CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
William, we need to talk.’
‘What is it now Suellyn?’ William snapped. He was on his way to the beach. His full length wet suit fitted his body like a glove and a beach towel hung around his neck and over his broad shoulders. The wet suit outlined his taut muscled body and Suellyn followed the bumps and curves of his form right down to his tanned, naked feet.
‘I’ve got something I want to show you before you go. It’s to do with your mother.’
William placed his keys on the dining table and saw the anxious look on his wife’s face. Suellyn was obviously frightened by something or someone. She was clutching sheets of crumpled paper in her hands. William took the letters from her and threw the towel over the back of the lounge and sat down to read them. Suellyn sat on the ottoman watching her husband closely for his reaction. Why didn’t he say something, anything? The silence was physically painful.
‘I’ll have to hand these over to the police,’ he said eventually. ‘These letters explain a lot. Where did you get them?’
‘I found the original letter from Isabelle in your mother’s bedroom after she died, the day you followed me, after we’d been to see the solicitor.’ Suellyn still remembered the way William had slapped her face and the way he had sobbed afterwards. ‘And I found a copy of the same letter at Tommy’s house along with the letter Tommy wrote to his mother asking her for money.’
‘So, this is what you were searching for? It’s all starting to make sense to me know. You were trying to protect him weren’t you? Is this why you wanted my mother out of the house, so you could find this letter and destroy it? Why show it to me now? What’s changed?’
‘No, you’re wrong. I was trying to protect you. I admit I wanted to know what Tommy’s involvement was in all of this. I was curious. Tommy told me that before his father died he had told him about the baby his mother had given away to Rose. But what Tommy didn’t know was that Isabelle changed her will and left her entire estate to Rose. We both wanted to find out the full details of the inheritance and what Rose was planning to do with all the money. I just wanted to help Tommy get what was rightfully his. His mother should never have left her money to Rose. It wasn’t right. Tommy tracked down her solicitor, that awful Bartholomew man, but he wasn’t going to tell him anything apart from that he had acted for Rose regarding Isabelle’s estate and that she had kept most of the paperwork at home. He knew a letter existed somewhere, outlining the reasons why Isabelle was leaving all of her estate to Rose. Knowing Rose, I knew the letter must have been somewhere in the house. You know what she was like William, she kept everything, she even had the first pay slip from when she worked at the dressmakers in the city before you were born.
I wanted to destroy any evidence that linked you and Tommy. I thought if I got her to move away I could search the house, find the letter and destroy it. I just wanted to protect you, I didn’t want you to get hurt. I know what finding out about your father did to you. You have to believe me.’
‘What was Tommy’s involvement in all of this? Did he ever visit my mother, I mean Rose?’
‘Tommy and I went to see Rose the day she died. I waited in the car outside while he went in to speak to her. He said he wanted to talk to her about his mother, to tie up a few loose ends.’
William’s head was spinning. He looked at Suellyn and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘And where did this letter from Tommy to his mother come from?’
‘I found it at Tommy’s place.’ Suellyn was rubbing her arms nervously, she stood and walked towards William but he turned his back on her. ‘William, I had no idea that Rose had written Tommy into her will.’
William spun around and raised his eyebrows.
‘I didn’t, really, you have to believe me. She probably did it to bring everything out into the open. It was like a clue, like the way you and Tommy both share the same middle name. She was probably too afraid to tell you the truth about Isabelle and that you had a brother. She knew how badly you took it when she tried to explain to you about the father she’d invented. I’m sure she was sick of all the lies but wanted to wait until after she was dead before you found out the truth. She was either too ashamed or too scared to tell you, especially after she had already tried to tell you the truth once before.’
William grabbed his keys and towel and slammed the apartment door behind him. He took the lift to the basement, grabbed his surfboard from the caged storage area and left the building by the fire exit which led out to the street in front of the building. The beach wasn’t crowded today. With the first hint of cool weather it was only the most dedicated of surfers who took to the waves. William ran headlong into the surf and paddled out to the first break. He surfed at Manly Beach often enough that he recognised a few of the other surfers and acknowledged the ones he knew.
The water was a chilly eighteen degrees. The waves washed over him and cleared his mind. He sat upright on his board with his legs dangling beneath him and drifted for a while before he looked back over his shoulder towards the shore and watched as the waves cracked and thundered onto the beach. He watched a young girl who he didn’t recognise, stretch up on her board like a cobra only to twist and flip over under the power of a freak wave.
William didn’t stay long at the beach, he knew he had to call Jill Brennan and speak to her about the letters. Suellyn wasn’t in the apartment when he returned an hour later and he was relieved that she had the sense to make herself scarce. He showered and walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his narrow waist. Water dripped from his hair. He picked up the cordless phone from the glass coffee table and selected Jill Brennan’s phone number from the phone’s directory and dialed.
It was Saturday. Jill Brennan’s first weekend off in a month. The afternoon sea breeze blew her hair into her face and a few loose strands stuck to her lip gloss. The sun still had some warmth in it and the wind burnt her cheeks. The gravel track was crowded with people heading towards Bronte. She was standing behind the barrier at the edge of the cliff face, deep in thought, gazing out at the postcard views of the Pacific Ocean. Behind her at Bondi Beach, a mob of surfers sitting on their boards were waiting for a decent wave to carry them back to shore. A Westpac surf rescue helicopter flew overhead just as her phone rang. William wondered if she worked on Saturdays or if she had the weekends off.
She dug her phone out of the side pocket of her jeans and answered the call.
‘Brennan speaking.’ She raised her voice over the noise of the chopper and pressed her left hand over her ear to blot out the noise.
‘Hello Jill, it’s William Phillips. Sorry to disturb your weekend. What’s that noise? Where are you?’
‘A chopper’s flying overhead. It’ll be gone in a minute.’ Jill waited for the sound of the rotors to fade. She screwed up her eyes and watched the helicopter bank to the right and head off down the coast. ‘That’s better,’ she continued. ‘Sorry about that, what were you saying?’
‘I said I’m sorry for disturbing your weekend.’
‘Oh, that’s okay, I’m not doing anything special.’
‘Look Jill, the reason for my call is because I’ve got some information that proves what I’ve thought all along, that Rose didn’t commit suicide.’
Jill was surprised. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind that Rose Phillips’s death had been anything but suicide. She thought William was just clutching at straws.
‘Can I meet you somewhere?’ William asked.
‘Well, I’m at Bondi at the moment, standing on the edge of a cliff. Do you want to meet for a coffee?’ she smiled into the phone.
‘I’ll be there in about forty minutes. I’ll meet you at Café Utopia on Campbell Parade. Do you know it?’
‘Yeah I know it. I’ll see you soon then.’
Jill was puzzled. What information could William possibly have that was so urgent that he had to see her on her day off. She looked at her watch and made her way back down to
the beach. She walked passed her car on the way to the café and fed the parking meter; enough to satisfy it’s appetite for another two hours.
When she arrived at the café, Jill went straight to the bathroom and applied some makeup and brushed her hair. She wished now that she had worn her snug fitting jeans instead of the faded, baggy ones she was now wearing. Using some liquid soap from the soap dispenser, she dabbed at the grease stain from the bacon and eggs she’d had for breakfast that morning and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
‘Well, that’s the best I can do,’ she said back at herself. A toilet flushed and an overweight teenager with dyed jet black hair and spiky orange tips opened a cubicle door and joined her at the wash basin. She looked at Jill and smirked. Jill ignored her, embarrassed that she had been caught talking to herself.
She chose a table for two outside the café on the footpath so she wouldn’t miss William when he arrived and picked up the menu tucked between the salt and pepper shakers and realised that she’d not eaten since breakfast. A shadow fell across the table as she tried to decide between the Caesar chicken salad or the pancakes with maple syrup. The aluminum chair next to her scraped against the concrete and she shielded her eyes against the sun as she looked up to see William Phillips towering over her. He pulled the chair away from the table and sat down.
‘Waiting long?’ he asked.
‘No, just got here.’
William caught the attention of the waitress and ordered. ‘Just coffee for me, short black,’ he said.
‘Same.’ Jill decided she could do without the pancakes and the maple syrup. ‘Well, William what’s all this about. What’s this information you’ve got to show me?’
William leant forward in his chair and pulled out the crumpled letters from the inside pocket of his jacket and pushed them across the table towards her. Jill laid the letters out flat and used the palm of her hand to smooth out the creases. He looked at her hands; they were small but strong, freckled and he noticed that her fingers were bare. William studied her carefully noticing the golden highlights in her hair as she read Isabelle’s letter addressed to Rose. When she finished reading it, she transferred it to her left hand and began to read the second letter, the letter from Tommy to his mother, Isabelle Dwyer.
Jill frowned as she put the letters down on the table. ‘Interesting. I’ll show them to my boss and get his take on them.’ She folded the letters and tucked them into an inside pocket of her backpack which was sitting between her feet beneath the table. ‘Tell me William, what do you know about this Tommy Dwyer anyway? He’s one of the beneficiaries to your mother’s estate, right?’
‘Yeah, but it’s a long story. You got time to hear it?’
Jill sat back in the chair and smiled at William, ‘All the time in the world.’
William ordered another coffee for both of them and began at the only place he knew where to begin - at the beginning. He described how his mother had raised him in a boarding house in an inner-city suburb; of the close relationship they had shared when he was young and how that changed once he crossed the divide and moved into the world of big business, big money and big demands. He told Jill of the regret he felt that he had abandoned his mother at a time when she had needed him most. He then went on to justify his actions, of how he felt that she was equally to blame because of her lack of honesty and how she wasn’t prepared to meet him halfway. How she turned her back on him by not wanting to or not being capable of understanding that he had moved on with his life, and that his life had evolved into something more complex and sophisticated than hers. He told her about the secrets and lies his mother had been guilty of, how she had picked up a photo of a soldier in a secondhand book store and cast him into the role of husband and father to cover up her moral indecency.
‘So where does Tommy and Isabelle Dwyer come into all this?’ Jill Brennan asked.
‘Tommy Dwyer is my half-brother, he squirmed out of the woodwork after my mother died - just showed up out of nowhere.’
Jill shifted in her seat.
‘Rose wasn’t my biological mother - Tommy’s mother, Isabelle was. Isabelle gave birth to me in London and took Rose along for the ride. Rose’s name was recorded on my birth certificate. Rose was thirty and desperate to have a child of her own. She knew she would probably never have the opportunity again, time was running out for her. After looking after her elderly parents, the prospect of marriage and family seemed so out of reach.
The secrets and lies started with Isabelle. It was 1955, a different era, and she had her reputation to consider. She’d married a very wealthy man, with a large family fortune and she didn’t want to have to explain to her husband how she managed to become pregnant when he wasn’t capable of producing another heir. Two years after Tommy’s birth, when they were trying to have another child, he came down with a severe case of mumps which made him sterile. But there’s more to this sordid story. It also seems that my wife, Suellyn was having an affair with Tommy and they were planning to run away together. They were in this together. Tommy was trying to get Suellyn to find out what Rose was doing with the money she inherited from Isabelle. That’s why Suellyn was so desperate to get Rose to move out of the house in Eden Street. She wanted Rose out of the way so she could have a thorough look through the house. When they found out that Rose made Tommy a beneficiary to the estate, well, that upset everything. Tommy realised that he was going to get his share after all. But that still wasn’t enough he wanted the Eden Street house as well.
‘But the house wouldn’t be worth much though, would it?’
‘Don’t be put off with the way it looks. I know it’s rundown but the land is worth at least twenty times the value of the house. The suburb’s becoming popular with young families and they either want to knock the houses down and build two storey mansions or else renovate them, bring them back to their former glory.’ William fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers on the table and looked across at Jill. ‘But it’s now got a whole lot more complicated with these letters turning up. Suellyn found them when she was rummaging through Tommy’s things. He’s got a beach house up the coast and he’s just sold it. I think the two of them were about to do a runner, at least Suellyn was until these letters turned up. Seems like my wife has a conscience after all.’
‘So what part do you think Suellyn played in all of this? Do you think she was capable of harming Rose?’ Jill asked
‘I really don’t know. Suellyn can be impulsive and quick-tempered at times and she doesn’t always consider the consequences of her actions. The fact that Rose left a large part of her estate to Tommy might have swayed her to leave me and run off with Tommy. She tells me she’s been unhappy in our marriage.’ William rubbed the back of his neck and felt a huge knot. ‘As far as Tommy goes though, he’s a real concern. In my view, if you’re looking for a motive as to why he would murder my mother, I mean Rose, you only have to remember that Isabelle cheated him out of his inheritance by leaving everything to her and he probably didn’t have the faintest idea that Rose intended to leave almost half to him.’
The autumn sun had all but disappeared and shadows from the neighbouring buildings crept along the footpath to where William and Jill were sitting drinking their second cup of coffee. Jill began to shiver through her thin cotton shirt. The beach was almost deserted and the café was getting ready for the dinner crowd.
‘I guess we should be making a move. I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,’ Jill said as she looked over at the owner standing by the cash register.
After William paid for their coffees they left the café together and walked at a leisurely pace along Campbell Parade to where Jill had parked her car. Jill was cold and she crossed her arms across her body to try to warm herself. She didn’t think to bring a coat when she left home earlier in the day.
‘This is my car here.’ Jill was relieved to see that she still had ten minutes on the meter. The parking rangers were notorious on this part of the
strip. ‘I’ll be in touch William. We’ll have to discuss these letters with your wife and do some digging around to find out the circumstances surrounding Isabelle’s death.’
Jill unlocked the car and William held the door opened for her as she slipped in behind the wheel and threw her backpack onto the passenger seat. As she drove off she looked at William in the rear view mirror. He was standing on the footpath with his hands in his pockets staring out at the ocean.