She was joking. Everyone knew that Mrs. Turner had a penchant for his mother’s fish paste. A fair portion of Tambilla felt the same way. It was one of the most-made recipes from Meg Summers’s great-grandmother’s heirloom cookbook. Along with theRoggenbrot,of course.
The wooden-framed wire-screen door slapped open and shut and John entered, the Brownie camera still slung across his shoulder, his face pink with heat and frustration. After searching for hours, traversing the property from one end to the other, he’dbegun to despair of ever finding Mr. Drumming. Frustration over the camera had put him in a bad mood, and in the habit of young boys everywhere, he’d come in search of food to assuage his tension. “I’m starving,” he announced. Very briefly his gaze met Marcus’s, before each boy looked away in an obstinate show of vexation.
“We’re leaving soon for the picnic.”
“Mum, no, I can’t.”
“Nonsense, we’re all going.”
“But there’s something I have to do, something important.”
“I thought you said you were starving.”
“I need to find Mr. Drumming.”
“He’s not here today.”
“What?” The panic in John’s voice was such that under any normal circumstances, any normal mother (and certainly Mrs. Turner) would have had her suspicions raised and set about Getting to the Bottom of Things, but at that precise moment, Mrs. Turner-Bridges reappeared with Matilda close behind her.
“I’m not going on a picnic,” Matilda blurted. “It’s far too hot.”
“It’s not.”
“I’m melting.”
“You’re not.”
“I’m bilious!”
Shedidlook rather green around the gills, and her eyes were bloodshot, as her aunt was later to confirm. “I assumed it was the heat,” Mrs. Turner-Bridges would tell the police. “Lord knows, I was feeling peaky myself. But it turned out she’d been busy that morning.”
It was Mrs. Pike who was able to shed light on Matilda’s actions, in her interview the week following the deaths. The housekeeper had just finished telling the police that Mrs. Turner had insisted she and Becky Baker only work a half day on Christmas Eve (“I thought she might have wanted some help making lunch—she still hadn’t started on dinner, and now there was a picnic to prepare—but shewas adamant that she could manage on her own; she was very firm about it”) when she paused and added, “It was busier than Hindley Street that day. Becky and I passed Marcus Summers on his way to make a delivery, and when we parted ways at the bottom of the driveway—I had my bicycle, and she prefers to walk back to town across the paddocks—I almost rode straight into young Matilda. I’m not sure where she’d been, but she was stalking back toward the house, her face red and her expression anguished.”
Matthew McKenzie, who had been “birdwatching” nearby, offered further information on Matilda’s movements after breakfast.
“I saw them sitting together in the Summerses’ ute,” he told police. “Where that dirt track breaks off from Willner Road. He was parked right up on the verge. I knew it was him. Even if I hadn’t seen him, I’d have known, because he had his lawn mower in the back. They were arguing, him and Matilda. She was crying and he was angry with her.”
“How do you know he was angry? Did you hear what they were saying?”
“After she left, he watched her go, and then he slammed his hand down on the roof of the car and swore.”
Isabel, though, in the kitchen spreading fish paste ontoRoggenbrot,knew none of what had passed. She was aware only that her fifteen-year-old daughter was behaving in a recalcitrant manner, and she was having none of it.
“It’s Christmas Eve and we are going on a picnic together, as a family. Consider what you’d like to bring with you and gather it now. A book, some writing materials, a towel. That goes for you, too, John.”
“Why do I need a towel?” he asked.
The kitchen was becoming crowded, people and discord causing the atmosphere to roil. At some point, Mrs. Turner-Bridges had returned, bringing with her a small, gift-wrapped parcel that Marcus longed to reach out and grab so that he could finally escape thisroom, this family. But alas, it sat on the far corner of the table, ignored by Mrs. Turner, whose knife was moving ever faster, spreading lashings of strawberry jam onto the remaining slices of buttered bread. Unable to leave, Marcus Summers watched her, miserable but mesmerized, from his place near the door.
“Why do I need a towel?” John said again.
“I thought we’d go to the water hole,” Isabel replied. “You can swim, and there’s that lovely big willow to sit beneath. Lots of shade, and a bough that will be perfect for the baby’s crib. Matilda, will you go and fetch your baby sister?”
“Isabel, please,” said Matilda, employing her best grown-up voice. “I really do feel wretched. I need to lie down.”
“There’s a small bag near the crib,” Isabel added. “Bring that as well.”
Silence fell. A stalemate had seemingly been reached, and with no further shots fired, the room’s thick ambience briefly settled. But there is nothing surer than that two siblings, each nursing a problem, will seek refuge in the familiar comforts of quarreling, and so it was with John and Matilda in that moment.
