‘Sounds just like a gun going off,’ joked Mrs Levack as Eddy popped the cork on the second bottle of Cockatoo Ridge Brut. Their celebratory dinner was over and for once in her life Mrs Levack was leaving the dirty plates on the table. They could wait. It wasn’t every day you celebrated your fortieth wedding anniversary.
‘Well at least no-one can say it was a shotgun wedding, Mavis.’ Eddy laughed loudly. He was in a jocular mood, which is just where Mrs Levack wanted him. They’d had drinks down at the club with Freda and Bill and the others. They’d come back and exchanged gifts—a new bowl for Eddy, a Black and Decker drill for Mrs Levack—and had a nice roast dinner. Just one more small thing and Mrs Levack’s evening would be complete.
‘I happened to be tidying up today and you know what?’
‘What?’ said Eddy, which is what anyone would say.
‘You know that drawer you always keep locked?’
Of course he knew the drawer. ‘Which drawer would that be, dear?’ he asked.
He was using that innocent tone on her but she wasn’t going to be put off. ‘In the cupboard in the spare room. I know what’s private’s private, but there seemed to be a piece of paper poking out the back of it. I thought it best to retrieve it. We don’t want your important papers going astray, do we?’
Mrs Levack was taking a bit of a punt. Eddy had always maintained there was nothing important in that drawer. If it was ‘nothing important’, why keep it locked? Eddy’s explanation was that in a relationship people should keep some things back, that as well as sharing you needed to be your own person. Sounded to Mrs Levack as if Eddy had been watching too much Oprah Winfrey.
What she had found written on that paper looked very important, and rather disturbing as well.
‘I fail to see how a piece of paper could have escaped unless someone was tampering with it. Want a refill, dear?’
She got the drift of his insinuation but as there was an element of truth in it, Mrs Levack could hardly protest. ‘I was only guessing. It might not be from that drawer at all. You’d be the best judge of that.’
Mrs Levack cleared her throat. ‘See if this rings a bell—“Goodbye, Syl. And thank you for all you have done. 7pm 5/1/40 . . . It seems useless enduring further pain”.’ She went back to her normal voice. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but were you thinking of topping yourself back in 1940?’
Eddy started chewing on a morsel of meat that was caught in his back teeth, as if the action might serve to jolt the memory. At their age anything that jolted the memory had to be considered a bonus. ‘Give us a look at that piece of paper,’ he said.
Mrs Levack reached into the pocket of her polyester/cotton blend slacks. She remembered a previous girlfriend or two, but the only Syl that came to mind was Sylvester Stallone. ‘If I give you back the paper will you tell me about it, Eddy? Was it a young love that went awry? Did you write the note and change your mind?’ A wife had the right to know these things.
‘It’s a complete mystery to me.’
Mrs Levack brought the piece of paper out of her pocket and hesitated before passing it over. Eddy reached for it but Mrs Levack deftly moved it away. ‘Promise?’ she persisted.
‘Mavis,’ Eddy assured her, ‘if it all comes flooding back to me, you’ll be the first to know.’
Mrs Levack handed the paper over as if serving him a delicate morsel. She watched his face change. The piece of paper seemed to do for Eddy what the madeleine had done for Proust. Mrs Levack had never read any Proust but she had seen a recipe for madeleines in Woman’s Day once.
‘Well?’
‘It’s a suicide note but it’s not mine,’ he murmured.
‘But it’s in your handwriting.’
‘I wrote down verbatim what the cops told me. It was in the days before photocopiers.’
‘Whose note is it, then?’
‘Bloke called Greg Vaughan.’
‘Was he a good friend?’ asked Mrs Levack sympathetically.
‘I didn’t even know him.’
‘Then how come . . . ?’
‘It’s a long story, Mavis. From long ago. I suppose there’s no harm telling it now,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Are we missing anything on the TV?’
Mrs Levack had a quick squiz through the program. The Bill was on but they could miss that for once. She might never get another chance of finding out why her husband had the suicide note of a complete stranger locked away in a drawer. ‘No,’ she said.
He reached over and took her hand. ‘Are you comfortable, Mavis?’ Eddy was mellowing just right. Mrs Levack poured him another glass of mood enhancer.
‘Yes, thank you, Eddy.’
‘Well, fasten your seatbelt.’
Eddy took a long draught of champagne. ‘It all began when a big shark ate a little shark. Remember that, Mavis, it’s the motif of the story—big fish eat little fish.
‘I suppose I’d better start when I got involved, back in 1954. As you might recall, I was working on the trams at the time, the Balmain run. I used to have a drink over there when I’d finished my shift. You get to know the regulars—bit of a nod here, comment on the weather there—sometimes strike up a conversation.
‘Remember the time Dad nearly drowned? Silly old bugger, going out fishing by himself on the harbour. Couldn’t swim to save his life.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Levack. ‘We hadn’t been married long. Gave your mother a real fright.’
‘And me,’ added Eddy. ‘I was in the pub with this bloke Ray—Ray Smith, an engineer by trade. Ray could see something was up. He commented on the fact that I was drinking whisky instead of my usual. I told him why. Ray went quiet for a moment—in fact I wondered if I’d said something wrong. He sat up suddenly, as if he’d been away somewhere else. “Sorry,” he said, “it reminded me of my own father.” “He drown?” I asked. He looked away from me, just staring into nothing. After a while he said, “I don’t know”.’
Eddy put his glass down. He knew how to make a pause work in a story. Mrs Levack sat there looking at him as if she were watching TV—glued, but wishing he’d get on with it.
Eddy resumed. ‘It was as if he had a lot of bits and pieces but wasn’t quite sure how they fitted together. It happened in 1935. Ray said his father had gone away on a fishing trip. He said “fishing” in a funny way, as if there was more to it. He told me there’d been foul play. They thought his father had been murdered but they never found a body. Only an arm. And that was a fluke. A couple of fishermen caught a shark that had swallowed an arm. The arm had a tattoo of two boxers on it, so it was pretty easy to identify.’
Mrs Levack could hardly contain herself. ‘Eddy,’ she said in tones of hushed excitement, ‘it’s the Shark Arm Case, isn’t it! I saw that shark—I was only about five, mind you. Mum took me down to Coogee Aquarium. I wanted to wear my best shoes, the dainty little ones with the straps, but Mum wouldn’t let me—’ she gabbled on.
‘You saw the shark disgorge the arm?’ interrupted Eddy, incredulously.
‘No, that happened a couple of days later. Mum read it in the paper. I remember all the hoo-ha. I snuck a look at the paper later. There was a picture of the arm with the boxers on it. I’d never seen an unattached arm before,’ said Mrs Levack with a certain amount of macabre delight.
‘For a kid of five you certainly took in a lot of detail,’ commented Eddy drily.
‘I’ve always had sharp powers of observation, even as a child,’ said Mrs Levack proudly.
‘Then you must know all about it, about Holmes getting shot and everything,’ said Eddy in a huff. ‘I needn’t say another word.’
Oh no, thought Mrs Levack, I’m losing him. She had to get him back on track. ‘I was only five, Eddy, I couldn’t read, only look at the pictures. I don’t remember about anyone getting shot. I probably didn’t even understand what getting shot was. There was no TV in those days. Please go on, I’m sorry for interrupting,’ she said plaintively. She poured some more champagne into his glass as a gesture of reconciliation.
Eddy shifted in his chair, waited for the bubbles to settle. Mavis still didn’t know how to pour champagne without it all frothing over the sides. ‘I wanted to surprise you, Mavis. There was a reward offered—a thousand pounds. I said to Ray if he told me everything he knew, maybe I could do a little investigating. We’d split the reward money. You know what I wanted to do with my share? Take you on a luxury trip to Tasmania, for a start. Five hundred quid was worth a lot in those days.’
Mrs Levack’s heart leapt at Eddy’s generosity. She wanted to give him a big hug and a kiss but was afraid that might put him off again.
‘Ray was only eighteen when it happened. His mother wanted him to leave it be. He never stopped wondering about it, though.
‘He told me his father had got a phone call to go fishing. When he wasn’t back after a few days Ray’s mother rang Greg Vaughan, who he was supposed to go fishing with. Ray remembered exactly what Greg said to his mother. He said . . .’ Eddy started stroking his chin, lost in thought.
What, thought Mrs Levack, what? Come on, Eddy, this is no time to lose the thread.
‘He said . . .’ Eddy stopped again. ‘Look, Mavis, I think it’s only fair to Ray to give it to you in his words. I won’t be a minute.’ Eddy heaved himself up off the chair and went into the spare room.
It had to be the locked drawer. Eddy was going to the locked drawer! Mrs Levack hardly dared breathe. One false move on her part and Eddy would clam up and the drawer would remain locked forever.
After a little while Eddy returned. ‘You look a little flushed, Mavis,’ he remarked. ‘You haven’t been holding your breath again, have you?’
‘Must be the champagne,’ she said, letting the air out in a rush. ‘I feel fine. Honestly.’
‘I wrote down what he said word for word.’ He offered her a couple of sheets of yellowing paper. ‘You’re not the only one with sharp powers of observation.’
Mrs Levack read Ray’s story:
When he wasn’t back after a few days my mother rang Greg Vaughan, who he was supposed to go fishing with. Greg said to Mum, ‘He wasn’t going fishing with me but Jimmy did come here before he went to Cronulla. He said he was taking a boat or something to Cronulla.’ Mum had already got a phone message saying he wouldn’t be home till Monday. That was on Saturday, 12th April. Mum had last seen him on the 8th.
On Anzac Day, just before dinner time, the shark at the Aquarium disgorged Dad’s arm. My uncle read about the boxers tattoo in the paper and said it must be Dad. You can imagine how we all felt. The police looked for the rest of the body at Port Hacking but found nothing. They reckoned the body must have been hacked up and put in a trunk—there wasn’t room for the arm so they attached it to the trunk with a rope.
Mrs Levack looked up. ‘Not very pleasant, is it?’ remarked Eddy. ‘It wasn’t easy for him to tell me all this. He faltered once or twice, especially when he got to the bit about the trunk.’
‘Actually, I was trying to picture it,’ said Mrs Levack. ‘Would it have looked like he was carrying the trunk under his arm or holding it in his hand like a schoolcase?’
Eddy sat there flabbergasted, not believing what he’d heard. ‘It’s nothing to joke about, woman. If you can’t treat Ray’s dad with a bit of respect I don’t think you should be reading his story.’ He reached over to retrieve it.
‘No, Eddy, it’s not like that,’ protested Mrs Levack. ‘I wouldn’t make jokes about those who are no longer with us. I was just trying to understand exactly what had happened. Can you pour me another little champagne, please, dear?’
Eddy finally obliged, pouring himself a glass as well.
With the storm in a teacup abated, Mrs Levack resumed reading:
A week later I get a note—‘Son, keep your mother quiet. I am in a jam. I plead it’s OK. Call the cops off. Tell your Mum I will have plenty and we will be alright. They want me. Something in town. Never mind, be a man for me.
your loving father
Jim Smith
destroy this
dated 1–5–35’
I showed it to the police. They reckon Brady forged it, so they trace him to a flat in Kirribilli and arrest him. The rest is history.
That was the end of Ray’s story.
But it wasn’t nearly enough. Mrs Levack wanted to know who Brady was for a start, and Ray’s story hadn’t mentioned the other chap, Holmes. She wanted more. She looked at Eddy, trying to gauge how he would react. It wasn’t just the murder mystery that set her nose a-quivering, it was the fact that finally she was getting an inkling of what was in the drawer. Could she go the whole way?
‘Eddy,’ she said as meekly as possible, and avoiding all reference to the drawer, ‘if you have any other information about all this, perhaps I could have a little look. You know, just to get a bit of background.’ She smiled her very best smile at him.
Eddy smiled back, a little the worse for wear but full of bonhomie. The champagne had finally worked its miracle. ‘OK, Mavis, you win. You can have the lot. I never did take you on that trip to Tasmania. As consolation prize you can have the drawer. Lock, stock and barrel.’
Once again he got up and went into the spare room, closing the door behind him. Mrs Levack thrilled at the momentousness of the occasion. She didn’t give two hoots about missing out on Tasmania. Tonight she was finally going to be privy to the contents of the drawer. It was all she could do not to go to the door and peep in. But no, she restrained herself. There had to be trust in a relationship.
Despite the thrill of the occasion, Mrs Levack felt a bit miffed that all those years ago Eddy had been carrying out investigations. After all, she was the one who was good at that kind of thing, she could have helped him. They could have been like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. Heavens above, over the years they’d probably put the drinking time into it already.
Eddy emerged from the spare room carrying the drawer. It was full of notes, newspaper clippings, a brochure from the Tasmanian Tourist Bureau, all showing signs of age. ‘Here it is, Mavis,’ he said, banging it down in front of her. ‘The drawer. Happy anniversary.’
Mrs Levack’s eyes were shiny with bliss. ‘Thank you, Eddy. It’s as nice a present as the Black and Decker.’
Then she got down to business. She read of Holmes, the star witness who’d been shot dead in his car; of Brady, the forger, who was James Smith’s mate, of James Smith himself. Occasionally she made comments—how handsome Clive Evatt was as a young man, how clever of him to get Brady off by saying the charge couldn’t be murder if there was no body. She followed the path of Brady, wanted for forgery in Tasmania, back to New South Wales under an alias, to Cronulla where he rented a cottage, ‘Cored Joy’ (probably some sort of code; who’d ever name a house ‘Cored Joy’?) where he and James Smith would meet.
‘You know what I think?’ She ploughed straight in now that she’d been given full rein. ‘I think Mr Brady had a crush on Mr Smith. You must admit that Mr Smith was a rather handsome man—tall, well-built and everything. They had a tryst down at Cored Joy. There was an argument and Brady went berserk with the knife. Just look at that photo—a shady-looking character if ever I saw one. I mean, can you really trust a man who wears a bow tie?’
‘You can’t hang a man on the strength of a bow tie,’ Eddy pointed out. ‘Brady would’ve come off the worst in any fisticuffs. Smith was a boxer, over six foot tall, whereas Brady was only five foot five and not all that fit.’ Eddy scratched his elbow and continued. ‘Besides, you’re forgetting the other blokes.’ He lay their names out like cards on a table. ‘Remember what I said about big fish and little fish? I reckon there was a bigger fish behind these tiddlers.
‘The year before, 1934, Holmes’s boat, The Pathfinder, had been used in a drug smuggling operation. A bloke known as The Director was in charge. The yacht went out to sea about eight miles off Norah Head and hove to. A little time before dawn a Japanese ship came by and dropped something. The Director ordered a dinghy to be lowered. He got into it and picked up a package wrapped in rubberised cloth.
‘What they fished for on those fishing trips was drugs. Smith scuttled the yacht for Holmes—an insurance job—but the smuggling continued. When Smith told his wife he was going on a fishing trip, they weren’t fishing for barramundi. When Smith’s arm turned up, the others knew what had happened, that he’d been killed and tossed overboard.
‘The pressure got to Holmes—he became a loose cannon careering round the harbour with a gunshot wound to the head, the police after him. He had to be got rid of. So someone arranged that fateful rendezvous at Dawes Point. Brady was smart, he knew if he stepped out of line he’d be next.’
‘So who did it?’ asked Mrs Levack.
‘One of the Mr Bigs of the drug trade back then. You ever heard of Phil Jeffs? Phil the Jew?’
‘I know that name. He ran Oyster Bill’s club down at Tom Ugly’s bridge. A fine lot of carry-on went on there,’ said Mrs Levack with a slight amount of disapproval.
‘You never went to that club, did you, Mavis?’
‘Certainly not! But I heard.’
Eddy continued his line of pursuit. ‘Phil the Jew’s name was mentioned briefly in association with the Shark Arm Case, but then we never heard any more about him. He was in with the cops, he could have paid to stop the “loose rumours”.’
‘What happened to Greg Vaughan?’ asked Mrs Levack tenderly. She felt rather kindly towards Mr Vaughan. His suicide note was the loose thread that had unravelled the whole story, the key that had unlocked the drawer.
‘He lasted five years but couldn’t take the pressure. In January 1940 he checked into a Kings Cross residential and took an overdose of pills. He’d been taking narcotics for years. You know the name he registered under? Jones. Now don’t tell me that had no connection to Smith.’
‘Or someone made it look like suicide,’ suggested Mrs Levack.
Eddy was quiet for a while, then he said, ‘Maybe you’re right. It would have been much simpler if it had ended there. I told you why I started to investigate the case. I didn’t tell you why I stopped.’ Eddy looked away, as if he were somehow ashamed.
‘Ray was going to give me a loan of his car to go down and have a look at Cored Joy. It was December 1954. We come out of the pub, he hands me the keys and the next thing, up goes the car. Gelignite. I can tell you it sure put the wind up me. I could have been in the car. You would have been a widow, Mavis. You wouldn’t have got much as the widow of a tram driver. I couldn’t leave you like that.’ Eddy sighed. It looked very much to Mrs Levack like he had tears in his eyes. ‘So I locked it all away. For me it was case closed.’
Mrs Levack stroked her husband’s hand. ‘It’s all right, Eddy,’ she comforted him. ‘You did the right thing.’
Then she remembered something. ‘Phil the Jew died in 1945, Eddy. Couldn’t have been him that bombed the car.’
‘Well . . . well,’ said Eddy, ‘maybe it was one of his associates—Perc Galea or Sid Kelly.’
Mrs Levack was shocked. ‘Perc would never have done a thing like that! I think it was Brady all the time. He survived Vaughan, he survived Holmes, he even survived Phil the Jew. When you and Ray started snooping round twenty years later, he organised a little warning. Like I said, you can’t trust a man who wears a bow tie, can you?’