The Celibate Mouse (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

One-Upwomanship

Daniella Winslow

Monday: early morning.

‘M
um!
Mum?’
Carissa, Daniella Winslow’s scruffy seventeen-year-old daughter sauntered into the kitchen, dropped on to a chair, crashed her elbows on the table and stared at her mother’s back. ‘Has Brendan rung yet?’

Daniella Winslow’s position in society was under threat. The church ladies guild, the golf club, book club group and businesswoman’s club, not to mention the hospital auxiliary would be on the one hand, wildly excited over the scandal and on the other, intolerant of a President whose relative managed to ‘get himself murdered.

Daniella gazed over the escarpment, trying not to cry, barely aware of her daughter’s presence. Introspection was not something in which she normally indulged, but the death of Jack Harlow brought back far too many memories than were comfortable. Even at thirty-eight years of age, she kept her secrets lest her friends despise the shameful person lurking inside of her. Jack had a lot to answer for.

‘Mum!’
The carping insistence of teenage angst finally penetrated her mental fog.

‘I wouldn’t know because I took the phone off the hook last night. Damned journalists,’ Daniella snapped, a solitary mackerel surrounded by sharks. ‘Do sit up straight, Carissa. What time did you get in last night?’

‘Why? What’s it got to do with you?’ Her daughter yawned and stretched. ‘Get off my back. And how do you expect me to get any calls? Brendan’s supposed to phone.’

‘What’s wrong with
your
mobile, then?’

‘I left it in Brendan’s car,’ snarled Carissa. A king-sized hangover was doing nothing for her temper. She sensed Brendan was using her as a stopgap until someone prettier or sexier came along. ‘He hasn’t even made a pass yet, for God’s sake and we’ve been going out for two weeks!’ She pouted, remembering the numerous times she’d stuck her boobs in his face, to no avail. Perhaps he batted for the “other side?” Or both sides. But surely she couldn’t be mistaken about something like that.

But Daniella had other things on her mind. ‘Since Jack got shot, I can’t remember whether I’m coming or going.’

‘Who?’ Carissa asked, puzzled by the conversational direction.

‘Jack Harlow. My cousin, your second cousin. Don’t you read the newspapers or watch the news on TV? It’s been all over the news. Are you so out of touch you didn’t hear? They’re calling it the “dog trial murder.”’ Her mother’s voice cracked.

‘What?’

‘I said, Jack’s dead. Someone shot him at the dog trials.’

Daniella checked the water in the electric jug, pressed the switch and gathered two mugs from the cupboard. She spooned coffee into each and then took the milk out of the refrigerator, watching her daughter’s face in the reflection in the gleaming stainless steel door.

‘When? But we were camping, mum. Out of, like, radio range. What happened?’

‘We don’t know. Maybe someone bore a grudge against him. Or it might have been an accident. The police will probably want to interview us all. At the moment, I can’t cope with any more people ringing. Ferna’s phone has been engaged for hours,’ she said, referring to the family matriarch. The kettle boiled and she began pouring boiling water into the cups. ‘He was shot just as he was penning the sheep.’ She reached for the milk.

‘Faaaaaaaaar out.’ Carissa’s eyes widened.

Daniella agreed. She found it hard to believe that the ghost of the past might be vanquished. Perhaps a husband, father or boyfriend had finally taken action.

The fear and fascination with which she regarded Jack, hadn’t abated since she was a fifteen-year old bridesmaid at a cousin’s wedding. Daniella had returned from the women’s restroom at the club to find Jack leaning against the wall, leering drunkenly at her. She’d tried to turn and run back to the reception, but he propelled her down the dark hallway and pushed her into a storeroom. Amid the choking smells of cleaning chemicals and solvents, he thrust his alcohol-coated tongue down her throat and stuffed his hand up her skirt. His fingers slid into her knickers and poked high up inside her, causing a sharp stab like a knife- thrust inside.

At first she’d been unable to react, but then she’d bitten his tongue and pushed him away, so hard he’d fallen into a pile of buckets and mop heads. She’d scrubbed her trembling hand across her mouth and rushed back to the reception.

Who could she tell? Her father? Uncle Arthur? But they would probably kill him. Her uncle John? No, not him. He was useless. Mum? Her mother was pontificating to a group of women from the bride’s family. Not a good move; perhaps later, after the reception finished. Too frightened of spoiling the day for the bride and groom, she wandered among the guests, filled with indecision, forcing back tears, terrified of having to face Jack again.

She made her way to the ladies loo at the other end of the reception rooms and hid in a cubicle. She burst into tears when she discovered the blood and the broken elastic around the leg of her knickers. She cleaned herself up as much as possible and emerged, filled with shame.

Then she made eye contact with the one person she thought would understand, Mark Gordon, a cousin-by-marriage. Her teenage fantasies often featured Mark, though he treated her like a little sister. She sidled up and clutched his arm. ‘Jack groped me!’ she’d hissed into his ear as he bent down to listen.

‘He did what?’
He straightened and looked around the room. Unable to see the perpetrator, he leaned down again. ‘What do you mean, he
groped
you? What exactly did he do?’

She opened her mouth to tell him, but was overcome with shyness, unable to find the words to describe how Jack rammed his fingers up inside her and wriggled them. Had, in effect, raped her. Remembering the scorn with which the older women in her family had flayed a girl from school who reported a rape–
she must have asked for it, respectable girls don’t get raped
–Daniella was too frightened to reveal everything. ‘He–um–stuck his hand in my pants.’

Mark’s face flushed; his eyes narrowed. ‘Right, I’ll deal with this.’ He rushed away, presumably in search of Jack. Daniella cowered in a chair, wondering what sort of explosion would follow. A vision came to mind of plates, glasses and wedding guests flying through the air while the newlyweds hid under the bridal table.

She bitterly regretted saying anything, but to her great surprise, nothing appeared to happen. The evening progressed smoothly; the bridal couple galloped out of the reception, hurled themselves into the best man’s car and escaped. A regiment of aunts, other rellies and a motley collection of friends, hysterical with excitement and drunken exhaustion, waved from the front of the club.

Face battered, Jack left. When she’d finally sucked up enough courage to approach Mark, he’d said shortly, ‘Don’t worry about it anymore,’ and, apart from asking if she was all right, refused to elaborate. Jack always pretended to have forgotten what he’d done–perhaps he was so drunk he really didn’t remember, and Daniella was never game to front him about it. But sometimes he’d winked slyly at her and she wondered. Until the time he caught her in the horse box...

The news of Jack’s murder was closure to her secret guilt. Mark was the only person who knew what happened, because she was never able to tell her mother or discuss the past with the now, Archdeacon Gordon-Jack’s threats had put paid to that.

‘So what happens next?’ Carissa asked her mother, who was sipping coffee, staring at nothing in particular.

‘Oh, I don’t suppose it will affect us much. After all, we weren’t at the showground. By the way, I want to call on the Kirkbridge’s sister-in-law today. She’s house-sitting for them and Eloise said she would leave eggs for me.’

‘I saw her at the Information Centre Saturday afternoon. Getting directions.’

‘What?’
Daniella was all ears. ‘I thought you only arrived home last night? I know,’ she answered herself, ‘you stayed with Brendan’s family out in the bush.’

‘Mum, you don’t have to get your knickers in a twist. Brendan went to work, so he dropped me off on his way out,’ Carissa muttered, burying her nose in her coffee mug. She raised her head briefly, to add, ‘And I slept in the spare room, okay?’

Daniella closed the magazine and stared at her daughter. ‘The news has been all over town. You must have heard about it.’

‘Hey, Brendan’s family don’t have TV. And his parents weren’t home anyway. Gross about Jack, but hey, shit happens!’

Daniella sighed, wishing she wasn’t paying all that money out for private schooling only for Carissa to use vulgarities. ‘The police will ask everyone in the immediate family for an alibi. What was the Kirkbridge’s sister-in-law doing there? And how did you know it was her? And how come you didn’t hear about Jack at the centre?’

‘They walked into the Centre just as we were leaving. She was with her daughter, I think.’ She gazed out the window for a moment, brow furrowed. ‘We stopped to read the notices on the Centre verandah and I overheard this woman asking directions.’

‘Are you sure it was the Kirkbridge’s sister-in-law?’ Daniella’s eyes narrowed like a fox watching a succulent pullet.

Carissa shrugged irritably. ‘Yes. Someone said.’

‘You must know who said.’

‘What does it matter?’ her daughter whined.

Daniella folded her lips, but curiosity got the better of her. ‘What’s she like?’

‘Who?’

‘The woman, of course? Is she ‘one of us’?’

Carissa squinted, trying to conjure up a face. ‘Medium height, red hair. There was something about her ... can’t put my finger on it.’ She paused and took a gulp of coffee. ‘Sort of serious. She’s quite pretty for an old woman.’

Her mother persisted. ‘How old
is
she?’

‘About the same age as you. She looked sorta–sad.’

Resisting the urge to strangle Carissa, Daniella shrugged and returned to her magazine. ‘Well, I’ll go over later. You can come with me and meet the daughter.’

Monday: mid morning.

Two fat grinning Labradors raced down the driveway to greet them, a geriatric spaniel bringing up the rear. Daniella parked a little way from the bottom of the rather grandiose entrance. The colonial-style, straw bale building with ochre walls and deep-silled, huge, tinted windows glowed in the sun. Smoke wafted out of the chimney; a hint of spring spiced the crisp air. She had visited many times, and knew the home inside was elegant with a comfortable reception room, and lounge with a stone fireplace, the mantel of which was adorned with priceless object d’art.

A red-haired woman wearing jeans, a cashmere sweater, highly-polished boots and big, wrap-around sunglasses, waited on the verandah. The dogs panted up the steps and flung themselves at her feet.

Daniella felt upstaged. She stepped out of her car, marched up the first three steps, then stopped. Something about the woman made her uneasy.

‘Hello! We thought we’d come and introduce ourselves,’ she said, trying for cheery tones. ‘I believe Eloise left some eggs for me.’

Her hostess stepped forward. The screen door behind her opened and a girl about the same age as Carissa, with olive skin and slanting blue eyes under dark brows, emerged. Her black hair was bound into a glistening French braid.

Daniella, feeling like a member of the hoi polloi, introduced herself and Carissa. The woman removed her sunglasses; Daniella cringed under the penetrating gaze. The silence stretched, seemingly forever, until the woman finally responded in a low, musical voice. ‘De–Susan Prescott. This is my daughter, Marli. I’m Eloise and James’s sister-in-law,’

Daniella, thinking there might be something caught in her front teeth, clamped her mouth shut and nodded. Scampering noises heralded the arrival of a tiny ball of black and white fluff.

‘Oh, how gorgeous!’ squealed Carissa, pushing past her mother to run up the steps and scoop the pup into her arms. Almost in the one motion, she breathlessly introduced herself to Marli Prescott, who smiled brightly and ushered her inside. Susan invited her visitor in for tea and told the dogs to stay out.

As she preceded her hostess through the great, wide hallway, Daniella realised, with some surprise, that for once she didn’t have the upper hand.

CHAPTER 6

Scones, Jam and Cream.

Susan

Monday: mid morning.

M
y heart sinks when the dogs begin their ‘Oh joy, oh Heaven, we’ve got visitors!’ routine, as I finish speaking to my sister-in-law in England. The sound of an expensive motor approaching sends nervous flutters through me. ‘For God’s sake, visitors are all I need, right when I find time to ring the hospital about Edna Robinson’s condition.’ The information imparted by the old lady the morning before makes me sceptical. A tale of crime and retribution couldn’t be discounted, but getting involved in townsfolk’s problems smacks too much of my profession, about which I have somewhat ambivalent feelings.

As I lean against the side of the French door leading onto the side verandah, questions about my collapsed marriage keep returning to buzz around my head like flies. Depression, grief, guilt–the ‘black dog’ are not problems which I have encountered in any pressing way, being an exponent of the ‘pull yourself together’ school inherited from my grandma. Now my chickens are coming home to roost.
I’ve lost my lioness persona and taken on the mantle of mouse.

How much did I contribute to Harry’s abandonment of our marriage? Was it my insistence on keeping my career? At one time, in a futile bid to be the perfect wife and mother, I seriously considered resigning from the police force, but Harry, alarmed by the realisation that the extra money coming in was more than helping with the current slump in demand for architects, hastily talked me out of it.

Had I ignored my good-looking husband’s affairs because I allowed chasing criminals to take precedence over Harry or the girls? But I did go to school plays and events ... often ... as much as I could. And I do–did –my share of the housework.
Yeah right, Susan, so that stacks up against what you didn’t do?

I reach for my sunglasses and walk onto the front verandah. A silver BMW is crunching its way to the house, accompanied by our dogs on escort duty. When the car stops, they stagger up the front steps and collapse around me.

A young girl of about Marli’s age, the other a woman of my own, alight from the vehicle. The girl is dressed in tatty jeans, sweater, boots and a duffle coat. Her mother is truly majestic. Perfectly groomed tresses encase her regal head, long neck elegantly wrapped in a silk scarf, no doubt genuine Gucci, folded into a crisp, white shirt, which in turn snuggles into a pair of tight, black jeans. An expensive black duffle coat dangles from her shoulder; breathtakingly high-heeled black boots complete the ensemble.

Her eyes sweep me from head to foot as she climbs the first three steps. I’m sure she’s guessed I wear washing-battered knickers. Old habits die hard. After she introduces herself and her daughter, I allow a lengthy silence to develop–a useful device for unsettling criminals and unexpected guests–until she starts to shift from one elegantly-clad foot to the other. Only then do I take my sunglasses off and introduce Marli and myself.

A moment of silence follows, during which my visitors don’t quite know what to say, but then Marli’s puppy wriggles onto the scene. With a happy cry, Carissa Winslow scoops him up, we all relax and the girls vanish to the back of the house. We mothers head for the kitchen.

Daniella sips her tea, grimaces and at my gesture, helps herself to more milk before diving headlong into the latest news in town, Jack Harlow’s murder.

‘So you see it was an awful shock when we were told about my cousin, Jack. I mean, I’m sure no one I know would do such a dreadful thing!’ she finishes breathlessly.

Her cousin? Vaguely interested, I allow her to witter on, her voice providing a background to my thoughts which insist on returning to the morning Harry left–

‘I don’t know what the family will think, especially since Aunty Edna had another heart attack yesterday morning. Just as well she was in hospital already. If it hadn’t been for some woman at the park, she might have dropped dead in the toilets...’

My mind snaps back to the present as Daniella’s voice rams itself into my consciousness.

‘Who?’

Daniella stops in mid-sentence, surprised, and then explains. ‘Aunt Edna. She took a turn with her heart yesterday at the park -’

‘You mean Mrs Robinson?’

‘Why, yes. Do you know her?’ Daniella’s eyebrows hit full mast.

‘I’ve met her. A very nice old lady. More tea?’

I wave the pot and thrust the scones, jam and cream toward her enticingly. She throws me a surprised glance, then holds her cup out and picks up another scone. ‘How is she?’ Perhaps it will save me a phone call.

‘Oh, I rang last night and the nurse said she was stable. I haven’t heard anything more, but no news is good news, as they say.’ Daniella smiles complacently. ‘You live in Brisbane don’t you? Whereabouts? How long are you here for?’

Leaving me little time to answer between questions, Daniella’s voice flows on, enquiring about my social standing and the depth of my relationship with Eloise and James. I parry her questions politely as my mind, in spite of my best efforts, shifts into cop mode. This woman knows “who’s who at the zoo.”

My guest waffles on about fashion, the local social hierarchy and all the volunteer groups to which she belongs. I can’t resist the lure of the chase and cut into her babble. ‘How well did you know Jack?’
Stay out of it, Susan.

Daniella’s eyes almost pop out of her head. For a moment, it appears as though she’s not prepared to answer and I’m about to follow up with reassuring noises.

‘Well, as I said, Jack was my cousin, but a good deal older than me. Our families lived next door to each other forever. Why do you want to know?’

I backpedal smoothly. ‘I was interested, because I am an avid reader of crime. I don’t mean to pry.’
Oh, you liar.

After staring at me for a moment, she relaxes visibly and launches into a long and involved family history. Jack Harlow was the oldest child of her Aunt Connie and trained sheepdogs all his life, as his father did. He left a widow, Penelope, but no children.

‘Thank goodness Jack didn’t breed,’ she says with a sigh, ‘but they have a lot of champion sheepdogs. Jack travels all over the country in the trial season, while Penelope looks–looked–after the farm. As a matter of fact, they live just over there!’ She flings her arm out, indicating a point to the north.

‘Jack was quite a bit older than you was he not? Did you know him when you were a child?’

‘Yes, I remember first meeting him when I was about five.’

Something is urging me on. ‘Did you like him? Get on well with him?’ I nudge the scone plate toward her again. Softly, softly catchee monkey ...

She looks undecided for a moment then, obviously stalling for time, takes another, cuts it in half, slowly slathers on cream and jam and devours it.

‘I believe his reputation with the women was not the best.’ I almost miss the moment when something dark flashes into her eyes and a shadow passes across her face. Rage. Pure, distinct, hatred.
Enough to kill?

‘There was a scandal last year, but you don’t want to know about that!’
Oh, don’t I just?
I remember the farmer’s voice–
‘Half the town, I’d say.’

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would want to murder him? A rival competitor perhaps? ’

She considers for a moment, opens her mouth to answer, then stares curiously at me. ‘Why are you so interested? Did you know Jack? Do you ...’ She snaps her mouth shut.

I hasten to re-assure her. ‘No, I didn’t know him. I’m just interested because I was there when it happened.’
Shut up, Susan!

Daniella jumps on my explanation like a crow on road kill. ‘You saw what happened?’

I gave her a brief explanation of why we were attending the trials, and then was thankfully saved by the girls surging out of the family room at the back of the house to swoop like birds of prey on the remaining plate of scones, pieces of which they proceed to feed to the delighted pup.
‘Mum!
Marli says the breeder had a few pups left in the litter! Can we get one?’ pleads Carissa. Thank heaven for small mercies: a diversion.

Before Daniella can answer, the dogs shoot out from under the table, race along the wide hallway, toenails scrabbling for a grip on the parquet flooring and hurl themselves down the front steps. I get up, excuse myself and head after them to the front verandah where I watch transfixed, as a police car creeps inexorably along the rutted driveway toward the house.

My heart begins a courtly dance against my ribcage. Has something happened to my other daughter? A band of ice clamps itself around my body. I feel faint but Marli, recognising my plight, wraps her arm around my waist and holds on tight.