The Death of Dora Black: A Petticoat Police Mystery

Book 1: Petticoat Police Mystery

by Lainie Anderson

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

A charming, uplifting cosy murder mystery inspired by the true story of Australia's pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks

'An outstanding debut - funny, poignant, historically fascinating, and an absorbingly good crime read - The Death of Dora Black keeps you guessing to the very end' PIP WILLIAMS

Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley.

When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks?

*In 1915, Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary as men. This novel is a rich exploration of that little-known chapter of Australian history.*

'Lainie Anderson has woven fact and fiction to create a crime fighting duo like no others, and I can't wait for the next instalment' PIP WILLIAMS

'The perfect cosy read. I loved spending time with the redoubtable Miss Kate Cocks and the marvellous Ethel Bromley. How refreshing to read historical crime fiction set in Adelaide during the Great War and focused on women' ANGELA SAVAGE

'Will have you engrossed and addictively flipping those pages' DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Armchair detectives will love this debut novel' WOMAN'S DAY

'Engrossing and entertaining . . . Anderson is an accomplished storyteller and she has crafted a cosy crime read that is equal parts intriguing mystery and fascinating historical study' BOOKS+PUBLISHING

'There is something profoundly addictive about Anderson's writing. It's warm, fast-paced and full of rich details that make it feel as though the story is oozing off the pages . . . Stunningly thought-out and accurately detailed' BETTER READING

'Full of warmth and humour, this is a cracking crime novel that will intrigue and impress' READINGS

Release date: August 28, 2024

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 320

Sample

Walter Hill watched the sea and smiled. It was dawn and the dolphins were there again, arcing through the water.

At sixteen, Walter was tall and shy and far and away the best middle-distance runner Glenelg Grammar School had produced. He was so long-legged in his white athletic singlet and shorts that his stocky father sometimes glanced sideways at his equally stocky wife.

A gull cried. Small waves lapped at the sand. Another stinking hot Adelaide day was on its way. Walter stretched an arm high over his head, savouring the heat tingling in his muscles. Then he glanced again in disbelief at the Glenelg clocktower behind him: he’d just run two miles in under twelve minutes. Finally.

Stretching the other arm, his thoughts raced. To the smell of bread in the bakery on Moseley Square. To breakfast. To the Olympics in 1920, if the war ever ended. To the Glenelg old scholars already named on the Roll of Heroes Casualty List in The Daily Herald. Poor bastards.

Fishermen stood in silence on the long wooden jetty, flicking cigarettes and raising the occasional frenzied fish. The beach was deserted.

The clocktower sounded once for a quarter past six. Daylight saving had begun for the first time on 1 January, to save power for the war effort, and after thirteen days Walter still enjoyed the novelty. Up near the Pier Hotel, a man whistled as he stacked crates of empty beer bottles.

Walter rolled his shoulders, backward then forward, impatient for his next race at Adelaide Oval. He watched for the dolphins, and for signs of life in the three-storey pavilion and lighthouse way out at the end of the jetty.

Out of the stillness came a shout.

‘Here! Over here!’

A fisherman up on the jetty was yelling at Walter, pointing into the water at the base of the pylon directly beneath him.

‘Help! Over here! There’s someone in the water!’

Walter thought he could make out something white, half hidden behind a pylon about forty yards from where he stood. He sprinted across the sand and into the shallows, bounding into the water, knees high and arms outstretched.

Someone shouted, ‘Get Constable Henderson!’

Walter was waist-deep, pushing hard through the cold water. He could see now that it was a girl, face down, her long hair caught on jagged barnacles. His eyes fixed on her hair, taut and then loose, taut and then loose, as the sea breathed her body in and out.

With a single movement he grabbed the girl’s shoulder and tugged a handful of hair, pulling her free from the pylon and flipping her over.

Walter reeled backward, a scream rising in his throat.

The right side of the young woman’s face was rubbed away where the barnacles had scoured her skin, leaving the eye to stare out from pale, flapping flesh.

At precisely twelve o’clock, piano man Pete smoothed down a persistent cowlick, fastened a smile on his face and began a hearty rendition of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.

They were summoned from the hillside

They were summoned from the glen …

As his voice soared over the ground floor of Moore’s on the Square, Pete risked a wink at Elaine in Embroidery as she accepted sixpence from a housewife who’d been dithering over sale-price lace collars for half an hour. I’d rather like to fan your flames one of these nights, my tiny-waisted Elaine, he thought, with a flourish that popped his cowlick. He put his back into the song and tried again to catch her eye, before turning his gaze to the broad central landing of Moore’s’ gleaming marble staircase. There he locked eyes with Mr Graham Wilbert Giles, the unsmiling, all-seeing store manager, and immediately fumbled the notes.

In Ladies’ Footwear at the rear of the store, Ruby Campbell heard the piano man groping for his chorus. Best keep your mind on the music, Tinkle Fingers, she thought, as she deposited five shillings in the till and farewelled Mrs Johnston with her new pair of maroon summer slippers.

There’s a silver lining,

Through the dark clouds shining …

At twenty-two, Ruby had the glossy red locks of a stage actress, the wide green eyes of a child and the voice of a wharfie. She’d first entered Moore’s five months earlier, on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in late August 1916, when Adelaide’s finest department store had opened its doors and brought the nation’s third largest city to a standstill. Ruby had queued for hours with her mother and three sisters, in a line that stretched down King William Street. As they nudged closer to the gleaming glass entrance, they gaped at the opulent window displays of sparkling silverware, filigree lace and spring millinery. Inside, the women had stopped to gaze in awe at the magnificent white marble staircase with velvet pile carpet, before being quickly swept along by the crowd to ooh and ahh at imported face creams and crockeryware, delicate gold loop bracelets and six furniture display rooms where settees, linoleums and lampshades seemed so reasonably priced they had to check twice. The store’s owner, Mr Charles Moore, was as conservative as he was philanthropic, and was apparently drawn to the City of Churches because orchestral music was banned in the parks on Sundays. Back then Mr Moore had only a few pennies to his name. Now he was spoken about in reverent tones. A top-hatted titan. A merchant messiah. A man who’d transformed this dull corner of the city and single-handedly shown that the Great War could not kill commerce. Ruby was mesmerised, and had applied that day to fill one of half a dozen roles left by men enlisting with the 10th Battalion.

She glanced now at the wall clock. It was Saturday, and the store closed at 1 pm. Less than an hour to go. She poked her head around the side of the ankle-boots cabinet to gauge the number of shoppers on the first floor, mentally listing all she had to do that afternoon. She’d need to check on Dora, too – she hadn’t turned up for work. Please don’t let there be bad news from France.

At the piano, Pete moved into his usual halftime instrumental interlude of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, rolling his shoulders and swaying his head with the intensity of a concert pianist. In Embroidery and Lace, dozens of chattering customers sat at wooden counters on either side of the aisle, while female attendants displayed intricate shawls, collars and lace panels sourced from head-high oak drawers stretching half the length of the ground floor. The constant opening and closing of the felt-lined drawers provided a comforting soft, dull thud.

Keep the home fires burning,

While your hearts are yearning …

God, I’m sick of this song, Ruby thought. Then, with a jolt, she saw one of her best customers striding toward her with fixed determination. ‘Lord,’ Ruby muttered, stepping back to quickly straighten her dress, ‘that woman loves to shop.’

That woman was Miss Cocks, officer in charge of South Australia’s women police. She was born Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks; her family called her Katie and a handful of trusted former colleagues called her Kate. By January 1917 most of Adelaide called her Miss Cocks, and as for the others – well, the insults were like water off a duck’s back.

She looked as neat as a pin, as she always did, in a light green, ankle-length silk frock with an understated ruffle at the throat and a fitted waist. Cream beads and black, laced shoes with one-and-a-half-inch heels complemented the practical, but not inexpensive outfit, along with short white gloves and the white handbag that was tucked permanently in the crook of her right arm. She was left-handed, and privately delighted that one of her nieces was also.

At 5 foot 6 inches, Miss Cocks was taller than the average woman, but her slight frame made her look smaller. She was forty-one years of age, and handsome in her own way, with thick brown curls greying at the temples and tamed into a bun under the fawn felt hat she wore turned up on one side. Her hazel eyes were kind and thoughtful, and her unlined forehead belied the fact that she was awfully fond of frowning.

A call rang out. ‘Oh, Miss Co-oocks!’

The councillor’s wife called loudly over the sound of the piano. She was inspecting a tapestry Morris chair in one of the furniture display rooms and waved for the policewoman to join her.

Miss Cocks glanced across without breaking her stride, offering a thin-lipped smile and a cursory nod of acknowledgement. ‘Another time, Mrs Noble!’ Her voice was low-pitched and businesslike. ‘Broken Hill train’s due at two.’ Mrs Noble, she could do without, although she did feel a pang of affection for the Morris chair. She’d received one as a parting gift from colleagues at the State Children’s Council on joining the South Australian Police Force, and it was something she still cherished.

Mrs Noble’s bellowing caused heads to turn and prompted murmurs behind gloved hands. Miss Cocks was a household name, courtesy of newspaper reports and neighbourhood gossip – indeed, mothers in most every suburb were given to cry ‘Call Miss Cocks!’ at the first sign of overt friskiness in their developing daughters. But without the infamous five-foot cane the policewoman carried religiously on night patrols, she could generally escape the notice of the wider public. She was resolved never to wear a uniform lest it frighten the women and children she was employed to assist. And she happened to look far more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman.

Her name meant different things to different people, but everyone had a tale. Mrs Wallace, whose head was being measured in Millinery, knew a woman whose niece had been single-handedly rescued by Miss Cocks from the lair of a celebrated bachelor in Semaphore. Young Bob Button in Linoleums and Flooring had felt the sting of Miss Cocks’ cane when lying too close to a girl on Henley Beach. ‘With due respect and all,’ Bob muttered now, ‘Miss Three Feet Apart should mind her own bloody business.’ And Roger in Security remembered when Miss Cocks took him and two other lads to a football game and bought them pies and chips. She was a juvenile probation officer at the time, and told him everyone deserved a second chance. A third chance? Most definitely not.

As Miss Cocks arrived in Ladies’ Footwear, Ruby stepped forward and cast her eyes down to the policewoman’s shoes. ‘What a pleasant surprise!’ she exclaimed. ‘How are those new Oxfords?’

Miss Cocks removed her white gloves and used them to dab her brow. ‘This song! I’m beginning to think it’s the only tune in that fellow’s repertoire.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Ruby, ‘it’s very popular with customers.’

Miss Cocks pointed to a handwritten card on the summer heels display. Similar signs were appearing everywhere in stores across Adelaide: By wearing Australian-made footwear you are keeping the Germans out of Australia.

‘Doubtless it promotes patriotic purchasing. But I find it … cloying.’

The policewoman pursed her lips, thinking of the returned soldiers she’d passed under the trees on the sweltering walk across Victoria Square; broken men with missing limbs and lost hope.

Ruby glanced around the department to check that her manager wasn’t in earshot, then dropped her voice. ‘Wait ’til half past and you’ll hear Pete make a hash of “Pack Up Your Troubles”. Can you believe we’re told to hum along when customers are nearby?’ Ruby straightened her back, and smiled. ‘So, how can I assist you today?’

Miss Cocks gave Ruby a nod, appreciating her frankness. As she often did when confronted by beaming smiles, she ran her tongue over the front of her own teeth, which were all false, and thought briefly of her dear friend Mrs Ranford, who’d paid for them. She looked down at her shoes. ‘I’d like the same pair in brown, please.’

‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you to … ?’

Miss Cocks glanced at her wristlet watch. ‘Thank you, no. You cannot.’

‘Not even the new styles from Melbourne?’

Miss Cocks looked at Ruby without smiling.

‘Wonderful choice. The ladies’ tan-coloured Oxford. Size eight, if I remember rightly? Let’s see if we’ve got a pair in stock.’

As Ruby checked a low cupboard for the style and size, she stole a glance at the policewoman. ‘I heard you travelled up to Bridgewater in the Hills recently. A big dance at the institute – word is you took all the beer bottles outside and smashed them.’

Miss Cocks spoke without shifting her gaze from the shoe stand. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear, Miss Campbell.’

Ruby continued to rummage through the cupboard, speaking almost to herself. ‘It did sound thrilling.’

The older woman picked up a shoe and turned it over in her hands. ‘And patently absurd. All that broken glass.’

‘Here we go!’ Ruby declared, holding the shoebox aloft. ‘Tan, size eight.’

When Miss Cocks declined her offer to try them on, Ruby began writing out a receipt at the service counter. ‘They could certainly use your sleuthing skills up on the first floor,’ she murmured. ‘I’m told a shoplifter is thieving an awful lot of items from Ladies’ Clothing.’

‘Oh? Has management reported it to police?’

Ruby scoffed. ‘And risk bad news coverage?’

Miss Cocks nodded, counting out ten shillings and nine pence on the counter. ‘Kleptomania is a fascinating disorder. The word comes from the Greek, “thief” and “madness”.’

Her musing was interrupted when a young woman with deeply flushed cheeks burst into the space and stopped abruptly beside the policewoman. ‘Miss Cocks! Here you are! Thank goodness!’ she blurted, gripping the sales counter to balance herself, gulping air. ‘I thought you said you were going to police headquarters!’

Miss Cocks glared, her voice as hard as stone. ‘I beg your pardon, constable?’

The young woman’s already flushed face burnt even hotter. ‘Oh!’ She calmed herself and dropped her voice. ‘Sorry, ma’am – they want us at the morgue.’

Miss Cocks stood beside her constable, Ethel Bromley, who’d only just finished apologising for her poor manners at Moore’s and was now battling to control her emotions. The dead body before them looked so very small under the sheet.

Detective Sergeant Fred Clarke’s message had expressly stated that they would meet at two o’clock to view the body, and he was now forty minutes late for his own appointment. Miss Cocks had not dealt with D.S. Clarke before and did not appreciate his tardiness. Nor did she appreciate the circling blowflies, the January heat, the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and decomposing human flesh, or the unpleasant drip echoing from drainage sewers deep beneath the floor. She closed her eyes to the sorry scene and whispered to the departed soul.

When we stand with Christ in glory,

Looking o’er life’s finished story,

Then, Lord, shall I fully know,

Not till then, how much I owe.

Ethel Bromley was not one for reciting Methodist hymns. Surveying the feminine lines of the petite body beneath the sheet, she thought how fleeting life was, how fortunate her own life was, and how utterly disgraceful it was that the good people of Adelaide, a city that prided itself on progress, ended their time on earth amid blowflies and dust drifting down from a rusting skylight. The decades-old morgue had no fans or open windows, and the three slate slabs were held aloft on crumbling brick plinths. Ethel opened her mouth to sympathise with the coroner about his work conditions, but Doctor Fitzpatrick was busy attending to some bookwork. She glanced at her boss, deep in thought or reverence or prayer, and knew she’d best keep her mouth closed.

Educated and wealthy, Ethel had followed her mother’s philanthropic passions before taking a paid position, much to her parents’ exasperation, as an assistant inspectress of licensed lying-in homes – private premises that took in single mothers-to-be. Her glowing cheeks and unnaturally large blue eyes made for a striking mix with the long blonde hair that often escaped her bun. But it was her wide smile, and the childlike exuberance with which she argued any and all topics, that people remembered on meeting her.

At twenty-seven she was considerably younger than her boss, as the ever-higher hemlines of her modern, military-inspired outfits attested. Quick to laugh, she considered herself more free-spirited than spiritual, with a calm ambition and a fondness for tall men who liked their politics and didn’t ask to meet her father. She never entered a room when she could burst in instead, and she never failed to cheer her friends with her truly delightful, open-eyed optimism. In the thirteen months they’d worked together in the Women’s Police Branch, Miss Cocks had come to admire Ethel’s courage, and particularly enjoyed recounting the time her young constable had been pestered by a mountain of a man on the Port docks, before laying him flat with a splendid jujitsu move and wedging his thick neck under her dainty heel.

At last, Doctor Fitzpatrick rose from his desk and approached the central examination slab. He glanced at his pocket watch before smiling warmly, knowing full well the unenviable nature of the task at hand. ‘Detective Sergeant Clarke has clearly been waylaid, so let’s see if we can’t grace this young woman with a name.’ He paused. ‘Remember, please, that Adelaide is a large city with an increasingly transient population – you must hold no guilt whatsoever if the deceased is unknown to you.’ He raised a corner of the sheet. ‘Ready?’

Both women nodded, and Ethel gasped as the sheet was removed. The right side of the young woman’s face had been scraped away. Ethel thought she could see cheekbone amid the torn, bleached flesh and mottled purple bruises. The woman’s lips were blue. Dried salt and sand flecked her eyebrows. Her dark hair was matted and thick with sand from when the police had dragged her body onto the beach. Her simple light-pink cotton summer dress had dried, shroud-like, against her small frame. Around her neck was a short silver chain with two round, silver pendants.

Ethel visibly paled under her cream rolled brim hat. She put a hand to her mouth and took slow, deep, audible breaths.

Miss Cocks leaned in, her eyes flashing with shock and then relief, followed by sorrow. She shook her head slowly. ‘Lord, please receive this dear soul into your comforting presence.’ She looked at the coroner, her face expressionless. ‘I believe her name is Black, Doctor Fitzpatrick. I don’t know her Christian name.’

Doctor Fitzpatrick looked dubious. ‘You know her? You’re quite sure?’

Miss Cocks took a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed it to her face, before clearing her throat and stepping back from the corpse. ‘Yes, I’m sure. I should have noticed she wasn’t in the Ladies’ Footwear department at Moore’s this morning. She’s always there.’

Ethel looked incredulously at her boss. ‘We were there – how dreadful.’

Miss Cocks focused on the left side of the young woman’s face, which looked all the more perfectly pure for the ghastliness on the right. ‘Her colleague mentioned a shoplifter in Ladies’ Clothing …’

A door slammed behind them as Detective Sergeant Fred Clarke strode into the room. ‘Apologies, Doctor Fitzpatrick. Press kept me longer than expected.’

The coroner responded with a look that suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d been kept waiting.

D.S. Clarke removed his tan trilby and pointed it at the deceased. ‘Any luck?’

Miss Cocks glanced at the coroner before eyeing the detective. ‘Good afternoon, Detective Sergeant Clarke. We have identified the deceased as Miss Black, a shop assistant in Ladies’ Footwear at Moore’s on the Square.’

D.S. Clarke’s five-o’clock shadow was early and well advanced; the jacket of his loose-fitting, brown tweed suit was grimy around the pockets. He eyed the women, recalling the words of a former superintendent who’d predicted female police would be bloody useless and suggested they volunteer with some women’s philanthropic organisation instead. Nothing the detective sergeant had seen or heard in the intervening thirteen months had caused him to think any differently about the two females before him. Gesturing toward the body, he grunted, ‘Any idea why she’d kill herself?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Miss Cocks.

‘What?’ said Ethel.

Miss Cocks looked at D.S. Clarke and then the coroner. ‘Whatever makes you think this was suicide?’

D.S. Clarke took a deep breath, batting away a blowfly before it landed on his shoulder. ‘There was a purse left on the jetty. Two small bottles inside, almost certainly containing liquid opium.’

‘Opium?’ Ethel’s face twisted with doubt. ‘A young woman like this?’

The detective raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t realise you were an expert on the use of opium, Constable Bromley?’

Ethel’s face reddened. ‘I’m not. I’ve just always thought –’

‘Opium’s not confined to old Charlie Chinaman anymore. Soldiers are bringing the habit home.’

‘Oh,’ said Ethel. ‘I see.’

D.S. Clarke gestured to the body. ‘She’s probably got a boyfriend not long returned from the Front.’

Miss Cocks stared grimly at D.S. Clarke. ‘Is it being smuggled in?’

He stared back at her. ‘Clearly.’

‘By whom?’

‘If I knew that, they wouldn’t be smuggling it in, would they?’

The coroner cleared his throat, and the detective sergeant took a breath. ‘Look. I was surprised by the presence of liquid opium, too. It’s not all that common among young women like your Miss Black here, and to my knowledge it’s not cheap. But we know some soldiers are coming home addicted, and for good reason, given everything the poor bastards are going through.’

Miss Cocks frowned at the profanity as she glanced around the room. ‘Is the purse here, Detective Sergeant Clarke? I’d like to take a look, if I may?’

The detective sergeant shrugged. ‘I presume Doctor Fitzpatrick’s got it here somewhere. Be my guest. I’ve got a chemist confirming the contents of one of the vials.’

The coroner pointed to a brown paper package on a workbench in the corner, and Miss Cocks began to carefully unwrap the purse.

‘Goodness!’ Ethel reached out to tenderly pat the object like she might a sleeping cat. ‘That’s exquisite.’

About seven inches wide, the cream satin purse was embroidered with delicate pink and pale blue beads to create a series of swirling flowers dotted among gleaming pearls. Its gold-plated clasp was an intricate Art Nouveau design fashioned with matching beads.

Miss Cocks gently opened the clasp. ‘I’ve never seen its like, certainly not in any Adelaide store.’ Inside the purse was a small thin bottle with a cork stopper. It was about the length of a pointer finger, and less than a quarter full of reddish-brown liquid. She lifted out the bottle, noticing embossed Chinese characters down one side.

Ethel craned to see. ‘Is there a manufacturer’s mark on the purse?’

‘No,’ said the older policewoman, returning the bottle. ‘But I’d hazard a guess it’s French – and owned by a woman of considerable means.’

Ethel turned to D.S. Clarke. ‘First opium, and now a purse that would have cost the girl –’ she waved a hand in the air. . .