Jon Cleary - Endpeace

Socially he had never aimed higher than God; he always felt that he fitted in. Wherever he went in the city’s social circles he was treated as an equal amongst equals, proving that flattery is no burden if one leaves others to carry it. He knew, just as the prince did, who would be king one day. Soon, maybe just a year or so down the track, he would be Commissioner. The thought did not make him giddy, since he had been tasting it ever since he had been promoted to sergeant, but he savoured it every day.

He stood outside the bedroom door listening to the low moaning coming from inside. He was not insensitive, but he knew Phillipa Huxwood would have to be interviewed and it was better that he do it rather than one of the five or six detectives still on the estate. After all, he could talk to her as an equal.

But first he moved along the hall to the next door, which was open. He had never been upstairs here, but this, he guessed, was Harry Huxwood’s room. He went in, ducking under the Crime Scene tape across the doorway. Another tape was strung round the four-poster bed, like a decoration from some old wedding-night bed.

Then the door to the adjoining room opened and Phillipa Huxwood stood there. Her face was even gaunter than usual, her eyes were red from weeping; but her carriage was still stiff and straight, her voice as firm as ever: ‘Do they have to put that ridiculous piece of ribbon on the bed?’

‘I’m afraid so, Phillipa. How are you?’

She waved a hand, almost a dismissive why-do-you-ask? ‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? I’ve been laying there –’

She used the Americanism. Up till her late teens she had lived a nomadic life with her archaeologist father and travel-writer mother; she still threw in local usage like postcards, as if to show she had been around. When she used a foreign phrase the accent was always immaculate, no matter what the language. Yet she wrote to reporters and anchor-people on the corporation’s radio and television stations who said ‘d-bree’ for ‘debris’ and used other Americanisms. She was rigid in her inconsistency, as despots are.

‘How are the others taking it?’ She led him back into her own room, seated herself in what he took to be her favourite chair by a window that looked down on the rose gardens.

‘I’ve only seen Derek,’ he said. He remained standing, aware of the disorder of her room, which surprised him; he had always thought of her as a meticulously neat person. But her bed was rumpled, the sheets twisted as if she had writhed in them in a frenzy. Her clothing, her dress and underwear, were thrown on the second chair in the room; the underwear, he thought, looked skimpy for a woman of her age. There was also a couch, an antique chaise-longue, but it was against a far wall; he could not seat himself there and talk to her across the width of the room.

‘How is Derek? Shocked?’

‘Of course.’

‘When I saw Harry –’ She closed her eyes, was silent for a moment, then she opened them. ‘I’m alone now, Bill. What do I do?’

He knew she didn’t want an answer. They were acquaintances, not friends, which is how it is in half of any large city’s social circles. He had known nothing of the intended selling of the publishing empire till Derek had filled him in this morning. What he knew of this family, even though he had been coming here for years as a dinner or luncheon guest, had been gleaned from observation and not from confidences.

‘How long have we known you?’ Her mind, it seemed, was shooting off at tangents this morning.

‘Twenty-five years.’

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’re joking!’

‘No. I first came here twenty-five years ago on a police matter –’

‘Ah.’ She nodded, was silent a while. He thought she was going to say no more, then she went on. ‘There was mystery then, too, wasn’t there? This is a mystery, Bill. Or is it?’ She glanced sideways at him, almost slyly.

He didn’t take the bait, if there was any. ‘Yes, I think it is, Phillipa. But we’ll find whoever killed Harry. I promise you that.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, as if he had promised her no more than a small gift. ‘I’ll miss him, Bill. We fought, oh, often we fought ... But we loved each other. Those downstairs don’t know what love is. Do you?’

But she didn’t wait for his answer. He wondered if she talked to her children, those downstairs , as she was now to him. He knew how people could sometimes confide in strangers thoughts they would never expose to those close to them. But why had she chosen him?

‘I’ll have to go down soon and face them all, I suppose. I’m the matriarch, they’ll expect it. When we first built the other two houses, Derek and Cordelia and Ned and Sheila used to come here every evening, we’d dine en famille . It was Harry’s idea. I’ve never liked the idea of matriarch -’

You could have fooled me .

‘– but Harry saw himself as the patriarch. He always wanted to fill his father’s shoes and there never was a patriarch like Old John. You met him?’

‘Once.’ Twenty-five years ago.

‘He was Biblical, he and I never got on. The en famille idea lasted a year, no more. The nuclear family is a pain in the uterus.’

He loved social gossip; but this was not gossip. ‘Phillipa, don’t tire yourself –’

She gave him the sly look again. ‘I’m talking too much, you mean? Why did you come up here if you didn’t want to talk to me?’

He was wearing out his welcome, she would turn nasty in a moment; he had seen it once or twice over the years. ‘Phillipa, did you hear the shot next door?’

She stared into space, the myopic eyes blank; then she blinked and looked back at him. ‘I’d taken two sleeping pills, I was upset last night. I heard nothing, the roof could have fallen in ...’

He began to move towards the door. ‘Fair enough. We’ll leave you alone now, you and the family.’

‘But you’ll be back?’

‘Not me, but Inspector Malone and one or two of the other detectives.’

‘I wish you would take charge. You can be circumspect.’

Now he knew why she was taking him into her confidence. She had said exactly that, you can be circumspect , twenty-five years ago.

The air waves shivered with indignation and horror at the news of Sir Harry’s murder. Nobody was safe if as important a figure as Sir Harry could be murdered in his own home, said another important figure, Premier Bevan Bigelow, unsafe in his own House. Editorials sang the praises of the dead man but had nothing to say in praise of law and order. Only the columnists, as plentiful on the ground in modern journalism as Indian mynahs and just as raucous, mentioned rumours of a possible sale of the Huxwood empire. The coming election was pushed to the edges of the front pages, to the relief of the voters.

‘Law and order doesn’t apply,’ said Clements, ‘when the throat-cutting is in the family. Don’t they know that?’

‘We don’t know anyone in the family killed him,’ said Malone.

‘No, but I’d make book on it.’

They were at a morning conference the day after the discovery of the murder. All nineteen detectives from Homicide were there, plus Greg Random, Chief Superintendent in charge of the Major Crime Squad. Some of the detectives had been assigned to the three other murders that had occurred in South Region, but the main topic was the Huxwood homicide. Notabilities were not frequent visitors on the Sydney murder scene. True, it was only a press baron who had been done in: had it been a star jockey or footballer of the status of O. J. Simpson there would have been a special session of parliament, the Minister and Commissioner would have brought camp beds into their offices and the media contingent outside Homicide would have looked like a grand final crowd. Still, the pressure was bad enough as it was.