‘No. She died when I was young.’
Cashin looked at the bookshelves: novels, history, biography, rows of books about Japan and China, their art, culture. Above them were books about World War II, the war against Japan, about Australian prisoners of the Japanese.
There were shelves of pottery books, technical titles, three shelves.
They moved on.
‘This is his bedroom,’ said Erica Bourgoyne. ‘I’ve never been into it and I don’t think I’ll change that now.’
Cashin entered a white chamber: bed, table, simple table lamp, small desk, four drawers open. The lower ones had been broken open. Through a doorway was a dressing room. He looked at Bourgoyne’s clothes: jackets, suits, shirts on hangers, socks and underwear in drawers, shoes on a rack. Everything looked expensive, nothing looked new.
There was a red lacquered cupboard. He opened it and a clean smell of cedar filled his nostrils. Silken garments on hangers, a shelf with rolled-up sashes.
He thought of asking Erica to come in.
No.
Beyond the dressing room was a bathroom, walls and floor of slate, a wooden tub, coopered like a barrel, a toilet, a shower that was just two stainless-steel perforated plates, one that water fell from, one to stand on. There were bars of pale yellow soap and throwaway razors, shampoo. He opened a plain wooden cupboard: three stacks of towels, six deep, bars of soap, bags of razors, toilet paper, tissues.
He went back to Erica. They looked at another bedroom, like a room in a comfortable hotel. It had a small sitting room with two armchairs, a fireplace. There was another bathroom, old-fashioned, revealing nothing. At the end of the passage was a laundry with a new-looking washing machine and dryer.
Beyond it was a storeroom, shelves of heavy white bed linen and tablecloths, napkins, white towels, cleaning equipment.
They went back they way they had come. ‘There’s another sitting room here,’ said Erica. ‘It’s the one with the television.’
Four leather armchairs around a fireplace, a television on a shelf to the left, more Swedish sound equipment to the right. Cosy by the standards of this house, thought Cashin.
‘Well,’ said Cashin, ‘that’s it. We needn’t go upstairs, I gather it’s undisturbed.’
There was a moment when she looked at him, something uncertain in her eyes.
‘I’d like to go up,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘Of course.’
They crossed the house to the entrance hall, walked side by side up a flight of broad marble stairs to a landing, up another flight. All the way, he shut down his face against the pain, did not wince. At the top, a gallery ran around the stairwell, six dark cedar doors leading off it, all closed. They stood on a Persian rug in a shaft of light from above.
‘I want to get some things from my mother’s room, if they’re still there,’ said Erica. ‘I’ve never had the nerve before.’
‘How long have you waited?’
‘Almost thirty years.’
‘I’ll be here’ said Cashin. ‘Unless…’
‘No, that’s fine.’
She went to the second door on the left. He saw her hesitate, open the six-panel door, put out a hand to a brass light switch, go in.
Cashin opened the nearest door and switched on the light. It was a bedroom, huge, twin beds with white covers, two wardrobes, a dressing table, a writing table in front of the curtained window. He walked on a pale pinkish carpet, lined like a quilt, and parted the curtains. The view was of a redbrick stable block and of treetops beyond, near-leafless, limbs moving in the wind, and then of a low hill stained with the russet leaves of autumn.
He went back to the gallery and went to the balustrade and looked down the stairwell at the entrance hall, felt a flash of vertigo, an urge to throw himself over the barrier.
‘Finished,’ said Erica behind him.
‘Find what you wanted?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing there. It was stupid to think there might be.’
They went back to the sunroom and sat with a glass-topped table between them.
‘Notice anything worth mentioning?’ said Cashin.
‘No. I’m sorry, I’m not much use. I’m pretty much a stranger in this house.’
‘How’s that?’
She looked at him sharply. ‘Just the way it is, detective.’
‘Everything locked at night, alarm switched on?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here at night for a very long time.’
Time to move on. ‘About your brother, Ms Bourgoyne.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘He drowned, I’m told.’
‘In Tasmania. In 1993.’
‘Went for a swim?’
Erica shifted in her seat, crossed her legs in corduroy pants, twitched a shiny black boot. ‘Presumably. His things were found on a beach. The body wasn’t found.’
‘Right. So you were here on Wednesday morning.’
‘Yes.’
‘Visit your step-father often?’
She rubbed palms. ‘Often? No.’
‘You don’t get on?’
Erica pulled a face, looked much older, lined. ‘We’re not close. It’s our family history. The way I grew up.’
‘And the reason for this visit?’
‘Charles wanted to see me.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘This is intrusive,’ she said. ‘Why do you need to know?’
‘Ms Bourgoyne,’ said Cashin, ‘I don’t know what we need to know. But if you want me to record that you preferred not to answer the question, that’s fine. I will.’
She shrugged, not happy. ‘He wanted to talk about his affairs.’
Cashin waited until it was clear that she wasn’t going to say any more. ‘On another subject. Who’ll inherit?’
Widened eyes. ‘No idea. What are you suggesting?’
‘It’s just a question,’ Cashin said. ‘You didn’t discuss his will?’
A laugh. ‘My step-father isn’t the kind of person who would talk about his will. I doubt whether he’s ever given dying a thought. It’s for lesser beings.’
‘Assuming that he knew the person who attacked him…’
‘Why would you assume that?’
‘One possible line of inquiry. Who might want to harm him?’
‘As far as I know,’ she said, ‘he’s a much respected person around here. But I don’t live here, I haven’t since…since I was a child. I’ve only been a visitor.’
She looked away. Cashin followed her gaze, looked out at the disciplined gravel that ran to the hedge. Nothing lifted the spirits about the grounds of The Heights-hedges, lawns, paving, gravel, they were all shades of green and grey. It came to him that there were no flowers.
‘He had all the garden beds ripped out,’ she said, reading his mind. ‘They were wonderful.’
‘A last thing. Do you know of anything in your step-father’s life or your life that might have led to this?’
‘Such as?’
‘This may become a murder investigation.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing will be left private in the life of anyone around your stepfather.’
She straightened, gave him the unfazed gaze. ‘Are you saying I’ll be a suspect?’
‘Everyone will be of interest.’
‘What about perfect strangers?’ she said. ‘Is there a chance that you might take an interest in perfect strangers who got into the house and attacked him?’
He wanted to echo her sarcastic tone. ‘Every chance,’ he said. ‘But with no sign of forced entry, we have to consider other possibilities.’
‘Well,’ she said, looked at her watch, a slim silver band, ‘I’d like to get going. Are you a local policeman?’
‘I’m down here for as long as it takes.’
There was truth in this. There was some truth in almost anything people said.
‘May I ask you why you brought the bodyguard?’ said Cashin.
‘It’s a work-related thing. Just a precaution.’ Erica stood up.
Cashin rose. ‘You’ve been threatened?’
Erica held out her right hand. ‘Work-related, detective. In my work, that makes it confidential. Goodbye.’