The Mystery Woman by Belinda Alexandra

Author:Belinda Alexandra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2020-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Berit’s funeral was a pauper’s affair with a graveside service and a cheap pine coffin. The prayers were conducted by a Lutheran priest from Wollongong whom Timothy had contacted after the local priest refused to perform rites for someone who had committed the ‘sin of suicide’. Rebecca, Timothy, Doris, Marge and Ernie stood on one side of the grave in the headland cemetery and Sanders Olsen with some of the whalers and their wives on the other. The mourners’ clothes flapped like sails in the strong wind and Rebecca needed both hands to hold on to her skirt. Sanders didn’t meet Rebecca’s eye once, but she observed him. He didn’t appear grief-stricken or remorseful. He rolled back and forth on his feet as if he was more annoyed by his wife’s death than he was upset. He kept glancing at the whaling station at the bottom of the cliff, giving the impression that the service was an inconvenience to him and that he was itching to get back to work. Rebecca gritted her teeth. The bastard wasn’t poor. He could have done better by Berit than disposing of her like a vagrant. Timothy’s fingers brushed her arm. Although she was grateful he had come, she didn’t lean against him for support.

‘There was absolutely nothing to indicate foul play,’ Timothy had assured her when he’d called her from Twin Falls after completing the autopsy. He’d been discreet, not wishing to upset her, but when she pressed him for details he’d reluctantly given them to her. ‘No sign of a struggle. No scratches or bruises on her body. No skin under her nails. No clumps of hair missing from her head.’

Rebecca wondered how a battered woman couldn’t have residual bruising, but Timothy wouldn’t lie, so that fact had only added to her confusion.

While the priest said the final prayers, the stench of boiling whale flesh wafted from the whaling station. Everyone tried to ignore it but it was overpowering. Even Doris, a firm supporter of the stink’s association with prosperity, couldn’t stop her nose from twitching. Rebecca scowled, wondering if Sanders Olsen had gone out on his chaser boat to kill a whale the morning of his wife’s funeral. The mourners took turns dropping a trowel of dirt into Berit’s grave. Ernie sidled up to Rebecca when he handed the trowel to her, too close for decency. She could smell the scent of mothballs on his suit. ‘It’s always the young and beautiful, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘Such a waste.’

Rebecca grimaced and wished she could pinch him hard on the arm. The wind picked up and everyone seemed relieved when Doris suggested the mourners go back to her place for a cup of tea. Sanders Olsen declined and made his way with the other Norwegians down the cliff towards the whaling station. Rebecca watched them then looked back to Berit’s grave, stuck out of the way of the others and not buried in the Lutheran section. She was in death as she had been in life, isolated and alone.

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