All three women were woken the following morning by an angry pounding on the front door.
‘Let me in, you shameless harridans,’ shouted an all-too-familiar voice. It was Mrs Moxham, whose obnoxious personality did nothing to challenge the general low opinion of landladies in the Cross.
‘Bugger off, you crazy bitch! It’s not even eight o’clock!’ Bernice stood in the doorway of her bedroom, her silk kimono hanging half open, a sleep mask still covering one eye.
‘How dare you talk to me like that, Bernice Becker! I have every right to demand access to my tenants’ flats when I find out they’ve been lying to me! Open up!’
Jess opened her eyes groggily, her face paler than the two china cups that still sat on Joan’s desk from the night before. ‘What’s all the noise?’ she groaned.
Before anyone had a chance to move, they heard a key in the lock and the door was flung open. Mrs Moxham stormed into the room brandishing a newspaper. It was the morning edition of Truth. ‘Have you seen this—this filth?’
‘Not bloody likely as we’ve only just been woken by your mad screeching!’ Bernice snatched the paper from Moxham. A photo of Ellie’s bloodstained room was on the front page with the headline: PROSTITUTE MEETS GRISLY DEATH IN BOARDING HOUSE: RAZOR WARS HEATING UP AGAIN? Bill Jenkins had made his deadline. Both Joan and Bernice were named as having discovered the body. The police made their usual plea for information.
‘Prostitute, eh?’ Moxham’s face had flushed as red as a boiled beetroot and a vein throbbed at her temple. She advanced on Jess, still prostrate on the cot bed. ‘And you? Are you a whore too, dearie, like your chopped-up roommate? Carrying on your filthy business right under my nose? Bringing depraved men into my boarding house? Rapists, gangsters, murderers!’ She turned to look at Bernice and Joan. ‘And I bet you two knew about it the whole time and said nothing!’
Jess had covered her head with both arms as if to shield herself. ‘I never, Mrs Moxham! I never did any such thing!’
‘You’ve got no proof,’ said Joan, stepping between Jessie and the apoplectic landlady. ‘What Eleanor and Jess do—did—outside these premises hardly concerns you, does it? They pay their rent and keep everything quiet and clean, just like the rest of your tenants.’
‘Your references said you were both in retail,’ Moxham thundered at Jessie.
‘Well, what Jess does is a kind of retail,’ Bernice observed with a grim half-smile.
‘Very bloody funny! Well, guess what, ladies? Youse’ll all be laughing on the other side of your smug dials when I tell you the news I got yesterday.’ Mrs Moxham crossed her arms. There was a glint of triumph in her rheumy eyes and an unpleasant smirk on her lips. ‘The owners are selling up. Bomora’s going to be torn down to build more of those hideous dog-box flats. So have a good laugh about that. Youse’ll all be out on your ear in a week or two. This nasty business is the final nail in the coffin.’
Bernice and Joan looked at each other in shock, hardly able to believe they were about to lose their home.
‘Not so bloody cocky now, are we?’ sneered the landlady. ‘May as well start packing your bags and looking for somewhere else to flaunt your immoral ways, the blinkin’ lot of you!’ As she turned to go, there was another rap at the door. ‘Like bleedin’ Pitt Street in here, it is,’ exclaimed the landlady.
Bernice tightened the sash on her kimono and opened the door. A tall, broad-shouldered woman in a dark blue, high-waisted skirt, white blouse and long twill jacket stood in the doorway. She was hatless but her hair was pinned up neatly off her face. She wore a string of pearls at her throat and a matching set of pearl earrings and clutched a sturdy, nondescript handbag. She could have been any doorknocking charity collector or dowdily turned out accounts clerk from Anthony Hordern’s or Mark Foy’s.
‘Who the hell are you?’ croaked Mrs Moxham.
Joan did not need to be told. She had seen this woman’s face in the newspapers several times.
‘I’m Special Sergeant Lillian Armfield,’ the woman said calmly. ‘Sorry to bother you so early but I’ve come to accompany Miss Jessie Simmons down to Central Police Station.’
Jessie rolled over on the cot bed and groaned.
‘It’s important we get your statement as soon as we can, my dear,’ Sergeant Armfield told her, ‘if we’re to have any hope of finding your friend’s killer.’
Jessie nodded and rose slowly from the cot.
‘I can lend you something to wear,’ offered Bernice, and she ushered the still half-asleep girl into her bedroom to get changed.
‘And I assume you’re one of the ladies who discovered the body?’ said Sergeant Armfield, addressing Joan. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’
‘Don’t mind me, I’m just the bleedin’ landlady,’ said Mrs Moxham, pushing past the policewoman in a huff. ‘I’ll leave youse to it then.’
‘Don’t worry, madam,’ the sergeant said, ‘we’ll be back to take statements from you and your other tenants soon.’
Mrs Moxham hesitated on the landing before making her final exit. ‘Well, you’ll need to get your skates on. This whole place is coming down in two weeks and all of us’ll be out on the street by then.’
Joan politely gestured to Sergeant Armfield to sit down. ‘Please. I’m Joan. Joan Linderman. Can I offer you a cuppa?’
‘Much obliged.’
Lillian Armfield took a seat on the divan, her handbag resting in her lap. Joan was more than a little flustered to have this famous policewoman right here in her flat. What an honour! She’d heard many a story from Bill about how unarmed Lillian resorted to swinging that handbag to get out of a tight scrape, dodging fists and bottles, in the laneways round Frog Hollow and Surry Hills. Not everyone was as hospitable as Joan. Armfield had even been pursued by well-known cocaine dealer, ‘Botany May’ Smith, who threatened to ‘knock her skull in’ with a steaming flat-iron, fresh off her ironing board. Joan wanted to profess her admiration for this pioneer policewoman’s courage but was too tongue-tied.
‘Did you know the victim at all, Miss Linderman?’ asked Sergeant Armfield.
‘No, not really. Not like Bernie did.’
‘Such a tragic end to a young life. It angers me to see so many working women preyed upon in this way. Even with the new consorting laws, we’ve still got our work cut out. Thank you, my dear.’ She took the cup of tea from Joan and motioned for her to sit down. ‘And what do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I work for The Australian Woman’s Mirror.’ Joan actually blushed.
The policewoman’s face lit up. ‘I love that magazine! Such wonderful stories. So you’re a writer then?’
Joan longed to tell Lillian about her crime novel but knew she would regret such foolishness. What would a police officer who confronted the realities of crime every day make of her idiotic scribblings on the subject? Oh, but how sorely tempted she was! For one who’d seen the worst of human nature up close, Lillian Armfield had a strangely calm, almost soulful face, one that inspired trust. ‘I dabble with the odd short story,’ admitted Joan.
‘I wish I knew how to write,’ sighed the policewoman, draining her cup as Jessie, clad in a peach dress, straw hat, gloves, stockings and shoes, entered the room with Bernice. ‘There’re a few stories I’d like to tell one day.’
And then Joan realised with a sudden stab of panic that the sergeant was staring over her shoulder at the eight forensic crime scene photos thumbtacked to the wall above Joan’s desk. Dear God! How had she managed to forget about them? What policewoman worth her salt would fail to notice something as conspicuous as those in this tiny flat?
Joan was in for it now.
‘Well, best be off.’ Sergeant Armfield cleared her throat and handed the empty teacup back to Joan. It was obvious that she had seen the photos and had made a deliberate decision not to mention them. Joan could feel her cheeks burning. She had been exposed as a fraud, meddling amateurishly in the world of crime, but forgiven her folly by this remarkable woman.
She felt the urgent impulse then to show Miss Armfield the piece of paper she had hidden in her pillowcase. What right had she to withhold evidence from the police? And what impulse had prompted her to conceal it in the first place? Was she protecting her Aunt Olympia, of all people, from suspicion? She certainly owed that woman nothing. Or maybe it was Bernice she was protecting, for her part in introducing Ellie to the club? Or was her reason more selfish than that: some half-formed, insane thought that she, Joan Linderman, could solve the murder? It was Bill Jenkins’s taunt—‘crime’s not a woman’s business’—that had done it. It had stuck in her gullet, festering there like an ulcer. But she’d show him, she vowed. She’d scoop him at his own game! Even as the thought flitted across her mind she knew how ridiculous and childish it was. Not to mention the fact that she was breaking the law.
‘Sergeant Armfield?’
The policewoman turned at the door. ‘Yes, Miss Linderman?’
Joan hesitated. Tell her, an inner voice urged. She cleared her throat. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you.’