Pip pulled up in front of a two-storey brick house at the end of a long driveway. She found the idea of driving to her next-door neighbour’s house a novelty; where she came from, neighbours were usually only a few feet away. Not that she’d really met any of hers. She always nodded to the couple in the next-door apartment if they happened to bump into each other in the underground carpark, and she occasionally recognised the tall, Mr Bean-like man in the supermarket from her apartment block, but she hadn’t ever introduced herself, nor did she know their names.
As she got out of the car she heard yapping coming from inside, and a small bundle of white fluffy fur exploded from the front door as it opened and a woman in a floral sundress stepped out.
‘Winston! Come here,’ the woman called, but the white fluff ball continued to run towards Pip, jumping up on her leg as it yapped and wagged its tail in a frenzy of excitement. ‘Sorry, love,’ the woman called out as she hurried down the path towards her. ‘Winston, get down!’
‘It’s okay,’ Pip called out, and dragged the animal, still holding onto her jeans-clad leg, as she walked towards the woman.
‘You must be Pip. Nice to meet you. I’m Anne,’ she said, hurriedly tucking her short grey hair behind her ear before bending down to gather the small dog into her arms. ‘Pete said he bumped into you this morning. Come inside, I just put the jug on.’
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ Pip said as they walked inside. On the walls of the hallway and then through to the lounge room were framed photos of children. Some were clearly Anne and Pete’s children, dressed in late seventies attire, with toothless grins, while others seemed a lot more recent—perhaps grandchildren.
‘Not at all. I’ve been meaning to drop in and say hello, but then everything happened and I didn’t want to just show up on your doorstep while all the police were over there. How terrible. Such a shock.’
Pip took a seat at the table as Anne went across to a high kitchen bench and brought over a plate of biscuits, setting them down on the table.
‘Yes. Not something you expect,’ Pip said, only imagining how much gossip would be circulating around the small town. ‘How long have you and Pete been here?’
‘This was Pete’s family farm, so he’s been here all his life, and his parents inherited it from his grandfather before that.’
‘So a long time,’ Pip nodded. It always amazed her when she heard of people who’d lived in the same house for so long. Her parents had bought a number of different houses as she’d grown up. With each promotion or job change they’d moved to be closer to her father’s work. She herself had moved several times over the past few years until she’d bought her apartment, but still, she’d never really had an attachment with any one particular house growing up.
‘Yes. I’m not considered a local, though,’ Anne laughed, then paused to ask how Pip had her coffee before continuing, ‘I’ve only been here about thirty years or so.’
Pip smiled. She’d heard Uncle Nev say it was almost country law: to be considered a local, you had to have at least several generations behind you.
‘Anne, do you know who owned Uncle Nev’s place before he bought it?’
Anne nodded as she carried the coffees over, placing a cup in front of Pip before taking a seat across from her. ‘It was the Bigsby place.’
‘Old Bert lived there for years,’ Pete said, walking in from the rear of the house. He wiped his hands on a tea towel before tossing it on the bench.
‘Your tea’s there,’ Anne informed him and he picked up a cup before joining them at the table.
Pete’s face had the weathered look of a man who had worked long hours outside for most of his life—the creases around his eyes were deep, and his hand that held the cup looked tough and calloused with dirt beneath his fingernails.
‘What was Bert like?’ Pip asked, popping the last bit of her biscuit in her mouth. Anne certainly could bake.
‘Cranky old bastard,’ Pete said before being reprimanded lightly by his wife.
‘He just had a very hard life,’ Anne said. ‘I used to cook for him towards the end—take him over some meals, that kind of thing. He was a nice enough old fella, just lonely.’
‘He was a bit of an odd one,’ Pete said, reaching for a biscuit.
‘Odd? How?’ Pip asked, following Pete’s lead and taking another herself.
‘The war messed him up,’ Pete said. ‘I remember my dad telling me stories about him. Old Bert had been a POW before he came home, and he was never the same.’
Instantly Pip felt something shift inside her. She had a soft spot for war veterans. It had all started when, as a young journo, she had been assigned to interview a group of former World War Two prisoners of war in the lead-up to Anzac Day. The stories they’d told were horrific, and it was clear that the effect their time in the POW camp had on their lives afterwards had been devastating. They’d been old men when she’d interviewed them back then, but she suspected their experiences had helped to age them even more.
She’d gone on to write a number of stories that featured World War Two, in particular the battles and campaigns fought in the Pacific theatre due to its close proximity to Australia. Previous wars Australia had been involved in had always been fought in far-off places most Australians had never even heard of, but by the latter half of World War Two, the fight had come alarmingly close to home—far closer than many people realised.
But the story that still haunted her to this day was that of a woman who as a child had been evacuated with her mother from Rabaul to Sydney in 1942, just weeks before the Japanese invasion.
The evacuated women and children left behind fathers, husbands and brothers who were never heard from again. Pip had gone to New Guinea to try to find some answers for the heartbroken families, and what she unearthed was horrifying. The woman’s family had been captured on their plantation by the Japanese army. They, along with other neighbouring Australian families including women and children, and many Papuan locals, were executed by the Japanese, accused of spying. Among them, a boy of just eleven.
‘The locals around here call him Butcher Bigsby,’ Pete added, cutting into her thoughts.
‘Did he own a butcher shop?’ Pip asked, pushing away her memories as she sipped her coffee.
‘Nah. That’s how they found the bloke he murdered.’
Pip choked on her coffee, coughing uncontrollably before gratefully accepting the handful of tissues Anne passed across to her. ‘Murdered?’
‘He was cleared of that,’ Anne cut in briskly. ‘It was a such a shame about everything that happened,’ Anne said, slowly shaking her head.
‘What happened?’ Pip asked.
‘His wife left him not long after he came back from the war,’ Anne began.
‘Or tried to leave him … she didn’t get very far,’ Pete added with a knowing look at his wife.
Pip’s glance switched between them.
‘The body in the dam,’ Pete said, taking another biscuit. ‘That’ll be Molly Bigsby.’
Pip felt the biscuit she just swallowed get stuck in her throat.
‘It may not be,’ Anne admonished before sending Pip a concerned look. ‘The story went that she ran away. Bert never heard from her again.’
‘That’s part of the story,’ Pete scoffed. ‘Tell her the rest.’
Pip looked at Anne expectantly, resisting the urge to yell, Someone tell me already!
‘The fella Molly was having a fling with,’ Pete jumped in, clearly unable to handle the suspense as well, ‘was found murdered out on Clay Target Road—just up the way a bit. Found him stabbed to death in his car. There was a witness that saw Molly and Vernon Clements together in his car, and Bert’s car parked nearby earlier in the night. When the police got there they didn’t find any sign of her, or Bert and his car, but they did find blood all over the passenger side of Vernon’s vehicle that they reckon belonged to Molly.’
‘So …’ Pip said slowly, trying to piece together the story, ‘did they charge Bert with the murder?’
‘Nup,’ Pete said, sitting back in his chair. ‘Bert had an alibi for the night. He was down in some Melbourne returned-vets psych ward.’
‘It wasn’t a psych ward—it was a hospital. He’d been trying to save his marriage. Molly had been begging him to get some help, and when he realised she might leave him, he booked himself into that place in Melbourne,’ Anne said, looking a little teary. ‘He once said it was the best thing he’d ever done and the worst.’
‘What did he mean by that?’
‘Apparently, whatever happened down there turned things around for him—he said he felt like it had helped but that in the end it hadn’t mattered because Molly still packed up and left him.’
‘But you think that’s Molly in the dam?’ Pip asked Pete.
Pete shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who else would it be? The woman goes missing—no one ever hears from her again … I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it seems a pretty logical conclusion to me.’
‘You think Bert killed her and dumped her body?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Anne said adamantly.
‘Anne’s always been a sucker for a sob story—too kind a heart she has,’ Pete said with a weary yet tolerant smile.
‘Bert would never have hurt his wife. He still loved her after all that time. I would have known if he were a murderer. Your father never believed the gossip either,’ Anne said pointedly to her husband.
‘Yeah, but my old man had a soft spot for Bert. And anyone who could stand up to a Maguire in this town deserves a bit of respect.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There wasn’t much love lost between Bert and the Maguires when he got back to town after his time in the POW camp. They cashed in on land during and after the war, buying up places when husbands and sons were killed and families couldn’t keep up mortgages. Didn’t sit well with a lot of people, especially Bert. They hounded him to buy that old place of his, but he wouldn’t budge.’
‘I had noticed the Maguire name around town,’ Pip mused.
‘You can hardly miss it,’ Pete grunted.
‘Well, Midgiburra is somewhat famous because of them,’ Anne chimed in, but when Pip blinked at her blankly, her smile slipped a little. ‘Edward Maguire,’ she prompted pointedly. ‘The politician. You didn’t learn about him in school?’ she asked with a confused frown.
‘Ah, no, can’t say I did.’
She saw Anne swap an exasperated glance with her husband across the table before turning her attention back to Pip. ‘Edward Maguire was born and raised right here in Midgiburra and went on to become the Victorian premier. He only missed out by a whisker on becoming the prime minister before he died.’
It was clear locals took this claim to fame very seriously indeed.
‘That was a long time ago. There’s not as many Maguires as there used to be. Over the years, kids packed up and left and the oldies died off. The old animosity around town isn’t there like it was back then.’
‘Do you think Molly’s death could be linked to someone else? Maybe this Maguire thing?’
‘Nah, I doubt it,’ Pete said. ‘I don’t think things ever got that heated. Nah, this was something else. His wife was having an affair—it was common knowledge,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.
‘You think he killed her,’ Pip said, more a statement than a question.
‘Happened before my time, but I believe that a jealous man is capable of pretty much anything. And Bert was also more than a little unstable. Who knows?’
‘You lived next door to him for all those years … If you thought he was a murderer, how did you trust him?’
Pete scratched his nose and folded his arms across his barrel-like chest. ‘He kept to himself, never caused a problem—at least not with us. There was the odd time he chased kids away from his place with a rifle, but that was only because they liked to hang around and throw rocks at his roof and whatnot back in the day. I mean, it’s not like he was a serial killer—it was a crime of passion,’ he said matter-of-factly, as though it made complete sense.
‘Anyway, I still don’t think it’s Molly,’ Anne said, getting up. ‘Anyone else like another coffee?’ she asked, but both Pip and Pete shook their heads as Anne crossed to the kitchen.
‘Well, I think I’d sleep better if it is, otherwise there’s a real murderer out there somewhere,’ Pete added.
As opposed to a murderer who had a justifiable reason for killing his wife and her lover, Pip thought sarcastically.
‘I guess if it does turn out to be her, there won’t be any answers, seeing as everyone involved is gone,’ Pip mused.
‘Oh no,’ Anne said, sounding surprised, as she came back to take her seat. ‘Bert’s still alive. He’s in a nursing home.’
What the hell? Suddenly Pip’s interest in the whole conversation perked up. ‘He’s still alive?’
‘He’s a tough old bastard,’ Pete said with a touch of reluctant admiration. ‘He had a stroke a few years back and had to be put in full-time care.’
‘That’s when your uncle bought the place,’ Anne said, then gave a sad smile. ‘Poor old Bert—he hasn’t been able to speak a word since his stroke. I try to visit him now and again, probably not as much as I should, though … He’s got no one else.’
Pip’s mind started to spin as the bits and pieces of information she’d just heard began to slide into place and she started to write the story. No! she told herself firmly. This wasn’t her story. She wasn’t on assignment. She had a book to write. She was not going to get mixed up in some tragic—yet really, really interesting—love-triangle tale. She really wasn’t.