The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

prefer to have Terrence Dioli found at the bottom of the Iron Cove bridge with this throat cut.

“Why now, Howard? If you knew all this about Mark Dioli’s childhood, why is it now you want to do something.”

“Because, Clyde, you’ve just told me it’s still going on, that’s why.”

This time it was me who’d gone quiet. Harry and Howard continued to chat about what we could expect as guests at Zephyr, Howard’s property in the Southern Highlands.

“Howard,” I said, suddenly interrupting them.

“Yes, Clyde.”

“I’m sorry, I’m a detective first and foremost, even if I don’t wear a badge these days.”

“Go on,” he said.

“I went to the library and read the account of the sinking of the Greycliffe and then the subsequent death of his mother. What puzzled me is the report said the whole family was lost in the tragedy. But, it doesn’t make sense. Who only has a mother and father and one sibling? What about grandparents, uncles, and aunts? Why didn’t one of them come forward.”

“Ah, I was getting around to that, Clyde. I thought we needed a break. But, since you ask, Mark Dioli’s real name, as you probably discovered, is Pieter Strickland. The family had not long arrived from Indonesia, where his father had been the manager of a rubber plantation. The company went bust in the great depression. You are right of course to wonder about other relatives. At about the same time that Dioli heard of the boy in the orphanage, he also learned that an uncle and aunt had written from Holland to say they were prepared to take him on, but Dioli paid them off.”

“Paid them off? What sort of people were they?” I felt outraged.

“Poor people, who had been left with nothing after the Great War.”

“Does Mark Dioli know they even exist?”

Farrell shook his head. “I’ve no idea, Clyde. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

“I’m sorry, Howard, how did you come by this information?”

He tapped on the business card that still lay on the table between us with his forefinger. “Ask him. I only know so much myself, but this bastard knows about Mark Dioli’s abuse and will have seen Terrence ‘testing him out’. I heard there were parties for such minded men in private rooms … for a price.”

The conversation moved to other subjects the moment the waiter arrived with our dessert, which was followed by coffee and petit fours. While coffee was being poured, I casually mentioned how well Howard Farrell had done in life, moving up to be among the more important members of General Macarthur’s entourage during the war.

He glanced at the waiter and said, “Let’s go upstairs and have a cigarette after coffee and before a brandy, shall we?” I thought his eyes held a melancholy look, and his smile was wistful rather than one of pleasure.

“Upstairs?” Harry asked.

“Yes, there’s a rooftop garden and it was a lovely warm evening when I arrived. Besides, I do like the feel of the Sydney air at this time of year.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said, fully aware that he was going to tell us something that should not be overheard.

The view from the outside terrace on the roof, although somewhat obscured by city buildings, was very interesting. To the west one could see the clock tower of the G.P.O. and to the east the edge of the Botanical Gardens and the portico of the Mitchell Library.

“Not many people know I came from an orphanage—the same one as Mark Dioli as it happens, but long before him. It’s something I don’t normally like to talk about. My parents emigrated from Ireland and I was born on the steamer, just as she came through the heads of Sydney harbour in 1910. They died of typhus not long after we arrived, and they were dirt poor from all accounts, at least that’s what I was told. Like Mark Dioli, the staff kept all knowledge of where we came from secret, in case we ran away looking for family members.”

“Why on earth would they do that?” Harry asked.

“Twenty pounds a year for each of us from the government, and another ten from private charities.”

“I suppose you children didn’t get to see much of that money spent on you?”

The look he gave Harry said it all. “I was one of the very lucky ones. I was adopted as quite an old child, just a few weeks off my fourteenth birthday, by a wealthy industrialist and his wife. He groomed me of course, without me knowing it, and I found myself seeking out his bed on the evening of my twenty-first birthday. There was no coercion, just opportunities—he never laid a hand on me until after I made the first move. They are still alive, you know, the couple who adopted me. I see them frequently, and that’s how I manage to live the lifestyle I do, with my big house in the country, my racehorses, and my parties, not to mention my apartment around the corner in College Street.”

“I was wondering how you came to know the details of Mark Dioli’s treatment,” I said.

“I tried to have the place shut down, Clyde. But that bastard Keeps had too much power. He threatened me on more than one occasion by saying he could trump up charges and have me thrown in jail.”

“Despite your connections? You must be protected, surely?”

“Keeps had so many people in his debt he could have forced any number of well-placed men to reveal details of what my guests get up to at some of my weekends. It was one night, not long before you killed him, Harry, that Keeps confessed he wished he could still return to the orphanage with his friend, Terrence Dioli, to find ‘fresh meat’ as he put it.”

“How disgusting!” Harry said.

“It was on that night he admitted his relationship as Dioli’s A.D.C. and told me about Mark—the boy his old colonel had adopted and had abused. I should mention that I never heard talk of Terrence using boys