Once I knew that Noan was down for the count, I wriggled out from under her and headed for the kitchen to grab a towel. With my face and hair covered in our combined fluids, I badly needed a shower. Before making my way to the bathroom, however, I reignited the fire in the stove and put the kettle on the stovetop to heat water for a morning cup of tea; or coffee, if I could find any in the pantry.
One other job that had to be done before I made it to the bathroom was to check on the water levels. As I stood on the verandah looking out over the sea that surrounded the small elevated cabin, I was thankful for having pumped water up to the header tank and stocking up the firewood before going to bed. The water was one-third of the way up the steps and it was still raining. While it had eased from the torrential downpour we'd received during the night, it was still falling quite heavily. From the verandah of the little house, it looks like someone only a little taller than me would have been able to reach up and touch the heavy clouds.
'The water's not quite as high as I was afraid it might have been,'
I thought, as I turned and walked back inside our cosy love nest.
'It seems to have slowed a bit but it will still be a couple of days before it drops enough for us to get out'
.
'I wonder if anyone has thought to leave a couple of board games behind to help us while away the hours. We can't just fuck ourselves silly for the next two or three days. ...or can we?'
After showering, I removed the food from the refrigerator and placed it on the dining room table. I then set the table with side plates and knives so we could at least share a meal of damper and jam. Before making up a pot of tea, I conducted a search of the pantry, where I found an opened - but still reasonably fresh - jar of instant coffee along with a used, screw-topped coffee jar containing sugar and a couple of tins each of condensed milk, Spam, Baked Beans, Spaghetti and Beef Stew. The menu had suddenly changed. It looked like we would be able to have Spam and beans on damper with coffee. I much preferred to start the day with coffee. Tea was fine for the rest of the day, but I just didn't really get going without my caffeine boost first up. It was evident that whoever had provisioned the place was also a coffee drinker.
The other thing I found was a box containing a few games. It seemed that the lovers who used the mill manager's cabin weren't
just
interested in playing games of physical endurance but enjoyed mental stimulation as well. In addition to draughts and chess, there was a pack of cards for the game Five Hundred. There was also a game of Scrabble and a box containing an Australian version of Monopoly called Squatter. That last game, I knew, had only recently been released - Liz and I had seen it on the shelves of the stores when we had been down in Australia, the previous year - so it was unlikely that it had been left behind by the cabin's last full-time resident. I had considered buying the game when I'd seen it but had rejected the idea because I thought it was too advanced for our young children.
As I sat sipping on my first cup of coffee, I started to think about the other users of the cabin. It was apparent that the place had been used for their clandestine rendezvous for some time and that they had gone to a great deal of effort to make the cabin as comfortable as was possible. But the range of food in the pantry; the firewood stacked in the wood-box beside the stove; the games in the box; the spare bedding and ironed napery; all told of trysts of more than a few hours duration. It was clear that overnight stays were involved. And, with the quantities of items like flour and canned goods, it appeared that there were occasions when more than a single night were spent in the cabin.
If Liz was involved - and every indication said she was - who was the other person? And if she
was
involved, how did she manage to fit her illicit meetings in with her mothering responsibilities? Sure, we had a nanny to help her with the children, but I really couldn't imagine her leaving the two girls with the nanny while she spent a night or two with her lover.
'But,'
I thought,
'let's assume she
was
prepared to leave the kids for a night or two with their nanny. When could she get away for even a single night? I was always home; well, almost always. Bugger!'
I suddenly realised that I'd occasionally had to fly down to look after a couple of the company's other plantations during the past year while they were either between managers or to fill in for a manager who had come down with some illness. My absences had been anything from a few days to a few weeks. The shorter absences had usually been of three- or four-days duration, when I'd had to be on hand to pay the labourers' wages.
On such occasions, I'd generally fly down on Friday. Pick up the money from the bank and drive out to the plantation ready to pay them when they finished work on Saturday. Pays were made monthly, so I would usually only have to do it once while waiting for either the resident manager to get over his illness or for a new manager to be appointed. When visiting those plantations, I would stay in the manager's house and live out of his pantry.
So, if Liz is one of the participants, she would undoubtedly have had the opportunity.
One of the advantages of living in such an isolated part of the world was that we had plenty of time to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. Whether it was fact or fiction didn't matter. Neither did it matter whether it was ancient or modern. While I tried to steer clear of romance novels - which Liz read with great enjoyment - I didn't mind the odd crime novel. One of the things I learned from those books was that the detective was always looking for three elements: motive, means and opportunity. The other rule, I had learned, was that a good detective always 'follows the evidence'.
While I wasn't ready to point a definite finger at Liz just yet, she was among my list of suspects. In fact, at this point, she was my only suspect. There was an abundance of evidence pointing to her involvement in setting up the love nest. I had already worked out that she had the opportunity to participate in the affair. She also satisfied the 'means' criterion by being able to arrange for the girls' nanny to look after them while she spent a night or two away from home. She also had her little Volkswagen, which would allow her to drive herself to the rendezvous and carry fresh bedding, linen and food to the cabin.
It was the third element that had me stumped, however. I couldn't work out the motive. Why would she suddenly change from being a loving wife and mother to being what I could only refer to as an 'adulterous whore'?
Putting aside my own actions of the past twenty-four hours, I was having difficulty trying to work out what had happened to bring about such a change in the woman who - to the best of my knowledge - had remained faithful for at least the last four or five years. Who had she met who would have enough of an impact on her to make her break her marriage vows?
There were only two other white men in our immediate area: Juanita's husband, James; and Harry Nettles who, with his wife, Joan, owned the plantation up behind ours. Harry and James were of similar ages but while James was a reasonably fit man, Harry was somewhat portly. I couldn't see Harry being Liz' lover. But then, I couldn't see her sharing a bed with James, either; particularly after what Juanita had said about his diminishing libido.
Further over to the south of James and Juanita's place was old Reg McKenzie and his wife, Betty. Reg wasn't really old. In fact, he would have been no older than James or Harry. He just looked older. He was an alcoholic World War Two veteran who had managed to buy his property using a soldier settler's loan. He was running it into the ground and I didn't think it would be very much longer before the bank took it off him. In fact, I'd heard a whisper that he might be looking at selling up and heading back to Australia. I couldn't see Liz falling for him.
There were four white men on the main station. Of those, the general manager - who was older than Methuselah - could be discounted. The engineer could also be discounted on the grounds that he was dedicated to his wife and kids. The same could be said of the bookkeeper, whose wife would take a knife to him if she even thought that he'd looked askance at another woman. That only left the manager of the main station, Steve Jones, who would be the only one from over that way who might fit the bill. I doubted it, though, as Liz disliked him intensely. That might simply be a smokescreen, though, so I'd put him on the list as a possible.
The only other possibility from over that way was young Douglas Keen. The company had employed him to manage the new plantings that were just now coming into production over behind the headquarters station. As a good-looking, twenty-two-year-old single bloke, he would fit the profile of a suitable lover for Liz. We'd had him over for dinner a couple of times since he had started working for the company. I liked him. More importantly, Liz had taken a bit of a shine to him, as well. Whether she had taken more than a neighbourly interest in him, though, was the question? The stumbling block to his involvement was that he hadn't been around long enough to fit into the timetable I was seeing. I acknowledged that my timing could be out, however, so I'd include him on the 'possibles' list.
While there were three other men on plantations to our south, each of them could be ignored either due to age or distance. Whoever it was would have to be close enough - in terms of both distance or relationship - to know when I was going to be away or for Liz to get a message to him.
