The Port Fairy Murders (24 page)

‘Selwyn?’

There was no response.

‘You need to come out now, Selwyn.’

Still nothing.

Halloran approached the shed, and slowly, in full expectation of having to avoid a blow, put his head around the door, and withdrew it instantly. This was an automatic response. The glimpse he’d caught of Selwyn Todd, sitting on the edge of his bed, naked in the heat, assured him that he was in no danger. He indicated to the others that they should stay back, and he stood in the shed’s doorway, where Selwyn could see him. Selwyn’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light, and he squinted up at the strange man. It wasn’t Matthew, so he needn’t be afraid. He was only afraid of Matthew. Halloran saw that Selwyn had blood on him. He saw, too, the bloodied shovel leaning against the wall near the bedhead.

‘It’s hot in here, Selwyn. You should come out where it’s cooler. You must be thirsty.’

Selwyn stood up, unselfconsciously. Halloran stepped back from the shed door, and Selwyn stepped into the sunlight. The sight of him made Constable Adams, one of the Warrnambool men, laugh. Selwyn laughed in response. Halloran shot the constable a look that silenced him.

‘Hand me my murder bag,’ Halloran said. He opened it and took out a swab.

‘Can you show me your hands, Selwyn?’ Halloran pointed to Selwyn’s hands as he spoke.

Selwyn, who hadn’t yet noticed Rose Abbot’s body, looked down at his hands. Why were they sticky? He held them up. Was the man going to hose them for him? Halloran took a sample of the blood, put it in a bag, and sealed it.

‘Would one of you go into the house and get a blanket or a sheet so that this man can be covered?’

‘Shouldn’t he just get dressed, sir?’ Constable Adams was trying to make amends for his undisciplined laughter.

‘No, he shouldn’t. I don’t want anything in that shed disturbed until we’ve gone over it properly. And I don’t want Selwyn cleaned up until he’s been thoroughly examined. But he can’t stay here. Constable Filan, if you’d take Selwyn to your lock-up, I’d appreciate it. Constable Adams will go with you. Constable Manton will stay here with me. We’ll come to you as soon as we can.’

Aggie watched as Selwyn, swathed in one of her best cotton sheets — she’d have to burn it if she ever got it back — was helped into a car and driven away. He’d been no trouble; a curious fact that wasn’t lost on Constable Filan.

Inspector Halloran questioned Aggie briefly. She told him what she’d told Paddy Filan. Inside the house, Constable Manton was photographing the bodies. He’d been asked to do this because photography was a hobby of his, and Warrnambool didn’t run to a professional police photographer. He was doing his best, although he wasn’t confident that his shots were either in focus or properly exposed. When Halloran came back into the house, he found that Manton had finished and that he was taking notes in the front room.

‘Constable Filan said that the local doc will be here as soon as he can, sir. A woman is inconveniently giving birth, even as we speak.’

‘We’re going to need help with this, Constable. I don’t want the bodies moved until Homicide gets here from Melbourne, and I know that won’t be until late this afternoon, at the earliest, assuming they can send people at all. We can cover the body of the woman once the doc has had a look, but I’m afraid I’d prefer that they stay where they are. Awful, I know.’

‘This isn’t as straightforward as it looks, is it, sir?’

‘Does it look straightforward, Constable?’

‘Well, Filan said that the old lady’s story was that the retarded bloke went berserk and killed them. They’re related, apparently.’

‘Yes, that’s the story. Does it look that simple to you?’

‘No, sir, it does not.’

‘It doesn’t to me either. Gut instinct, Constable?’

‘I don’t think the person who killed the man in the front room is that same person who killed the woman in the backyard. I think the bloke’s been dead for a longer period of time.’

‘You’ll make a bloody good detective, Constable Manton. Why do you think he’s been dead longer?’

‘The spittle and mucous around his mouth and chin are dry and crusted. The blood around the woman’s head is still wet and sticky. Also, the lady …’

‘Her name is Miss Agnes Todd.’

‘Miss Todd said that Selwyn went crazy and that she heard him struggling with her nephew in the front room. There are no signs that there was a struggle. It’s neat and tidy. The body looks like it’s been placed there. It doesn’t look like he died there.’

‘So that nice old lady — and she’s not that old — sitting out on the footpath is lying to us about what happened?’

‘Yes, sir, I think she is. Constable Filan said as much as well.’

‘Constable Filan is as sharp as you are. Any theories, off the top of your head?’

‘No, sir. It does look as though Selwyn hit the woman.’

‘It does look that way, doesn’t it?’

Halloran asked if Manton had photographed the interior of the shed. He had. He then examined Matthew Todd’s body. He pulled the shirt collar down to reveal raw ligature marks.

‘He certainly wasn’t strangled while he was sitting in this room. I’d say he was brought here, either from somewhere else in the house or from outside the house. There’s a bit of sand in the tread of the shoes, which is hardly unusual in Port Fairy. There’s no damage to the hands, and nothing under the fingernails. He didn’t, or couldn’t, put up a fight.’

‘Which means the killer was strong.’

‘And that rules out Miss Todd. I don’t see how those skinny arms could draw a cord this tightly around his neck. Any sign of the cord?’

‘No, sir — not in the room. We haven’t had time to do a thorough search.’

‘Let’s look at the woman. Her name is Mrs Rose Abbot.’

In the backyard, the early cohorts of flies had arrived. Halloran waved them away.

‘We need to get Mrs Abbot covered.’

Constable Manton went inside and returned with a tablecloth. Halloran looked down at Rose.

‘This is a very different crime. Her face is unrecognisable. Are we even sure this is Rose Abbot?’

‘According to Filan, Miss Todd says that she saw Selwyn attack her niece with the shovel.’

‘And then he took it and drove the blade into the side of her head? That seems very precise for the man who came out of that shed. He didn’t react at all when he saw her on the ground. Did you notice that?’

‘I got the impression that he didn’t understand what it meant.’

‘Could he kill her in a rage and then forget almost immediately that he’d done it?’

‘I suppose that might depend on what sort of retarded he is.’

‘Not very well put, Constable, but I see what you mean.’

‘When I was photographing in the shed, I noticed that there was a slate with writing on it that you might want to look at, sir. I made sure I got close-ups of it.’

There was very little to see in the shed. The only furniture was the bed, and Selwyn’s clothes were piled in a corner. The shovel was there — that would need to be dusted for fingerprints. And the slate that Manton had mentioned was on the end of the bed. It was an ordinary slate, the kind used in every primary school. Halloran cocked his head so that he could read what was on it: ‘Me do bad. Them bad, but.’

‘Who’s “them”? Rose and Matthew, or Rose and Miss Todd? Maybe he wanted to go after Miss Todd, too, but she locked him up first. What do you think, Constable? Is this a confession?’

‘It certainly looks like one.’

‘I can’t get a handle on any of this. It looks like an open-and-shut case, at least as far as Rose Abbot’s death is concerned. Miss Todd says she saw Selwyn attack Rose, and he’s more or less confessed to it on his slate. And yet I don’t believe it. There’s not a single thing that rings true. I feel as if someone’s throwing sand in my eyes, and I don’t like it. This is a small town, and a murder in a small town is like a hand grenade going off. A lot of people can end up getting hurt. This needs to be solved quickly, before it starts to fester. I’ll telephone Melbourne and insist on someone from Homicide coming down here. And so, Constable, the grim and tedious process begins.’

INSPECTOR LAMBERT TOOK
Inspector Halloran’s call at 8.00 am.

‘A case that fitted your department’s brief better than this one would be difficult to find, Titus.’

‘We’re pretty stretched here, Greg.’

‘I understand that. Let me outline the case, and you’ll see why my inexperienced men aren’t equipped to deal with it on their own.’

‘You don’t have confidence in your people?’

Greg Halloran ought perhaps to have been offended. He wasn’t. He thought the question a reasonable one.

‘I’ve got one first-class man. You’ve met him — Constable Manton. The local bloke in Port Fairy is excellent, too, but none of them have had detective training, and they’d benefit from being guided through this. When I said I was rusty, Titus, I meant it.’

‘I’m listening.’

Halloran ran through the details, sketchy though they were.

‘Tell me about Port Fairy, Greg. I’ve never been there.’

‘It’s small, about 30 minutes out of Warrnambool along a terrible road. I suppose you’d say it was a picturesque place, although what that really means is that nothing’s been done to it since about 1900. Farming and fishing keep it going. No one’s been murdered here since God knows how long. It’s quiet, orderly, with Western District certainties that will find these murders hard to accommodate. Murder in a small place like this can create all sorts of tensions. I’ve seen it in Warrnambool. Old wounds open up, even when they’ve got nothing to do with the crime. People settle scores with gossip or with malicious accusations. It can take a generation for a community this size to recover from murder, which is why I want this cleared up as quickly as possible.’

‘I can’t come down, Greg. There’s too much going on here.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to, Titus. I’ll run the investigation. Just send me someone who knows what he’s doing.’

‘Would you be willing to work with Constable Helen Lord? She’ll have someone with her, of course.’

‘I need someone who’s trained.’

‘The person she’ll be with is a trained detective. Helen Lord is better than trained, Greg. She’s good.’

‘My blokes aren’t going to like deferring to her.’

‘They won’t have to. She’ll be under strict instructions to follow your orders, and she’s perfectly aware that her rank means she can’t throw her weight around. Not that she would.’

‘I don’t know, Titus. I know she’s good. I’ve met her.’

‘Under normal circumstances a policewoman wouldn’t be let near a homicide, but these aren’t normal circumstances. Nothing has been normal since Darwin was bombed. It won’t hurt your blokes to work with Helen Lord. I’m happy for you to decide how best to use her.’

‘Has she ever seen a mutilated body, or smelt it?’

This question shook Titus’s confidence in his decision to send Helen Lord to Port Fairy. He realised that she hadn’t, in fact, been exposed to the brutal reality of a violated corpse. She’d examined photographs of particularly unpleasant murders in the case involving George Starling, and she hadn’t flinched. On the contrary, she’d done what many seasoned officers still found difficult to do — she’d stared and stared at those photographs, extracting from them as much as she could. She hadn’t looked away for the same reason that Maude hadn’t ever looked away. She was on the side of the victim, and sometimes the victim spoke through an overlooked detail in a photograph.

‘I don’t expect you to expose Helen Lord to the bodies, but you don’t need to protect her from the photographs. She’ll be a tremendous help to you.’

‘All right, Titus. Who’ll be coming with her?’

‘I haven’t decided that yet.’

‘It’ll be faster if they come by train.’

‘And how long will you need them?’

‘With two extra people we can get through interviews quickly. This might turn out to be much simpler than it looks.’

‘I want them back in three days, Greg.’

‘Fair enough. By the time they get here I’ll have a much clearer idea of what we’re dealing with.’

Titus needed to make a decision on the spot. He ran his eye down the list of continuing investigations. There was no one he wanted to take off a case. Alternatively, he could borrow someone from the CIB, but he didn’t like doing that. The Homicide department was still finding its feet, and it seemed important to Titus that it be seen to manage whatever case load it found itself carrying. Sergeant Reilly was an obvious choice, but Titus knew that there was tension between Reilly and Lord, and Greg Halloran wouldn’t appreciate having to sort out any arguments that might erupt between them.

With mild trepidation, he decided that it might be time for Sergeant Sable to return properly to work. This would mean delaying a meeting with Tom Mackenzie, but that couldn’t be helped. There were several advantages to sending Joe to Port Fairy with Constable Lord. He’d be well away from George Starling, who was still in Melbourne; Titus had no doubt about that. And work would offer Joe a distraction that he sorely needed.

Hoping that Helen and Joe wouldn’t have yet left for work, he telephoned the house in Kew. Ros Lord answered and said that they were almost out the door. She called them back and handed the telephone to Joe. Joe listened as Inspector Lambert issued his instructions. When he hung up, he gave the gist of it to Helen.