‘Did you know Kenji Sagawa?’
‘Not really. I’ve never been interested in cotton. My dad would never have anything to do with grain – wheat, barley, sorghum, stuff like that. He was strictly for the woollies. I’m much the same. They approached me, asked me if I wanted to go in with them on raising cotton and I said no. They never came back.’
‘Who?’
’Sagawa and his bosses from Japan. Chess Hardstaff introduced them.’
‘Is he involved with the cotton growing?’
‘Not as far as I know. As I said, he just rules, that’s all.’
‘Did you know him, Trev?’
Waring took his time, taking a few more puffs on his pipe before tapping it out into an ashtray. He was like an actor with a prop; he didn’t appear to be at all a natural pipe-smoker. If he thought it gave him an air of gravity, he was wrong; there was a certain restlessness about him, like a man who wasn’t sure where the back of his seat was. Trevor Waring would never be laid back.
‘He was unlike what I’d expected of a Japanese, I’d been told they liked to keep to themselves. He didn’t. He joined Rotary and the golf club and he’d even had someone put his name up for the polo club, though he didn’t know one end of a horse from another and it only meets half a dozen times a year.’
‘So he was popular?’
‘Well, no, not exactly. For instance he was rather keen on the ladies, but they fought shy of him. You know what women are like about Asians.’
‘Some women,’ said Carmody, defending the tolerant.
‘Er, yes. Some women. He came to see me last week at my office. He said he’d got three anonymous letters.’
‘From women?’
‘I don’t know about that. I didn’t see them. They told him Japs weren’t wanted around here. I told him I couldn’t do anything, the best thing was to go to the police.’
‘Did he?’
‘I don’t know. You’d better ask Inspector Narvo about that. He and Ken Sagawa were rather friendly at the start, I think it was Hugh Narvo who put him up for the golf club.’
‘Friendly at the start? Did something happen between them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Waring shrugged, did some awkward business with his pipe. ‘They just didn’t seem as – ’ well, as close as they had been. Not over the last few weeks.’
‘There’s a second Japanese out at the farm, isn’t there? What’s he like?’
‘Tom Koga? He’s young, rather unsure of himself, I’d say. I should think this, the murder, I mean, would make him even more jumpy.’
Sean Carmody sat listening to this, his pipe gone out. Now he said, ‘This isn’t a simple murder. Am I right?’
‘Most murders aren’t,’ said Malone. ‘Even domestics, which make up more than half the murders committed, they’re never as simple as they look. Sometimes you have to peel off the layers to find out why the murder happened – you hate doing it. You realize you’re going to make a lot of people unhappy, the family usually, who are unhappy enough to begin with.’
Then Ida Waring came out on to the veranda. ‘Time to take the kids home to bed, Trevor.’
She was in her early forties, two or three years older than Lisa. Her mother, Cathleen, had been half-Irish, half-Jewish, a featured player on the MGM lot in Hollywood in the 1930s. She had gone to Berlin looking for her Jewish mother, who had disappeared, and there, in the last month of peace in 1939, she had met Sean. Cathleen had been successful in her search and the two women had escaped to England, where she married Sean, who had managed to get out of Germany in October of that year. Sean had become a war correspondent and Cathleen had gone back to New York, where, instead of returning to Hollywood, she had gone on the stage and become a minor Broadway star. Ida had been born in 1947 and she had been twenty-three, already married and divorced, when Cathleen died of cancer. Unhappy in New York, she had been glad to accompany Sean back to his homeland. She had her mother’s beauty, most of her fire and all of her father’s love of the land. It was difficult to guess what sort of love she had for her husband. All Malone felt was that it did not have the passion and depth that he and Lisa had for each other. But then married love, like politics, came in so many colours.
‘We’ll take all the kids in the Land-Rover. Lisa can ride back with Scobie. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ She gave Malone a half-mocking smile.
He smiled in return, liking her, but wondering if he would come to know her properly in the short time he would be here. He was all at once glad of the Carmody clan: they might prove to be the only friendly oasis in the Collamundra shire.
While Lisa was helping to put all the children into the Warings’ Land-Rover, Malone waited by the Commodore for her. Sean Carmody came across to him, moving with the slow deliberation of a man who now told time by the seasons and no longer by deadlines or the clock.
‘Take things slowly, Scobie.’
‘Don’t make waves, you mean?’
‘No, I don’t mean that at all. Certain things around here need to be changed and Mr Sagawa’s murder may be the catalyst.’
‘If things have needed to be changed, Sean, why haven’t you tried it before?’
‘Do you know anything about opera or musical comedy?’
It was a question that came out of nowhere; but Malone was used to them. He had faced too many high-priced barristers in court not to know how to be poker-faced. ‘No, I think I’m what they call a Philistine, even my pop-mad kids do. I like old swing bands, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, all before my time.’
‘Mozart was before my time.’ Carmody smiled.
‘The only thing that saves me, according to Lisa, is that my favourite singers are Peggy Lee and Cleo Laine. Lisa’s an opera fan, but she likes them, too.’
‘Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw used to be favourites of mine when I went overseas before the war. My war, that is. There have been a dozen wars since then, but it’s still the one I remember . . .’ He stopped for a moment; then shook his head, as if he did not want to remember after all. ‘In Vienna and Berlin I started going to the opera – I heard Gigli and Schmidt and Flagstad.’ He paused again, nodded. ‘Just names now – and echoes. Anyhow, there’s an operetta called Die Fledermaus, by Johann Strauss, the younger. It’s lightweight, but its theme song is “Happy is He who Forgets what Cannot Be Changed.” You want me to sing it?’
‘No, I get the message.’
‘No, Scobie, you get only half the message. It was my theme song for quite a while after I came home. But lately . . . If I can help, come out again. Any time.’
Driving back to the Warings’ house Lisa said, ‘I’m glad you’re here. I missed you.’
He leaned across and kissed her, almost hitting a tree stump as he took his eyes off the winding track. ‘I’ve missed you, too. I didn’t realize how big a queen-sized bed is till you’re in it alone.’
‘Just as well we didn’t get a king-sized one. You haven’t invited anyone home to fill up the space, have you?’
‘Just three girls from the Rape Advisory Squad. How are the kids making out? You’d better keep an eye on Tom. He could hurt himself falling off horses.’
‘Don’t be so protective. They’re all right. Claire’s fallen in love with