Paving the New Road Read online

  Paving the New Road

  A Rowland Sinclair Mystery

  Sulari Gentill

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Originally published in 2012 by Pantera Press

  Copyright © 2012, 2018 by Sulari Gentill

  First US Edition 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2017946809

  ISBN: 9781464206894 Hardcover

  9781464206917 Trade Paperback

  9781464206917 Ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., #201

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Paving the New Road

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  About Sulari Gentill

  Contact Us

  Prologue

  “No! For God’s sake, no! Rowland Sinclair cannot be trusted.” Freddie Middlemiss was adamant and furious. His lips puckered and pressed into a disconsolate line. “The man’s a disgrace. We still can’t be sure he’s not a bloody Red.” He stubbed out his cigarette, agitated. “If I had my way, we’d shoot him and be done with it!”

  “What Charles is suggesting may be tantamount to shooting him,” Maguire observed. It was hard to tell if the surgeon was necessarily unhappy with the proposition.

  Senator Charles Hardy pushed his fingertips together as he considered the warning. The select meeting of loyalists waited for his response in the private meeting room of the Riverine Club. A dozen men sat around the polished board table, ashtrays and scotch within easy reach. The air was heavy, a smoky, conspiratorial fog. It was a testament to Hardy’s growing influence that the venerable men in attendance had travelled to Wagga Wagga at such short notice, and that they had done so without the knowledge of Wilfred Sinclair.

  A throat was cleared. Frederick Hinton tapped the table impatiently, his chin dimpling as he dropped it into his fleshy jowls. Sir Adrian Knox mopped at his brow with a handkerchief as if he were searching for the judge’s wig under which his balding crown was so often hidden. Even Goldfinch pulled restlessly at his moustache. Only Maguire remained rigid, unmoving.

  “I believe Rowland was cleared of suspicion,” Hardy said finally. “And the Sinclairs have always been true to King and country.”

  A general murmur of agreement.

  “There is not a man here who would doubt Wilfred,” Middlemiss returned. “He’s a decent chap, but Rowland is another matter entirely. I doubt even Wilfred trusts him.”

  “Rowland has skills that could be very useful,” Hardy said, sensing the mood was against him. It would take a great deal to convince these men to act against Wilfred Sinclair. “Rowland is fluent in French, Spanish, and, most importantly, German. Not to mention the fact that the very associations which cause some of you to doubt his loyalty may make him privy to valuable information.”

  Frederick Hinton’s round face puffed. “Surely you are not suggesting that we should endorse his enlisting the Reds to help…”

  “No, of course not,” Hardy said hastily. “But his ability to move among the vermin may be useful. Let us remember, gentlemen, why we need to place a man in Germany.”

  “We have not forgotten, Charles.” Knox pointed at the Senator. “It’s why we need a man we can trust, who is unimpeachable. It’s why Wilfred is our man…whether or not he speaks German.”

  “One should also remember that the ability to speak German didn’t really help Peter Bothwell in the end,” Goldfinch added.

  Hardy pulled the unlit pipe from his mouth. He spoke carefully. “You may be right, gentlemen. But let us not deceive ourselves—this operation is not without risk and Wilfred is both very valuable to and inextricably connected with our movement.”

  “What are you saying, Hardy?”

  “I am simply making the observation that if things were to go wrong, Wilfred is inseparable from this organisation…he is closely linked to every man at this table. Rowland Sinclair, on the other hand, is a known renegade—there was that business last year between him and Campbell, and then that nonsense with the Theosophical Society. No one will doubt that he was acting of his own accord.”

  Hardy’s proposal was considered. The Senator waited.

  It was Maguire who first broke the pensive silence. “Wilfred won’t like it. He won’t allow it.”

  “He could be made to appreciate the wisdom of it if we were resolved. We really can’t risk a good man like Wilfred.”

  “And how do you expect to get Rowland Sinclair to agree?” Maguire asked. “You have hardly endeared yourself to him.”

  Hardy did not flinch. “Leave young Sinclair to me. I’ll make him see the sense of taking his brother’s place. Needless to say, I shall have to speak to him before Wilfred suspects our purpose.”

  Maguire folded his arms, tilting back in his chair. “Wilfred will not take kindly to this plan of yours, Charles.”

  “I suppose he won’t,” Hardy replied. “Regardless, it will keep Wilfred out of harm’s way.”

  “By putting his brother directly in it.”

  Middlemiss snorted loudly. “Wilfred may thank us for it. Rowland’s been little more than an embarrassment for years.”

  Maguire’s beard moved with the clench of his jaw. “Rowland Sinclair is his only surviving brother. You’re a fool if you think Wilfred will tolerate any proposal to send Rowland into danger!”

  “Steady on, Maguire,” Knox protested. “All we’re doing is replacing Bothwell.”

  “And may I remind you, Sir Adrian, that Peter Bothwell is dead.”

  The room fell again into an uneasy silence as the inescapable fact settled on the consciences of the Old Guard leadership.

  Hardy’s voice was brittle. “All the more reason we should send Rowland Sinclair.”

  Chapter One

  ERIC CAMPBELL

  NOW IN LONDON.

  FASCISM URGED FOR N.S.W.

  LONDON, March 7

  Mr. Eric Campbell told a press representative he was seeing Sir Oswald Mosle
y regarding organising Fascism in New South Wales. He proposes to visit Italy, Germany and Poland. Mr. Campbell added the time was never so opportune as now for Fascism in New South Wales. Not only Lang and his Communist friends need watching, but the Stevens Government was paving the way to Socialism and Communism.

  —The Townsville Daily Bulletin, 1933

  It was a particularly inconvenient time to call.

  The smoke was thick and the blaze in real danger of getting away. A misshapen, one-eared greyhound barked madly at the flames as it tried to warn its master of the peril.

  “Lenin! Calm down!” Rowland Sinclair relinquished his shovel reluctantly. No doubt it would be another irate neighbour demanding to know why he was trying to set the street alight.

  “Who is it this time, Mary?” he asked the housekeeper, who had personally ventured into the gardens of Woodlands House to bring him the message. He patted his thigh to call his dog to heel beside him.

  Mary Brown sighed, conveying all manner of frustration, disapproval, and concern in a simple exhalation of breath. She had been employed at the Sydney residence of the Sinclairs since well before its current master was born, and although she had run Rowland’s household for several years, she did not condone his lifestyle. Of course she would never utter what it was not her place to say…and so she sighed again. “A Senator Charles Hardy, Master Rowly,” she said, addressing him with the title she had used since he was a child. “The Senator is most insistent that he speak with you now.”

  “Hardy?” Rowland stopped, frowning as he unrolled his sleeves and rebuttoned his waistcoat. He and the Senator were hardly friends. Why would he call unannounced? “Ask the Senator to wait in my studio, please, Mary. I’ll be along directly.”

  “What is it, Rowly?” Edna shouted over the crackling roar of the fire. The young sculptress for whom they had built the small inferno tossed an armload of split logs into the flames. She wore overalls, as she always did when she was working. Her auburn hair was caught back from her face beneath a headscarf and her cheeks were streaked with smoky residue. Rowland paused to enjoy the dishevelled picture of her. There was something particularly enchanting about such a beautiful creature, being so at home in overalls and soot.

  “Rowly…?” Edna prompted, rolling her eyes. She had become accustomed to how easily men were distracted in her company…or by it.

  “Just an unexpected visitor,” Rowland said finally.

  “Who?” Edna persisted. She knew him too well to dismiss the hard glint in his dark blue eyes, and she was too curious by nature to let it pass.

  “Senator Hardy, apparently.”

  Milton Isaacs looked up from his book. The poet had taken refuge in the gazebo upwind of the fire, unwilling to risk his immaculate cream jacket in the smoke. “And they were enemies: they met beside the dying embers of an altar-place,” he said loudly, looking pointedly at the fire.

  “Byron,” Rowland shouted back at him. Milton’s posture as a poet was the ill-gotten product of his talent for quoting the works of English bards at will. That the words were not the creation of his own poetic inspiration was a detail that escaped most people…except Rowland Sinclair, who felt obliged to make the attribution his friend so conveniently omitted.

  Milton snorted contemptuously as if it were Byron who had, in fact, stolen his words.

  Clyde Watson Jones leaned on his own shovel, a wary eye still on the fire. He was not the eldest of them by many years, but his face was already mellowed, weathered but comfortable, like a well-worn pair of boots. The time he’d spent in the luxury of Woodlands House under Rowland’s generous patronage had not erased the map of care etched by years on the wallaby, scrounging for work and dignity. “What would Hardy want with you, mate?”

  Rowland’s face darkened further. “I’m sure I’ll find out.” His last encounter with Charles Hardy had been anything but pleasant. The Senator had essentially accused him of treason…some cockeyed notion that Rowland Sinclair, the youngest brother of Wilfred Sinclair—that bastion of conservative respectability—was a Communist spy, a traitor to King and country. Rowland might have found it funny, if it had not seemed that his brother was standing with the accusers.

  Retrieving his jacket from the garden seat on which he had tossed it when they’d begun the task of digging a pit for Edna, he dragged it on. Edna reached up and straightened his tie, and used her sleeve to wipe a stray smudge of black from his cheek. Unfortunately, her sleeve was not itself pristine and her efforts were less than successful.

  Rowland smiled as he attempted to rectify the extra soot she had left on his person. It was just cursory…let Hardy take him as he found him, cinders and all.

  He entered the house through the conservatory. Lenin padded quietly after him.

  Rowland’s studio, in which Hardy waited, had once been the grand mansion’s main parlour. It was a large room with high, ornate ceilings and ample light afforded by bay windows. It was this light that made it an excellent studio space. That using it in such a way stamped his stewardship of Woodlands House absolutely did not displease Rowland either.

  Charles Hardy was standing before the larger-than-life portrait of Rowland’s late father, the pastoralist Henry Sinclair. His gaze, however, was on the painting that graced the opposite wall—a nude of Edna seated in the armchair which Rowland now invited his guest to take.

  The Senator smiled broadly. “Just admiring your father’s portrait…a fine, loyal Australian, a real Briton,” he said as he approached Rowland with his hand outstretched.

  Rowland accepted the handshake cautiously. Aside from the fact that he doubted Hardy had been concentrating on his father’s portrait, the Senator was no more than thirty-five. It was unlikely he’d known Henry Sinclair, who had died in 1920.

  “Of course, I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him personally…but I knew him well by reputation. A man to be reckoned with, I’m told. He was taken too early, as I suppose the best men are.”

  Rowland glanced at the glowering likeness in oil, and said nothing. He had been fifteen when his father died.

  In the silence, Hardy’s eyes fell upon the greyhound. The dog ignored him and stretched out at Rowland’s feet. “Good Lord! Your dog?”

  Rowland nodded.

  “What do you call him?”

  “Lenin.”

  Hardy changed the subject. “Been barbequing, I see.”

  Eager to ascertain the purpose of Hardy’s unexpected visit, Rowland offered the Senator a drink. He allowed Hardy to make small talk for the minimum time that courtesy would allow before asking quite bluntly, “What can I do for you, Senator Hardy?”

  “Please…Charles,” Hardy said. He studied Rowland over his glass of whisky. “Look, Sinclair, I’d like to bury the hatchet, as it were. I misjudged you. I admit it and I apologise.”

  Rowland watched him suspiciously. “Thank you.”

  “Good…good…no hard feelings, then.” Hardy didn’t wait for Rowland to reply, and Rowland didn’t make any attempt to do so.

  The politician glanced back at the portrait of Henry Sinclair. “I should have known that despite your unusual social connections, the Sinclairs have always been King’s men. Your father would have brought you up with love of country and Empire.” He paused in his rhetoric. “I was hoping that I could rely on that now.”

  “Rely on it for what, exactly?” Rowland knew full well Hardy had not called merely to apologise.

  “I hoped to enlist your help on a matter of national security.”

  Admittedly, Rowland’s interest was piqued. “National security? Are you sure it’s not Wilfred you’d like to talk to?” It was Wilfred who now wielded the power of the Sinclairs—influence born of wealth and political connections. Rowland had instead claimed the role of black sheep, a part which suited him and which he thought he played rather well. That the Senator would seek his help on any matt
er, let alone one of national security, was, at the very least, a little surprising.

  Hardy sipped his scotch and let the silence settle dramatically before he answered. “No, it’s you…Can I depend on you, Sinclair? Can your country, your fellow Australians, depend on you?”

  Rowland raised a single brow. Hardy had always had a predilection for theatre. “What do you want, Senator Hardy?”

  “I really must insist you call me Charles,” Hardy said, placing down his drink. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I need your word as a gentleman, Rowland, that what I am about to tell you will not go outside these walls.”

  Rowland nodded impatiently.

  “I understand that you are acquainted with Eric Campbell.”

  “I believe he is a mutual acquaintance,” Rowland replied. He wasn’t going to allow Hardy to deny his own involvement with the fascist group.

  Colonel Eric Campbell was the commander of the New Guard, a right-wing movement of citizens which had once sought to overthrow the New South Wales government of Jack Lang, who they decried as a Communist-coddler. Over a year ago now, Rowland had infiltrated the movement for his own reasons and, in the process, come to know Eric Campbell and the machinations of the New Guard quite well. But the whole affair had ended rather badly, destroying his reputation in certain quarters, enhancing it in others.

  Hardy studied him piercingly. “The Riverina Movement was not a part of the New Guard,” he said tersely, defensively.

  Rowland did not withdraw. Led by Hardy himself, the Riverina Movement was to Rowland’s mind not so different from the New Guard. Indeed, Campbell and Hardy had been tentative allies against what they regarded as a common evil. Of course, now Charles Hardy was a respectable member of His Majesty’s parliament and Campbell considered an extremist crackpot…in some circles, at least.