‘Jimmy, I’d like you to meet our little Enigma.’
But Jimmy didn’t even glance at the baby. Instead, he fixed his eyes carefully on Connie’s forehead and said, ‘I was just wondering. Well, I was wondering if you had a fellow?’
Not any more I don’t, thought Connie Doughty, and hid her smile as she buried her nose in the sweet folds of the baby’s neck.
5
(Excerpt from ‘The Munro Baby Mystery’, a DL-sized brochure printed in four colours on celloglazed 150 gsm stock and handed to every visitor to Alice and Jack’s house on Scribbly Gum Island, Sydney, Australia.)
Welcome to the mysterious ‘frozen in time’ home of Alice and Jack Munro! Look, be intrigued, but please do not touch! It’s vital that we preserve our historical integrity. This home, built in 1901, has not been touched since teenage sisters Connie and Rose Doughty stopped by for a cup of tea with their neighbours on 15 July 1932. They discovered the kettle about to boil, a freshly baked marble cake waiting to be iced, and a tiny baby waking for her feed–but no sign of her parents, Alice and Jack Munro.
The only clues that violence may have taken place were a few drops of dried blood on the kitchen floor and one upturned chair. (Please do not attempt to look under the chair.) The bodies of Alice and Jack have never been found, and over seventy years later their disappearance remains one of Australia’s most famous unsolved mysteries.
The sisters, Connie and Rose, took the tiny baby home and reared her as their own child. They named her Enigma–you can guess why! Connie, Rose and little Enigma (now a Grandma Enigma!) are all still residents of Scribbly Gum Island, as are Enigma’s two daughters, Margaret and Laura, and their families.
Note: For obvious health and hygiene reasons the cooling marble cake you will see during your tour is not the original cake but actually a freshly baked one, made to Alice’s delicious original recipe. Enjoy a complimentary piece after your tour!
6
Grace Tidyman is dreaming. Her eyelids twitch irritably. It’s one of those frustrating, muddled dreams.
Aunt Connie is really cross with her. She’s pouring Grace a cup of tea from her blue china teapot and snapping, ‘Of course I’m not dead! Where did you get that idea?’ Grace is floundering, trying to remember why she thought such a thing. Suddenly, to Grace’s horror, Aunt Connie puts down her teapot, throws back her head and begins to wail with a scrunched-up face like a baby. Grace puts her hands over her ears even though she knows she’s being very rude, but she can’t bear to hear that gruesome baby-cry coming from Aunt Connie’s mouth. The sound keeps going on and on and on. ‘I’m sorry!’ screams Grace. She feels angry, astonishingly angry, with Connie. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings! I thought you were dead!’
‘Grace? He’s crying. Will I get him for you?’
‘Mmmmm. What? Oh. Yes. OK. Good.’
Grace feels her husband leave the bed. She squashes her fingers hard into the sockets of her closed eyes and pushes herself up into a sitting position.
Aunt Connie is dead, she remembers. She died yesterday.
She hears her son’s sharp wail and Callum’s voice. ‘You hungry, mate?’
She snaps on the lamp and winces at the yellow spotlight. Her arms in front of her, resting on the duvet, look strange in the light, as though they’re not hers. She thinks of that American rock climber who had to chop off his own arm after he was trapped by a boulder. She imagines sawing diligently away at her own flesh, snapping her own hard, white, bloody bone: escaping.
Callum appears with the baby in the crook of his arm.
Grace thinks, Please just go away, and says, ‘Come here, sweetie.’
7
‘I’m positive I remember her saying that she wanted to be buried in that lovely burgundy suit she wore to Grace’s wedding.’
‘Enigma, you are a terrible fibber.’
‘But I remember it quite clearly! It was that day we went to that Legacy luncheon. I complimented her on the suit and she said something about wearing it to her funeral.’
‘She said she was wearing it to Molly Trasker’s funeral, not her own! I can remember her saying that she didn’t see the point in wearing anything at all. She said it was a waste of good fabric. “I came into the world naked, I’ll leave it that way too.” That’s what she said.’
‘She was joking, Rose! You can’t bury your own sister in the nude!’
‘Why not? It would give her a good laugh.’
Margie Gordon listens to her mother and Aunt Rose bicker while she cuts almond cake to have with their cups of tea. She gives herself a small piece for comfort and motivation. It’s difficult sticking to a diet when you’ve got a big, complicated funeral to arrange. Margie feels quite overwhelmed when she thinks about everything she will have to do over the next few days. She needs a tiny sugar burst.
‘I expect Connie has it written down somewhere what she wants to wear,’ she says to them as she pours tea. ‘You know how organised she is.’
She was. Oh my goodness, fancy there being a world without Connie. It seems as though everything on the island will surely fall apart without Connie’s iron-hard certainty, her irrefutable opinions, her snap-fast decisions. Margie feels a sea-sick sensation at the thought. How will they cope without her?
It had been a nasty shock finding Connie’s body yesterday morning, her face sickly grey against the pillow, her eyes glassy slits, her forehead ice-cold under Margie’s palm. For a moment she’d had to fight a childish desire to run away and find a grown-up, but of course she was the grown-up, over fifty years old and a grandmother to boot, so she had to ‘bite the bullet’, as they say, and take care of things.
‘Pale blue always suits Connie.’ Rose’s age-spotted hand trembles badly as she lifts her teacup. ‘Not too pale, of course.’
Rose looks awfully frail today, worries Margie. Even her beautiful peach-coloured cardigan is buttoned up wrongly, which is unlike Rose.
‘You’d think Connie would have mentioned what she wanted to wear when she brought around all that minestrone soup,’ says Margie’s mother, Enigma. Her eyes are shiny with tears, but her grey hair is so bouncy, her cheeks so pink with good health, it seems almost disrespectful to Connie. ‘“Put it straight in the freezer, Enigma,” she said, and I said, “Goodness, Connie, what are we stocking up for? Are you going away?” I didn’t know we were stocking up for her blooming death, did I?’
The three women fall quiet, and Margie feels grief wrap its lethargic arms around them, making their shoulders slump.
‘Thomas is going to see Sophie tonight,’ she says.
‘That’s good,’ says Rose. ‘I wonder what she’ll say.’
‘Maybe they’ll get back together!’ says Enigma brightly, conveniently forgetting Thomas’s wife and new baby.
‘Oh Mum, don’t be so ridiculous,’ snaps Margie, because she wishes that too.