The Celibate Mouse (28 page)

‘I think it’s time we got this cleaned up and you girls can watch some TV then if you want.’ Perhaps they’d calm down watching a film or something. He went to the sink and started scraping the frying pan out, preparatory to washing up. The twins stood up, exchanging sulky glares and started clearing the table. ‘We have a dishwasher,’ said Marli, petulantly.

‘It’ll do you good to do it by hand for once,’ replied David, as he filled the sink with hot, soapy water and stacked dishes. At the periphery of his vision, the girls flicked each other viciously with the tea towels, but he didn’t have the energy to get into another brawl. Once he finished reading reports, he wanted to sit in front of the fire, brooding over Susan’s return home from her date. The image of Mark Gordon kissing her seethed in his memory. If Jellicott did the same, Maguire planned to spoil the moment by swooping out front. He made a note to turn the front security light on. That would halt any moves Jellicott might make.

In their bedroom, Brittany opened her rucksack and took out a small box.

‘Look at this! I got it from Sandy. You know, that blond boy we met at the party last night?’

Marli leaned close, frowning. ‘What is it?’

‘Sandy works for a private investigator and he gave me this.’

‘Why? What are you going to do with it?’ Marli’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘You’ll be in deep shit if anyone sees it.’

Brittany giggled. ‘Nah. No one will know what it is, if you don’t tell them.’ She flung a hard look at her sister.

‘But I don’t know what it is,’ answered Marli, reasonably enough.

‘Then you can’t get into trouble!’

CHAPTER 40

Contents of a Diary

Susan

Sunday: late morning.

T
he phone rings at ten o’clock. A woman says she has information I’m looking for and to meet her in town. The utmost secrecy is essential. David has gone into Ipswich for a meeting with the big-wigs. I try to call him, but his mobile is switched off or out of range. I resolve to try again on the way to town. The girls are playing on their laptops surrounded by dogs. I am satisfied they are safe. It’s raining, cold and not a day to be driving, but I have to go. This might lead to nothing, as did my date last night.

Euon Jellicott had arrived punctually at six o’clock, heavily disguised as a gentleman. Harry would have loved his navy blue, XJ40 Jaguar. Inadvertently rising to the occasion, I’d worn a sapphire pantsuit, pearl choker at my throat, high heels and black jacket.

The girls watched us leave with narrow-eyed scrutiny. I felt as though two rifles were aimed in the middle of my back and Euon Jellicott’s ears blushed. They didn’t approve of me going out with anyone other than Harry, but after Brit’s moment of weakness, when we’d told her about Harry’s rejection of her, it was “venom as normal.”

Euon set himself out to be charming, plying me with exquisite food, outstanding wine and humorous stories. In spite of my reservations, I enjoyed myself, until we got back to the farm. The moment I said ‘Goodnight,’ and took off the seatbelt, he crushed me against him with his left arm, while his right hand snaked between us to enclose my breast.
Not very creative.

I started to berate him, but he thrust his tongue into my mouth, let my breast go and whipped his hand into my crotch. Just as well I had slacks on. I grabbed him by his ‘bunch in front,’–which had increased in size and made a good target–tightened my hand around it and jerked my head away.

‘Let me go now,’ I hissed, ‘or you’ll be singing castrati.’

His hands instantly returned to the steering wheel and I let go.

‘Thank you for spoiling what was, until now, a very pleasant evening, Euon.’ I picked my handbag up, opened the door and scrambled out. The wind caught the door and slammed it behind me.

‘Dickhead!’ I snarled, glaring at him over my shoulder as I marched to the steps. The security light came on, momentarily blinding me. I turned back to look at Jellicott. Stony-faced, he started the motor, yanked the gear stick back and lurched into reverse. Gravel flew as he roared away, no doubt uttering curses like the Black Fairy at the christening.

‘You look pretty pissed off. Wasn’t he a gentleman after all?’ smirked David, from his position in the shadowed side of a bay window.

‘Until just now he was, the bastard.’ I headed for the kitchen, seething.

‘Want me to go after him? I can shoot him for you if you like.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of shooting him myself, thank you. It was nothing I couldn’t handle. Want a cup of coffee?’ I turned the kettle on and took two cups out of the cupboard.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a scotch?’ he invited, waving a full glass under my nose.
What a grand idea!
I took a piece of broken biscuit out of a tin and went to the cupboard under the sink, surprising my wee mouse mum in the act of carrying something into her nest. She stopped and looked up at me, before dashing for cover.

‘I really don’t know what I’m going to do about them,’ I sighed, squatting to place the treat carefully outside their makeshift home. I checked the egg cup beside her house was full of water. ‘On the one hand, I can’t have mice all over the house, but on the other, I owe her! And she’s only a fieldmouse.’

He laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. Did you have an opportunity to look at the diaries before you went out?’

‘No, they’re in my bedroom. I’ll get them and we can go through them now. Have the girls gone to bed?’

‘Yes, thank God.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and proceeded to tell me about the fight he’d interrupted upon his return to the farm and the ensuing battle at dinner. ‘Believe me, Susan, it was awful.’

I sighed. ‘Girl’s fights are always like that, David. You’ll have to get used to it if you’re going to hang around.’ We stared at each other for a long moment, shades of our aborted sexual adventure filling the space between us. After a moment, I broke eye contact and scuttled for the lounge room.

We settled into easy chairs with our drinks and some cheese biscuits. The walls of the room glowed in the light from the fire. A Brahms symphony played on the stereo, Fat Albert forced his more than ample person into my chair and the old spaniel flopped his head on David’s feet. Outside, the wind raged.
Bliss.

David took one of Edna’s diaries, I bagged the others, but it wasn’t until I got half-way through the second, that I discovered the Robinson’s secret. Edna’s entries in this book, written in an almost printed style, started in January, 1947 when she was sixteen. Mostly her ramblings were about boys and church doings, but suddenly I’m riveted.

There it is. All laid out clearly and pretty much as I suspected.

‘David, listen to this.’

July 15.

They found out about Bob today. We were bottling apricots and Kath started crying and Mum and Auntie Ethel thought she was joking when she said she’s going to have a baby. Mum shouted, you’re only fifteen then we all started crying and she made her tell. Alice cried and cried. They wanted to know why and she told. He did IT to her too when she slept over at our house. Mum went sort of white and she and Auntie Ethel went into the bedroom. We tried to hear what they said but couldn’t. Then Mum called dad and Arthur in from the paddock. I didn’t know Bob was doing it with all of us. I thought it was only me, but Connie and Kath said he pushed their beds together and got in with both of them at once. He used to come to my room sometimes, but not as much as Kath and them. It hurts but he said they’ll belt me if I tell. And no one would believe me because he’s Grace’s husband and he’d say I’m lying to cover up doing it with someone else. I’m so scared. They might tell the police and then everyone will know about me. How could he do it? Grace’s baby is due soon.

‘Bob, the one who got killed by the bull. Coincidence, do you think?’

‘How come the parents didn’t hear this bastard creeping around?’

‘I think I can answer that! At lunch the other day, someone said that the original homestead had bedrooms opening onto the garden. The side verandah was added in the early 1950s.’

‘Ah, this is probably why they added it. What else is there?’ he asked, eagerly.

‘Not much here just stuff about everyday things...’ I flipped the page. ‘Ah, here we go again ...’

Mum, Auntie Ethel, Dad and Arthur spoke in the kitchen after we went to bed. We had to answer lots of things, like when did he do it, how often and since when. Dad got really angry when we said it started while he was away in the Army Reserve and Arthur was in New Guinea. Dad said Bob only managed to stay home to run the farm because he has heart trouble. I don’t think he has heart trouble. Arthur said after the Japs, it wouldn’t worry him none to do Bob.’

They were really angry and shouted at us why didn’t we tell mum what Bob did? We said we were scared no one would believe us. I told them what Bob said and mum said to dad, if he yelled at them like he was now, it was no wonder they didn’t tell. Dad said Aggy he’s going to pay for this. I don’t care that he’s Grace’s husband. They’re going to tell Alice’s mum and dad too. Johnnie cried because Dad scared him, yelling at us. Mum took Kath to the doctor.

Nothing else of note was recorded that week, apart from comings and goings between people, presumably relatives and neighbours. Alice, it transpired, was the daughter of a neighbour.

The shocking details went on.

The women finished bottling the fruit. Between blaming her sisters for leading Bob on, Grace had screaming fits and spent a lot of time crying. Edna didn’t say how Kath felt about it. According to Edna, Grace and Bob lived on a cottage on the farm.

I fast-forwarded the entries, looking for the vital pages which might disclose what eventually happened. Nothing for a couple of weeks, apart from Bob being ordered to the house and Edna and the girls sent to their rooms while he was there. There was a lot of shouting and Edna, who’d sneaked out and listened, wrote that her dad told Bob he’d a good mind to ‘fix him up.’ Grace moved back in the main house with their parents, and spent most of the time hiding in her room, as far as I could make out.

There were arguments over whether they should get Kath an ‘operation.’ The mother, Agnes, is terrified Kath might die if they do that. The father insists the disgrace of Kathleen having a baby out of wedlock will be too much for the family. My heart twists for them in their dilemma. Abortions in those days frequently ended in death. Poor Kathleen, I thought remembering the staid, well-dressed matron at Edna’s funeral that afternoon. I wondered what happened to the baby.

Frustrated, I began to comb the book from the back, and it was there amongst the last pages that we discovered the price Jellicott paid for his predatory behaviour.

July 30

Grace screaming outside woke me up. Arthur and Alice’s father were unloading a bull from Tomlinson’s truck and shut it in the side yard they use for killing steers. Then dad and Arthur and Alice’s brothers marched Bob out of the shed. Grace was hanging on to Bob. Mum and Mrs Tomlinson ran down the paddock and grabbed Grace by the arms and brought her back to the house. She was shouting no no no.

Then Mum came in and said we weren’t to go out, no matter what. She pulled the blind down and we came away from the windows. Connie and Kath went out to the kitchen with mum, but I looked around the edge of the blind and out the window. There was lots of dust flying and I couldn’t see anything, then they dragged Bob around the side of the shed. He looked all limp and his head kept hitting the ground, like he was dead and I couldn’t see anymore. The bull was roaring and charging around the yard. Mum and dad made us swear on the family bible that we’ll never tell anyone about this morning. No matter who asks. Not the police, not even God.

There was a gap here of several pages, before the diary started again on the 3rd of August.

We went to Bob’s funeral. The coffin was shut. I’m so scared. I keep having nightmares about what happened. It’s all mixed up with Grace crying and things. Kath is going to stay with Aunty Maureen in Sydney and Mum said, again, that we’re never ever ever to tell what’s happened or what Bob did to us. Ever!

The last ‘ever’ was underlined many times and so thickly, that the pen had gone through the paper. We went through the diaries we had, but as far as we could tell, Edna never told anyone outside the family about that terrible event, until the day I’d visited her in the local hospital. The day someone thought she’d revealed the family secret and may have killed her for it.

‘Would the police have investigated it then?’ I asked David.

‘Yes, but forensics weren’t as technical as they are now. From what Edna says in the diary, they beat him up first, so he was too groggy to get away from the bull, which they probably tormented into attacking. Technically, it could be first degree murder because they clearly knew Bob would be killed, but they could argue that they only wanted to teach him a lesson which would be second-degree murder. It was obviously passed off as an accident caused by his carelessness. The cops at the time may have had their suspicions, but murder would be very hard to prove unless they could get the girls to talk. The cops probably didn’t even question them. They’d take the adults word for what happened. And now a defence counsel would argue that their recollections are well over sixty years old and unreliable due to their present age.

I stop to try and call David again, but no ring tone at all. I am in one of the “dead spots” in the road. I fling the mobile onto the seat and keep going. The windscreen wipers are not much help against the driving rain.

I shudder, as the whole terrible scenario runs through my mind again, like an old time newsreel, never ending. Rough justice, murder certainly, but Arthur had just come back from fighting the Japanese in New Guinea. Would a jury blame him? I doubted it. And how much did John, the youngest child remember of that time?

I’m saddened by the thought of the pain the girls carried throughout their lives – Arthur and their father to all intents and purposes, murderers, Grace, a young wife whose husband had been proved a rapist. Kathleen, Connie, Edna and Alice Tomlinson living through the horror and shame of his abuse, probably never to tell they weren’t virgins when they wed. Those days it was very important to remain pure, or be seen to remain so. Did their husbands know their wives had been raped? Maybe they’d used the “horse riding’ excuse, if their virginity was questioned.

As for Kathleen, no one could ever appreciate the agony she must have endured. Grace is not Jellicott anymore, so she married again somewhere along the way. Euon, of course is the grandson of the child she carried when the abuse was discovered and undoubtedly knew the story. I could well imagine the joy with which the media would greet such juicy news attached to such a prominent family. It would almost certainly tarnish the professional careers of the younger men and women. It wouldn’t do much for the Tomlinson family either. I wondered how many of the older members of the valley community knew about the murder.
Probably all of them.

The wind buffets my car, sleet pings on the bonnet. I turn the heater and demisters up. Traffic is starting to build up around me. I turn down Athertons Street. Meter after meter is taken up and I’m thinking I’ll have to go around the block again, I suddenly see one just near the address I’m seeking and pull in. Is there time to ring David’s mobile again? No, I’ll check this out first.

Dreading getting out into the cold, I reach into the back seat, grab my heavy coat and drag it into the front. I gather up my shoulder bag and swing open the door. Iced rain pelts into the car, turning the legs of my jeans sodden and sending my French braid swinging around my head. I force myself into the wind and sling the coat around my shoulders. Pedestrians bowl past, hunched into their umbrellas like colourful mushrooms. I turn and start up the pathway, hurrying to get into the warmth of the building.