by Jon Cleary
But no longer. Now he was as concerned for the success of the conference as were Quentin, Larter and Edgar; he had become a silent, unacknowledged member of the delegation. He wanted the conference to succeed in its main purpose, to achieve some sort of peace, no matter how fragile, in Asia; he also wanted it to succeed for Quentin’s sake. The man would want to take something with him into the dark years ahead in gaol.
At the afternoon break in the discussions Quentin had come out of the big main room and along to where Malone had stood by himself on one of the balconies. Other delegates went by in pairs and threes, heads drawn together in the one net of earnest discussion. Malone saw the American who had come to the house this morning; he passed by with two other men and as he did so he looked at Quentin with hurt eyes. Quentin missed the glance and the American passed on, looking even more hurt.
“Thinking of buying the place, Scobie?” Quentin said.
Malone had been gazing admiringly at the staircase and the big hall below him. “I’m going to find it tough going back to my flat in King’s Cross. No marble walls and chandeliers there.”
“The marble is imitation. Like the attitudes of some of the delegates here today.”
Quentin sounded bitter and disappointed, but he managed a confident simile as a Malaysian delegate went by. Then he looked about the balconies, at the groups clustered together like salesmen in some gem market. That’s what they are, Malone thought: salesmen selling their influence. The thought disgusted him; some ember of youthful idealism flared again for a moment Then cynical realism prevailed. He was supposed, as a policeman, to be experienced in human nature. Everything today was based upon buying and selling: even love was a commodity and not just sold by prostitutes. Why should he expect men to make a gift of peace? Christ had tried it and they had nailed him to a cross for his pains.
Quentin said, “The man who designed this house also built the house where you were last night, Fothergill’s. He built Crockford’e, too. I wonder how he feels now? Three of his biggest commissions finishing up as gambling clubs.”
“Three?”
“Wouldn’t you call this a gambling club? The odds are longer here than at Crockford’s or Fothergill’s. Especially today.”
“Things are getting worse?”
Quentin nodded, then looked over Malone’s shoulder. “Mr. Chen, Mr. Pai. Enjoying yourselves?”
Malone was introduced to the two Chinese, one thin and young, the other fat and middle-aged. “Our stay has been enjoyable, but we are looking forward to going home,” said the young man, Chen. “We do not make very good observers. We prefer to work.”
“I thought you had been working all the time you were here.” The look of sour depression had gone from Quentin’s face; he smiled with frank good humour. “Winning friends and influencing people.”
“Dale Carnegie is required reading in Peking. And Norman Vincent Peale and Godfrey Winn.” Chen was not without a sense of humour; he had learned that outside China propaganda had to be more subtle than at home. “How else can we understand the West unless we read their philosophers?”
“You should not neglect Dorothy Dix.”
“Women have never made good philosophers,” said Chen, still smiling, and looked at the fat man. “We know that, don’t we?”
“Too emotional,” said Pai, taking off his glasses and polishing them with a handkerchief. He was a nervous man and Malone could imagine him taking off his glasses every few minutes, rubbing away at them till they splintered apart in his fingers. “We are fortunate there are no women here at the conference trying to influence decisions. Do you not think so, Mr. Quentin?”
Quentin looked at Malone, then back at the two Chinese. “Perhaps they are in the background. One never knows. Most of the delegates here are married men.”
“Wives are not the women to be wary of,” said Chen, still unmarried and still innocent. “Wives do not have ambitions for power, except perhaps over their husbands. At least I understand that it is like that in the West.”
“I must ask my wife what power she has over me,” said Quentin, still smiling.
“I did not mean to offend,” said Chen: the revolution had not killed all politeness.
“I know that. I was only joking. But what about Lady Wu–wouldn’t you say she had ambitions for power?”
“Lady Wu was a concubine, not a wife. Not as you Western men understand the term wife.”
“Who was Lady Wu?” Malone asked.
“She lived in the seventh century,” Quentin said. “She was about the most villainous bitch of all time. She made Catherine the Great and Lucrezia Borgia look like a couple of Girl Guides.”
“An absolute reactionary,” said Pai.
Quentin hid a smile, kept a straight face. “Yes, you could say she was that. She murdered hundreds of people, including some of her own sons. She lived to a ripe old age, ran a male harem till she was almost eighty. When she thed she left a will saying that she forgave all those people who had made her kill them. They don’t make women like her any more, do they, Mr. Chen?”
Chen shrugged. “One never knows. Perhaps the climate is not right any more. Could you see Lady Wu as a London hostess?”
“Perhaps not,” conceded Quentin. “Wholesale disposal of corpses in London is difficult.”
“You could stand them in queues at bus stops,” said Malone. “No one would know the difference.”
Chen and Pai looked at Malone as if seeing him for the first time. “Mr. Malone has a macabre sense of humour,” said Chen. “One does not expect that of Australians, only the decadent Europeans.”
“We’re full of surprises,” said Quentin.
Then Chen and Pai bowed their heads, excused themselves and went away. Quentin watched them moving round the balconies, their faces open in bland smiles, only closing up as they passed the American delegation and the Russian observers. The Americans and Russians had at last become allies of a sort: they had a common enemy.
“What do you make of those two?” Quentin said. “Do you think Madame Cholon would be working for them?”
“I doubt it. Those two blokes are real wowsers—” Malone used the Australian term for puritanical killjoys. “I only had about ten minutes with Madame Cholon, but she struck me as anything but a wowser. She’d be in every sort of sin going.”
“I wonder if she has ever read the story of Lady Wu?”
“If I knew what her ambitions were, maybe I could tell you.”
“It’s a pity your friend Jamaica won’t tell you what he seems to know about her. Have you seen him here today?”
Malone shook his head. “He seems to have blown through. Denzil is trying to find out what he can about him. I gather he’s up at the American Embassy now making a nuisance of himself.” Malone hesitated, then said, “Sergeant Coburn will see you home this evening.”
“Where are you going?”
“Up to Qantas to book our seats for Saturday. There’s a flight out at five-thirty in the afternoon. Shall I book Mrs. Quentin on it, too?”
Quentin drew a deep breath and his brows came down, as if he were trying to concentrate on a problem he had for the moment forgotten. He tugged at his moustache; Malone had begun to notice it was almost a reflex action when Quentin had to consider his other, real identity. He wondered how soon Quentin would shave off his moustache, would revert fully to being Corliss. Or would that ever be possible?
“Make it for the three of us. First class. I may as well have the comfort while I can. I’ll pay the extra.”
“There’s no need. They authorised first class for you and me. But I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for Mrs. Quentin.”
“How did you come over?”
“Economy class.”
Quentin grinned, with a little effort, and shook his head. “See how I make things so much better for you?”
“You don’t, you know,” said Malone; and was glad that at that moment Larter came up to say everyone was moving back into the conferenc
e room.
He had left Lancaster House late in the afternoon, when Coburn had come to relieve him, and gone up to the airline offices to book seats for Saturday’s flight. “Will it be crowded?”
“No, sir. So far there are only two other passengers in first class.”
He did not know why he wanted to continue the protection of Quentin right till they arrived back in Sydney; once they boarded the plane in London everything for Quentin was finished. The curiosity of fellow passengers who might recognise him would be nothing to what he would have to face as soon as they arrived in Sydney.
He handed the girl two ticket vouchers. “For yourself and Mr. Corliss, is that right? And the name of the third person?”
“Mrs. John Corliss.” The voucher for Quentin’s ticket had been made out in the name that was on his warrant for arrest. Malone wondered how Sheila Quentin would react to bearing the name of another woman, a woman now dead. Perhaps he had made a mistake in giving that name, but it was too late now: the girl was already writing it down.
“And the address in case we want to get in touch with you?”
He gave the number of the house in Belgrave Square; the girl did not seem to attach any significance to it. “That will be another three hundred and ninety pounds, sir.”
He took out his traveller’s cheques and the money he had won last night He laid down the notes and wrote out cheques for the balance. “What time will we reach Sydney?”
“Seven-twenty Monday morning. Rather early, I’m afraid.”
But not too early for the newsmen to be out there, their pencils sharpened for mayhem. He had always got on well with newspapermen, but now suddenly he hated them. They would only be doing their job, just as he was only doing his. But at seven-twenty Monday morning they would begin to drive the first nails into Quentin. It didn’t help to know that he was playing Pilate.
“Enjoy your trip,” said the girl, safe in the heart of Piccadilly.
Then he had come back to the house in Belgravia, come up to his room, taken off his jacket and shoes, picked up his brief-case and at once seen the scratches on the lock. Whoever had been in his room had not succeeded in opening the lock, but they had damaged it; it had taken him some time to open it and he had bent his key in the process. Now he lay on his bed wondering who had made the crude attempt to open the brief-case. Quentin himself? He had been home at kast half an hour before Malone had returned. Sheila? She would have had all day. Or Joseph? Or even Lisa? But why would either of the latter two want to know what he had locked in the case? It looked like Quentin or his wife.
He reached for the case again and took out the file. He had not looked at it since his arrival in London; but he knew that he could now read between some of the lines. Quentin, on acquaintance, had been opened up a little more; he was down now to the bones of the man. But not to the heart, not yet. How long did that take? A month, a year? Or as long as the tide took to reach the heart of a rock? Justice was going to claim Quentin, the man who right now, somewhere in this house, was worrying himself sick trying to salvage some peace for a world that, involuntarily or otherwise, had begun to devalue the human condition. Was justice interested in the heart of a man? What was justice? Malone had once looked it up in a dictionary and got no satisfactory answer. It had not been an expensive dictionary, but one should not have to pay a lot of money to learn what justice was. The quality of being just, the book had said; from the entry above he had learned that to be just was to be lawful, upright, exact, regular, and true. All the definitions had, in his mind, added up to smugness. There had been one other definition: retribution. Then, because he had been in doubt and doubt engendered cynicism, others had occurred to him: revenge, compensation to the victim. And, sometimes, a sense of guilt: society blaming itself for what had happened and sentencing the man in the dock, its own representative, to punishment. Society could not be blamed for what Quentin had done. But how would it feel when it came to sentence him, especially if he should somehow drag the conference back to a successful conclusion? If he owed a debt to society, what of society’s debt to him?
Malone’s head ached; it was not accustomed to the exercises of philosophy. He opened the file, began to read it again from the beginning, skipping some of those pages that held only the opinions of the researcher. It now read like another story; or at least the story of another man. . . .
“. . . Corliss kept very much to himself while working for the Water Board. He seems to have been incapable of communicating with other people. He had no friends there and belonged to none of the social clubs. He played golf at Moore Park, which is a public course, and even there had no friends; he played either alone or would join a pick-up foursome. None of his workmates had ever met his wife or been invited to his home. Their neighbours in Coogee remember him as a shy morose man who never did more than pass the time of day with them; the wife Freda was also shy but one or two women remember her as pleasant; she would not talk about her life before she came to Australia. . . .
“. . . Certain of Corliss’s workmates remember thinking of him as unhappy. He appeared to be a man without ambition or interest, living only from day to day. Then, roughly three to four months before he disappeared, those working closely with him in survey parties noticed a change in him. He still did not join them out of work hours in any social functions. But he was gayer, seemed to be enjoying life more. . . .”
Why? Malone asked himself. Had the relationship between Quentin (he could not bring himself to think of him as Corliss) and his wife Freda improved? But if so, why had he killed her so soon afterwards? Or had the killing, as Quentin had claimed, really been an accident?
“. . . Two weeks before the murder Corliss took his annual holidays. He went away for a week. He did not take his wife with him nor is it known where he went. He returned to work on Monday, December 8, 1941. His workmates noticed that he seemed troubled and unhappy again, but put it down to the news about Pearl Harbour. He was asked if he was going to enlist. He made one of his few confidences of his private life; he said he would have to see how his wife felt. Up till then, he said, she had been against his joining up; she had lost her parents to the Nazis and she did not want to lose her husband. But now the Japanese were in the war, he said, things might be different He left work early that afternoon . . .”
Where had Quentin gone for that week alone? Why had he not taken his wife? Had they had an argument on December 8 about his enlisting, an argument that had blown up into a fierce row, which had come to blows and in which she had been fatally stabbed?
“. . . There is another gap in Corliss’s movements. From leaving the head office of the Water Board at 3.30 p.m. on December 8, 1941, till he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy at H.M.A.S. Leeuwin, the Navy depot in Perth, Western Australia, on May 12, 1942 . . .”
Where had he been for those five months? Had he been going through torture that was only to be assuaged when he met Sheila Redmond? Malone flipped through several more pages.
“. . . On July 10, 1942, he married Sheila, daughter of Leslie and Elizabeth Cousins Redmond, at the Registry Office, Perth. Nothing can be traced of Sheila Redmond’s history prior to her marriage. When Corliss (now Quentin) became Minister Without Portfolio, Mrs. Quentin was interviewed by several newspapers. But all the articles written about her are vague about her beginnings. All that emerges is that she grew up on a farm in northern Queensland . . .”
Malone sat up. Northern Queensland?
Then there was a knock at the door and Sheila Quentin said, “Mr. Malone? Would you care to join us for a drink before dinner? My husband has something he wants to discuss with you.”
II
“Sherry? Whisky? Beer?” Sheila was pouring the drinks. “I don’t know your taste, Mr. Malone.”
“He’s not a sherry man,” said Quentin and smiled at Malone. “That’s one thing we have in common. Give him whisky. But where’s Joseph?”
“It’s his afternoon off.” Sheila looked at Quentin, her eyes
darkening with concern. “Have you lost track of the days? It’s Thursday.”
Quentin nodded his head sharply, as if annoyed with his own abstraction. “Of course. He’s lucky, having an afternoon off. Did he take that clock of mine to be mended?”
“He had it with him when he went out” Sheila handed Malone his drink. “How’s that?”
Malone tasted the drink and coughed. He looked up at her, thinking how beautiful she looked even through the tears in his eyes, wondering what she had hoped to achieve by finding out what was in his brief-case. “Are you trying to knock me out?”
She smiled. “Whisky is supposed to be medicinal. I thought it might help you forget your bruises.”
Which ones? he wanted to ask. The physical ones or the bruises to his trust He had trusted her husband, gone much further than he should have as a policeman, and Quentin had rewarded him with lies. He looked at Quentin and said, “You wanted to see me about something?”
“How much do I owe you for Mrs. Quentin’s air ticket? You got us on Saturday’s plane?”