The Gilded Madonna, Garrick Jones [best fiction novels txt] 📗

he said. He rents a room in Medina Court, that block of flats on the other side of the road, and was speaking to his lady friend. And yes, I checked with her too.”

“But why did he notice the kids?”

“It wasn’t so much the kids, but the dog.”

“And?”

“He said he was amused. The dog was as big as the little boy and was licking his face. The man remembered smiling at how pleasant the scene was.”

“The dog owner?”

“No, Clyde. No one else even noticed the dog or its owner.”

“Did you check the butcher shop next door to the grocer’s?”

“Yes, he was busy with customers and didn’t see a thing.”

It was puzzling Mrs. Bishop didn’t immediately ring the police, but went home to fetch her hat and purse and then caught a tram to the Randwick depot, where her husband worked as a fitter and turner. It was he who’d called it in.

“What time was that?”

“Close to half past four.”

“An hour?”

“She only had enough money in her purse to get to Peter’s Corner, Clyde. She had to wait ages for a tram, bought a threepenny ticket, and then had to walk a mile down the tram cutting to get to her husband’s workplace.”

I shook my head. Even in 1956 people were still doing it tough. What was a tram ticket from Coogee to Randwick Racecourse, the closest stop to the tram depot? Fourpence? Sixpence?

By nine o’clock, Tom had started to stifle yawns. I’d made pages and pages of notes, so I told Vince to take Tom home. I suggested we’d all catch up on Saturday and make a day of it when Vince had the day free. He, Tom, Harry, and I could perhaps spend the morning at the beach, have lunch in the pub, and then watch the cricket in the oval opposite my flat in the afternoon. Perhaps we could all cook dinner together? It was something I’d learned in Italy, immediately after the war. Preparing food together in a group tended to loosen people up; it gave them something to do with their hands, think about the finished product, and to throw ideas around while engaged in a relaxed, comfortable activity.

By Saturday, I’m sure I’d have a million questions to ask, and perhaps not one or two ideas to suggest to help Vince with his case. Besides, it would be an excuse for Harry to stay over after a bottle or two of wine and a tummy full of good food.

*****

Harry phoned as I was saying goodnight to Vince and Tom at my front door, so we didn’t spend long on the phone. I walked down to the street with them and waved goodbye as they got in the car and drove off.

I wasn’t prepared for the quick flash of loneliness that swept through me as I walked up the stairs to my top-floor flat. Harry and I had spent the past ten days living in each other’s pockets; it was going to be hard to climb into bed and not have him at my side. How we’d manage I had no idea. We hadn’t discussed the ways in which we could spend nights together. His parents, although still quick-witted and lively, were elderly and needed looking after. It was the reason he’d left the army—when his sister had died there was no one to care for them. Perhaps we could arrange a weekend or two away, ostensibly for our work on the investigation tribunal, but that couldn’t go on forever.

I had a fairly good idea that Mary, his mother, had realised what was going on between us. She’d been a nurse, and from what little I’d gathered from their conversations, her brother Percy, who’d been killed during the Great War, had had a “special friend” too. There was a photo of the two men with their arms around each other, dressed in their uniforms, on the lid of the grand piano in Mary and Arnold’s living room. It nestled up front among the rest of the family photos arranged in silver frames on a Spanish shawl that was draped over the instrument.

We’d work it out. I knew we would, but we’d have to sit down and talk it through first. It had been a subject that had been on my mind while we were in Melbourne, but I hadn’t wanted to spoil our time together. I’d kept putting it off and then, by the time we were on our way home, I hadn’t wanted to dwell on it.

I turned on the water of the gas geyser at the foot of my bathtub and lit the flame. Once the water was at the right temperature, I swivelled the stopcock so the warm water was diverted into the showerhead and then half closed the shower curtain to stop any splashing onto the floor. After turning off the bathroom light, I let out a tired sigh as I stepped into the tub. The only illumination in the room came from the flickering blue flame of the geyser—it played over my shins and toes.

At night, with the lights off, the sound of the falling water, and steam rolling around me, it’s where I did my best work—uninterrupted by the world, I found it easy to piece together the jigsaw of unrelated facts, or juggle around possibilities in my mind, or even to mull over the meaning of life—that’s what I told myself anyway. More likely, in recent times, I’d thought of Harry. Being in love was so new to me that more often than not I either felt like a child in a sweetshop or the bull in a china shop. I simply didn’t know what I should or should not be doing or saying when I was with him.

I wet my face washer under the warm water and folded it over my eyes. Tonight I wanted to try to make sense of what Vince and Tom had told me about the Bishop case.

Why would someone snatch two children off the