightly. The doctor diagnosed shock and offered her a sedative, which Mary refused. When he left, Mary turned to Titus.

‘Poor Sheila,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t her they wanted to kill, was it? It was me. Someone knew that I’d been staying there. Who’s doing this? Who’s doing this?’

‘We don’t know yet. Whoever this person is, Miss Quinn, he’s very, very dangerous.’

‘He’s killing everyone who’s close to me, until he gets to me. This is torture.’ She was trying to keep her hysteria under control. ‘You must have some idea, Inspector. You must. You have to stop them.’

Titus looked at Helen. He wasn’t expecting her to say anything, but he wanted her to know that she had his confidence if she did want to speak. It turned out that Helen certainly did.

‘I hope you won’t think this question is impertinent, Miss Quinn,’ she said, ‘but is there anyone who hates you sufficiently to do these things to the people you love?’

Mary stared at her blankly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you had any threats made against you?’

‘Who would make threats against me?’

‘People in the public eye sometimes attract obsessed fans.’

‘But I’m not in the public eye. Not yet. The show’s only played once.’

‘Success creates envy, even among people you trust.’ Helen said. Titus could see what she was getting at — that the murderer had no relationship to the victims beyond their closeness to Mary. This was possible, but he felt instinctively that it was wrong.

‘You agree with me, then, that they might be trying to hurt me by hurting others — that they mightn’t want to physically hurt me, but go on hurting people around me?’

Titus heard the relief in her voice. She’d grasped this straw tenaciously. Constable Helen Lord was, he thought, a very smart woman. A hysterical Mary Quinn was of no use to them, and a danger to herself. Helen had offered her a scenario that was cold comfort, but it was a whole lot better than no comfort at all.

-10-

Ptolemy Jones sat
down once again at a table in Clarry’s café, and Clarry put a cup of black tea in front of him. ‘On the house,’ he said, and withdrew to his position behind the counter, from where he watched the man warily. He’d been spooked by him the previous day and had hoped never to see him again. Now here he was, sitting there like a great cuckoo. Somehow, though, Clarry couldn’t take his eyes off him. Clarry pretended to read the
Truth
, but every few seconds he looked over at Jones. He emanated menace.

Clarry understood that, in coming back to the café, the man was offering him a simple choice — was Clarry for him, or against him? Was he a friend, or an enemy? Clarry didn’t even know the man’s name, but he imagined that being his enemy would be unsafe. So much for choice.

Jones took out of its brown-paper packaging the book that Mitchell Magill had given him. If it did turn out to be a copy of
Mein Kampf
, perhaps it would be an English translation, which would be welcome. Jones’s copy was in German, and although he was reasonably proficient in that language, he was by no means fluent in it.

But the book was something altogether different, called
Nakenkultur
. There was a black-and-white photograph on the cover of two men and two women, naked, with their arms in the air, their fingers touching at the apex of a human teepee. Jones was puzzled by it. Was Magill some kind of pornographer, and did he imagine that Jones would be interested in having this stuff peddled to him? He opened the book to find photographs of Aryan youth frolicking in alpine meadows, stretching, standing gymnastically on their comrades’ shoulders, or rolling hoops at each other. The photographs were broken up by pages and pages of tedious text, which Jones understood to be a lengthy defence of the joys and benefits of naturism. He had no interest at all in doing this, let alone in reading about it, and if Magill and his friends thought any different, they’d better watch out. The idea of Arthur and Margaret naked made him sick. They resembled the people in this book the way a swan resembled a buffalo.

At the back of the book, Magill had slipped in a postcard of a painting, or perhaps he’d forgotten it was there and hadn’t meant to give it to him. Jones saw its presence as a sign. It was a painting of Hitler, in civilian clothes, addressing a small group of men in a room. Jones turned it over. It was called
In the Beginning Was the Word
, by Hermann Otto Hoyer. He felt a thrill run through him. The
nakenkultur
stuff was crap, and unworkable in a disciplined society. He would stamp it out. Herr Goering was imposing when dressed by Hugo Boss; naked, he would be ludicrous. Good tailoring was fundamental to the exercise of power — even the Americans understood this. Jones tried his best. He was certainly never shabby, but he had neither the coupons nor the cash to dress really well.

This was yet another reason for him to tolerate the soft politics of Magill and Australia First. Jones would sharpen the focus of that organisation soon enough, and the first thing to go would be the name. National Socialism, not Australia, came first. Jones would call his party Our Nation, and if Mitchell Magill didn’t like it, that’d be too bad for him. Magill’s fortune was merely seed money. Once Our Nation got going, anyone who held it back would be pruned, and by then there’d be plenty of people happy and willing to use the secateurs. Jones looked over towards the counter.
Like that little cowering ferret
, he thought.

‘My name’s Ptolemy Jones,’ he called out. ‘What’s yours?’

Clarry indicated the filthy window. ‘Clarry. That’s me — Clarry Brown.’

‘How’s business?’

‘Slow.’

‘Maybe it’s the prostitutes. Getting your cock sucked doesn’t pay the bills.’

Jones noticed that Clarry Brown bridled, but he wasn’t sufficiently sure of himself to act on it. He was afraid of Jones, and Jones smelt his fear.

‘I’ve got some mates,’ Jones said. ‘We’ll be here tonight at nine o’clock. Any problem with being open?’

‘No problems at all.’

‘Good. Business is looking up already.’

Although the Liberty
Bell café in Collins Street hadn’t been open for very long, its name was helping it reap rewards. It was crowded with American servicemen who walked through the doors thinking it would offer them food they were familiar with. It didn’t, of course. Enforced austerity menus meant that the Americans could get better fare, and more of it, in their own canteens. What they couldn’t get there, though, were girls. They were a menu item that was worth coming back for.

Mitchell Magill, who’d been waiting in the Liberty Bell for Peggy Montford to finish her shift at the Glaciarium, was thinking about Ptolemy Jones. He didn’t like him. Margaret had said that there was something brutish about him, and she was right. Jones could manage a modicum of charm and good manners, so at least he hadn’t been raised by wolves. Magill was beginning to think of him, instead, as a well-trained attack dog, and he was even more convinced than he had been the previous day that Jones would be good for Australia First, or the Australian Patriots as they were now called. He had no aesthetic sense, no taste, and no sensitivity to the creative energy that was re-establishing the primacy of Aryan culture. He was a thug. Magill could use him the way a sculptor used a chisel. He was pleased with that metaphor, and jotted it down for later refinement.

Peggy came into the café accompanied by a good-looking man in an inexpensive suit. They were laughing, and Magill felt a little rush of jealousy. He was prone to these feelings, which Peggy didn’t discourage. She was flattered by them. When they reached the table where Magill was sitting, Peggy leaned down and kissed him, quickly pushing her tongue between his lips, just to reassure him that he had nothing to worry about.

‘This is Joe Sable,’ she said. ‘I’m teaching him to skate. Joe, this is the man you wanted to meet — Mitchell Magill.’

Magill stood up and extended his hand. Joe shook it.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Magill.’

‘Mitchell, please. You wanted to meet me?’

‘I’ve wanted to meet you for quite a while.’

If Joe hadn’t spent hours reading Intelligence reports he’d have been puzzled by Magill. He appeared to be so civilised. The fine tailoring of his clothes — a pale-blue silk shirt that would have cost Joe a month’s pay — and the careful grooming of his hair, moustache, and nails, did not now disguise what he really was: a vicious anti-Semite. Remembering Hardy Wilson, who’d been passed over for the directorship of the National Gallery of Victoria, and who’d declared the slight to have been the result of Jewish influence in the government, Joe felt he knew how to play out the conversation. He managed to weave Wilson’s name into their chatter about the state of the world, and Magill had been obligingly quick to agree that the failure to appoint him, a man of exquisite refinement and judgement, had been a travesty.

Over afternoon tea, which Magill paid for, Joe found himself an early recruit into a new political party, called Australian Patriots. Mitchell’s initial reticence had been all but swept away by Joe’s easy engagement with questions of culture. Nevertheless, he sounded Joe out, testing where he stood on key political issues. Joe was for king and country, but he was opposed to the war. Trading with Japan had always been a more sensible option than going to war against her; that was a failure of leadership and intelligent thinking. A lot of what Herr Hitler had to say made sense, especially his racial theories. All he was doing was stating the obvious. Joe lowered his voice when he said this, although there were no black American soldiers in the Liberty Bell. In fact, there’d been very few black faces among the Yanks in Melbourne. They’d all been sent to the outback in order to reassure people in the cities that the government hadn’t gone soft on the White Australia policy just because there was a war on. Joe said that this at least was reassuring.

‘What’s less reassuring,’ he said, ‘is the number of Jewish refugees coming into this country. They’re not right for Australia. They’re a parasitical influence.’

He’d read this expression in an excerpt from Hardy Wilson’s book,
Collapse of Civilisation
, and it felt like poison in his mouth. He immediately took a sip of water.

‘You’d be surprised how many people agree with you, Joe. You know the ALP pulled the Victorian branch into line at their conference a few days ago?’

Joe said he didn’t read the papers much, and he’d missed that.

‘The Victorian branch of the party put forward a wet resolution condemning the treatment of the Jews in Europe, and supporting a homeland in Palestine. They were told to pull their heads in, that this was no concern of ours. One of the delegates even had the balls to say that rich Jews didn’t want to live in Palestine — they just wanted a place to dump surplus Jews.’

‘Surplus Jews. That’s a fine expression.’

Magill liked the cut of Sable’s jib. Joe explained that he was ineligible for military service on account of his heart, and that he was looking for something to put his energies into — and his money, although there wasn’t too much of that. Nevertheless, this last sentiment pleased Magill mightily. He preferred dealing with people who were prepared to put their money where their mouths were.

‘Sable is an interesting name,’ Magill said.

‘Sounds a bit Jewish, doesn’t it?’ Joe laughed. ‘Serves me right for not liking them much. It’s French, I think. Way back. Sablé, or something like that. I’ve never taken much interest.’

‘I think it’s a lovely name,’ Peggy said.

‘I’d like you to meet a few of our friends,’ Magill said. ‘They’re people I think you’ll have a lot in common with. They’re civilised, erudite, like yourself. There aren’t many of us yet. As you know, Australia First was pretty much filleted by the internments of our key people. I think people are getting sick of the bloody war, and I think they’re looking for an alternative that stands for something, that calls a spade a spade.’

‘And a kike a kike,’ Joe offered. ‘You’re right about there being others who are fed up. I talk about this stuff with friends. We bang on about the bloody Bolsheviks and Jews, but nobody listens.’

Peggy smiled, and Magill said, ‘Precisely. Meeting you couldn’t have come at a better time, Joe. I have a place near Daylesford — a few acres called Candlebark Hill. It was my father’s. There’s a good house there, and it’s private. Peggy and I are going up tomorrow, early, so no nosey coppers get a chance to stop us to ask the purpose of the trip. I hate those bastards. I can afford the fuel, so why don’t they mind their own damn business? It’s a bugbear of mine — interfering functionaries. Anyway, there’ll be half-a-dozen people up there by Tuesday, depending on whether or not they can get a train ticket. If you can make it the day after that — that’d be the 29th — and stay the night, if you can, you’d be most welcome.’