A Time of Secrets Read online

  ‘I don’t think so.’ My voice was clipped with annoyance. ‘They spoke of Laleia; isn’t that a river in Portuguese Timor?’

  ‘We shouldn’t talk about such things here.’ Dolly’s voice was sharp. She glanced around, but no one was near enough to hear us.

  ‘I’m worried they meant it,’ I whispered.

  Dolly became thoughtful, then almost jittery. She picked up her empty cup and tried to drink, seemed surprised to find it empty, put it back in the saucer with a clatter. She raised her hand to examine her cuticles, glanced at me, looked out the window.

  I persisted. ‘Wasn’t there some scandal about a field operation Lieutenant Ross was involved with in Timor? Wasn’t it near the Laleia River?’

  She glanced at me again and sighed. When she spoke, her voice was low, almost inaudible. ‘It was called Operation Kestrel. Lieutenant Ross took five men into Timor last month – yes, it was near the Laleia River. It was a disaster. The radio operator was killed and we only just got the others out in time.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked.

  Dolly shrugged, pouted. She said with a touch of pique, ‘Lieutenant Cole organised Kestrel, and I doubt he’ll ever forgive Lieutenant Ross for its failure.’

  Lieutenant Lance Cole was Dolly’s superior officer in wireless intercept. I lowered my voice to match Dolly’s bare whisper. ‘Was it part of Destro?’

  Operation Destro was an intelligence network on Japanese-occupied Timor comprising a small group of Portuguese officers and an Australian liaison officer. They’d been inserted by sea in March, just after the last Australian commandos had been evacuated. Destro was the brainchild of Lieutenant Cole, and of Captain Molloy, who was the Officer in Charge of the Melbourne office of APLO, and it had been a spectacular success. Against all odds it was still providing valuable intelligence after three months in heavily occupied Japanese territory.

  Dolly nodded her head briefly. ‘All of those covert operations in Timor are supported by Destro. We were concerned that Kestrel’s failure might have compromised Destro, but luckily not.’

  I frowned at my hands, which were in dire need of a manicure, then looked up at Dolly. ‘I’m worried that the men I overheard meant what they said about killing an officer. Given what happened near Laleia, the officer might be Lieutenant Ross. Don’t you think I should tell Captain Deacon?’

  She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Stella, forget about it. Lieutenant Ross is far too good-looking to be murdered. Talk is easy – it doesn’t mean they’ll actually do anything. Captain Deacon or Lieutenant Ross would probably just think you’re a hysterical female if you go to either of them with the story.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

  I blew out a breath. There was no point arguing with her. I’d have to make up my own mind. We left the cafe and entered the chilly afternoon, walking briskly towards our tram stop on Swanston Street.

  ‘Oh, quick,’ Dolly forced me into a run. ‘Come on, Stella. The tram’s almost here.’

  We splashed through puddles to get to the tram stop and pulled ourselves up into the crowded car just as it was leaving. I grabbed a strap and although I held on tight, I bumped against Dolly as we took off.

  ‘Hey, you bums, get up and let the ladies – I mean the sergeants – sit down.’ A couple of marines standing next to us were glaring at two young men in suits who were sitting near the door. The seats were vacated and we sat down. The marines loomed over us, hanging onto the straps and swaying dangerously with every lurch of the car. They looked sweet and young, no more than nineteen, but I was well aware that they’d probably come from the Solomon Islands and some of the most horrific battles imaginable.

  ‘Why, thank you,’ said Dolly, giving her most charming smile.

  ‘How do, ma’am?’ said the shorter marine, a swarthy young man who seemed to be as broad as he was tall, but was all muscle. His companion was taller with less hair and a cheerful face. ‘We’re mighty pleased to meet two such bee-yew-tiful sergeants.’

  A conversation began between Dolly and the marines, who were called Lou and Wyatt. It seemed to focus on the weather, recent hit songs and the best places to go dancing in Melbourne. I smiled, nodded and occasionally murmured assent at something Dolly had said, and I let her chatter on about nothing in particular as my thoughts returned to what I’d overheard in the laneway. The tram rattled over the Princes Bridge and I looked out at the utter darkness of the Royal Botanic Gardens. The words ran over and over in my brain: In the neck, quick and fast from behind . . . And as I do it I’ll whisper, Laleia, Lieutenant.

  What if it was Lieutenant Ross they meant? Should I warn him?

  ‘And this is our stop,’ said Dolly brightly.

  Surprised, I looked up. We were almost at the Toorak Road corner.

  Dolly’s smile was dazzling. ‘It’s been so lovely talking to you, Lou, and you too, Wyatt.’

  The marines appeared to be dazzled. ‘You’re sure you won’t come out dancing with us?’ said Lou, with a pleading look. ‘I’ve never danced with a sergeant before.’

  Dolly gave a gurgle of laughter, as if she’d not heard that line at least a dozen times before. ‘I’m so sorry, but we’re busy tonight.’

  She dragged me up out of my seat, and we climbed down from the tram and watched it swerve away to the left along Toorak Road. We had a short walk from the tram stop to Dolly’s flat, which was one of four in a block called Avoca that had been built in the late thirties across from Fawkner Park. I’d been assured that in peacetime the park was very pretty, but ugly slit trenches – now filled with weeds and rainwater – had been gouged out of the area facing Toorak Road. The Americans had built an army camp in the middle of the park when they arrived in 1942, but at present it housed hundreds of AWAS Signals Corps women.

  I was well aware how lucky I was that Dolly had offered to share her flat with me. When I first arrived in Melbourne I’d been billeted in a big old house with far too many very young AWAS girls. The food was appalling and there was no central heating. I’d been cold, lonely and malnourished. It must have been obvious how miserable I was in the army accommodation, because Captain Gabriel, who was in charge of the AWAS girls at Goodwood, mentioned that Dolly Harper had a spare room in a flat nearby. Six weeks ago, I’d moved in.

  ‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ Dolly had said as she showed me around. ‘I’m lonely. And anyway, I’ve been told I’m unpatriotic to have a spare bedroom when accommodation is so scarce.’ She’d paused then, and given me a quick, slightly embarrassed smile. ‘Actually, Captain Gabriel practically ordered me to rent my spare bedroom to an AWAS girl, preferably one in APLO. They like to keep the people who work in Intelligence together, because there’s less chance of letting things slip that way. I was simply waiting for the right girl to offer it to.’

  Dolly and I crossed Park Street and walked carefully along the wet footpath. It was already gloomy and the evening was drawing in. To our left across Toorak Road, Fawkner Park was a mass of darkness out of which AWAS girls appeared, bustling past us in small groups, giggling as they splashed through puddles and headed out from their barracks in the park. They were on their way to the trams and a night on the town.

  A couple of jeeps roared by, full to bursting with American marines. They were followed by a big black sedan, weighed down by a large charcoal-burning contraption in the boot space. There were few vehicles on the road nowadays, other than jeeps or sedans driven by military personnel or trucks painted in camouflage colours. Petrol rationing was strict and if you did have the temerity to drive a personal vehicle you risked being stopped by the transport police and asked for your permit. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ inquired the posters on the trams and the walls of buildings in the city.

  A few minutes later we reached Avoca. The flats had been built in 1939 and were very modern and Art Deco. Over the entrance was a rounded cantilevered porch, and the do
ors were flanked by a couple of circular planters, sitting just below the level of the two rounded porches that belonged to the ground-floor flats. Our first-floor flat had a matching curved balcony, which looked out over Fawkner Park. The flat was large and full of light and I loved living there.

  We pushed through the double front doors into the lobby; the glass in the doors had been painted over because of the brownout, so we waited until we were inside and the doors were closed before we turned on the hall light. The ground-floor flat to our left was currently unoccupied. The flat directly above that, across from us on the first floor, was occupied by Violet Smith, a WAAAF corporal who had been a singer in civilian life. Dolly disliked her. I suspected it was because Violet was very pretty, sang like an angel and was only twenty-three years old. Violet had been seeing Lieutenant Cole, Dolly’s superior officer at APLO, for the last month or so.

  Mrs Campbell, who was eighty-nine, had the flat immediately below ours.

  The door to the right opened a crack. A small, round face framed by a halo of fluffy white hair peered out at us.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Campbell,’ I said.

  Mrs Archina Campbell was a tiny Scottish woman with a gentle demeanour and a sharp intellect, who managed to get around well, despite having a clubfoot.

  ‘Just like Lord Byron,’ she told me when we first met. ‘But it’s never caused me any real concern. He swam the Hellespont, of course. And I was married three times.’

  Her mind tended to dart from topic to topic and her conversation was peppered with such cheerful non sequiturs, pronounced in a soft Scottish accent. She was, as she said herself, ‘a well-covered woman’ and tried to hide her weight by dressing in baggy black garments that reached her ankles. Inside her flat she wore soft leather slippers and a bonnet that might have been fashionable fifty years before. When she ventured outside for her daily ‘constitutional’ or over to the old Presbyterian church on Punt Road, her feet were invariably encased in buttoned boots and she wore a shapeless hat that was decorated with dangling jet beads.

  I was very fond of Mrs Campbell. Dolly disliked her, and called her ‘Mrs Busybody’. It was true that she interrogated us mercilessly about our comings and goings, but I knew it wasn’t prurient curiosity; it was that her world was so small and her interest in it was so immense. On occasion, she exhibited flashes of intuition about people that amounted almost to second sight.

  ‘A sad anniversary, is it,’ she said to me two weeks ago when I arrived home from Goodwood, longing for a cup of tea and a rest after eight hours of work without even a break for lunch.

  It had been six years exactly since my wedding, and I’d been forcing the memory out of my mind all day.

  Dolly told me, when I came to live in her flat, ‘If you’re holding on to a secret don’t even think it when you see Mrs Busybody in the hallway.’

  If Mrs Campbell saw me coming home after work she’d sometimes invite me in for a cup of tea and a ‘natter’, and we’d spend an hour chatting. I’d usually accept the invitation with good grace. She was lonely and, besides, I was fascinated by how she saw the world: to Mrs Campbell it was such a wondrous, brightly coloured thing, where people seemed to be better or worse than they really were. Her great delight in life was reading all the newspapers from cover to cover, and dwelling at length on the crime pages. To my amusement, Mrs Campbell appeared to be completely unshockable. She had absolute faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity, but she was well aware that there was ‘great wickedness’ out there and she seemed to revel in reading about it.

  ‘Oh, hello, my dears,’ she said now. ‘An axe attack. Whatever is the world coming to?’ A delicate shudder accompanied the words.

  ‘What?’ I asked, as Dolly hissed in my ear, ‘Don’t encourage her.’

  ‘A girl was attacked. Last night. When she was sleeping in her own bed.’ Her eyes were bright black buttons set in a face as white and wrinkled as crumpled linen. ‘They’ve not found the bloodstained axe.’

  My mind was trying to fit it altogether. I couldn’t help but imagine how horrible it must have been for the victim. Roused out of sleep to see a dark figure standing over her, axe raised – the terror and then the pain and, finally, oblivion. I shuddered, pushed the thoughts out of my mind and tried to concentrate on Mrs Campbell, who had put her head on the side and was looking thoughtful.

  ‘I don’t know about lady tram conductors,’ she said.

  ‘Tram conductors?’

  ‘The poor girl was a tram conductor,’ she said. ‘Manpowered, no doubt.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Dolly, who had hold of my arm and was on the step above me, tugging.

  ‘Fractured her skull.’ Mrs Campbell seemed not in the least perturbed by the information she was imparting. ‘Do you think it was the uniform? Some men are very, ah, stirred up by a woman in uniform.’

  I was confused. ‘You said she was in bed. Surely she wouldn’t have been in uniform?’

  Dolly giggled and Mrs Campbell gave us a look from under her sparse eyebrows.

  ‘Of course not. But don’t you agree that such interesting things happen in St Kilda?’ she said.

  ‘Mmmm,’ was Dolly’s response, accompanied by another tug at my arm.

  I knew St Kilda quite well, because Leroy Johnson was billeted at the Prince of Wales Hotel, on Fitzroy Street near the beach. I’d joined him for dinner there and he’d taken me to Luna Park, of course. We’d also walked along St Kilda Beach – in the rain, of course! It had a reputation for unsavoury activities, and crime. In May 1942, three women had been brutally murdered by an American soldier, Eddie Leonski, who’d become known as ‘the brownout strangler’. Leonski had attacked a woman in St Kilda and killed one of his victims in Albert Park. He had been executed in November last year, but I couldn’t help the occasional shiver when I walked alone at night.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Campbell, but we can’t linger,’ said Dolly. ‘Waiting for a phone call.’

  ‘Be careful when you’re out, Stella, dear,’ Mrs Campbell’s voice followed us, as Dolly practically dragged me up the terrazzo stairway to our first-floor flat. ‘You know how the cold air brings on your asthma.’

  Dolly unlocked the door and we entered the dark hallway. I hung my hat and greatcoat on the hallstand with a sigh of relief and stumbled into the lounge room, where I collapsed into one of the large chintz-covered sofas. Using her torch to navigate across the room, Dolly walked over to the glass doors leading to the balcony and pulled across the heavy curtains. Then she turned on the lamps.

  ‘Axe murderers,’ said Dolly, in a low thrilling voice. ‘I swear, Mrs Busybody simply adores a good murder.’

  ‘She didn’t say the girl had died, just that she’d been attacked.’ I really didn’t want to dwell on it.

  ‘Well, you be sure to cling tightly to your captain when you’re down in his neck of the woods.’ She laughed. ‘Has he taken you for a walk along the beach?’

  ‘Of course, but it was raining.’

  Dolly grinned. ‘Then you might have been spared the sight of marines and local girls rolling around on the sand. They say that more marines have, er, become men, so to speak, at St Kilda Beach than anywhere else and it should be declared a national monument.’

  The telephone rang, startling us.

  ‘That’ll be your Yankee captain,’ said Dolly, in a high singsong voice. ‘Go out dancing and forget all about your worries for tonight. Leave any axe murderers to me.’

  ‘You’re safe enough,’ I said. ‘Wrong uniform. Wrong suburb.’

  Four

  ‘Honey, if you want gin I can find some.’

  Captain Leroy Johnson was responding to my request for something more alcoholic than a lemon squash. We were in Prahran at Leggett’s Ballroom, one of the biggest in Melbourne, open until midnight every night with continuous dancing and music provided by two bands. It was supposed to be dry, because a
ll public venues were required by law to cease serving alcoholic beverages at six o’clock. That had never stopped the Americans; they smuggled alcohol in to all the dance halls.

  ‘I’d love a drink. It’s been a difficult day.’

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ said Leroy. I smiled my thanks and he glanced at our companions. ‘You want some booze, Joe? Kathy?’

  We were sitting with Leroy’s best friend, Captain Joe Baudoin, and his Australian girlfriend. Joe was a short, eager-looking man from Louisiana, who was in the Engineering Corps with Leroy. Kathy Kelly was a pretty brunette. Before the war she’d been a salesgirl at the Myer Emporium in the women’s wear department, and although she’d been manpowered into working at a munitions factory in Maribyrnong on the outskirts of Melbourne, she seemed to have an unending store of party frocks and evening dresses from that almost mythical time, Before the War. Tonight she was wearing a slinky dress of dusty pink, embroidered on the sleeves and waist with big black flowers, and she looked stunning. I glanced down at my khaki and stifled a sigh, wishing army regulations allowed me to put off my uniform and dance in a pretty dress.

  ‘Before you go,’ said Joe, ‘have you heard the latest story?’ Joe loved to tell stories. He nodded towards Kathy and me. ‘One of your upper-crust matrons –’

  ‘From Toorak, no doubt,’ said Kathy, who was a Melbourne girl.

  ‘Yeah, well, she telephoned our Morale Section to invite some officers to a party at her home, but made it clear that no Jews were to be invited.’

  ‘That’d be right,’ put in Kathy.

  ‘So, when the big day came, she opens the door to find a group of Negro privates standing on her doorstep and she says, “There must be some mistake.” They reply, “No, ma’am, our Major Cohen, he don’t make mistakes.” ’

  We all laughed. Wartime Melbourne was a hotbed of rumour and stories, and who knew which were true and which mere wishful thinking?