Babylon South (26 page)

“I think she's the one with the loosest tongue in the family. And she knows more than she lets on.”

Just like me; I must watch I don't let my tongue rattle loose.
Then his phone rang and he picked it up. With John Leeds on his mind, he feared it might be the Commissioner. Instead, it was Sergeant Greenup.

“Scobie, we've found the murder weapon, I think. My boy Sobers did some fossicking over in the Gardens. He found a PPK .380 Walther under some bushes. What do you want done with it?”

“I don't want too much handling of it. Send it direct to Fingerprints, then tell „em to pass it on to Ballistics. Tell „em the reports are to come direct to me. Give my thanks to your constable.”

“Are you getting anywhere with the case?”

“Just plugging on, Jack.” He hung up; but the phone immediately rang again. “Inspector Malone.”

“Ah, Inspector—” It was Assistant Commissioner Bill Zanuch, suave as a con man on one of the more expensive cruise ships. “Just checking on the Springfellow case. Both of them. Any progress?”

There were seven Assistant Commissioners. The Assistant Commissioner, Administration, did not check on homicides. “We're making marginal progress, sir.”

“I have an interest in these cases. I was on the original one, when Sir Walter disappeared.”

“Yes, sir, I remember. I was with you for a week or two.”

“
Of course, so you were!” The bugger hadn't forgotten at all. What was his game? Then, oh so casually, “The Commissioner probably has an interest, too. He was a protégé of Sir Walter's.”

“I didn't know that, sir.”

Zanuch waited, as if he was expecting further comment from Malone. But Malone, too, could play the waiting game and after a moment the Assistant Commissioner said, “Well, keep me informed if anything interesting turns up. I'm always here.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks for your help.” Malone waited; you didn't hang up in a senior officer's ear. There was silence for a moment, then Zanuch hung up.

“Who was that?” said Clements.

“Zanuch.”

Clements frowned. “What the hell's worrying him?”

“I wouldn't know,” said Malone blandly, but wondered if politics was going to invade the Police Department. Should he warn John Leeds? Then decided against it. He could read between the lines and he did not want to be caught between them.

“Let's go and see Mrs. Magee,” he said and in his own ears sounded reckless. “Is she down at The Wharf or over at Mosman?”

“When we left her yesterday she said we could always find her at Mosman.”

But they didn't find Alice Magee there. Instead they found only Mrs. Leyden, the housekeeper. “Mrs. Magee has gone shopping. She likes to do it herself.” It was difficult to tell whether she was resentful or relieved; neither Malone nor Clements had had much experience of housekeepers. “I'll tell her you called.”

“Perhaps we could come in and talk to you for a few minutes?” said Clements, carrying the ball again.

“I have nothing to say, I'm sure.” She was a good-looking woman who put on a plain face when holding unwelcome visitors at bay.

“Just a few questions, Mrs. Leyden.” Clements didn't have one foot in the door, but looked as if
he
did.

She led them through the house and out to the kitchen; that was her ground, where she would feel safest. It was a big room: in the old days, one could imagine, the Springfellow children would have had their meals here (though Malone could not imagine Emma and her brothers as children). Today, one could not imagine even the most modern child in it. It was clinical, stainless steel and plain grey tiles; the triple oven looked as if it might house scientific experiments. But Mrs. Leyden looked at home in it, as house-proud as a Nobel laureate.

She offered them coffee, freshly brewed: none of your instant muck here. Playing hostess seemed to soften her: “I don't really think I can help you much.”

“Let's try it,” said Clements, up and running as he sat down. “Were you at home here on Monday night?”

“Monday?”

“The night Miss Emma was murdered.”

“You don't think—? Of course you don't. No, I wasn't home, at least not till about one o'clock. Monday is my night off. And my husband's—he's Lady Springfellow's chauffeur.”

They still say
chauffeur
here in Springfellow Avenue, thought Malone. Everyone else, even the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, had a
driver.

“Where did you go?”

“To the early show up at Mosman—we always go to the movies on Monday night. Then we went down to the Manly Leagues Club for dinner.” She was sounding more human, less starched, by the minute.

“What about Lady Springfellow? Was she home here on her own?”

“You'd have to ask the security man, the night one. He's not on duty now. He comes on at six.”

“Was Lady Springfellow home when you left?”

“No, she was working back, she does that a lot on Monday nights. She has her dinner sent over from the restaurant in the apartments where Miss Justine lives.”

“
How does she get home if your husband isn't there to drive her?”

“A hire car picks her up.”

“Was she home by the time you got home?” Clements was doing all the questioning.

“Oh, yes.”

Clements suddenly changed tack. “That gun collection in the other room. Did you notice the Walther missing? The smaller hand-gun?”

“Oh, that one. Yes, I noticed it was gone, the first time.”

“The first time?”

“Yes, just before they discovered Sir Walter's—remains. Then it was back in the cabinet for a day or two, then it was gone again.”

“Did you mention it to Lady Springfellow?”

“No-o. She had enough on her mind—I mean with Sir Walter—turning up after all that time.”

“What about the other missing gun?”

“Oh, I don't know a thing about that. You'd have to ask my aunt. She was the one who really knew all about the family. She was with them for forty years.”

“Your aunt?”

“Mrs. Dyson. She was the housekeeper and cook here for years. When she retired, she got me and my husband our positions.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Oh yes. She lives in a retirement village out at Carlingford.”

“Near Channel 15?”

“Just down the road.”

“Does Lady Springfellow visit her?”

Mrs. Leyden looked at her cup, as if searching for scum on the coffee. “Well, no, not exactly. She and my aunt didn't see eye to eye, if you know what I mean. Well, maybe you don't.”

“No, I'm afraid we don't.”

She
looked up again. “Well, I'm not going to tell you. That's in the family. Lady Springfellow doesn't visit her, but she looks after my aunt. She pays for everything and my aunt gets a nice pension. I don't think Aunt Grace complains.”

“Forgive me asking,” said Malone, feeling he'd better ask something, “if Lady Springfellow and Mrs.—Dyson?—didn't see eye to eye, how did your aunt last so long? And why did she accept your aunt's recommendation of you?”

He hadn't meant it to sound so much like a barrister's cross-examination; Mrs. Leyden took a moment to straighten it out. “I—I think Lady Springfellow sometimes has—I shouldn't say this—well, she has fits of conscience. It seems like that. Sometimes she's come home with an expensive present for my aunt, a nightgown or something like that, but she always asks me to take it to her. She's really a kind woman at heart. My aunt just never understood that.”

“Does your aunt refuse the presents?”

Mrs. Leyden smiled. “No. She's an old lady. Old ladies like to receive presents. So do old men, I should think.”

“I'll let you know when I get there,” said Malone.

“We'd like to talk to your aunt,” said Clements. “She's not too old to answer questions, is she?”

Again Mrs. Leyden smiled, the plain look gone from her blunt-nosed, good-looking face. Policemen were not such ogres after all. “My aunt likes to talk. There's not much else to do in a retirement village, except talk and watch TV.”

And wait to die, thought Malone.

He and Clements drove out through the heat of the day, away from the coast breezes. He wondered why Mrs. Dyson, having lived for forty years cooled by harbour breezes, should have chosen to retire away from them. But perhaps she had had no choice: when someone else was paying the bills, you went where you were sent.

“What do you reckon about the guns?” said Clements.

“I don't know.” Malone was cautious. “Anyone could have taken them.”

“
Any one of the family, you mean? Yeah, I guess so.” But Clements's mind was already starting to set.

Despite the stationary air that felt as if it had escaped from a furnace and been filtered through a wet screen, Pleasant Oaks was not a hell-hole. The cottages and apartments were attractive, built of dark brick and with green—tiled roofs, fitting neatly into the landscaped grounds. Malone had a sudden dim memory of visiting his grandfather, his mother's father, in an old men's home somewhere in the southern suburbs, where the roof leaked, the rooms smelled damp and the season, it seemed, was always winter.

Mrs. Dyson had a one-bedroom apartment in the main wing. “When we get on a bit, they move us in here so's they can keep an eye on us. Everybody's indoors today—it's so hot. So you two are policemen, eh? You're an inspector, eh? They must make „em younger these days.”

She was in her late seventies, her back beginning to bend but not her mind. Her eyes, behind their glasses, showed how alert she might be; Malone only wondered about her memory. His own memory, at least of her, was dim; he couldn't remember the woman who had opened the door to him and Zanuch twenty-one years ago, yet he was sure it would have been her. She was not tall, but she sat up as straight as she could in her straight-backed chair and he could believe she would have been a formidable guardian of the Springfellow privacy.

“Lady Springfellow? Well, yes, I worked for her—” there was a pause “—when she married into the family.”

“It's going back a long way, Mrs. Dyson—” Malone decided it was time he did the questioning; he had given Clements enough rein. “Can you remember when Sir Walter disappeared?”

“Of course. How could I forget?” Then her eyes clouded, as if the memory was too much for her and she
wanted
to forget.

“Did anything unusual happen about that time?”

“How do you mean?” She had made them some tea as soon as she realized they were going to spend some time with her; once a housekeeper, always a housekeeper. “Have a biscuit. I believe they call „em cookies now. Everything's American. How do you mean?”

“
Well, did Sir Walter or Lady Springfellow do anything that wasn't usual with them?”

“They had a terrible row.” Then she looked at them cautiously. “I shouldn't tell you that. I'm not a gossip.”

“Giving information to the police isn't gossiping, Mrs. Dyson.”

But gossip is a great help; it oils the wheels and sometimes gives them a shove. Tell it not in Gath, whisper it not in the streets of Askelon: no Philistine policeman ever gave that advice.

“Well—” She was dubious; but she was afraid that if she said nothing, they would leave her. Company was company: she looked out the window at the empty grounds. “We-ee-ll, some time that weekend, I can't remember which night, they had this terrible row, I don't know what it was about—my bedroom was at the other end of the house. It was unusual, all right—Sir Walter never raised his voice.
She
did—in those days she was . . .” She didn't finish, but Malone made a guess: Venetia was
common.

“Were they still, well,
cool
towards each other when he left on the Monday morning?”

“I think so. I'm sorry. When you ask me things like that, I mean the little things, I can't remember as well as I used to. Your memory goes, you know, when you get on. That's why I keep so many of my things out, to remind me.” She looked around the small living-room; framed photos formed a broken frieze on side-tables, a bookcase, the television set. A hearty-looking man with a laugh that could be heard even in the photo looked out at her from a silver frame. “That was my husband, we never had a cross word in our whole married life.”

“You were lucky, Mrs. Dyson. Had anything happened during the previous week, while Sir Walter was down in Melbourne, that might have caused him and Lady Springfellow to—to disagree?”

She was silent for a while, staring at her dead husband. She closed her eyes and for a moment Malone thought she had dozed off; then she opened them and said firmly, “Yes, I remember something. A young man came to see her. Inspector Leeds had come to see her—I don't know what night, the Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Malone avoided Clements's glance. “That was Inspector John Leeds?”

“Yes, he was a friend of Sir Walter's. He's the Police Commissioner now. But I suppose you
know
that.” She smiled, showing what looked to be still her own teeth.

“Vaguely,” said Malone, smiling back at her; he had a gentle way with old women, though he didn't know where he had learned it. “Was Mr. Leeds a frequent visitor?”
Christ, why did I ask that?

“Did he come with his wife?” said Clements.

“He wasn't married then, not that I know of. He'd come when Sir Walter was home and sometimes he'd come and take her out to dinner. That was after Sir Walter had joined that spy lot and gone to work in Melbourne. They were very friendly.”

“Who were?” said Clements.

“Mr. Leeds and her.” Her mouth tightened, like a drawer snapped shut; she had said too much, some things should be locked away in the past. “No, I'm not going to say any more about them. That would be gossiping.”