Jon Cleary - Endpeace

‘Your mother?’

‘She’s upstairs in her room. Leave her – please?’

Malone hesitated, then nodded. He and Clements said goodbye to Van Dieman and Zanuch and left the garden room. Outside in the hallway they met Kate Arletti, looking even more untidy than ever. ‘Having a hard time of it, Kate? You’ve lost another button off your shirt.’

She looked down in surprise. ‘So I have! Sorry, sir ... This family is worse than any Italian family I’ve ever met. They can’t make up their minds whether to grieve or to argue.’

‘Where’s the elder sister, Sheila? And her husband?’

‘They’ve gone back to their own house.’

‘Righto, you and Russ continue with the others. I’m going over to Little House Two. Russ, give me the envelope with that scrap of paper.’

He went out through large French doors on to a wide stone terrace that ran the entire breadth of the main house, crossed half an acre of lawn, went through an opening in a head-high privet hedge and came to Little House Two.

The main house had been built in the 1860s, a hodgepodge of English country house, Roman villa and Colonial homestead, as if the architect, uncertain of his surroundings, had gone on a drunken spree yet had somehow produced something that was not an eye-sore. The two smaller houses had been built a hundred years later and the style, with just minor modifications, copied. The three stood in line facing north across the tiny bay, resembling nothing more than a slapdash Nash project that, like the convicts, had been transported and survived the change.

Ned Custer met Malone at the heavy oak front door. ‘I saw you coming, I’ve been expecting you. Finished with that lot over there? Van Dieman there, putting his oar in? Best lawyer in town. Pity he knows it better than anyone else.’

‘How’s Mrs Custer?’

Custer was leading the way into a large comfortable room that looked out past a lawn and a jetty, where a yacht was moored, to the bay. He was dressed in lightweight blue trousers, a blue-and-white cotton jumper and espadrilles; but at least his face showed appropriate gloom. ‘Not the best. We don’t get on, the family, but Jesus wept – murder ?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘What?’

‘You implied someone in the family committed the murder.’

Custer waved his hands in front of him, as if beating off smoke. ‘No, no! Christ, I didn’t mean anything like that – oh darling. Here’s Scobie, come to interrogate us.’

Spoken like a true lawyer .

Sheila was more appropriately dressed; she was not in funeral black, but at least she didn’t look as if she were ready for a yachting picnic. She was in dark blue linen, skirt and shirt, with dark blue casual shoes. Her glasses did not hide the fact that she had been weeping. Without make-up she looked older than she had last night.

‘Sit down, sit down.’ Custer bustled about, like a front-row forward looking for the ball that had come out on the wrong side of the scrum. ‘Drink? Coffee?’

‘Nothing, thanks.’ Malone sat down in a comfortable chair, one of four in the room meant to relax their occupants; this was a room obviously meant for relaxation, the afternoon read, the pre-dinner drink. It was, Malone guessed, what the Custers called their family room, though the furnishings were much richer than he had seen in other family rooms. One narrow wall was taken up with an entertainment ensemble: television set with the largest screen Malone had ever seen, video recorder, tape-deck and shelves full of videos, tapes, CDs and even a stack of old LPs. Yet the room showed no wear and tear, it was a room for a phantom family. Sheila was already seated and Custer now dropped into a chair beside her, but neither of them looked comfortable. ‘All we’re after at this stage is what you may know of last night.’

‘You mean the murder? Bugger-all. Harry had gone to bed when we left.’

‘What time was that?’

‘I never wear a watch,’ Custer said and looked at his wife.

‘Midnight,’ she said. ‘What time is my father supposed to have been – ?’ Her voice was unsteady, she didn’t finish the sentence.

‘Around midnight, give or take an hour.’

‘So whoever killed him could have been in the house while we were there?’

Custer got up, poured himself a whisky, straight, no ice, no water or soda.

‘If it was an intruder –’

‘Of course it was a bloody intruder!’ The drink splashed in Custer’s hand as he sat down heavily.

‘What’s the security like over at the main house?’

‘Adequate.’ Custer sipped his whisky. ‘That’s about all you can say for any security in domestic circumstances – you’d know that as well as I do.’ Malone nodded. ‘We employ two security firms to watch the estate – and each other. But there was a break-in a coupla years ago – they caught no one – so it could easily have happened again. Burglars not so long ago didn’t carry guns or knives. But now ...’

There had been several incidents in the past year of murder by intruders, householders shot or knifed, people worth not one-hundredth of the Huxwood wealth.

‘Is there any way up to the first floor over there besides up the main staircase in the hallway?’

‘Of course.’ Sheila was beginning to regain some composure. ‘There’s a rear stairwell for the staff. And there’s all that latticework on the east wall. We’ve wanted to pull it down, but Mother wouldn’t allow it.’

‘What’s that there for?’

‘The roses, of course. The climbing roses, the Chinese hybrids – don’t you know what Malmaison is famous for?’

‘I thought it was – famous , if you like, for the Huxwoods.’

‘Nicely put, Scobie,’ said Custer. ‘I’d have said notorious.’

‘La Malmaison was where Napoleon’s Josephine lived. She was the one who really popularized rose-growing in Europe, she had roses brought in by the boat-load from all over, China, Turkey, everywhere. My great-great-grandfather, who built the original house, was a great admirer of Napoleon and Josephine. And he loved roses. I take it you’re not a gardener?’

‘I grow camellias and azaleas, they’re easy. But no, I’m not a gardener. Burke’s Backyard leaves me cold,’ he said, naming one of television’s top rating shows.

‘And,’ said Custer, looking halfway to being half-drunk again, on one glass of whisky, ‘you’re not a student of Sydney’s history?’

‘Not this side of town, no. Ask me about the arse-end of Sydney and I’ll give you chapter and verse. Sorry,’ he said to Sheila.

‘Take it easy, Ned,’ Sheila told her husband, then looked back at Malone. ‘We were saying ... Yes, it would be easy to get up to the first floor, where the bedrooms are. Someone going up the east wall might get scratched or pricked, but not if he wore gloves.’

Malone took the plastic envelope from his pocket, extracted the scrap of notepaper with his tweezers. He held it out: ‘I can’t let you touch this, not till it’s been fingerprinted. It was found in your father’s hand, as if it had been torn off a full sheet. Do you recognize the notepaper?’

Both the Custers leaned forward; then they glanced at each other before Sheila said, ‘It’s the family’s – well, Malmaison’s. My mother orders it every year through the company – it’s special paper. She likes us all to use it, so we do. Boxes of it are delivered to us, Derek, Nigel, my sister and I, every Christmas.’

‘Did you use it to write your father a note?’

‘No.’ She was taking off her glasses while she answered, so he didn’t see her eyes at that instant. Then she was polishing the glasses, carefully, giving them her attention. ‘I was not in the habit of writing my parents notes. After all, they’re just over there –’ She waved vaguely.