The Holiday Murders (3 page)

‘Did she describe what she’d seen?’

‘No. She said she couldn’t bring herself to, and besides, she said she’d only seen each body for a moment.’

‘Had she called the police?’

‘No. She’d been too distraught. I called them, probably at about 4.30. We’d gone into the house, into the living room. I telephoned from there.’

‘And you didn’t look in either of the rooms?’

‘No. I stayed with Mary until the police arrived.’

‘You knew the family well. Do you have any idea who would want to murder Xavier Quinn?’

‘None of this makes any sense to me, Sergeant. And I simply can’t believe that Mr. Quinn took his own life.’

‘Why are you so sure?’

Sheila pointed to the print above the fireplace.

‘You can’t have missed that,’ she said. ‘Mr. Quinn was a Catholic. It is inconceivable that he would risk eternal damnation by committing suicide.’

‘Were he and his son on good terms?’

Sheila looked at Joe and narrowed her eyes.

‘It would be presumptuous of me to judge their relationship, Sergeant.’

‘I wonder if, under the circumstances, you might be so presumptuous.’

‘There was some tension between them, but I imagine that’s normal for a father and son.’

‘What happened here is a very long way from normal, Miss Draper.’

Sheila thought about that for a moment.

‘I feel like I’m telling tales or gossiping.’

‘If you know anything that might shed some light on this, I don’t think Mr Quinn, or his son, would thank you for keeping it to yourself.’

A flush rose along Sheila Draper’s throat, betraying the fact that she’d been stung by this small rebuke.

‘I went out with Xavier a couple of times,’ she said. ‘It was earlier this year.’

‘How old was Xavier?’

‘He’s twenty.’

‘Had he joined up?’

Sheila shook her head.

‘No, he did try, but he wasn’t fit.’

‘Physically fit?’

‘No,’ Sheila said quietly. ‘There was nothing wrong with him physically.’

‘You said you went out with him a couple of times?’

‘He asked me. It was strange. He took me to church, to St Patrick’s. Each time, he was agitated after the Mass. He walked me home and didn’t say anything, but he was shaking with anger. He frightened me.’

‘Was he a violent man?’

‘Why do you want me to say terrible things about him?’

‘If the truth is terrible, Miss Draper, surely the lie that disguises it is more terrible.’

Even in the midst of this tense discussion, Joe Sable thought that Titus would have been impressed by this response. It had the desired effect on Sheila Draper.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’re right. This wasn’t a very happy household, Sergeant. Mr Quinn became quite distant after the death of his wife. He was always unfailingly polite, maybe kind in a way, but his withdrawal was hard on Mary and Xavier. He didn’t want Mary to become an actress; he thought the profession was only one step up from prostitution. They quarrelled about it, but he was never going to win that one. Mary was fiercely determined. I think, though, that it was Xavier who gave him the most trouble. Soon after his mother’s death — he’d just turned eighteen — he became a bit peculiar.’

‘Peculiar? You mean he was a fairy?’

Sheila Draper gave a sharp little intake of breath.

‘No, Sergeant, that’s not what I mean. Xavier was always a religious person. He entered a seminary, but he was too strange even for them, and they sent him home. He said he saw things. He called them ecstatic visions.’

‘Why did you step out with him?’

‘I suppose I thought I could help him. But I’m not a fool, Sergeant. Whatever was wrong with Xavier, I soon realised it would take a lot more than the love of a good woman to fix. As I said, he frightened me. I only saw him occasionally after our second outing. I think he spent most of his time in his room.’

She looked down at her hands. Joe Sable followed her gaze, half expecting to find her wringing them. They were still calmly placed, one on top of the other.

‘The truth of the matter is, Sergeant, that in all the time I’ve known the Quinn family, I’ve never had a real conversation with Xavier. Even when he took me to church, he barely spoke. I couldn’t tell you what his views were about anything, and I certainly couldn’t tell you who his friends were, or if he had any. I suppose that sounds odd.’

‘Not at all. It’s possible even for people who’ve been married for a lifetime to know practically nothing about each other.’

Sheila Draper leaned forward, and Joe felt a rush of sympathy from her. He blushed, suddenly aware that she supposed he’d been referring to his own parents. Titus would have been angered by this leak from his private life. In any investigation, distance between the questioner and the questioned always had to be maintained.

‘I was speaking generally,’ he said.

‘Yes. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.’

‘You’ve been most helpful, but I should point out that we may need to speak to you again.’

‘Mary’s going to spend the night with me. She couldn’t possibly sleep here.’

‘Of course,’ Joe said. ‘The house will have to be thoroughly searched, so there’ll be people here until morning.’

‘What a horrible way to spend Christmas Eve,’ Sheila said.

Titus and Joe
stood in Xavier Quinn’s bedroom. Mary Quinn and Sheila Draper had been escorted to Sheila’s boarding house. Neither of them had objected to being accompanied by a policeman, although at first the suggestion had created a mild panic in Mary.

Xavier’s bedroom window was open. Mary confirmed later that he never closed it, choosing to mortify the flesh with both hot and cold air, depending on the season. The room was crowded with Catholic paraphernalia. There were rosaries, crucifixes, and a gallery of Sacred Hearts, Perpetual Succours, and unpleasant-looking saints, all of them looking smugly ecstatic in their martyrdom. The one thing that the room had going for it was its neatness: it was crowded, but well ordered.

‘This stuff would give me nightmares,’ Joe said. ‘No wonder he hallucinated.’

‘Whoever killed him was giving all this a bit of a nod, so we can probably assume it was someone who knew him.’

Xavier Quinn’s obsessive neatness was a gift for anyone searching his room. In no time at all, Titus discovered two diaries, each filled with pages of beautiful copperplate.

‘It’s Latin,’ he said. ‘Do you read Latin, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Latin isn’t big in Jewish families.’

‘Mine’s too rusty to be of use. This will have to be translated as quickly as possible.’

‘Mary Quinn might read Latin.’

‘She might, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to read these at this stage, would it?’

Titus kept his tone neutral. Nevertheless, Joe was acutely conscious of having been corrected again. It wasn’t that he particularly craved Inspector Lambert’s approval, but he hated his inexperience being so apparent. Although Titus had never expressed it explicitly, Joe was aware that he hadn’t been altogether happy about being landed with an apprentice. The recently formed Homicide Division was short-staffed, and Joe’s age would have precluded him from a promotion to it under normal circumstances. However, the war meant that there was no longer such a thing as ‘normal circumstances’.

Titus had never asked Joe why he was a policeman and not a soldier. Maude had wondered, though, soon after she’d met Joe, if it had anything to do with his being Jewish. Jewish refugees weren’t allowed to enlist, and she thought that this ludicrous lack of trust in their desire to combat the very regime that was slaughtering their families might have made Joe reluctant to deal with the military authorities. He wasn’t a refugee, of course, but he was Jewish, and perhaps he believed that as far as the army was concerned, this was a distinction without a difference. It had been she, in fact, who’d raised the issue with Titus. However, he didn’t think it was any of his business. The job in front of him was to turn a young man fresh from Detective Training School into a detective. This wasn’t going to be possible if Joe Sable had no talent for it. Despite what many in the force believed, Titus Lambert knew that detection depended on a finely tuned instinct rather than on well-honed skills. Skills could be acquired, but you either had the instinct or you lacked it — and if you lacked it, the best you could hope for was plodding competence.

‘This is interesting,’ Titus said. He showed Joe a magazine that had been under some clothing in a drawer. It had a pale-orange cover. There was no decoration on it, apart from a small triangle in which sat an illustration of a kookaburra. The rest of the cover was simply a table of contents.
The Publicist
, it proudly proclaimed,
The Paper Loyal to Australia First
.

‘That’s ringing a bell,’ Joe said. ‘Why?’

‘Read the contents.’

Joe took the magazine.

‘
Australia and the Jews, Australia’s Pacific Strategy, The Refugee Threat, Jews and the Kimberleys
. I’ve heard my father talk about this, but I’ve never actually seen a copy.’

‘The people involved in this rag were interned last year.’ Titus said. ‘I don’t know much about them. I think I recall Maude saying something about one of them being a Pankhurst. But the fact that Xavier Quinn had a copy might mean nothing, of course.’

‘There don’t seem to be any more in this room.’

‘There is this, though,’ Titus said, pulling another magazine from the drawer. Joe moved to where he could see what Titus was holding. There was a photograph on the cover of five people: four women — two of them barely into their teens — and a man. They were standing outside a tent, smiling, and at studied ease. The remarkable thing about this family, if they were a family (that was certainly the idea being conveyed), was that they were completely naked, and there’d been no attempt made to blur or hide their private parts. Above them was the name of the magazine:
Menschen in der Sonne
.

‘What do you make of this, Sergeant?’

Joe took the magazine and flicked through it. Inside there were twelve colour plates of men, women, and children, all in robust good health, in poses that varied from gymnastic to the more mundane.

‘It’s a German nudist magazine,’ Joe said. ‘At least, I presume that’s what it is. I don’t read German, but the pictures rather speak for themselves.’

‘I’m sure that’s exactly what it is. The question is, what’s it doing in the drawer of a religious fanatic?’

‘Well, sir, religious fanatics are prone to unusual sexual outlets.’

Titus nodded.

‘Yes. This seems a bit tame, though, don’t you think?’

‘It might have been enough for Xavier Quinn. It’s dated 1935, so he’s had it a long time.’

‘I doubt it’s been in his possession since 1935. He’d only have been twelve then, and where would a twelve-year-old boy get hold of a magazine like this?’

After a few more minutes of searching the room, Titus had seen enough, ‘All right. The scientific boys can do a more thorough search here. We need to see John Quinn’s room.’

Quinn’s bedroom was a large, beautifully proportioned space. It retained certain feminine touches that he must have kept in deference to his late wife. The room wasn’t crowded with furniture, but the few pieces it contained were ostentatiously the best of their kind — although neither Titus nor Joe could have identified the period or the craftsmen involved. There was a crucifix above the bed, and on the wall opposite was an arrestingly gorgeous portrait of a woman. Titus presumed it was Mrs Quinn. If he’d checked the signature, he would have seen that the artist was Hugh Ramsay. It was Joe who crossed to it immediately, and whistled. Australian and European art were something of a hobby for him. The name meant nothing to Titus.

‘I presume this is expensive good taste,’ Titus said.

It took only a few minutes for them to find a cache of copies of
The Publicist
. There were several bound volumes, and many unbound copies. There were also other magazines similar to the German one in Xavier’s bedroom. Some of them were in German —
Licht-Land
,
Die Neue Zeit
, and
FKK in der Schweiz
— and there were a few copies of an English magazine called
Health and Efficiency
. The German magazines were brazen in their cover displays of naked men and women. Joe, who didn’t consider himself a prude, was nonetheless shocked by the clarity of the genitalia. He felt himself responding to the photographs sexually, even though no one in them was engaged in any activity that was remotely erotic.
Health and Efficiency
featured young naked women on its covers, but their nakedness was coy and seemed deliberately reminiscent of Victorian paintings. Breasts were
de rigueur
, but nothing else was, and there wasn’t a man or boy in sight — at least not on the covers.

‘It looks like fascism and naturism were family affairs,’ Titus said. ‘I wonder if Mary Quinn shares her father’s politics and his … hobby.’

‘Do you think there’s a connection between these magazines and the deaths?’