We headed for his office, but not before I made a call. “Sydney, what does your rumour mill tell you about the relationship between Jacinta and Dorothy Palmer?”
“If I told all you’d never believe me.”
“Try me.”
“They were partners in more ways than one. They were both sexually ambidextrous. If you really want to find Dorothy, assuming that she hasn’t left the country, I’d start by finding her husband.”
“That’s going to be difficult if she has kept her maiden name.”
“Dorothy was never a maiden. Ooh, I am awful, I must punish myself. Seriously now, he has a large property somewhere out west along the Barwon River, he breeds cattle among other things, nothing illegal mind you. My guess is that she’ll head in his direction hoping that the police will not look that far away.”
“They will if we tell them. Thanks, Syd.” I ended the call before he abused me for calling him that.
Gareth listened while I told of my conversation with Sydney. He called DS Russell. “Sergeant, we seem to be doing your work for you to the point where I am considering billing you for the time. Calm down, let your humour gene crank itself into life. We have discovered that Dorothy Palmer has dropped Jacinta Tomlinson into it and hung her out to dry.”
“Don’t tell me how you managed to find out about this before the information has been released, I don’t want to know, it’s probably illegal and therefore inadmissible.”
“It is neither, we have our sources that are unavailable to you. They have also told us that Dorothy has done a runner.”
“How? We have only just now sent a car to fetch her.”
“Too late. We do however have a lead as to her whereabouts.”
“Are you going to give us this information or just sit there and gloat?”
“Word has it that she has flown to her husband. We do not know her exact location, suffice it to say that it is somewhere on the banks of the Barwon River. Her husband has a cattle property there.”
“That’ll keep him busy for a while. Now, what do you two have planned for today, work-wise?”
“Nothing.” Chandra said. “Work-wise that is.” She added quickly.
“Nothing officially work-wise,” I said, “we do have something personal to do.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to race off to get a Marriage License?”
“No. Not yet at least. No, we are going to take a close look at my apartment. I can hardly expect Chandra to live there with its overtly macho image.”
“I don’t know, I like macho. Chandra said. “I must have been distracted, I can’t recall any discussion on this.”
“I haven’t discussed it with you, but if you’re living with me, I no longer have to project that image to re-enforce my heterosexuality.”
“Getting ahead of yourself there aren’t you mister?” I was about to respond when she cut into my response time. “Not that this is without promise.” She kissed me. “If you ask nicely I might say yes.”
“Chandra, will you move in with me?”
“Yes.”
I kissed her.
“Get out of here before you defile my desk.” Gareth said. The smile on his face spoke of his approval.
We managed to find time, in between doing this and that, to work on the re-design of my, our apartment.
“Stefan, we have to go to my apartment and get at least some of my clothes.”
“Why, do you plan on wearing any?”
“I need clothes to wear to work, you know, that thing I do to earn money.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?” My fingers pleaded my case for me. Chandra conceded defeat and we adjourned to our bed.
Over the next two or three weeks, time was something of a blur, we divided our time between Chandra’s work and mine. Gareth was in constant consultation with the police and Chandra and I worked on getting as much background information on the relationship between Jacinta and Dorothy. This came in handy to the police who were able, acting on the information provided by us, to play both sides against the middle and gather enough evidence to bring charges against both for the murder of Jacinta’s last three husbands.
A distrust built up between Jacinta and Dorothy to the point where Jacinta had to seek new legal representation for the upcoming trial.
We reasoned that, to establish individual innocence, they would both need to establish the other as the sole guilty party, and so it proved, but the result was not what either expected.
“Sergeant Russell, can you explain to this court the sequence of events that has led to these persons being charged with the offences of murder and conspiring to commit murder?
Jeffrey Somerton, the Police Prosecutor asked.
“On July the seventh, this year, we received a phone call from Mister Gareth Chambers of the Legal firm of Chamber Hallston and Associates, advising us that one of their Paralegals, in the process of serving papers on Mrs Jacinta Tomlinson in regards to the property at Wahroonga where she resided, and which had been owned by her deceased husband.”
“These papers, what did they refer to?”
“They were being served to prevent her from selling or in any way interfering with the property. The property had been left, unbeknown to her, to the National Trust and due to restrictions to the nature of work that could be carried out on National Trust properties because of the heritage status that applied in this case, an injunction had been taken out preventing her from carrying out any work prior to selling the property.”
“Were these papers served on Mrs Tomlinson?”
“Not initially, no. Mrs Tomlinson had gone out for the day and left an Interior Design Consultant at the house to formulate a design proposal for her.”
“Why were you called to the property?”
“The Paralegal sent to serve the papers had informed the Senior Partner of the legal firm of information that she had received that raised questions concerning the death of Mrs Tomlinson’s former husband. While there, two workmen arrived to remove boxes from the basement of the home. Ms Chambers, the Paralegal, informed the workmen they were not to remove the boxes because, under the terms of the bequest, all property apart from the personal property of Mrs Tomlinson, was now the property of the National Trust. While waiting for the return of Mrs Tomlinson, Ms Chambers, in the presence of Mister Stefan Baptiste, the Interior Design consultant, opened one of the boxes to find it contained laboratory equipment that we have been able to link to the death of Mister Tomlinson.”
“When you say that this equipment was linked to his death, what do you mean?”
“We have established that the cause of death was that the defendant produced placebos that she administered to the deceased instead of his prescribed medication. The initial forensic examination established that there were no drugs in his system that could have caused his death. Acting on the information given, the investigation examined the body on the basis of the existence of prescribed medication in his system. There were none. With this in mind, we re-opened our investigation into the deaths of her two previous husbands who had died under similar circumstances. We were able to establish that they too had no evidence of the drugs that they had been prescribed to prolong life.”