The Holiday Murders (19 page)

-13-

Mary Quinn went
into the studios at 3UZ, despite Constance having assured her that she could take all the time she needed before returning — another actress could read her lines until she felt able to rejoin the cast. But Mary wanted to work. What else was she going to do? She couldn’t just sit in her room at the Windsor and worry.
The Red Mask
was a life-saving distraction, she said. The other cast members knew that Mary had suffered a great tragedy, although the details were hazy. There’d been a small paragraph tucked away in the previous day’s
Argus
, but it gave little away beyond the fact that John Quinn and his son, Xavier, had been found dead in their house on Christmas Eve. It was Mary’s leading man, Jack Ables, who’d spotted it. It had been the subject of conversation before Mary arrived, but discretion descended upon them when she stepped into the studio.

The cast of
The Red Mask
was an unusually affable one. There were six of them: Mary Quinn; Jack Ables; the ingénue Annette Smith; a journeyman character actor, Wilson McCormick; and Andrew Harris, an actor with a vocal range that enabled him to play multiple roles, including completely convincing female ones. They were all grateful to be working and to have been granted exemption from war jobs. Animosities, so common among actors, had been suspended for the duration. Any resentment that Mary Quinn came from money was kept well hidden; and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she was untalented. She had earned her place in the cast.

Mary was immediately conscious of the atmosphere of studied normalcy, and put the cast out of their misery.

‘My father and my brother were murdered on Christmas Eve, and my best friend was murdered on Christmas night. I don’t know what’s happening or why.’

She began saying this matter-of-factly. There was a moment of silence after she’d spoken, and then she gulped a mouthful of air and began to sob. Jack Ables was the first to reach her, and he took her in his arms unselfconsciously. She clutched at his shirt. The others gathered around, eager to be included in the drama. Constance, who’d been in the production booth, hurried in to comfort her leading lady. A chair was brought over, and Mary was gently helped into it.

Constance felt torn between her sympathy for Mary’s distress and a guilty annoyance at the possibility that the recording might be held up. Mary had insisted on coming in, but what use was her presence if all it meant was disruption to an already-crowded schedule? 3UZ had put a lot of faith and money into
The Red Mask
. They wanted it to be a success nationally, and had therefore committed themselves to recording each episode. Acetate was expensive, so recording did not mean they had the luxury of making mistakes; the cast had been well drilled on the need to get it right the first time.

With two 15-minute episodes to be recorded each day, there was no time for discussions about the scripts. The actors simply spoke the words as written by Dora Mansfield, whatever they thought of them. The rehearsals, which were disciplined and focussed, were mainly technical — to get the sound effects right. They were managed by a man in his sixties named Mike, who worked in a corner of the studio with a range of objects that were a mix of the perfectly ordinary and the arcane; with these, he could reproduce anything from an explosion to a footfall. He saw his job as the equivalent of the percussionist in an orchestra.

Fortunately, Mary Quinn’s collapse didn’t last long. With the cast around her, she was acutely conscious of her need to get on with it and begin the recording. But she didn’t feel as well prepared as usual. She’d managed to read her scripts the previous evening, despite the shocking news about Sheila Draper. She hadn’t memorised them, though, which she liked to do. She thought radio actors who read their parts were lazy, and she could always tell when an actor was under-prepared.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Please, let’s start work.’

She stood up, smiled grimly, thanked Jack Ables for the use of his shoulder, assured Constance again that she was up to it, and took her position behind the microphone.

Afterwards, with two episodes of
The Red Mask
secured on acetate, everyone agreed that she’d been marvellous, a real trouper, and that work was the best thing, the only thing, to distract Mary from her almost unimaginable grief. Constance seemed not quite as effusive in her support, and later she would say to Dora that there might be something hard in Mary Quinn, something that compromised her ability to grieve.

It was close to seven o’clock when the cast of
The Red Mask
left the 3UZ studios. Jack Ables suggested to Mary that they have dinner at the Menzies Hotel. It was, he said, one of the last bastions of decent cooking in Melbourne, somehow managing to turn out respectable food despite the restrictions imposed by rationing and the austerity regulations. Mary hesitated, but agreed.

The maitre d’ at the Menzies made it his business to know who was who in Melbourne. He harboured fantasies that the Menzies was an outpost of the Dorchester or Claridges. Consequently, he recognised Mary Quinn from her picture on the cover of that week’s
Listener-In
. He knew Jack Ables, of course. Who wouldn’t recognise the handsome face that had been appearing on the cover of radio guides and in newspapers for a couple of years now? Jack Ables was the object of another of the maitre d’s fantasies — one he kept very much to himself.

‘Good evening, Miss Quinn,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Mr Ables.’

Mary Quinn was surprised, and very pleased. This was the first time a perfect stranger had recognised her, and it gave her a lift. They were shown to a table in the crowded room. Like everywhere else in Melbourne where money mattered, American men in uniforms were prominent. Here, it was the officers. Their companions were either other officers or well-dressed women — a cut above the shop girls who enjoyed the attentions of GIs in the picture theatres. At a table close to where Jack and Mary had been seated, two women watched the room. Jack thought they might be prostitutes, although there was something rather clumsy about their predatory air. It was more likely that they were bored housewives who’d been successful in the past in picking up Yank brass in need of company.

Menus were brought to the table. Mary said that she didn’t feel up to unpicking the pretentious French, and that Jack could order for both of them. Neither of them felt like wine, which was just as well, given the narrowness of the choice and the ludicrous expense involved. Jack ran his eye over the menu. Hors d’oeuvres had been proscribed, and in order to bring everything in under five shillings, fare such as lobster wasn’t available.

Jack ordered
Consommé Celestine
and
Lapin au Saupiquet.

‘The maitre d’ knew my name,’ Mary said. ‘How strange.’

‘You might have to get used to that, Mary. It looks like
The Red Mask
is going to run.’

‘What’s it’s like, Jack, to have people stare at you?’

‘They’re staring at us now. I think the maitre d’ has passed the word around.’

It was true that people were staring, although it was mostly the women, and they were staring mostly at Jack.

‘It really doesn’t happen that often,’ Jack said. ‘Sometimes after a promotion, but I think people are more familiar with my voice than with my face.’

Mary looked at his face, which she’d never examined closely before. It was familiar, because it had appeared so often in various publications. If Australia had a movie industry, she thought, that face would be staring down at audiences from the silver screen. Jack wasn’t conventionally handsome, and he gave every appearance of not being vain about his looks, although this might have been a conceit. He had beautiful eyes, which were blue and strangely faceted; Mary thought he resembled Richard Barthelmess. He wasn’t married, and there’d been no gossip about affairs, so she assumed he was queer, which was fine by her. She liked the company of homosexual men, although she harboured a secret contempt for them when the mood took her.

Jack Ables didn’t press her for details about the deaths that had altered her life. He gave her ample opportunity to talk about them, but she avoided discussing anything personal. They talked about
The Red Mask
, about how awful some of the dialogue was, and how awkward it was that Dora Mansfield was so close to Constance Thorpe. No one felt comfortable criticising her. They talked about the other cast members, not nastily, but speculated gently about their private lives. Neither of them felt like dessert — the rabbit had been a generous serve — and Jack offered to walk Mary to the Windsor Hotel. She accepted, admitting she was certain that her life was in danger. She said she felt foolish saying it, because it sounded so melodramatic. ‘Do you think I’m being paraoid?’ she asked.

‘Paranoia has no basis in fact,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know what happened to your family and your friend, not in any detail — and I don’t want you to tell me, if you don’t want to — but it seems to me that you have bloody good reasons for feeling vulnerable.’

‘I’d like to tell you, Jack. I didn’t want to over dinner. I feel so alone.’

The Windsor dining room was still open when they reached the hotel, and they took a table and ordered a pot of tea. Jack was a sympathetic listener. Mary told him all that she knew. She described finding her brother’s body and described, too, how the detective had made her identify the body — how he’d made her look at her brother’s naked corpse.

‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘I know he’s got a job to do, but I don’t think he likes me. I suspect he thinks I’m rather cold.’

As Mary spoke and as Jack listened, occasionally reaching out and covering her hand with his, she began to think that he mightn’t be queer after all. He looked at her warmly, and she felt that there was more to the look than sexless sympathy. However, if he was expecting an invitation to her room, he’d be disappointed. She felt in no position to begin an affair with her leading man.

Jack Ables wouldn’t have said no to a sexual advance from Mary Quinn, although he would have been slightly uneasy about taking advantage of her at a vulnerable time in her life. His was not a predatory nature. The worst that could be said about him was that he was sexually opportunistic, but not consciously at the expense of another person’s feelings. Where sex was concerned, Jack Ables happily inhabited a broad church. The war had been a godsend to him. As his profile grew among the locals, and as his face became well known, his sexual dalliances with men became more dangerous. American servicemen, however, didn’t have a clue who he was, and there were more than enough of them to keep him busy when he felt the need — and when initiating sex with a woman was too complicated and fraught.

Feeling primed for sex by his dinner with Mary Quinn and the more intimate conversation that had followed at the Windsor, Jack decided that he’d take a detour to St Kilda Road on his way home. The gardens opposite Victoria Barracks were always busy with GIs far enough from home to want to explore sexual options not available to them in Hicksburg.

Ptolemy Jones had
watched Mary Quinn enter the Windsor Hotel with a man he didn’t recognise — not that he expected to recognise her acquaintances. He hadn’t got a good look at him, but he’d seen him place his hand in the small of her back as they passed through the door. This man obviously had some sort of relationship with her that was a few notches above casual. He’d waited to see if the man stayed. When Jack Ables came out of the hotel, Jones followed him down to Flinders Street and across Princes Bridge onto St Kilda Road.

The dance hall on the west side of the road was busy. Ables kept to the opposite side and slipped into the park. Jones fell back, but didn’t lose sight of him. The path was carrying an unusual amount of traffic, and the reason soon became apparent to Jones. There was a tentative rhythm to the perambulations. Men would pass each other, turn to observe the retreating back, and if encouraged by a similarly turned head, stop, and then go back to where the other man now stood. Words were exchanged, and they would either part or head off together deeper into the shadows.

Jones made sure he kept off the path. He knew that he’d react with instinctive, unstoppable violence if some GI offered to suck his cock, or presented his own cock for Jones to enjoy. He had bigger fish to fry, and was sufficiently self-disciplined to postpone dealing with these perverts. He’d leave that for another night, when he’d come back with his acolytes and enjoy doling out some lessons on the purity of National Socialism. For now, he was content, although it disgusted him, to watch as Jack Ables brazenly kissed an American soldier on the mouth before leading him away. As far as Jones was concerned, whoever this man turned out to be, that kiss had sealed his fate. Such creatures had been swept from Germany’s streets, and the same would happen here. But not tonight. Not now.

Titus and Maude
agreed that the mutton stew was a failure. It was a
Women’s Weekly
recipe. Everything that might have made it tasty had been stripped out of it, on the assumption that households wouldn’t have the butter to brown the meat, or the wine to enrich the broth. Maude had followed the recipe to the letter. The result was greasy and with a flavour that was simultaneously bland and unpleasant. Fortunately, neither of them was much interested in food. They ate for sustenance rather than enjoyment.

Maude passed on what she’d learned about Helen Lord, and confirmed for Titus that his instincts about her were correct. In Maude’s opinion, Helen was spectacularly more gifted than any of Titus’s male colleagues, a fact that no doubt would not go unpunished in the police force. Titus was briefly offended, but conceded the essential truth of his wife’s comment.