As she dressed and fixed her hair, Bernice declared she was sticking to her plan to attend a rehearsal of her new play, Bathsheba, which was being staged over on Phillip Street. As in her novels, Bernice favoured historical settings for her plays, from the Stone Age to Ancient Egypt, the Moghul Empire to the Kingdom of David. And both her novels and plays featured vulnerable but strong, erotically mesmerising but coolly chaste women in the grip of the eternal battle between flesh and spirit.
‘Are you sure you’re alright?’ asked Joan as Bernice headed for the door.
‘If I let myself dwell on what has happened, I will be lost. Utterly lost. I cannot face it. Not now. Not yet.’ And she left.
Joan sighed, grateful to be alone again but also unnerved by the sudden silence. Except for the rhythmic bucking of the blind in the breeze, the flat was eerily quiet. No Bernice, no Rimbaud, no Lillian Armfield, no Mrs Moxham, no Jess. As she contemplated the intensely familiar room—the divan bed, the Japonerie screen, the pockmarked mirror over the mantelpiece, her cluttered desk, the stone paperweight—Joan fancied for a moment that the mayhem that had entered her life barely forty-eight hours earlier with the force of a cyclone had swept through just as suddenly as it had arrived, taking with it all the horrors of the last two days and restoring this room to its habitual calm. Her deep exhaustion of that morning had also abated. With an almost cheery determination to make the most of this brief period of normalcy, she smoothed out her sheets, plumped her pillows and folded up the divan bed. She then gave herself a sponge bath at the basin and slipped on some fresh clothes. Nausea (born of fear, or of guilt at lying to Sergeant Armfield?) tugged at her guts, but she checked the pantry anyway in case of hunger later in the evening. Tinned soup or tinned beans were the only choices on offer.
The typewriter beckoned. Joan sat at her desk, fished her pack of Luckies out of the top drawer—the same drawer where she had tucked away her crime scene photos—and lit up. She had not touched her novel since Saturday night and wanted to get back to work. But Joan was troubled by all the obstacles that seemed to stand between her and Reg Punch’s deadline. The eviction notice left her and Bernie only a fortnight in which to find new digs and, while smoking calmed her nerves a little, it could not stifle the grief she now felt at the looming loss of this cosy flat and her favourite rectangle of sky.
Worst of all, how could she justify writing about fictional crime when she was now so deeply immersed, heart and flesh, in the mess of at least one real crime, if not more than one? Murder, assault, stealing evidence, blackmail. She was like the idle wader who, having ventured ankle-deep into the rough surf, finds herself dragged in over her head, struggling against a riptide.
She wound a fresh sheet of paper into the Corona and forced herself to begin:
Sergeant Lillian Armfield had seen many crime scenes in her seventeen years on the force, but the savagery of this murder stood out in her mind as exceptionally frenzied and cruel. Inspector Phillips kneeled by the victim’s body and examined the deep wounds to her throat and face. ‘Nasty,’ he murmured. ‘Gotta wonder if this one wasn’t particularly personal. If you know what I mean.’
Lillian nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. Looking around the cramped, dingy bedsit with its rusted gas ring and mildewed wallpaper, Lillian was sure this was no break-and-enter. There was nothing of worth to steal in this rundown boarding house. Some well-known Sydney prostitutes, like Dulcie Markham, made spectacular amounts of money——as much as fifty pounds a night——but this poor love was not one of those high-class hookers. Maybe she had been once: there was a moth-eaten fur coat in the wardrobe and a very nice old Magnavox radiogram in the living room. But she had probably ruined herself with snow; it was an all-too-common story for young prostitutes. As was the other likely motivation for this woman’s brutal fate. Neither Lillian nor Inspector Phillips stated the obvious: the autopsy would establish if she had been raped before she was killed and mutilated.
‘Have you had a chance to speak to the woman who found her?’ asked the Inspector, who was more than happy to leave the task of interviewing overwrought female witnesses to his trusted sergeant. ‘Needs a woman’s touch,’ he would always say in such circumstances.
‘Yes, I have a brief statement,’ said Lillian, pulling her notebook from the inside pocket of her twill jacket. ‘When Eleanor Dawson——the victim——failed to show up for an arranged meeting at eleven pm at the brothel where she worked on Darlinghurst Road, Miss Bernice Becker immediately returned to the boarding house. She found the door to Miss Dawson’s flat wide open and her body by the bed.’
‘So who was the last person to see Miss Dawson alive?’ asked the Inspector. The boys at the morgue would try to estimate time of death, but it was always useful to have any accounts of the victim’s final movements. It helped to fill in the backstory and often yielded clues as to the victim’s state of mind——not to mention it narrowed the list of suspects.
‘Let me see,’ replied Sergeant Armfield, checking her notebook again. ‘That would probably be a Miss Mavis Thorne, a prostitute who worked with the victim.’
Joan stopped typing and stared at the page in astonishment. Where had this come from? Then she remembered her strange dream. What on earth was she doing, turning the horror of Ellie’s death into fiction? How cold-blooded was that? Joan felt ill with self-disgust.
But wait a minute. It was not that simple. Depending on how you looked at it, writing about a fictional crime was the obscenity, not the other way round. She had told herself she owed it to Ellie—and possibly now to Jess as well—to find out the truth. Was this not the obvious way to do just that? Joan would sift the evidence and follow the leads of a real crime through the eyes of her fictional version of Lillian Armfield. That way the story would be unfolded in real life and on the page at the same time, back and forth, one creating the other. Already this new story had shown her the next step. It seemed obvious now but it had taken her writer’s imagination to bring it into focus.
She must talk to Mavis Thorne.
Joan had only met Mavis once, when the other woman had joined Ellie and Jess for a late-night supper at H.S. Gilkes’ Wine Saloon with Bernie and Joan. She was older than the others, possibly in her late thirties, and had once been a singer. Working in Tilly Devine’s brothels on Palmer Street for years (‘A bad-tempered old bird but much kinder to her girls than that two-faced bitch Kate Leigh’), she had recently sought employment with Jeffs. While Tilly was off ‘rusticating’ in England for breaking the consorting laws, her husband Jim had managed to get himself razor-slashed and then hauled up on a murder charge for accidentally killing a taxi driver during a shootout. ‘Tilly’s business affairs were a bloody mess; it was time to get the hell out.’
How was she going to convince Mavis to talk to her? Joan wondered as she stomped through the puddles along Victoria Street, the cold wind and slanting needles of rain stinging her face beneath her umbrella. Her head was encased in a scarf and she hugged her well-worn overcoat tightly about her. In the inside pocket she had stuffed some cash taken from the nest egg hidden under her bed. Maybe money would help. Who knew?
As she neared the brothel—an undistinguished terrace house with no lighted windows facing the street—Joan slowed down. She dared not try to enter the building; why would a woman other than a whore trespass here? And there was still the terrifying possibility she would come face to face with Frankie Goldman again. Her palms grew damp at the thought of that bastard’s cruel face coming out of the darkness. Fortunately, Joan had devised a plan to avoid him.
When a man in a grey mackintosh and rain-stained fedora brushed past her, heading towards the brothel’s front door, Joan cried out: ‘Excuse me, please.’
The man stopped, obviously taken aback at the note of alarm in Joan’s voice.
‘Are you alright, miss?’
Joan took a step nearer. ‘I need a favour and I’m happy to pay.’
A look of surprise tinged with suspicion crossed his face. ‘Are you a cop? Is this some kind of stitch-up? ’Cos I’m not falling for that.’
‘I have a friend inside,’ said Joan, pointing at the brothel behind her. ‘I urgently need to get a message to her. Her name is Mavis. I have ten shillings to make it worth your while.’
The man whistled. ‘Jesus, lady! It must be some emergency. Well, what the hell, I was planning a visit anyway. Gimme the message.’
Joan handed over an envelope with Mavis’s name inscribed on the front and pressed the coins into the stranger’s hand. There was a pound note inside the envelope, along with a short message asking Mavis to join her for a quick drink and the promise of a second pound if she was willing to talk. Joan had signed her name and then added in brackets: a friend of Ellie’s. This could prove to be an expensive and utterly futile fishing expedition, thought Joan, as she watched the man eagerly pocket the envelope and dash up the front stairs without another word or glance in Joan’s direction.
Joan waited. The rain fell harder still. Her feet became soaked and numbed by the cold. Why was she such an idiot? She was on the verge of giving this up as a mug’s game when the front door opened and a figure in a hooded coat came down the front stairs.
‘This had better be important,’ said the whore as she approached Joan. ‘I’ve got twenty minutes.’
The two women retreated to the muggy warmth of the nearest sly-grog joint, where Joan shouted Mavis a whisky. ‘I recognise you: you’re Bernice’s friend. Share a flat with her, right? We had supper once at Gilkes’.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘So why are you snooping around about poor bloody Ellie? I assume that’s why you’re here. Not an undercover copper, are ya? I’ve already told them everything I know.’
‘You’ve spoken to the cops?’
‘Yeah, thanks to Becker and her big mouth. That bloody woman copper—whatsername … Armfield—comes round and interrogates the lot of us. Me most of all. Did I see anything fishy going on between Ellie and Goldman? Like I’d tell her. No way am I going to stick my neck out to get myself slashed or worse by Frankie!’
‘Was something going on between Frankie and Ellie? Bernie said Ellie told her as much.’
‘Maybe. I couldn’t say.’ But Mavis’s tone left little doubt that she was well aware of the situation.
‘So you were the last person to see Ellie alive?’ Joan persisted.
‘Yes, probably. Except for the killer, of course!’
‘And you saw her around nine-thirty that night?’
‘Something like that. She was due to start her shift at seven o’clock. Frankie was furious that she hadn’t turned up. Said he’d dock her pay. And the rest.’
‘So Frankie was at the brothel?’
‘Well, yes. Off and on. I was a bit busy, so I can’t say when exactly. But not when Ellie dropped by, luckily. Frankie had gone by then. He reckoned he had some important meeting. Probably with Jeffs.’
‘Was there anything odd about Ellie? Did she look sick?’
Mavis looked around the room, checking no one could overhear them. ‘She was in a crazy mood, now that you mention it. Half crying, half laughing. And I’ll tell you something else that I also told the police: she had a black eye coming on.’
‘Someone had hit her?’
‘Yep, given her a real shiner. She’d tried to cover it up with make-up, but I could tell. Seen a few of those in my time.’
‘Did she say anything about it?’
‘I asked her straight up. “Who socked ya in the eye, love?” But she refused to say.’
‘And then Bernie shows up.’
‘Yep, just before eleven. She’s in a state too. Drunk. All weepy and carrying on. “Have you seen Ellie? I need to talk to Ellie urgently.” I told her what I’d seen and she leaves.’
‘Do you think something had happened between Bernie and Ellie?’
‘I have no idea. You’d have to ask her. She’s a strange one, that flatmate of yours.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Wild. Maybe a bit mad.’
Mavis must have seen that Joan was upset by this remark and felt obliged to provide some evidence. ‘She came into the brothel one night a while back, drunk as a skunk, and started screaming at the customers, “Take your filthy hands off her!” Eleanor and Jess were white as sheets, begging her to calm down. Jesus, if it had got back to Jeffs! She was dragged out by one of Frankie’s standover guys, with her yelling and cursing and spouting all manner of malarkey! “I’ll cut off your cock and balls, you bastard! I’ll burn down the whole fucking place.” Did she never tell you? Goldman said he would kill her if she pulled a stunt like that again.’
Joan was lost for words. She knew Bernie’s drinking and manic episodes sometimes got her into strife, but she had never heard this story.
‘Sorry, time’s up. Don’t know if what I told you is much use. I want the coppers to catch the bastard who killed Ellie as much as you do, but in this crazy shithouse world we all have to look out for ourselves, don’t we, love?’
Mavis put on a good performance, but it was not hard to tell that behind the bravado there lurked real fear. The whore drained her whisky glass and put her hand out for the cash. Joan handed over the promised second pound and Mavis left.
The rain had eased as Joan made her way back to Bomora, but the dark streets still shone with bright pools of neon light.
Back at her desk, she sat smoking nervously, the tip of her cigarette glowing in the darkness. Rimbaud lay curled up half asleep in her lap, his soft body rising and falling gently under her hand. Now that the rain clouds had dispersed, the dark harbour and the steel arch of the new bridge that spanned it glinted under a full moon. The radium-painted hands of her alarm clock stood at quarter past ten.
Bernie had no doubt gone on for a late supper after the rehearsal with the director and maybe one or two of the cast, so Joan had plenty of time alone to ruminate about her meeting with Mavis. Who had beaten Ellie and why? Was it possible that Bernie had known—or suspected—who had done it: Gordon, Frankie, the mysterious Mr X? Was that why she had been so upset and needed to talk to Ellie urgently? Because she knew Ellie was in danger?
And then Jessie’s words from the party came back to Joan. She and Ellie had a fight. A really bad fight. If Bernie was so desperately in love with Ellie, was it possible that it was Bernie herself who had hit her that evening in a jealous rage? Joan had seen Bernie lose her temper before: hurl a plate of food against a wall, burn the manuscript of a failed novel on an impulse, slap the face of a drunk who refused to stop harassing her at Theo’s Club, even kick poor Rimbaud one night in anger when she was deep in her cups, drunken curses gushing from her lips. And then Joan recalled an evening late last year: Bernie staggering home with scratches on her face as if Rimbaud had lacerated her with his paws in self-defence.
‘Did you and Laszlo have a fight?’ Joan had asked, incredulous that a man would scratch rather than punch or slap. ‘It was an accident,’ Bernie had said lightly. Was it possible those scratches had been from a fight with Ellie? Mavis’s story about the scene at the brothel had rattled Joan. Were Bernie’s mad outbursts getting more violent and uninhibited?
‘Jesus, no,’ whispered Joan in the dark. For the thought then flashed across her mind that Bernie had not told the police the whole truth about that evening. She’d made no mention of Ellie’s black eye. Why not? Was Bernie hiding something? Had Bernice Becker, first on the crime scene, her hands and blouse bright with blood, fuelled by drunken fury or manic delusion, accidentally or—God forbid—deliberately killed her lover, Ellie?
No. Never. Unthinkable.
Joan continued to sit in the dark, grateful to have the sleeping cat in her lap as an excuse not to move. She had gone behind Bernie’s back tonight. The next step was obvious: to go through her friend’s private diary and the letters that were no doubt tucked away somewhere in her room. While the risk of being discovered was foremost in her mind, that was not the true reason for Joan’s reluctance: it was because she couldn’t bear to face the possibility that Bernie was a suspect. Yet, having once had that thought, she couldn’t banish it from her mind.