Holly frowned. So the solicitor, Allnut, had stayed on Tuesday night—and had slept in the room opposite Andrew’s, and next to Sheena’s. No one had mentioned that before.
It doesn’t make any difference, she told herself. None of this makes any difference, and none of it has anything to do with you anymore. Stop reading!
But she didn’t.
At about 11 pm, Ms Molloy, with the assistance of Lily Hoban, made tea and brought a tray of filled mugs into the casual sitting room at the back of the house. My brother’s tea was in the personalised red pottery mug that I had bought him as a gift, and from which he had drunk since his arrival in the house on Sunday afternoon.
The tray was left on a side table for people to help themselves. I took little notice of it. I do not drink tea at night.
Everyone else took their tea and went up to bed. My brother stayed to say goodnight to me, then followed the others upstairs, taking the remainder of his tea with him.He was yawning, and seemed very tired. By 11:30 I was the only person remaining downstairs. I personally locked the front and back doors and took the remote control for the gates into my room as usual.
I can testify that no one came down the stairs into the entrance hall after that. The stairs squeak badly, and I would have heard. I was wakeful in the night. I often am, being troubled by pain, and that night I was excited by events. If I dozed at all, it would have been only lightly. There is no fire escape, and all the windows in the house are barred.
My brother did not appear for breakfast the following morning. At 9:30, at my request, Eric Maglioco knocked at his door and, receiving no reply, looked in. The room was empty, and . . .
Holly snatched up the papers, folding them quickly to stop herself inadvertently reading another word. Then she saw the five fifty-dollar notes that had been lying underneath them.
‘Pieces of eight!’ the parrot squawked, waddling over to look more closely.
Holly stared at the notes as if by concentrating on them she could will them away. Abigail’s prediction that she was about to receive money from unexpected sources floated again into her reeling mind. It was quickly followed by the memory of her stiffly telling Eric she hadn’t taken a cent from Una Maggott, and an image of herself explaining to a clone of Constable Chloe Graff why she had given a false name, pretended to be a detective, and run away to Sydney with an old woman’s money. Her head began to throb.
‘Don’t panic!’ she said aloud.
‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ the parrot screeched excitedly. It was clearly familiar with the phrase.
Holly collected the notes and stood up. She took a deep breath. Then another.
This is not a disaster, she told herself. It doesn’t mean you can’t leave here tomorrow. It doesn’t mean you have to see Una Maggott again. All it means is that there will have to be a slight change of plan. You put the money into an envelope, addressed to Una, with a note saying that unfortunately you’ve been called away and can’t take her case. In the morning, very early, as soon as you have the petrol—the sign on that little place near the war memorial says it opens at six—you drive to Medlow Bath and put the letter in Una’s letterbox. At that hour no one will be awake to see you. You then come back here and proceed with the plan as before. Simple.
‘Simple,’ she said aloud. ‘Cowardly, but simple.’
‘Don’t panic!’ croaked the parrot.
It sounded as if it was no longer behind her. She looked around and saw that while she had been thinking it had quietly retired to its cage. Presumably it had decided the fun was over for the night.
Before it could change its mind, Holly hurried to the cage and fastened the door with the butterfly clip. The parrot blinked at her through the bars and fluffed its feathers sleepily. On impulse Holly turned and went to the garbage bags. She returned with O’Brien’s blue shirt and draped it over the cage.
‘Goodnight,’ she said softly.
‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ the parrot responded, and was silent.
14
At nine the next morning, Holly swung her car onto the highway and headed for Medlow Bath.
She was on the road three hours later than she had planned. Against all expectations, she had slept long and soundly in O’Brien’s sagging bed. Dreams of black iron bars and faceless men, of pumpkins, witches and hieroglyphics, had crowded her sleep but had not roused her. She probably wouldn’t have woken when she had if it hadn’t been for the parrot rattling its cage and screeching for a seed refill.
At first she had been appalled that she had overslept. Then, as she began frantically pulling on jeans, shirt and jacket, she had told herself to slow down and take it easy.
In the bright light of day, with a good night’s sleep behind her, her resolve to reach Medlow Bath at the crack of dawn seemed melodramatic and unnecessary. After all, it was Saturday, and in her experience, Saturdays began slowly in the Blue Mountains. Mrs Moss’s apartment, and Abigail Honour’s, had been utterly silent as she stole down the stairs and let herself out into Stillwaters Road. She took this as a promising sign.
Now, as the highway traffic thickened and the nine o’clock news bulletin gave way to music on the car radio, her spirits were high. Trevor Purse’s envelope, now addressed to Una Maggott and containing Una’s money, the folded statement, and a short, hypocritically regretful note, was in Holly’s shoulder bag. The car was filled with petrol. She herself was filled with surprisingly good coffee and an unbelievably delicious egg and bacon pie from the Mealey Marshes cake shop.
The garage at the top of Stillwaters Road, with its two petrol pumps, its battered freezer marked ‘ICE’, its stacked plastic sacks of firewood and its bundles of Saturday morning newspapers, had been attended by a shrivelled, toothless old man in fingerless mittens who looked as if he had slept in his clothes, and not for the first time. He had taken Holly’s money with an air of deep suspicion, as if serving blow-ins was not part of his job description.
The woman in the cake shop, however, had been brisk and cheery, her glossy black ponytail swinging as she darted around her warm, fragrant domain, seeing to everything single-handed. The cake shop, in fact, had been like an oasis in the chill Saturday morning silence of Stillwaters Road, a fact clearly appreciated by the locals. The comfortingly urban sound of the coffee machine was frequently punctuated by the squeaks, rattles and bangs of the old screen door as men in overalls and paint-spattered jeans strolled in for meat pies with sauce, leaving the engines of their white utes running outside.
The men who waited for coffee, lounging against the back wall of the shop to leave the counter free, all knew one another. They exchanged casual remarks, joked with the ponytailed woman, whose name was Dee, and glanced at Holly in a friendly, mildly interested way. One in particular— tall and rangy, with an untidy shock of fair hair and bright blue eyes—had even nodded to her with a tweak of the lips, as if they were acquainted. Holly felt a spark of interest, which she instantly suppressed. She smiled faintly back at the man, then looked away. Despite Abigail’s predictions, men had no part in her immediate future plans. And men from Mealey Marshes, however brightly blue their eyes, were definitely out of the question.
Still, it had been nice to be noticed. And it had been good to feel like an independent woman again, a woman with a purpose, picking up a bite of breakfast before tackling the business of the day, instead of like a piece of flotsam washed helplessly around by the tide of circumstance.
Holly reached Medlow Bath more quickly than she had expected, and in her uplifted mood turned off the highway without qualm, trusting in instinct to guide her.
As it happened, instinct served her well, and she found the way to Horsetrough Lane with only a couple of wrong turns. This was lucky, since she saw no one she could have asked for directions. There was the occasional parked car, but otherwise the area seemed as deserted as it had been the day before. Either the houses behind their screens of trees were holiday homes, untenanted this weekend, or everyone w
as still in bed. She hoped the members of Una Maggott’s strange household also slept in on Saturday mornings.
She eased her little car along the bush-lined lane. Just past a bend, the roof of the Maggott house reared through the trees. A moment later the railings of the fence became visible. Then Holly saw a large, black vehicle hulking in a rough lay-by just ahead.
Her stomach had turned over sickeningly by the time she realised that the vehicle wasn’t the hearse, but only the inevitable four-wheel drive, no doubt belonging to some early bushwalkers. The fright, however, had been enough to persuade her that it would be a bad idea to drive boldly up to the Maggott gate. Better to go the rest of the way on foot. She pulled the Mazda off the road and squeezed into the lay-by behind the four-wheel drive.
It wasn’t until she had got out of her car that she realised she had been wrong about the four-wheel drive’s being the property of enthusiastic bushwalkers. The vehicle’s bonnet was spattered with sap and bird droppings, its windows were steamed up, and groaning sounds were coming from inside. Holly quickly averted her gaze and hurried on.
She was within metres of the Maggott letterbox, and was actually reaching into her shoulder bag for the envelope, when she heard a car coming up behind her. She ducked her head and shrank against the fence railings, trying to make herself inconspicuous. The next moment a gleaming grey BMW had swept past her and parked half on and half off the road just beyond the black iron gates.
As Holly hesitated, torn between the desire to beat a hasty retreat and the urge to make a lunge for the letterbox, a man got out of the BMW and walked briskly back towards her. He was probably in his mid-forties and was vaguely pleasant-looking, like a mild-mannered sheep. He had a ruddy complexion, and his carefully combed, light brown hair was thinning slightly on top. He was wearing a tweed sports jacket, a striped tie and a checked shirt, all in muted autumn tones. Holly stood rooted to the spot, waiting for him to challenge her, but he merely nodded and smiled.
‘Lovely morning for a walk,’ he said heartily.
As Holly agreed that it was, he strode past her to the gatepost and pressed the button on the intercom panel.
The intercom spluttered with static. ‘Yes?’ a tinny voice demanded.
‘It’s Cliff Allnut, Una,’ the man said, still in that same hearty, confident tone. ‘Sorry to come so early, but I need to talk to you. Could you open the gates, please?’
The intercom spluttered again. ‘No!’ the tinny voice said. ‘Go away!’
The man’s cheeks darkened to a dull red. He shrugged at Holly, forcing a smile. ‘Difficult client,’ he mumbled. ‘All in a day’s work.’ He laughed uncomfortably.
Holly stretched her own mouth into what she hoped was a sympathetic grin and began to edge away. She had remembered that Cliff Allnut was the name of Una Mag-gott’s solicitor. She was painfully aware of the envelope in her shoulder bag—the envelope stuffed with ill-gotten Mag-gott money.
Before she had taken two steps, the intercom burst into life again. ‘Who’s that with you, Allnut?’ the tinny voice demanded.
With horror, Holly looked through the bars of the gate and saw that the lace curtain masking the bay window had been pulled aside. A pale disc was pressed against the glass. Una Maggott was looking out. Una Maggott had seen her!
‘Ms Cage, is that you?’ the intercom yapped. ‘Good! Come in! Come in!’
There was a click and the gates began to swing open. Allnut stared at Holly, his mouth slightly open.
A dozen phrases hovered on Holly’s lips: I don’t really need to go in . . . I was just dropping off . . . I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding . . . Look, please tell Ms Mag-gott that I can’t . . . But none of them were uttered, for at that moment the front door of the house opened and a stocky figure bundled to the knees in an elaborately crocheted maroon poncho hurtled out. It was Dulcie Maggot.
‘Cliff!’ she cried, hurrying down the steps. She rushed for Allnut, her arms outstretched, the poncho flapping around her like bat’s wings.
‘Dulcie,’ Allnut murmured, standing his ground manfully as she bore down on him.
‘I saw your car from upstairs,’ the woman gasped, clawing at his tweedy sleeve. ‘Thank heavens you’ve come! Oh, I’ve had the most terrible night! I can’t tell you! I didn’t sleep a wink! Cliff, we should have called the ambulance last night, whatever Una said. She should be in hospital!’
Ambulance? Hospital? Remembering Una Maggott’s urgent, hissing voicemail from the night before, Holly felt a prickle of apprehension. What had been going on here?
‘She’s refusing to open the door to any of us, even Eric,’ the woman babbled on. ‘She’s still locked in, with that snake.
I’m sick with worry. She hasn’t had a thing to eat—’
She broke off as she registered belatedly that Allnut was not alone. ‘Not today, thank you,’ she said, flashing a hideously artificial smile in Holly’s general direction. Clearly she failed to associate Holly with the formally dressed intruder of the day before.
‘Dulcie—’ Allnut began.
‘I rang that doctor Nguyen this morning, to tell him what was happening, and he was quite brusque,’ the woman went on. ‘“Just leave her alone,” he said. “She’ll eat when she’s ready.” Almost rude, really, and criminally irresponsible, in my opinion. Then he had the hide to say that he thought having the house full of people was making Una overtired, and perhaps Bastian and I should go home. As if I’d leave her the way she is! I couldn’t live with myself!’
Allnut wisely kept silent.
‘At least she opened the gates for you,’ Dulcie went on. ‘For a moment I thought—’
‘She didn’t open them for me,’ said Allnut. He nodded in Holly’s direction.
Dulcie’s pencil thin eyebrows shot up. She turned to peer at Holly, and the eyebrows drew together as recognition dawned. ‘Miss Maggott can’t see anyone this morning,’ she snapped, her pale blue eyes as hard as river stones. ‘She’s not well.’
Holly returned the gaze blandly. By now she had accepted that a quick escape was no longer an option. It wasn’t just because Cliff Allnut, solicitor, had seen her, and an envelope containing two hundred and fifty ill-gotten dollars was still weighing down her shoulder bag like a burning brick, or just because she enjoyed the idea of defying Dulcie, who she liked even less this morning than she had yesterday afternoon. It was mainly because she knew that she couldn’t run out on Una now, without explanation, and without finding out what had happened last night.
Recognising dumb insolence when she saw it, Dulcie pursed her lips, tensed her shoulders like the pug she so much resembled, and made an absurd little spring to the right so that she was standing in Holly’s way. Holly was wondering if she’d actually have to wrestle with the woman to get through the gateway when they were both distracted by the sound of a car engine. A dusty white ute with a brown dog in the back was rattling up the lane.
Dulcie clicked her tongue. ‘It’s that landscaper again!’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Una must have rung him,’ Allnut said glumly.
The ute braked and turned into the drive. Finding his progress blocked by three people, the driver leaned casually on the wheel and nudged his vehicle’s blunt nose forward fractionally, as if to hint that when Allnut, Dulcie and Holly were ready, he’d appreciate it if they’d move out of the way. With a little shock, quickly followed by the lowering sense that she had once again become the hostage of fate, Holly recognised the fair-haired man who had half smiled at her in the Mealey Marshes cake shop.
Tamely she trotted through the gateway with Allnut and Dulcie. The ute followed, rumbling at their heels, herding them as if they were a small mob of sheep. The moment its path was clear, it sped up, rattled across the gravel apron, skirted the right-hand light pole, and disappeared around the side of the house. Slowly the gates began to swing closed again.
‘Heaven knows what she’s told him to do this time,’ fretted
Dulcie. ‘String barbed wire along the top of the fence, nail up the doors . . . Cliff, we’ve got to put a stop to this!
You’ve got to speak to that doctor again, make him—’
‘Ms Cage!’
The shriek from the front door made them all jump. Una Maggott, sitting well forward in her wheelchair, was framed in the open doorway. Her left wrist appeared to be bandaged.
‘She’s come out,’ said Allnut, who seemed to be one of those people who relieve their feelings by stating the obvious.
‘Ms Cage!’ Una shouted. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. Come on!’
Holly walked to the house and up the steps, ignoring the sound of two pairs of feet hurrying after her.
Una Maggott’s face was grey. There was a small gauze dressing on her forehead, only partly concealed by her fringe, and the circles under her eyes looked as if they had been drawn on with charcoal, but she was as impeccably groomed as ever, and energy radiated from her like heat. Without a word she spun the wheelchair around and sped back towards the snake room, with Holly trotting in her wake.
‘Una, wait!’ squealed Dulcie from the front door. ‘Cliff is here to see you!’
‘Leave this to me, Dulcie,’ Cliff Allnut muttered, and Holly heard their feet clattering on the entrance hall tiles as they ran forward.
At the same time, obviously attracted by the noise, Sheena, Eric and Lily appeared from the back part of the house. Sheena, looking highly amused, was wearing the same lime-green tracksuit she had worn the day before. Eric was sultry in glittering pale blue, hung with silver chains and holding a piece of toast and Vegemite. Lily was draped in witchy black from neck to toe, so that her exquisite, inscrutable face seemed to be floating in mid-air.
Love, Honour & O'Brien Page 16