(In which Mavis Levack meets Claudia Valentine)
‘I think I know who did it,’ Mavis Levack announced to her husband.
‘Yes, dear?’ said Eddy from the depths of the newspaper. He had lost interest in Murder, She Wrote after the first ad and was now ensconced in the weather page.
‘It’s the nephew,’ Mrs Levack continued. ‘I think he’s wearing mascara.’
‘Yes, dear. Thirty-two millimetres of rain at Cootamundra yesterday.’
‘Have a look at the nephew, Eddy. I mean, a grown man wearing mascara.’
‘The chance of local heavy falls and squally winds clearing from the west.’
‘He’s written a note and slipped it under the door. What do you think that could be?’
Eddy was saved by the bell. Or at least the buzzer. They both looked up, Eddy from the newspaper, Mavis from the television. Neither of them was expecting anyone. Perhaps it was Freda on her evening stroll with the dog. Just popping in to say hello.
Mrs Levack pressed the button that opened the outside door of the block of flats.
‘Who was it, dear?’
‘Probably Freda.’
‘Probably? Didn’t you check? We could be letting in a murderer for all we know. You can’t be too careful nowadays.’
Mrs Levack knew her husband was right, but she didn’t like to admit that she hadn’t quite caught the name. It was a woman’s voice, so it probably wasn’t a murderer.
It must have been someone fit because in next to no time there was a knock on the door of the flat. Freda couldn’t have got up the stairs in that time, especially with Flopsy in tow. Mrs Levack was curious, very curious.
She opened the door to a tall, attractive woman with red hair, wearing a black leather jacket, black leather pants and black spiky high heels. She reminded Mrs Levack of someone—Modesty Blaise, only not so bosomy. That woman from The Avengers? Perhaps she was a friend of Lisa and Sharon next door and had pressed the Levack buzzer by mistake.
‘Good evening, Mrs Levack, I’m Claudia Valentine, private investigator.’
Mrs Levack stood there stunned. Here was adventure knocking on her very door. A real live private investigator! Who knew her name!
‘Oh, do come in!’ invited Mrs Levack, excited as a schoolgirl. ‘Fancy that, I was just watching that show on the television and then in you come. What a coincidence!’
Claudia Valentine strode into the room. Mrs Levack would never be able to walk in those high heels. What confidence, what ease!
Mrs Levack tried to share this special moment with her husband but he wasn’t anywhere near as impressed. He didn’t look up from his newspaper but he did extend a hand in the direction of the visitor, a hand that stayed there even after she had shaken it.
‘No, not that. I want to see your card, proof of identity.’
Mrs Levack blushed right up to her hair rollers. As if there could be any doubt about her being who she said she was. Mrs Levack knew instinctively.
The private investigator handed Eddy her card. He looked at the card and he looked at Claudia Valentine. For quite a long time, it seemed to Mrs Levack.
‘Carry on,’ said Eddy, and went back to reading the newspaper.
Claudia’s eyes flicked around the room and finally settled on the back window. ‘Do you mind if I take a peek, Mrs Levack?’
Mrs Levack knew they had an instant rapport. Despite all the fuss with Eddy wanting to see the ID, the private investigator had addressed Mavis, not Eddy. She knew which side her bread was buttered on.
‘Oh no, go right ahead. Someone following you, dear?’ Mrs Levack ventured.
‘No,’ said Ms Valentine. Mrs Levack was sure she’d be a Ms. ‘Not right at this moment, anyway.’
The P.I. went over to the venetian blinds and looked straight into the flat of that poor young boy who’d died so suddenly. Well, she couldn’t actually see into the flat because since that fateful day the curtains had been drawn, as Mrs Levack knew only too well.
Eddy sat there with his nose in the paper, not the least bit interested, as if all this was happening somewhere else.
Ms Valentine walked briskly back to the lounge. ‘I’ll come straight to the point, Mrs Levack. I’m investigating the death of Mark Bannister, who lived over there in that flat.’
‘Oh yes, terrible business, wasn’t it? Fancy a young one like that dying of a heart attack.’
‘You knew him then, did you?’
‘Oh no, dear, we read it in the paper.’
From out of the depths of the newspaper, Eddy spoke: ‘It was as good as if she knew him, the way she kept her eye on him.’
‘Well, Eddy, it’s just as well someone is keeping an eye out. The way things are nowadays, you could be lying dead in the street and no-one would lift a finger to help.’
Eddy grunted and turned the page. But Mrs Levack had a more willing listener. ‘Isn’t that right, Claudia? You don’t mind me calling you by your first name do you, dear?’
Claudia gave her a smile. Call me anything you like, that smile seemed to say.
‘What is it you want to know, Claudia?’ Mrs Levack perched herself on the edge of the lounge, ready to reveal all.
‘Anything, Mrs Levack, anything you think might help us with our enquiries.’ Oh, enquiries. Mrs Levack loved all those police words. Claudia certainly was a professional. ‘His habits,’ Claudia continued, ‘whether he had visitors . . .’
Mrs Levack stood up, the centre of attention, and clasped her hands together as if she were about to recite a poem. ‘Well,’ she started, ‘he looked to me like the studious type. Not that he wore glasses or any of that, but he spent a lot of time near the window writing or typing. I couldn’t see the typewriter but just by the way he sat I guessed that’s what he was doing. Habits: well, he drank a lot of coffee, twelve cups a day.’
This seemed to impress Claudia because she raised her eyebrows, which encouraged Mrs Levack to continue with the subject. ‘Sometimes when he brought a cup back from the kitchen—actually it was more of a mug than a cup—he’d stand by that very window looking out—I suppose he got sick of the studying—and you know,’ Mrs Levack embellished, ‘I could have sworn he was looking straight at me.’
‘Yeah, but you, of course, were behind the venetian blind, so how could he see you? I’ve told you, Mavis, if you’re going to look in people’s windows, let them see you doing it. At least that gives them a fighting chance.’
‘Oh, Eddy, then they’d think I was a busybody.’
‘Well?’ sneered Mr Levack triumphantly.
‘What else have I got to do, you with your head in the paper all day every day? That’s as much a busybody, isn’t it, only you read about it, I get it first-hand.’
‘Humph!’ retorted Mr Levack. ‘What I read about in the newspapers is important. How many cups of coffee a person drinks a day isn’t important.’
Mrs Levack turned back to the P.I., who was tucking a renegade lock of hair behind her ear. ‘It is, isn’t it, Claudia?’
Claudia shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The high heels were probably getting to her. Mrs Levack should have invited her to sit down but it was too late in the piece for that.
As it happened, Claudia sat down anyway, on the edge of the lounge Mrs Levack had recently vacated. She was more at Mrs Levack’s eye-level, much better for a woman-to-woman discussion. ‘It could be important, Mrs Levack,’ Claudia admitted. ‘At this stage we don’t have much to go on, so anything you can tell us might be helpful. Did he have any visitors?’ she continued, not at all perturbed by Eddy noisily turning another page.
‘Only that girl, really, with the hair like a lion’s mane. I don’t think she was a very good influence, though, because whenever she came he’d stop the studying straightaway.’
Claudia Valentine’s eyebrows swam together like twin tadpoles. ‘Mrs Levack, how can you be so precise about what you saw? Surely through curtains you’d only be able to see vague shadows.’
‘She had her binoculars trained on him,’ snorted Eddy.
‘They’re your binoculars,’ Mrs Levack threw back at him. She turned to Claudia: ‘His racing binoculars. Only he doesn’t go to the races any more and if it wasn’t for me they’d just hang there gathering dust. Shame to waste them, really. If you’ve got a thing use it, I always say. Anyway,’ she said, rubbing her hands down her dressing gown, ‘it wasn’t through the curtains, it was straight through the window. The curtains were always open, even at night. He was the fresh air type. In fact the first time they were closed I saw him do it. Not the young man. It was an older one that closed the curtains. I remember thinking at the time, that’s strange—’
‘You’re always thinking “that’s strange”,’ Eddy piped up. ‘If he hadn’t had his first cup of coffee by nine in the morning she’d be saying, “That’s strange, he usually has it earlier than this”.’
Mrs Levack cleared her throat and glared at her husband. ‘As I was saying,’ she said loudly and emphatically, ‘I thought at the time it was the police, but he wasn’t dressed like the police, and Eddy said it was probably those other ones, you know, plainclothes like yourself.’
‘Private,’ said Eddy brusquely. ‘She’s private.’ For someone feigning disinterest he was certainly keeping track of things.
‘It was then, it was when he died. I didn’t get a good look at the man because he pulled the curtains across, so I only really saw the arm and the glove.’
Claudia Valentine was really paying attention now. ‘So did you see this man before or after Mark Bannister died?’
‘Oh, after. It was a Thursday because normally at that time I’d go down and cash the pension cheque. But there was that strike on and they were late, which was just as well, wasn’t it, because otherwise I would’ve missed it.’
‘You don’t miss anything,’ commented Eddy.
‘Well, it’s just as well, isn’t it, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to help Miss Valentine with her investigations.’ Mrs Levack winced. She’d gone and called this modern young woman ‘Miss’. She couldn’t help herself. She was concentrating more on the police word ‘investigations’ and Miss just popped out. Anyway, Ms sounded like a bee buzzing round your name.
Claudia Valentine paid no attention to the gaffe, so Mrs Levack strode boldly on. ‘See, the young man came and sat at the desk and was typing or something. Then he kind of went rigid and stared. Just stared. Then he stood up, well, not properly up, kind of bent. He was most upset.’
Mrs Levack leaned towards Claudia in a confidential manner. ‘He was using bad language. I could tell by the way his mouth was moving. That “f” word,’ she whispered. ‘He put his hand to his heart, then up more, near the shoulder, and sort of thumped it like this.’ Mrs Levack acted it out. ‘And looked at me. Looked straight at me like he was begging for help,’ she embroidered. ‘Next thing I knew, he disappeared. Just plopped over.’
Mrs Levack shook her head at the pity of it all. ‘I was going to ring the ambulance, but then the girl came in—’
‘What girl?’
‘That girl that’s always there. She just stood staring too, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. She went into the bathroom, then came back and bent down out of sight. She was probably trying to revive him with smelling salts or something.’
‘Gawd, Mavis, smelling salts! No-one’s used smelling salts since Cocky was an egg. Anyway, that’s for fainting, not a bloody heart attack.’
‘Well, she was probably trying to help him with pills or something, you know, like those pills Reggie had for his heart.’
‘That was for blood pressure, not his heart.’
Claudia Valentine had been patiently watching the to and fro. ‘Ahem. Mrs Levack, what happened after the girl bent down?’
‘She stood up again. And she picked up the phone and started to speak, using her hands as well. Then her head jerked round and she ran away. She must have gone to open the door because next thing that plainclothes was there. And he closed the curtains.’ The show was over.
‘Did you see or hear anything after that?’
‘No, dear, we went to bowls then. It was Thursday.’
‘Yeah, but we did see that police car, Mavis.’ Eddy had finally got sucked into it. ‘On the way home from bowls.’ He turned to Ms Valentine. ‘Had the devil’s own job trying to tear her away from the window in the first place.’
‘Well, we should’ve stayed, shouldn’t we? I might have been able to solve the mystery, mightn’t I?’
‘Look, Mavis, there was no mystery. He just died of a heart attack. “No suspicious circumstances”, that’s what the papers said.’
‘You can’t believe everything you read in the papers, Eddy.’
Several times Claudia Valentine tried to interrupt to say goodbye, but they were so engrossed in their argument she left them to it. Eventually they stopped for breath and noticed that their visitor had gone.
‘Well,’ said Eddy into the silence, ‘I could do with a Milo and whisky. What about you?’
Had a real live private investigator actually been here or had Mrs Levack dozed off in front of the television and dreamt the whole thing?
‘I say, Mavis,’ Eddy bellowed as if she were deaf. ‘Do you want a whisky and Milo?’
She nodded her head.
While Eddy was in the kitchen mumbling quietly to himself, or singing—Eddy’s mumbling and singing sounded identical—Mrs Levack espied the card that Claudia Valentine had left. She hadn’t dreamt it after all. She sat staring at that card, her ticket to thrills and spills, to all the things she had never done.
What she wanted more than anything in the world was to have a card like that, with her name on it. She’d start up her own agency, learn lip reading.
Eddy came back in and put the hot drinks down on the coffee table. But not before Mrs Levack had popped the card into her dressing-gown pocket.
‘Just going for a walk, Eddy,’ said Mrs Levack. She had her joggers on, tracksuit pants and her new purchase of a baseball cap.
‘Hang on, I’ll come with you.’ Eddy rarely went on walks. He’d walk to the library, to the bowls club, somewhere that had a destination at the end of it, but not a walk for its own sake.
‘Ah, well . . .’ Under other circumstances she would love to have had him along, a nice romantic stroll along the beach, some time together, not that they were short of that, but Mrs Levack had a hunch that this was a walk she’d better take on her own. ‘What about tomorrow, first thing? You’ll miss the evening news if you go now.’
‘That’s all right, I can catch the later bulletin.’ He was already getting up, putting shoes on.
‘Actually, Eddy,’ said Mrs Levack as nicely as she could, ‘I’m not going for a stroll. It’s the exercise.’
‘I could do with the exercise too.’ That was certainly true. Bowls was OK but it didn’t really get the heart pumping.
‘But I’ll be in the zone,’ said Mrs Levack.
‘The zone?’
‘Yes. You know, the one athletes talk about.’ She had no idea what the zone was but she was hoping that the mere mention of it would work. ‘You can only be in the zone alone. See you soon, Eddy. I’ll bring back an icecream.’ She was out the door and down the steps before Eddy had even tied up his laces.
From her window she had only seen the flat from the back, but she’d done a bit of reconnoitring on her way to the shops that afternoon and she was pretty sure she’d earmarked the right block.
When she got out into the street and had turned the first corner, she looked behind to make sure that no-one was following her, especially not Eddy. Mrs Levack breathed a sigh of relief. No-one was. She made her way to the flats. There were lots of people about, as there always were in Bondi, thin young girls in thin young clothes sitting on milk crates outside cafes. You’d think the least they could do was supply chairs.
She came to the targeted block of flats. It was an old-style block, even older than hers and Eddy’s, and fortunately it didn’t have any security doors or even a buzzer—you just walked straight in. Dingy, peeling paint and graffiti, but these were the mean streets and Mrs Levack had to walk them.
It wasn’t the ground floor, she’d worked that out, so she climbed the dark staircase. There were two flats upstairs, numbers 3 and 4. She gave a soft little knock on number 4. No answer. She tried again, louder this time. Still no answer. She got down on the ground to look through the thin gap between the floor and the door.
‘Lost something?’
Mrs Levack turned, and found herself staring at a pair of shaved legs with a set of beautifully developed calf muscles. Her eyes travelled up to the thighs, shorts, singlet and the gym bag that the handsome young man was carrying.
‘Mark Bannister?’ she said, finally standing up. She knew of course that it wasn’t Mark Bannister. This chap looked nothing like the boy she’d been spying on and besides, he was dead, though she had heard that sometimes people who die suddenly don’t know they are dead and hang around where they used to live.
‘Harvey Keitel, actually,’ said the young man. The name rang a bell with Mrs Levack but she couldn’t quite place it.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Keitel.’ She held out her hand. He had a good strong grip. It had been a while since she’d felt a man’s good strong grip. People said Eddy had one but Mrs Levack rarely shook hands with her own husband.
‘Mavis Levack, private investigator,’ she repeated the words Claudia Valentine had said the night before. Except that she changed the name, of course.
‘Really?’ he said.
She handed him one of her cards. It wasn’t a proper ID, not like Claudia’s with a photo and everything, it was just a set of instant cards she’d had done that afternoon at the photocopy shop up the road. She’d spent ages trying to work out how to operate the machine and eventually had to ask one of the nice young men behind the counter to give her a hand. She was meeting such a lot of nice young men since she’d started as a P.I., and this was only day one.
Mr Keitel stuck the card into the waistband of his shorts, then opened the door, the very door Mrs Levack had been looking under. He went inside, leaving the door ajar. A light went on at the end of the hallway and she heard him going to the fridge, then some other unidentifiable noises.
‘Did you know Mark Bannister?’ she called out. If he’d heard, he wasn’t answering. She banged on the door to get his attention.
‘Yo, it’s open, David. Come in.’
Why did he think her name was David? Maybe in the dark Mavis sounded like David. Should she or shouldn’t she enter the flat of a strange man? She decided she should and stepped over the threshold. He didn’t seem strange, except for the shaved legs.
He came down the hallway towards her, carrying two whisky glasses that had something very dark and potent in them. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘thought you were my gym buddy.’
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Levack couldn’t help asking.
‘Wheat grass shots. Want one?’
Mrs Levack had no idea what he was talking about. Wheat. Grass. Shots.
‘It’ll put hairs on your chest,’ said Mr Keitel.
That was the last place Mrs Levack wanted hairs, but in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ She downed the lot in one go, a rich heady brew that tasted very rural.
‘How long have you been living here?’ she asked.
‘Two and a half, three years,’ he said.
‘Did you know Mark Bannister?’ she tried again.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He lived in there,’ she prompted, indicating the flat across the way.
‘Oh, that guy,’ he said. ‘I see him occasionally, nod hello. I’m a flight attendant, not here that much. Davo,’ he greeted someone behind Mrs Levack.
She turned around to see a second chap, also with singlet, shorts and shaved legs. This Davo chap looked Mrs Levack up and down.
‘Got yourself a personal trainer,’ he commented to Mr Keitel.
Mrs Levack was thrilled that she was being mistaken for a personal trainer. All of a sudden she felt quite light-headed, giggly. She couldn’t tell if it was the jungle juice she’d imbibed or the testosterone. You didn’t get either of them at the bowls club.
‘Not on my days off,’ she retorted, entering into the spirit of things. She brought out another of her cards and handed it to him. Perhaps she should be more sparing with the cards. At the rate she was going, she’d be through the lot before you could say Jack Robinson.
‘Mavis Levack, P.I. We’re investigating the death of the young man who lived next door.’ Apart from the height, the clothes, the hair, the age difference, she could have been Claudia Valentine herself.
She leaned towards him and said in a confidential tone, ‘They say it was a heart attack but we think otherwise.’ The two chaps raised their eyebrows at one another. They must have been impressed.
‘Yes, we certainly do,’ she went on. ‘You didn’t see or hear anything that might be of value?’ she queried.
‘Like what?’ asked Mr Keitel.
She remembered practically word for word what Claudia Valentine had asked her, which was quite astonishing as Mrs Levack often had lapses of memory. Perhaps it wasn’t remembering, perhaps she was channelling Claudia Valentine. ‘Anything you think might help us with our enquiries. His habits, whether he had visitors . . .’
The one called Davo was getting impatient, looking at his watch and tapping his foot.
‘Like I said, I’m not here much. I don’t think I can be of much help.’ Mr Keitel was starting to withdraw.
‘What about the girl with the hair like a lion’s mane?’ Mrs Levack tried desperately to jog his memory.
‘There are so many of them,’ said Mr Keitel philosophically. ‘Bye now.’
He closed the door, with him and his friend on the inside and Mrs Levack on the outside. She tried not to feel rejected. Claudia Valentine probably had frustrating days too. Not everyone paid such attention to detail as Mrs Levack did. Claudia Valentine was very, very lucky to have pressed the right buzzer.
All was not lost, there were the flats downstairs, they might know something. She tried one door then the other, again and again, knocking louder and louder till finally someone shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, go home!’
She looked up. It was Mr Keitel, dressed only in a towel. She gave him a little wave. ‘Just going,’ she said sheepishly. He’d seemed like such a nice young man. She hoped his manners improved when he was up in the air.
Eddy was sitting by the phone and looked immediately relieved when his wife walked in the door. ‘I was just about to ring the police. Did you get lost in the zone?’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘How come your mouth’s green?’ Eddy asked.
‘Green? Is it green?’ she said. She went into the bathroom and had a look in the mirror. She saw green. ‘An all-day sucker,’ she explained. She didn’t think she could get away with the wheat grass thing, he’d be asking what it was and where she’d got it.
‘Well, don’t forget to brush your teeth, then,’ he said, and headed towards the bedroom.
Mrs Levack had false teeth, top and bottom. More important than brushing was to put them in a glass of solution. She scrubbed her mouth clean and, after examining her chest for hairs, donned her nightie.
The bed lamp was blazing and Eddy was propped up on the pillows snoring, a book—Photography for Dummies—open beside him. She gave him a mint-flavoured kiss and turned off the light.
All was quiet—except for the comforting rhythm of Eddy’s snoring. He made a few shunting noises, probably dreaming of his younger days as a tram driver. The Bondi route was the last to go. Eddy hadn’t converted easily to the buses.
Through the doorway into the lounge Mrs Levack could see the window, venetians blinds open. What with the departure from normal routine this evening, they had forgotten to close them. It was the window that looked onto the victim’s flat. She willed her mind into that flat, searching for possible clues. Then, by some strange coincidence, though it often happened in Murder, She Wrote and those other TV shows, the light went on.
Perhaps the strength of Mrs Levack’s mind was so mighty that she had actually made it happen. She tried willing Eddy to stop snoring, to no avail. But wait, was that a shadow behind the curtains? Was someone over there in the dead boy’s flat?
She padded silently into the lounge room and picked up the trusty binoculars. Yes, there was definitely movement behind the curtain. She had no time to lose. Down the stairs and round the corner she went.
As Mrs Levack approached the flat she saw her—the girl with hair like a lion’s mane. Up to no good, no doubt. Mrs Levack slid into the shadows and watched. The girl was coming down the path to the front gate. She looked in the letter box and retrieved one of those pamphlets advertising the specials at the supermarket. Call it junk mail if you will, but Mrs Levack read hers as studiously as Eddy read the paper. The girl looked like she wished the mail was something else, but at least she didn’t throw the flier away. Instead, she shoved it into her big bag. What else did that bag contain?
‘Excuse me.’ Mrs Levack emerged from the shadows. The girl looked up, startled. ‘Do you have a light?’ Mrs Levack was hoping she’d catch a glimpse of something incriminating when the girl opened her bag for the matches.
‘What?’
Mrs Levack didn’t have her teeth in and was talking all gummy. She repeated the request, this time accompanied by a bit of miming.
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘What about a Kleenex? I feel a cold coming on.’
The girl looked at Mrs Levack oddly, then took off down the street. So fast, in fact, that Mrs Levack could hardly keep up. The girl got into one of those fancy big black cars and drove away.
If only Mrs Levack had had the presence of mind to bring a pencil and pad with her. Despite repeating it over and over to herself, by the time she got back to her block of flats she had completely forgotten the registration number.
That was not the only thing. She had forgotten her keys. Here she was out in the cold night air, without her teeth and wearing only her nightie. At least it was one with long sleeves and not that flimsy little black number she’d bought for their wedding anniversary. She couldn’t sneak in undetected—she could hardly shimmy up the drainpipe—she’d have to get Eddy to let her in. Which meant waking him up. That was the last thing she wanted to do.
She stood there till she started shivering, then pressed the buzzer, leant on it so long and persistently that it would have woken Eddy up even if he were dead.
Eventually she got a response, a gruff kind of sound. She couldn’t make out the words but the voice was Eddy’s.
‘It’s me,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Mavis.’
He was at the top of the stairs waiting. She put one hand on the bannister, the other out in front, and up she went.
‘What in blazes are you doing, Mavis?’
Did she have to spell it out for him? She glided into the flat. Mrs Levack knew that place like the back of her hand, could find her way around it blindfolded, which was more or less the case at the moment. She thought it best to keep her eyes closed although she badly wanted to see the expression on Eddy’s face.
‘Flamin’ hell, Mavis. I think we’d better make a doctor’s appointment for you. You’ve done some strange things in your life but never this.’
Mrs Levack kept a blank face. Her arms were beginning to get tired, but if she put them down the game would be up.
It was an almost perfect run. In the home straight she knocked over the beaker containing her teeth. She felt them make contact but didn’t react. It had been a long time since she’d been able to bite her own toes. She climbed into bed. At last. It was probably safe to put her arms down now.
She opened her eyes, as if she’d just woken up. ‘Eddy!’ she said. ‘What are you doing up? Did you hear a burglar?’
‘What am I doing up? What were you doing up? You were sleepwalking, Mavis, you were outside leaning on the blessed buzzer.’
‘Nonsense, Eddy. I’m the one in bed and you’re the one up. If anyone’s sleepwalking, it’s you. Perhaps we should make an appointment with the doctor.’
Eddy rolled his eyes and got back into bed. ‘It’s only a dream,’ he kept mumbling to himself, ‘it’s only a dream.’
Eddy kept a careful watch on his wife over the next few days, giving her little opportunity to get out and about on her own. When she said she was popping out for a morning walk, Eddy said he’d do the same, that he wanted to observe the zone first-hand. She was in that precarious state of balance in which she needed to get out and do more investigating before the trail went completely cold, but had to assure her husband that she was quite all right.
Finally Mrs Levack’s chance came. Wednesday—Eddy and Bill’s library day. They seemed to spend hours there and Mrs Levack often thought that perhaps they were up to no good, but today she welcomed it as a godsend.
‘What’s Freda up to?’ Mrs Levack enquired when Bill arrived. Apart from being Bill’s wife, Freda was Mrs Levack’s best friend.
‘Gone for a walk with the dog.’
‘Mavis and I have taken up walking, haven’t we?’ said Eddy. Was there a hint of sarcasm in his voice?
‘Yes, we have,’ she said, treating it as a genuine remark. ‘Keeps the osteopyrethrum at bay.’
Eddy and Bill were ready to go. ‘You boys enjoy yourselves at the library. Eddy, maybe you could bring me back a book on exercise if you come across any. Cheerio.’ She put her rubber gloves on as if she was about to do the washing up.
Mrs Levack waited a full five minutes before she took off the gloves and put on her joggers. Remembering to take the key, notepad and pencil, she walked down the steps, looked left and right, and headed off. She had a new focus of attention, not the flat but the mailbox. If the girl had looked in the mailbox, it meant an important clue was coming.
The mail usually came between ten-thirty and eleven. It was 10.47 when Mrs Levack observed the postie deliver a long envelope to the victim’s letter box. She waited till he had passed, then made a beeline for it.
A letter from America. For some reason she thought of Captain Cook. No, that wasn’t it. Another Cook who did that thing on the radio, practically as old as Captain Cook. She knew the letter was from America because there was a small label in the top left-hand corner that said: ‘Grosz, Grosz and Epstein, 130 Madison Ave, New York.’ Hmm. She held it up to the light but couldn’t see through it.
She walked briskly back home. There was no time to lose. She filled the kettle and waited for it to boil. ‘Come on, come on.’ She strummed her fingers on the laminex. Then she heard its merry little whistle. At last. Strangely enough, Mrs Levack had never tried steaming open an envelope before and it took her a few goes before she realised she should be steaming the back, where it had been stuck down. But the blessed thing wouldn’t budge. Ah, finally, she was able to get one corner of it up.
So intent was she on her task that she didn’t hear the door open.
‘Ah, a cuppa. You’d better put that letter aside, it’ll get all soggy.’ Then Eddy’s eyes narrowed as he saw what she was doing. Mavis was caught in the act. Now it was her husband’s turn to strum his fingers on the laminex. Though Eddy would need his glasses to read the small label, he could certainly see the addressee’s name, and it wasn’t Mr or Mrs Levack. ‘That’s theft,’ he pointed out.
‘But he can’t read it, he’s dead.’
‘You should have left it in the box.’
‘It’s not safe.’
‘Well, it doesn’t appear to be safe with you. Even if he’s dead the next of kin are entitled to it.’
‘But we don’t know who they are.’
‘It’s none of our business,’ said Eddy.
‘It is,’ Mrs Levack insisted. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been helping Ms Valentine with her enquiries.’
‘Who?’
‘You know, the young woman who came around, the redhead.’ She hardly needed to specify the young woman was a redhead. They rarely had any visitors under the age of sixty, red, blonde or brunette.
‘And just how have you been “helping”?’ Eddy asked.
Eddy knew the trouble his wife could cause when she ‘helped’. It was time to hand this over to the professionals. ‘You’d better ring and tell her then.’ He got out the phone book, put on his glasses and started looking under the Vs.
Mrs Levack took out the card that she always kept close to her person. ‘Actually, Eddy, I’ve got the number.’
He handed her the phone. She tapped out the numbers. ‘Hello? I say, hello? It’s Mrs Levack. Are you there, Ms Valentine?’ She winced as she got a beep in her ear. Then there was silence.
‘You think she’d have the courtesy to say something,’ Mrs Levack said to her husband.
‘It was probably one of those answering machines.’
‘It sounded suspiciously like a human being,’ Mrs Levack remarked. She tried again and the same thing happened.
‘You’ve left your name. Stop bothering her, she’ll call back if she’s interested.’
‘But she doesn’t have our number.’
‘She seemed to find our address without any trouble.’
Eddy took a pile of library books out of his bag and handed her the one on top: Exercise for Dummies. He’d remembered. He was a thoughtful husband.
‘Thanks, Eddy, you’re a gem.’
He accepted a small peck on the cheek. ‘Well, the kettle’s boiled,’ he said. ‘We may as well have a cup of tea.’
Eddy kept a watchful eye on both the letter and his wife for the rest of the day. They read their books, they watched TV. Several times Mrs Levack interrupted her reading and her viewing to glance at the letter, propped tantalisingly against the toaster. But every time she started to get up to go to the kitchen, Eddy said, ‘Cup of tea, dear? I’ll make it.’ They had many cups of tea that day.
Soon it was time for dinner and Ms Valentine still hadn’t called. ‘She’s probably got a lot on her plate,’ said Eddy. ‘Speaking of which, you’ve hardly eaten a thing. You’re not upset, are you?’
‘No,’ Mavis said in a small voice. She toyed with a pea. ‘Would you like my chop, Eddy? I’m thinking of becoming a vegetarian.’
‘Leave it aside, you might feel like it later. She may still call, and there’s always tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Eddy.’
Mrs Levack was just removing her washing-up gloves when she heard the buzzer.
‘Miss Valentine!’
Claudia looked tired. She was still smartly dressed but her face showed signs of strain. Mrs Levack thought about offering her the spare chop, sitting in the fridge wrapped in foil, when she said: ‘You rang me, Mrs Levack. Sorry I wasn’t there to take the message personally.’
A frown manifested from the wrinkles of Mrs Levack’s forehead. ‘Your secretary seemed such a quiet girl, not very talkative at all. I asked if I could talk to you but she didn’t say anything.’
‘It’s my Ansafone, Mrs Levack. You just leave messages on it. Like a tape recorder.’ She ran her hand over her brow.
Eddy put the newspaper down on the coffee table. ‘I told her it was one of them answering services, but she insisted someone had spoken to her. Sometimes I think Mavis lives in another century.’
Ms Valentine gave Eddy a wan smile, then turned to his wife: ‘What did you ring about, Mrs Levack?’
‘This, dear.’ Mrs Levack handed her the letter. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it, taking mail out of letter boxes, but it was sticking out. See, it’s one of them long envelopes and . . . if I knew his next of kin I would’ve given it to them, but you were the only one I could think of.’ She glossed over the fact that it had been Eddy’s idea to phone.
‘It was all I could do to stop her steaming it open,’ threw in Eddy.
Mrs Levack let Eddy’s remark pass. Even if it was true, he shouldn’t be bringing it up in front of company. ‘It might be important, dear. Aren’t you going to open it?’
Claudia Valentine, in the presence of Mavis and Eddy Levack, opened the letter and read it. To herself. You’d think after all the trouble Mrs Levack had gone to that Ms Valentine would at least share it, especially as whatever it was seemed to brighten her up no end.
‘When did you pick it up, Mrs Levack?’
‘Just today, dear. I rang you as soon as possible.’
‘Ever since you came here the first time she’s been snooping around. Thinks she’s Angela Lansbury,’ said Eddy.
But Claudia didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, in fact she was looking most pleased. ‘You’re a jewel, Mrs Levack. I don’t know how to thank you.’
Mrs Levack went all fluffy, like a little girl in her first party dress.
‘Don’t go telling her things like that,’ said the voice of reason. ‘She’ll never get her hat on the way her head’s swelling out.’
‘Oh, shut up, Eddy! Just go back to reading the paper,’ said Mrs Levack, flush with power. It was a bit strong, but if she was going to be a private investigator, she had to talk tough.
‘Claudia,’ said Mrs Levack confidentially, ‘that letter, ahem, is it important?’
‘It’s just a letter from a publisher. Would you like to read it?’
Would she like to read it? Is the Pope Polish?
Her eagle eyes moved along the lines as she read:
Dear Mark Bannister,
Thank you for sending us ‘The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’. You are a talented writer but I’m afraid this one’s not for us. There are some good touches here and there but the writing is, we think, slightly overdone and there doesn’t seem to be any plot. I am sure that you will find somebody to take it but I don’t think that we are the people.
Awaiting your further instructions re return of disk.
Yours
Nancy Grosz
‘Oh, the poor thing . . . all that writing and they didn’t want it. I knew he was a writer, though. Didn’t I say he was a writer?’
‘You thought he was a student,’ said Mr Levack. ‘It’s not the same thing.’ Mrs Levack looked breezily past him, his slings and arrows bouncing right off. ‘That girl’s been round again,’ she said knowingly, ‘looking in the letter box. That’s what gave me the idea to do it.’
‘Ha!’ snorted Mr Levack. ‘You don’t need any excuses to go through people’s mail.’
‘I didn’t even open the box, Eddy, it was sticking out the slot.’
‘Humph!’
It was time for Claudia Valentine to make an exit. She patted the letter safely in her pocket and made her way to the door. ‘I’ll be in touch, Mrs Levack, Mr Levack,’ she smiled. ‘If anything else crops up, Mrs Levack, don’t hesitate to call.’
Eddy was lying in bed chuckling to himself.
‘What?’ said Mrs Levack, putting her teeth in the glass.
‘All this cloak and dagger you’ve been going on with and you know what, Mavis? You didn’t even ask her what it was all about.’
How could she have been so obtuse? She’d been so taken up with her own little achievements she’d lost sight of the big picture.
‘You know who Harry Lavender is, don’t you?’
‘A jockey,’ she took a stab.
‘Not even close,’ said Eddy. ‘You want to be a private investigator, you’d better read the newspapers. He’s one of the Mr Bigs.’
‘You mean that chap who did the Great Train Robbery?’
‘Not Ronald Biggs,’ Eddy sighed patiently. ‘The Mr Big of crime and corruption in our fair city. Gambling, drugs, property developments.’
Mrs Levack was so impressed she put her teeth back in. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘It’s almost like meeting a film star. A brush with fame.’
‘I wouldn’t get too enthusiastic about it if I were you, Mavis. You might get more than brushed.’
Mrs Levack hadn’t even thought about her own personal safety. She had been investigating the case and she hadn’t been killed yet, it’d probably be all right. Still, she’d make sure the doors were locked at night and look both ways when she crossed the road.
‘I think you’d better phone Ms Valentine and ask her what it’s all about. You might have bitten off more than you can chew.’
Mrs Levack liked chewing on big bits. ‘Do you think she’ll tell me?’
‘Why not? You’re practically her personal assistant.’
First thing in the morning, well, about ten o’clock, Mrs Levack phoned Claudia Valentine.
‘Who?’ Mrs Levack heard on the other end.
‘Mavis Levack,’ she repeated, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.
‘Sorry, I’ve had hardly any sleep.’
Mrs Levak thought she could detect the faint odour of whisky down the telephone line. What an exciting life private investigators had, investigating all day, partying all night. ‘Good time, was it?’ Mrs Levack suggested.
Mrs Levack thought she heard Claudia groan, then take a large swig of something. ‘Claudia?’
‘What was the question?’
‘I . . . actually, Eddy and I were wondering, that is, if you could tell us what happened, you know . . . about the death of young Mark Bannister.’
Another swig, then an indrawn breath. ‘Mark Bannister was writing the bestseller of the century and became the victim of a murder so perfect that someone smelled a rat . . . And wanted it caught.’
‘How was Harry Lavender involved?’
‘How wasn’t he involved? You can read all about it in the afternoon paper.’*
‘Ahem, if you don’t mind me asking, do I get a mention?’
‘A mention? No. But then neither do I. Believe me, it’s better that way. I have to go now. I’m very, very tired.’
Eddy had hardly walked in the door before his wife snatched the paper out of his hands. There it was, the whole story, right on the front page. Mrs Levack devoured it almost in one go, so eager was she.
‘Heavens above,’ she exclaimed. ‘And to think we were involved in it, that we played a part in solving the mystery. Won’t we have something to tell them down at the bowls club, eh, Eddy?’
‘Might be better to stay quiet about it. I’m sure he has henchmen looking out for people who can’t keep their mouths shut.’
Perhaps Eddy was right. Mavis might mention it to Freda, but she knew Freda was like Fort Knox when it came to keeping secrets. She more or less had to be, because Mavis had a few of Freda’s secrets tucked up her sleeve.
Mrs Levack went to her viewing spot and looked across to the flat. For the first time in weeks the curtains were open. She could see movement. She picked up the binoculars. A young couple, standing right at the window in passionate embrace.
‘For Gawd’s sake, Mavis, enough’s enough. What do you think you’re doing?’
‘A bit of quiet, please, Eddy. I’m working on my next case.’
*For the full explanation, see The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, published by Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988.