The Holiday Murders Read Online Free Page A

allowed to enlist, and she thought that this ludicrous lack of trust in their desire to combat the very regime that was slaughtering their families might have made Joe reluctant to deal with the military authorities. He wasn’t a refugee, of course, but he was Jewish, and perhaps he believed that as far as the army was concerned, this was a distinction without a difference. It had been she, in fact, who’d raised the issue with Titus. However, he didn’t think it was any of his business. The job in front of him was to turn a young man fresh from Detective Training School into a detective. This wasn’t going to be possible if Joe Sable had no talent for it. Despite what many in the force believed, Titus Lambert knew that detection depended on a finely tuned instinct rather than on well-honed skills. Skills could be acquired, but you either had the instinct or you lacked it — and if you lacked it, the best you could hope for was plodding competence.
    ‘This is interesting,’ Titus said. He showed Joe a magazine that had been under some clothing in a drawer. It had a pale-orange cover. There was no decoration on it, apart from a small triangle in which sat an illustration of a kookaburra. The rest of the cover was simply a table of contents. The Publicist , it proudly proclaimed, The Paper Loyal to Australia First .
    ‘That’s ringing a bell,’ Joe said. ‘Why?’
    ‘Read the contents.’
    Joe took the magazine.
    ‘ Australia and the Jews, Australia’s Pacific Strategy, The Refugee Threat, Jews and the Kimberleys . I’ve heard my father talk about this, but I’ve never actually seen a copy.’
    ‘The people involved in this rag were interned last year.’ Titus said. ‘I don’t know much about them. I think I recall Maude saying something about one of them being a Pankhurst. But the fact that Xavier Quinn had a copy might mean nothing, of course.’
    ‘There don’t seem to be any more in this room.’
    ‘There is this, though,’ Titus said, pulling another magazine from the drawer. Joe moved to where he could see what Titus was holding. There was a photograph on the cover of five people: four women — two of them barely into their teens — and a man. They were standing outside a tent, smiling, and at studied ease. The remarkable thing about this family, if they were a family (that was certainly the idea being conveyed), was that they were completely naked, and there’d been no attempt made to blur or hide their private parts. Above them was the name of the magazine: Menschen in der Sonne .
    ‘What do you make of this, Sergeant?’
    Joe took the magazine and flicked through it. Inside there were twelve colour plates of men, women, and children, all in robust good health, in poses that varied from gymnastic to the more mundane.
    ‘It’s a German nudist magazine,’ Joe said. ‘At least, I presume that’s what it is. I don’t read German, but the pictures rather speak for themselves.’
    ‘I’m sure that’s exactly what it is. The question is, what’s it doing in the drawer of a religious fanatic?’
    ‘Well, sir, religious fanatics are prone to unusual sexual outlets.’
    Titus nodded.
    ‘Yes. This seems a bit tame, though, don’t you think?’
    ‘It might have been enough for Xavier Quinn. It’s dated 1935, so he’s had it a long time.’
    ‘I doubt it’s been in his possession since 1935. He’d only have been twelve then, and where would a twelve-year-old boy get hold of a magazine like this?’
    After a few more minutes of searching the room, Titus had seen enough, ‘All right. The scientific boys can do a more thorough search here. We need to see John Quinn’s room.’
    Quinn’s bedroom was a large, beautifully proportioned space. It retained certain feminine touches that he must have kept in deference to his late wife. The room wasn’t crowded with furniture, but the few pieces it contained were ostentatiously the best of their kind — although neither Titus nor Joe could have