Quattrini’s house was in fact a mansion, with a wide veranda and all sorts of wooden fretwork and design of the sort coming to be known as ‘gingerbread’ – rare, as yet, in Victoria, but apparently coming into fashion in San Francisco. The bell was answered by a servant in a mob cap and apron, no more than a girl, of perhaps sixteen, dark haired and pale cheeked. She opened the door only a few inches and told me there was no one at home.
‘Are you Ellen? You’re the one I’d like to talk to.’
She opened the door more fully and her eyes widened as she took in the fact that I was a policeman. ‘Is it about poor Kathleen?’, she said, pronouncing it almost as ‘Catchleen’, in a lilting, almost Scottish accent. She raised a pocket handkerchief, already in her hand, to her face and wiped her eyes. When she took it away it was clear she had been crying a lot. Her eyes were bloodshot.
‘May I come in?’ I entered the house past the girl. Standing in the hallway, I said ‘I’d like to see Kathleen’s room please. Can you show it to me?’
‘We shared a room, Sir. I’d be too ashamed to let you see it. It’s up in the top of the house, and of course it’s full of our things. It wouldn’t be right.’
I had become used to Victoria’s free and easy lack of procedural restrictions. I could insist on seeing the room right away and barge up there and ransack it if I wished. But I agreed, it would not be right.
‘Could we go and sit down then? So that I can ask you a few questions?’
‘Yes, Sir’. Looking frightened, Ellen led the way back along the hall to a huge kitchen, where there was a mass of freshly washed dishes set to dry in racks near a double sink. She asked me to sit down at the table on which were carrots and celery she had been peeling and slicing.
‘When did you hear of Kathleen’s death?’ I asked.
‘Just now, at lunch time. When Pino came he told me.’
‘Pino?’
‘Mr Quattrini’s son. He sometimes comes home for luncheon.’ Ellen blushed, then raised her handkerchief to her eyes.
‘Didn’t you miss her in the morning? Or in the middle of the night?’
‘Indeed I did. When I awoke this morning she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she’d gone downstairs early. But she wasn’t here either.’
‘Did Mr Quattrini notice she wasn’t here?’
‘Him? No. He’s in such a hurry to get to work in the morning he’d not notice anything.’
‘And what did you think when she didn’t come back later in the morning?’
‘Nothing. I never know what to think about anything.’ This remark sounded plaintive.
‘Was anything missing from your room?’
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘All her clothes are there?’
‘Yes. Pino said she had her pink dress on, that she was wearing yesterday. He saw her at the warehouse. He said she was all blue and puffed up. It’s horrible.’ Ellen wiped her eyes again, and let out a little sob, then surprisingly broke into an abrupt wailing sound – ‘Ochone, Och a Chatchleen, mo vrone, mo vrone!’ Or at least that is how I transcribe it. She paused and looked at me, wiping her tears. ‘I’ve seen drownded people’, she said. ‘At home in Ireland. I never dreamed Katchleen would end up like that.’
‘Are you from the same place in Ireland?’
‘Och yes. Derrybeg – the Bloody Foreland, they call it. And aren’t we cousins?’
‘And is she what you’d call a good girl?’ I asked, feeling I must be sounding like Father McMahon.
Ellen looked at me in indignation. ‘Of course she was a good girl. None better. Guh mannee jeea air an anam.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘May God’s blessings be on her soul.’
‘How about her stays?’ I was suddenly fed up with getting nowhere.
‘What?’ Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know that? They’re up in the room, on the chair.
‘She wasn’t wearing them. That’s how I know.’
‘Did you see her undressed?’ She looked at me in horror.
‘No. The doctor mentioned it to me. Did it strike you as odd that she should get dressed and leave her stays behind?’
Ellen now blushed hotly which, since the rest of her face was pale, gave a patchy clown-like appearance to her cheeks. She looked at the table. ‘Not really’, she muttered.
‘How could she get dressed in the middle of the night and leave the room without you noticing?’
She continued looking at the table, saying nothing.
‘You did notice it!’
‘I was half asleep and I heard her getting up, but I didn’t open my eyes. It’s best not to notice things like that.’
‘Why?’
There was no reply.
‘Did you know any of Kathleen’s secrets? After all, you were cousins.’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t tell them’, she said vehemently.
‘It seems she may have drowned herself. Do you think she did?
Ellen sighed. ‘She might have done.’ She began crying again.
‘Why, Ellen?’
‘I can’t say, Sir.’
‘Wouldn’t she want you to?’
‘No, she wouldn’t. She said to me once: ‘Aileen my girl, as you grow older you’ll learn not to cry about your sorrows. You’ll learn to take them into yourself and no one will ever know.’
‘Did she say that recently?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘So she was suffering from a sorrow. And you knew what it was.’
‘She never told me.’
‘Ellen – or is it Aileen? – I can see that you’re very upset and you don’t like to let down your friend. But if you think she has been badly done by, you should let me know. When a person commits suicide, we have to understand why. I believe you when you say Kathleen told you no secrets. But I think you must have guessed some of them, and I know you’re hiding something.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘Because when you mentioned Pino, and when I mentioned Kathleen’s getting dressed without her stays, you blushed.’
‘Well, about the stays I would, wouldn’t I? It’s not right for a gentleman to ask such things.’
‘And Pino?’
‘I hate Pino’, she said, scrunching her handkerchief into a tight ball and squeezing it. ‘If I let him do what he wanted I’d be in the same fix as her! I’d be lying dead upon the shore, so I would. Like father, like son!’
‘You mean Mr Quattrini had relations with Kathleen?
‘Of course! The beast. She would go down and visit him at night. I knew it, though she would say it was for a walk in the back yard. Even when it was raining. I knew it! So this morning at first I thought she must still be lying in the bed of the pig, having slept in. Then I remembered she couldn’t have been.’
‘You mean she was having her monthly?’
‘You know that too! Well, of course. And very happy she was to have it, too. She had waited, I guess, three months for it, and then when it came she weren’t half relieved. But it lasted over three weeks, by my count. I guess it was one week for each missed month.’
‘How long had she been having this relation with Mr Quattrini?’
‘Coming on a year. Mrs Quattrini died not long before that.’
‘And it was a reluctant relation on her part?’
‘She never liked him! Sometimes she’d feign sick. Many a night she’d complain, in the old bull’s – pardon me Sir – in Mr Quattrini’s hearing, like: “Oh dear, Ellen, I believe I have a headache tonight – will you smoke that old Dudeen in my ear?” It’s a custom we have, if a person has a headache or a cold, of blowing pipe-smoke hot into the ear. Mr Quattrini didn’t like that, he thought it stupid, so he did. Maybe it put the old bull off his pleasures. Her heart was really with her young man.’
‘Who was that?’
‘She’d never tell me. Only she said he was a lovely young man, and quite the gentleman. When she had the day off – which wasn’t often, let me tell you – she’d dress up like the dickens and off she’d go to see him, like as if she was going courting. But she would never tell me his name.’
‘Did you ever see her locket?’
‘Of course. Why, you know everything, don’t you?’ Ellen seemed by now quite perked up with talking. ‘She kept his picture in it. But danged if she ever let me see it.’
‘Didn’t she worry about being gotten with child?’
‘You didn’t know her! She was gay and lively, like. Only when her monthlies were late she grew thin with worry. Then she went away for the night, with Mr Quattrini’s permission, would you believe it, to stay with a friend. Not a friend I knew of! And whether it was the travelling, or what, the next day her monthly came, and I guess because it had been backed up so long it kinda wore her out and she was more miserable than before.’
I felt somewhat confused by all this, and I realised that Ellen’s knowledge of female physiology was not necessarily more detailed than my own.
As if to confirm this, she went on: ‘That’s why I get upset when Pino … when he wants to do that. You know what I mean. I’m afraid I’ll catch a child, and then what would I do? Do you think it’s enough to sit on the pot and cough?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Me mother – God bless her soul – always said that if a woman got up out of the bed after her husband had done that, and went and sat on the pot and gave a few hard coughs, that would take care of it. But she had seven of us, and she would have had more if her insides hadn’t dropped out.’
‘I doubt if the method works’, I said. ‘Listen to me. If you don’t want this Pino to keep interfering with you, you must tell him so. And if he doesn’t stop, you must seek another job. There’s a shortage of maids in Victoria. You must know that. You’d have no difficulty at all finding employment.’
‘But not in a good Catholic household like this!’
To this I had no answer. I stayed for a while, telling Ellen that Quattrini would never dare treat her badly, knowing the police now knew the whole story, and assuring her that Kathleen must not have suffered much – which I did not believe.
* * *
I wanted to confront Quattrini, to reverse in righteous accusation the positions we now held – of dominating Quattrini, inoffensive Chad Hobbes. But to do this I would need to know more. I had a hypothesis I could try on Dr Powell. But I felt more inclined to receive knowledge from the horse’s mouth, as it were. I went to the Windsor Rooms, which were empty except for a janitor scrubbing the floors, and asked for Sylvie. Since I was in uniform I had no difficulty in being directed to a shabby rooming house just around the corner, the Exelsior. My ring was answered by a woman with a scarf over her curlers, who showed me into a seedy parlour with tattered armchairs and settees, where I waited for a few minutes. There was a smell of stale cigar smoke and the ash trays had not been emptied. There was an abundance of worn velvet in the upholstery. Perhaps in the dim lamplight of after dark, to men at least half inebriated, the parlour would convey sufficient elegance.
Sylvie entered, more than presentable in a canary yellow dress with a black shawl. She was rouged and eye-shadowed as if ready for the Windsor Rooms, although it was still afternoon. She held out her hand, palm downward, as if I might kiss it. I took it, held it for a moment, and let it go. She laughed, as if to let me know that her gesture had been deliberately facetious. ‘To what do I owe the honour of a visit so soon?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid I have to ask questions. Your advice, really. You were so helpful last night, and frankly I’m naïve about certain matters. I need to catch up on some facts.’
She motioned me to the settee and sat down beside me, though not too close, pouting in a deliberate way. ‘It’s not a private visit then’, she said.
‘I’m afraid not. I’m sorry to impose on you, but if there’s any way I can repay you another time, I shall. I’m now investigating the case of a young lady who seems to have drowned herself this morning.’
‘Yes, it is all over town I believe. Pulled out of the water with a starfish on her face. A servant girl, I was told. In the family way?’
‘One might suppose so, but apparently not. Can you please tell me about such things from a woman’s point of view? I’ve looked in textbooks of physiology and medicine for information, but there is none, or it avoids the point.’ I was thinking of the Medical Physiology I had taken from McCrory’s. ‘What can a woman who has relations with men do to avoid becoming “in the family way”, as you put it.’
‘You mean what do we do as a contraceptic? Different girls have different ways. A “douche” of strong vinegar is the best. Some use a sponge – soaked in vinegar, or lemon juice, or quinine. Then some girls can sense when they are ready to “catch” – by a twinge in their back or stomach when they are half way between their monthlies – and they abstain at that time. There’s an area where you find rubbish in the medical books and from the doctors! One girl showed me a book she had got hold of, by a doctor called Scales, supposed to be the most prominent medical man in the States, who said that the safest time was exactly between the monthlies! I’m sure a lot of women have been “caught” by that advice. Then, of course, if a girl feels she has caught, even before waiting for the missed monthly, she’ll take quinine to bring it on – which it sometimes does. And after that there’s always a hot bath and plenty of gin. Then there are ways of bearing down, to force a monthly on. And if all else fails, and a little “by-blow”, as we call it, must come to light, then there’s the baby farm. There are several here in town. If you care for your child, you pay for it to live, month by month. If not, you let it take its chances. Is that enough for you, Sergeant? I think I see you looking a little green. I could tell you worse things – of girls rolling down stairs and breaking bones…’
‘In truth it’s a subject I know little of. But I want to ask you about one more thing: abortion, by a specialist in that line.’
‘That’s a delicate subject, Sergeant, since it’s against the law.’
‘Can such an abortion be procured in Victoria?’
‘Of course. But I could never tell you where. It’s not a fair question.’
‘Can you tell me – from hearsay perhaps – what the after effects of such an operation are?’
‘Tiredness. Melancholia. An infection if it’s not done properly.’
‘Bleeding?’
‘Like a stuck pig, as they say.’
‘For some time?’
‘Several weeks.’
‘Thank you. I think that’s what I wanted to know.’
‘Was she bleeding, the drowned girl?’
‘I shouldn’t say, because it hasn’t been made public. But your guess is a good one. I’d like to know who does such things, though – I mean abortions.’
‘I can’t say. But look, Sergeant Hobbes.’ She moved closer and put her hand on my knee. ‘I like you well enough, and I know you don’t look down on us girls – I don’t know why. Is it that your lady friend is one of us? But that doesn’t fit. Anyway, since I know you’re interested in the carrot-haired mad-doctor, and since he’s dead and out of the way now, I’ll tell you: he did some work in that line.’
‘All roads lead to that man!’ I could not help exclaiming. I fell silent. It all came together in my mind. I remembered the scraping tools among McCrory’s surgical scalpels. ‘With ladies from the Windsor Rooms?’ I asked.
‘No names, now. And certainly not I. But for one or two I know he did.’
I took Sylvie’s hand and lifted it off my knee but again held it for a moment before letting it go.
‘What do you and your friends think about McCrory’s death?’ I said.
‘Well, it looks as though the Indian did it, doesn’t it? But some of the girls say a man like McCrory could have been killed by anybody. He knew so many secrets. Yet I find it hard to believe he was a blackmailer. Once he started on that his whole life would have failed: it was built on his guarantee of absolute confidence. And though he would talk to us girls, he would never speak of his patients. His profession was like ours.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘We must also provide complete confidence. We too know many secrets. And a girl who tried blackmail would be swiftly ruined. She would lose all her friends and nobody would go near her.’
‘You express it very clearly.’
‘I was a school teacher once – in California. Then something happened to put me into this life. I’m not complaining. But when a girl becomes tired of it, she begins to slip down the scale. You see, to “dance” in a high class place like the Rooms, a girl must enjoy it. If she no longer does, she soon ends up on the street. But I’m putting by some savings, and I shall retire soon, and return to California. This will merely have been a gay episode in my life. And you Sergeant? You look less happy than the other night. Troubles with your “amour”?’
‘I pulled the drowned girl out of the harbour.’ But I knew that, in itself, was not the origin of my ‘tum tum’ sickness.
‘Never worry, she’ll be happier where she is now’, Sylvie said.
I got up. ‘Again I have to thank you’, I said. ‘If you should ever need me to speak up for you, I shall.’
‘If something should go wrong with your “amour”, come and see me.’
‘Thank you.’
The appropriate way to take leave of Sylvie was apparently with a kiss on the rouged cheek which she was turning towards me. Again she smelled strongly of a heavy floral scent. I preferred the wood-smoke of Lukswaas’s hair. But I liked Sylvie.
* * *
It is true, I don’t look down on those girls. I don’t mind what they do. Could I fall in love with someone like Sylvie? Perhaps. Could I sleep with her night after night knowing how many men had possessed her? I don’t think so. But I’ve never slept with any woman night after night. Is it because of my mother? If I despised a woman for making love with more than one man I would have to despise my own mother. Was my mother – is my mother – a whore? Not for an instant. She had her own reasons. Sylvie has her own reasons. I like her.
* * *
I returned briefly to the court house where I sat down in my bedroom and carefully opened the locket again. The glass had dried and become transparent. Behind it the photograph had faded slightly, perhaps from the water, but its browns and whites were clear enough to show the face of a candid-looking young man in an Oxford boater. Frederick. This was what I had feared, since seeing the boater through the misted glass. The lock of hair, now dry, light brown with golden streaks, was Frederick’s.
I decided to finish with the business of the drowned girl before the day was over. I put the locket back in its envelope and in my tunic pocket. I walked to the warehouse and asked to see Quattrini. The scene was at first like a repetition of our other interviews. The clerk was shooed out of the room, and Quattrini sat down overpoweringly close to me. He pulled out his watch and looked at it. ‘I hope this is important, my lad’, he said affably. ‘I’m a very busy man.’ He was certainly his usual self. But I recalled the anguished yell when the corpse had been pulled out of the water. I had decided that since the autopsy report was not yet ready the only way to shake Quattrini was through bluff.
‘Your servant, Kathleen Donnelly, had had an abortion. What’s more we know she obtained it from Dr McCrory.’
Quattrini looked startled, but quickly said, ‘Dio mio! Who’d have thought it? A nice Irish church-going girl like her.’
‘Please Mr Quattrini. We’re talking about a criminal matter – the murder of an unborn child. Why not be open with me? You can see, I’m not taking this down in my notebook, and no charges have been laid – yet. If you insist on providing no explanation, I shall make your life very difficult by calling in your other servant, Ellen, your son Giuseppino, and yourself, for questioning at the courthouse. I suggest you provide some explanation – especially since the man who performed the abortion has since been the victim of a murder which is under investigation.’
In fact I knew that if I wrote in my report about the dead Kathleen something like: ‘suspected she was mentally deranged after a surgical abortion by Dr McCrory (now deceased)’ – the police, even under the direction of Pemberton, a man of probity if there ever was, would almost certainly ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’
But Quattrini was looking at me in a stunned way, the blustering gone out of him. ‘You wouldn’t do that, my lad’, he said in a dry voice. ‘It’d ruin me. And what would Mrs Somerville think? Bella!’
‘It doesn’t need to come to her ears,’ I said, although making the mental reserve that if Quattrini had been involved in foul play it would be a different matter. ‘But I want the whole story.’
‘It’s nothin’ unusual, I guess. I got the girl in pod, and I arranged for it to be taken care of.’
‘How did you know McCrory would do such a thing?’
‘Like I said already. I knew him from the Somervilles.’
‘You said before that was the only place you knew him.’
‘Awright, awright. When Kathleen told me she was that way, I went to see McCrory at his house and I said, ‘What do I do?’ And he said he’d take care of it. So he did. That was a coupla weeks before he was killed.’
‘What did you pay?’
‘A hundred dols. Pretty steep, but what could I do?’
‘What could she do? Did she not want you to put things straight another way?’
‘By marryin’ her?’ Quattrini’s eyes bulged and he became red again. ‘A slut?’
‘Did she suggest marriage?’
‘Sure she did. She was crazy – scared to death. But when I told her I could arrange sumpn’, she calmed down. Also I said I’d give her some money.’
‘And did you?’
‘Fifty dols.’
‘Did you attempt to resume relations with her? Last night for instance?’
‘Dio mio! You been talkin’ to Ellen?’
‘Yes.’
‘She ain’t got no business…’
‘Wait a minute. If you give her any trouble over this, you’ll be in even bigger trouble. Of course Ellen answered my questions. And by the way, your son Pino is attempting to force her. Do you know about that?’
‘Christ!’ Quattrini actually jumped up from his chair and stood in front of me, puffing up as if about to explode. ‘Giuseppino! The little bastard! I’ll have his skin! I’ll send him back to Frisco!’
I think you should give Ellen her leave, with some money as compensation. In fact I expect you to do so.’
‘Awright, awright, I will. Jesus! Giuseppino! He’s only sixteen.’
‘So you attempted to resume relations with Kathleen last night?’
‘I asked her if she’d come to my room. But she said she was still bleedin’ from the surgery, and she couldn’t.’
‘Was she upset?’
‘Not that I could see. She was a great one for weepin’ and wailin’, but last night she was cold as ice.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Whaddya mean? Look, Hobbes, I’m a man, you understand? I told you that before. I got needs. I ain’t remarried. So what am I supposed to do? Am I a saint? That’s what I said to Kathleen last night. “Am I a saint?”’
‘And she said, “Yes, of course you are…” I couldn’t help myself.
‘Awright, awright. She said, “You ain’t no saint, you’re a devil.” But she didn’t mean it. She weren’t cryin’ or nothin’.’
‘Where were you on Wednesday afternoon of last week’
‘You mean when the doctor was killed? You don’t think I’d do that? Hey, come on, Hobbes.’ Quattrini, still standing, loomed over me.
I got up, taller than he. ‘In this context you should call me Sergeant’, I said. ‘Please answer my question.’
‘That’s the damned thing,’ Quattrini said, licking his lips. ‘Usually I’d be here at the warehouse, but I wasn’t. I was at home, with her – with Kathleen. I’d gone home for lunch, which I sometimes do. She was feelin’ poorly, on account of her bein’ on the rag after the surgery. She wasn’t up to doin’ housework. So I gave Ellen the day off and I stayed at home with Kathleen.’
‘Doing what?’ I was not inclined to accept that Quattrini had been acting out of loving-kindness.
‘Hell, you don’t need to know that.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I got her to give me a back rub, that sort of thing – hell, there’s lots of things a woman can do for a man. You know that, Hobbes – I mean Sergeant.’
‘So you still used the girl.’
‘She didn’t mind. Usually, like I say, she could be as cold as ice. I mean, she never really enjoyed it’, if you know what I mean. But that afternoon she was feelin’ low. She even said she wanted me to hold onto her and take care of her. Then over the followin’ days she became cold again, sort of floatin’ around, pale, like an angel, not talkin’ to no one.’
‘And now she’s dead and she can’t say you were really with her that afternoon.’
‘Sergeant.’ Quattrini seemed chastened. ‘You can’t pin that killin’ on me. Why would I do that?’
‘Perhaps he was blackmailing you. You’re a rich man.’
‘If I stay in Victoria much longer I won’t stay rich … But McCrory, a blackmailer? Never. Like I told you once before, there was sumpn’ funny about him. I figure he got close to women, not by cuddlin’ with ’em, but by helpin’ em out. Almost as if he was a woman. Hell, I never minded him doin’ the surgery on Kathleen.’
‘You might have been jealous?’
‘With another man, sure. Getting’ into her private parts? When I have a woman she’s mine.’ Quattrini had rebounded into his usual confidence. ‘But a blackmailer? No. McCrory believed in whatever he did – all those weird ideas – he was almost religious about ’em. Made me think of some priests I’ve known.’
‘Don’t you see you contributed to this girl’s ruin?’ I said, lapsing into priggishness. I tried to correct this by being more worldly. ‘Why take advantage of your servant? Why not get your needs met elsewhere? Say, in a dance hall.’
‘And throw away good money on whores? Putane? What do you take me for?’
‘So you had no quarrel with McCrory.’
‘Nope. The girl went over there one day. I sent the 100 dols with her. He kept her overnight and sent her back in a buggy. No receipt, but I didn’t expect that. I saw him the Sunday after, out at the Farm. We had a private word together. He said Kathleen should come and see him once a week for a while. I should give her time off on Friday mornings, and send her to him with an envelope with ten dols, and he would give her a treatment. He said she needed it for her nerves, after the operation. Now you might think it was a kinda blackmail – to get ten dols a week outa me. And I did get annoyed, like it was an extra fee I hadn’t bargained for. But he said it was for her own good. And you know what? I believed him.’
‘I suppose that will be all’, I said. ‘As you see, I haven’t taken this down. I may want to ask you more questions though. Oh yes. If you have any influence with that priest of yours, Father McMahon, see if you can get him to turn a blind eye to how that girl died, and bury her in consecrated ground. He thinks God doesn’t turn a blind eye on anything. But you know, Mr Quattrini, that the girl would never have killed herself, had her life not been made intolerable.’
‘Don’t you play God!’ Quattrini flared for a moment. ‘But I’ll talk to the Father. He’s a hard man. Sergeant!’ Quattrini took my arm and looked wildly into my eyes. ‘Never a word of this to Bella Somerville! That woman’s pure as the driven snow. If she heard one word that I was sleepin’ with Kathleen, I’d be finished! Then I might as well walk off the quay into the harbour myself!’
‘Of course I won’t mention it to her.’ I was becoming a keeper of secrets.
* * *
Quattrini believed McCrory – the Southern gentleman. Similarly he trusts me, and reveals himself to me – the English gentleman. McCrory and I apparently have it in common that we appear gentlemen. Quattrini referred to McCrory as a ‘devil’. Then there is the ‘King George devil.’ All Englishmen are ‘King George’. Witherspoon. King George par excellence – George Beaumont. Another gentleman. There is something devilish about Beaumont – his rictus smile, his woodenness. But that is a caricature. What is wooden about the devil? The devil is surely like a snake. He creeps along, he is subtle, deceptive, two faced. If I were the devil how would I want to appear in Victoria? What would be my outer face? Perhaps a wooden soldier like Beaumont. Or a whited sepulchre like Firbanks. My father used to joke that the Devil if he wanted to incarnate himself as a person would surely choose to do so as a clergyman. ‘I mean, why the devil would the devil want to appear as he is – evil and twisted?,’ he said. ‘He would appear as some smooth and jovial country vicar – like me! It was generous of him, or perhaps cautious, not to say ‘like some smooth country curate’, meaning Aubrey. But he had a point. Everyone here is afraid of the Indians. They are devils. Freezy obliges, he lives up to the fears, by chopping his wife’s head off on the beach facing town. Wiladzap, Lukswaas, the whole lot of them out at Cormorant Point, are devils. Of course Wiladzap butchered McCrory. That’s what devils do. To hell (as it were) with mens rea, Wiladzap doesn’t need a reason to kill. He just kills, that’s all.
But that is not enough for me. McCrory’s death may be, as Parry said, the devil’s making. If so I should seek the devil in the smooth faces of my friend Frederick, of Firbanks, of George Beaumont. Quattrini? No devil he. Just a bad man. And why a man? Could a woman have killed McRory? Should I seek the smooth faced devil in Lukswaas? In one of the Somerville ‘eligibles’?
This is ridiculous. If I were not myself, Chad Hobbes, I would start suspecting Chad Hobbes, the smooth faced, upright, priggish young detective constable – sorry, Acting Sergeant – another devil.
* * *
I reached the ironmongers just as it was closing. Frederick was showing the last customers to the door, and the other clerk was nowhere visible.
‘Chad, old chap. On the prowl?’
‘Yes. I’d like to have a word with you.’
‘Of course. Just let me lock up.’
Frederick locked the door and swung the sign behind it around so that from the inside it read ‘OPEN’. Since the sun, low in the sky, shone from behind the building, it was gloomy in the store, although the street outside was in a glare. Frederick pulled out two tall stools and set them beside the counter. We sat facing each other as if at a bar.
Looking carefully at Frederick’s face, I brought out the envelope and opened it, setting the locket on the counter between us.
Frederick’s eyes widened. ‘I say, that’s my locket’, he said. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘Where do you think?’
‘No idea. I lost it a few weeks ago. Thought it was stolen.’
‘You wear a locket, Frederick?’
‘Steady on. Of course not. I was merely going to send it home to my sister.’
‘Frederick, you know perfectly well where I got this. Don’t lie to me.’
‘Lie to you?’ Frederick’s face had its usual expression of candour and innocent enthusiasm, but he had gone very pale.’
‘It was worn on a very cold bosom’, I said.
‘What do you mean, old chap?’
‘I know Kathleen was a reticent sort of girl, but she did tell some things to the other maid, Ellen, with whom she shared a room – and a language, come to that.’
‘Damn it!’, Frederick said rather feebly. ‘We did become rather fond of each other. That’s when I gave her the locket. And then this morning I heard she had drowned herself. Poor Kathy!’, he said in a hollow, mournful voice.
‘You’re leaving out all the interesting bits,’ I said cruelly, ‘such as her becoming “enceinte”’.
‘All right, Chad old boy. But I didn’t know if it was by me or that old beast Quattrini. She said it was by me – she said she could feel it was. But that was only because she wished it, I suppose. Anyway, I said there was nothing I could do about it. We had a row, actually. But I wasn’t about to acknowledge the paternity of a child that might not be mine. She was, of course, in a dreadful stew. Then she came and said Quattrini had arranged for some surgery to get rid of the child. Of course he didn’t know I was in the picture. That was a relief. But it gave her the “blues”, as she put it – meaning she cried a lot, as she tended to do anyway. It was with McCrory, by the way, the surgery. You know that?’
‘Yes. Did you talk to him about it?’
‘Not beforehand. He had a word with me out at Orchard Farm the following Sunday. Quite decent about it, actually. He said he knew I had been Kathy’s lover. She had told him. He said she would come to see him for a while, to deal with the after-effects of the operation. He said she would be prone to hysteria, after such an assault on the uterus – “hysteros”, as you know. It would seem he was right, too. And…’
‘What?’
‘“I’ll see if I can mend a broken heart”, he said. Made me feel quite bad, actually. I forgot to mention … I broke with her before the operation. It was time. I couldn’t go on with it. Anyway, McCrory knew this too, and he very kindly offered to give me what he called “lessons in contraceptics”. For a fee, of course. Who knows, I might have taken him up on it. Then he got killed.’
‘Where were you that afternoon?’
‘I was here. On the job. I didn’t kill McCrory, if that’s what you’re insinuating.’
‘Did you know from the beginning of your relationship with the girl that she was Quattrini’s mistress?’
‘No. Only that she was easier than she should have been.’
I felt disgusted but let it pass. ‘What did she tell you about Quattrini?’
‘That he was a beast. That he had forced her, originally. But of course maids get into these situations.’
‘Was she in love with you?’
‘I dare say she was. She said she’d never known anyone like me – gentle, and all that.’
‘Were you in love with her?’
‘Don’t be silly, Chad. I said I was fond of her, that’s all.’
‘Why did you meet in secret? Plenty of young men court their young ladies openly.’
‘A serving maid? I wasn’t going to court her.’
‘But you’re an ironmonger’s clerk. As you would say yourself, “this isn’t England”. The same distinctions just don’t quite obtain here. The Americans in this town would see you on the same level as she. She would too, as a matter of fact – “gentle” or not. Did she not find you cruel?’
‘What’s this got to do with police work, Chad? You’re moralizing. You know perfectly well I would not take seriously a relation with a servant girl – any more than you would yourself if you stooped to it. But one has one’s needs, doesn’t one? Or don’t you? You’re such a prune.’
‘So you never considered marriage with her.’ Here I knew vaguely that I was pursuing a line of questioning for my own good. It was indeed not police work.
‘Of course not. Not merely because she was an Irish kitchen-maid, but because she was, to put it bluntly, second hand goods. Would you marry a woman who gave herself easily to you? It’s the worst thing they can do. She was spoiled already, by Quattrini.’
* * *
I paused in my questioning. My mind had wandered to Lukswaas. She had given herself to me – though perhaps under the pressure of my authority. She was spoiled – if that was what it was – by her relations with who knows how many men, not to speak of her husband Wiladzap whom she had apparently betrayed willingly. She was a ‘bad’ woman. Yet what she and I had done together seemed so different from what other people did. I imagined Quattrini using the girl Kathy, herself seeing him as a ‘beast’, and the gentle Frederick also using her, less beastly perhaps, but surely not with the sort of self-dissolving passion I felt for Lukswaas. It went further than the ‘need’ which both Quattrini and Frederick talked about so glibly. Real desire was more than need … or was I deceiving myself?
* * *
‘When did you last see her?’ I resumed wearily.
‘Last night. I do feel bad about that. About three in the morning it was. She threw gravel against my window. It’s on the second floor – meaning, in English terms, the first. I opened the window and there she was in the street, like a wraith. She wanted to come in and see me. But I couldn’t let her. It was all right for her to visit my rooms during the day, ostensibly for ‘tea’. But not at night. My landlady would have thrown me out. So I told Kathy to go home, in a sort of loud whisper. She stood looking at me. I closed the window. She must have gone away.’
‘Did it not strike you,’ I burst out, ‘that with McCrory dead, when he had said he would see her every week, and with you deserting her, she was left in the lurch? Don’t you think you could have helped her?’
‘I couldn’t get involved with her again. You’re naïve if you think it’s possible to see a girl you have been involved with that way, and not get back into it. If I’d let her in we would have gone and done it again, no question. But there’s Cordelia! She’s the only girl I think about now. Dear Cordy!’ Frederick seemed near tears.
I could say nothing. I did not like my own moral indignation very much. I had never felt very close to Frederick, but had found him good company, and liked his ingenuousness. Now Frederick was not merely boyish but weak, not merely amusing but cynical.
I got down from my high stool, and walked out of the store, unlocking the door for myself, not saying a word to Frederick who hovered behind me like a ghost.
I wrote a brief report for the Superintendent and Pemberton. I concluded that Kathy had procured an abortion from Dr Richard McCrory (now deceased); that Dr McCrory had undertaken to give her a series of treatments for the nervous effects of the operation; that since the doctor was dead and she had become alienated from the putative father of the aborted child, she must be assumed to have fallen into a mental state, of extreme melancholia or hysteria (which Dr. McCrory had warned of) which had caused her to commit suicide. Insofar as the information I had received was pertinent to the death of Dr McCrory, I would summarize it in the report I was preparing on my preliminary investigation of the murder.
I knew that Pemberton, at least, would read between the lines of this, and if he decided to pursue charges, would know he could obtain the details from me. But I still thought Pemberton would let sleeping dogs lie. What would I do, if I were in Pemberton’s place? The question kept me awake half the night.