We took turns to clean up in the bathroom I’d built on to the office so that I didn’t have to traipse into the house in a filthy condition, and walked down the road in silence. The dog appeared ahead of us: taken a short cut through the neighbour’s paddock. The sky was clearing, the cloud cover broken, harried fragments streaming east in full retreat. Suddenly the world was high and light and full of promise. I hadn’t talked much to Allie since she started. She had a reserved way about her, not rude but not forthcoming. And I didn’t have any experience of working relationships like this. Man and a woman working with hot metal.
At the pub, it was just us and Vinnie and two hard-looking women in tracksuits playing pool. The fat one had a lipstick smear at the edge of her mouth. It looked like a bruise when she bent her head. Allie put the beers down and said, ‘Know someone called Alan Snelling?’
‘Know who he is.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘Runs a few horses. Nice house. Nice cars. Gets married every now and again.’
‘He asked me out.’
‘Available to be asked out?’ I instantly regretted the question.
She smiled, drank some beer, wiped away a thin tidemark of foam on her upper lip with a fingertip. ‘I’m between engagements. He was at Glentroon Lodge yesterday, looking at a horse. Asked my opinion.’
‘Who wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘An older man. They can be attracted to capable young women.’
She put her head on one side. ‘Older man? He’s about your age.’
‘That’s what I mean.’
She laughed. Vinnie arrived with the toasted sandwiches.
‘That was quick,’ I said.
‘Cook’s day off,’ said Vinnie. ‘Everything’s quicker on his day off. Including the time. Passes too fast.’
We talked business while we ate. On our way back, I said, ‘About Alan Snelling.’
‘Yes?’
‘You want to think.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Alan’s lucky,’ I said. ‘His old mum popped off. Nobody thought she had much, just the house, falling-over weatherboard. Not so. She had lots of things. Jewellery, coin collections, stamp collections, and a box with about $100,000 in cash in it. All up, worth about $400,000.’
‘Well, I suppose there’s an explanation,’ said Allie.
I said, ‘Also, Alan had a business partner, ran their little video hire business in Melbourne. Top little business, big as a phone booth, cash flow like Target. Then the partner was working out in his home gym and the machine collapsed on him. Fatal.’
‘That’s not lucky,’ Allie said.
‘They had key executive insurance,’ I said. ‘Half a million.’
We were going down the lane, when Allie said, ‘What’s that about his mother mean? I don’t get it.’
‘People could think Alan was parking invisible earnings with his mother.’
‘Invisible? You mean illegal? Like drugs?’
I shrugged. ‘Among the possibilities.’
‘Jesus,’ Allie said. ‘How do you know this stuff?’
‘I forget where I heard it,’ I said.
Allie went off to a job. I should have worked on the knives but instead I rang the library at Burnley Horticultural College and asked them if they had any information on Harkness Park. The woman took my number. She rang back inside half an hour.
‘I’ve tracked down a dozen or so references to it,’ she said. ‘There’ll probably be more.’
‘Any pictures or drawings?’
‘No. It was designed by a man called Robert Barton Graham, an Englishman. It’s not clear but he seems to have been brought out by a Colonel Stephen Peverell in 1896 to design the garden. He designed other gardens in Victoria while he was here, but they’re all gone as far as we know.’
‘Anywhere else I could try?’
She sighed. ‘Our collection’s pretty good. The State Library doesn’t have anything we don’t have. Not that you can get to, anyway. I’ll keep looking.’ As an afterthought, she said, ‘Sometimes the local history associations can help. They might know who has information.’
I drove over to Brixton, the town nearest Harkness Park. I knew where the local history museum was, a brick and weatherboard building near the railway station. It had once been a factory with its own rail siding. Two elderly women sitting behind a glass display counter in the front room of the museum looked surprised to see a visitor.
‘G’day,’ said the smaller of the pair. She was wearing a knitted hat that resembled a chimney pot. Wisps of bright orange hair escaped at the temples. ‘You’re just in time. We’re just having a cup of tea before we close.’
A hand-lettered sign said: Adults $2, Children $1, Pensioners Free. I put down a coin.
The second woman took the money. ‘On your own, are you?’ she said. She looked like someone who’d worked hard outdoors: ruddy skin, hands too big for her wrists.
‘I’m interested in gardens,’ I said. ‘Old gardens.’
The women looked at each other. ‘This is a local history museum,’ the smaller one said apologetically.
‘I thought you might be the ones to ask about old gardens around here,’ I said.
They exchanged glances again. ‘Well, there’s a good few that open to the public,’ the taller one said. ‘The best’d be Mrs Sheridan’s, wouldn’t it, Elsie? Some very nice beds.’
‘You don’t know of a place called Harkness Park?’ I said.
‘Oh, Harkness Park,’ she said. ‘Mrs Rosier’s house. I don’t think that’s ever been open. She had nothing to do with the town. Didn’t even come to church. People say it was a grand garden once, but you can’t see anything from the road except the trees. It’s like a forest.’
‘Old Col Harris used to work there,’ the other woman said. ‘Him and that Meekin and another man-I can’t remember his name, lived out on Cribbin Road. Dead now. They’re all dead.’
‘There wouldn’t be photographs, would there?’ I said.
The taller woman sighed exaggeratedly. ‘Don’t talk about photos. There’s a whole room of unsorted photos. Mr Collits was in charge of photographs. Wouldn’t give anyone else a look-in, would he, Elsie?’
‘He’s not around anymore?’