Chapter Nine

Estelle Baker, having dealt with the day's departing guests, was ensconced behind her office desk when Jack went looking. He could hear someone speaking, so tapped on the open door before sticking his head around it, finding her talking on the telephone. She glanced up and when she saw who it was, beckoned him in.

He wandered the room as he waited for her to finish her call with what was clearly a recalcitrant butcher. The mantelpiece held a series of photographs; looking more closely, he realised they were all of the family. Childhood photos of first bicycle rides made him smile reminiscently; a studio shot, carefully posed, of all three children – Martin and the young David standing either side of Estelle, proudly atop a rocking horse.

Further along the mantelpiece was a photo of the whole family; mother flanked by her two boys and father proudly holding his little girl. The resemblances were particularly marked; father and daughter both fair haired, the boys and their mother dark. The features, too – a Roman nose didn't do Estelle many favours, but distinguished her father, while their mother's heavy eyebrows branded both Martin and young Davy.

He was still pondering the family resemblances when he heard her put down the telephone, and turned round.

"Sorry, Inspector – I don't know if you had the fillet last night, but it's the last time anyone's going to try to pass off sirloin as fillet to my clients. A lovely cut of meat, but not what the menu says, and I lack a sense of humour about these things," she stated firmly. In her element, Estelle Baker was a forceful woman. "How can I help you?"

He apologised first for having to trouble her, and swiftly got through the tedious part of the interview; she had been at the hotel all evening, and when she'd finished supervising the dinner service and preparing the bills for the guests in the morning, she'd asked for a brandy from the bar at around eleven and taken it to her room on the top floor.

"You live here?" he asked, surprised.

"In the attic," she answered. "Have done since I was fifteen years old and started working as a chambermaid. Then waitress. Then commis chef. Learning the job, Inspector. There are people who play at hospitality, and then there are those of us that want to do it right." She raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't expect you started out on the force as a detective?"

He admitted she was right, and carefully asked, "And your brother, Martin? I understand he's by way of being a property developer."

She nodded. "He's minded to put up some more houses on the vacant plot we have. I can see why he would – since the railway came through, it's so easy to get here from Melbourne," she gave him a half-smile to acknowledge that he'd done just that. "He's got a good instinct, I think. I don't really try to second-guess him any more – he can see opportunities that I don't have time to look for."

She looked up at him steadily.

"He was rude to you when he first met you, and I tore a strip off him for it. He's too used to being the head of the family, king of the walk, master of all he surveys, use whatever cliché you like – when a mere officer of the law asks him to justify his behaviour, he has to readjust his ideas a bit."

She glanced out the window for a moment, then turned back to him.

"Give him facts to deal with, and you'll get facts in return, Inspector."

She smiled then.

"Not like Davy," she shook her head, lost in a happy moment that he couldn't bring himself to snap her out of.

"He was our dreamer of dreams. He'd be happiest with moonlight and a song. An old fashioned minstrel. I sometimes thought that he liked the boat so much because he'd really rather be on his travels than staying in one place."

When she looked at him again, her eyes were full of tears and her voice was clear and low.

"Find my brother's killer, Inspector."