by Peter Corris
“A bit, not much,” he said sullenly.
“But you see my point don’t you? My client carries a fair bit of weight still and I want to keep her happy. I might leave you out if I get co-operation.” I drank some more brandy and looked down at the sad fat man with the empty glass on the floor. “He’s the grandson, right?”
“Don’t tell him, Russell,” Verna Reid barked, “don’t tell him a thing.”
James looked down at Baudin who was playing with the glass in his big, meaty hands.
“We think so,” he said slowly. “It was all Richard’s idea.”
Selby opened his mouth to say something but I waved my glass at him and he shut it.
“The way I see it,” I said, “is that Brain spotted fatty here and blabbed something to you about his long-lost son. He told you that he’d been married to Mr. Justice Chatterton’s daughter and you knew Selby here was married to her now and you thought he might be interested.”
James nodded and put down half his brandy. Bettina looked interested and hadn’t touched her drink yet.
“That’s right,” James said. “Richard took over then. We . . . he sent old Henry up to pressure the old lady but he made a mess of it. Then Henry dropped out of sight for a while, Richard had given him some money. Then the Judge died. We didn’t know what to do after that. Then Richard . . .” He stopped and took a nervous sip of his drink.
“Richard came up with the idea of you latching onto Miss Reid,” I said. “Dirty trick.”
Verna Reid’s face lost its boldness, her hands flew up and fluttered like the wings of a bird beating against bars. “I thought you . . .” she said, “I thought that we . . .”
“Charades, Verna,” I said. “All charades. Do you know what Lady Catherine planned to do with the estate?”
“Not really, she’s mad. One time she told me she’d leave it to me, another time she said she’d leave me nothing. She hinted that there was someone else, I knew she didn’t mean her.” She shot a look at Bettina who was nursing her drink and leaning forward as if she was watching a good play.
“Just what did you have in mind then, Miss Reid?” Bettina purred.
She didn’t answer; she looked at James who was staring down into his glass and at Selby who avoided her eyes. She seemed to know that she’d reached the end of things—a relationship, prospects, a job. Her eyes were empty and dull.
“I slaved for that old bitch. The wages are a joke. She was always promising things, promising. Well, the place is pretty run down and she hasn’t got any money to speak of. The way things were going she’d have had to sell it sometime.”
“I get it,” I said. “You could help that process along a bit and Russell here could do himself a bit of good when the place came up for sale.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“What about Booth, the lawyer?” Bettina said angrily. “He should have been able to protect her, he was my father’s friend.”
“He’s an old fogey,” Verna Reid said. “She had him completely bluffed.” The tears that had flowed when I was heavying James had left streaks down her face and they got wet again as fresh tears started. “It would have worked, it would have. And then this fool had to play around with this grandson idea.” Selby poured himself some more brandy and said nothing.
“They had the grandson idea first,” I said. “You were just a supporting act. They kept both ideas running and couldn’t decide which one to back. You’re a tough nut Miss Reid, you put James on to me and he tailed me down the coast.” The words mortified me. Being tailed twice by amateurs and not picking it up is bad for the ego. I said: “What about the old lady?” to James and some of the anger in my voice was for myself.
James jerked and held his hands out, palms up as if to ward me off. “I didn’t touch her, I swear it. I got scared and came back to talk to Richard and then you were all over the place. We didn’t know what to do.”
Selby had finished his drink and he reached across and took the bottle again. “Good on you, Russ,” he said, “you always did drop your bundle. Well Hardy, what are you going to do about it?”
I was suddenly very angry, disgusted with them and part of the disgust was because there was nothing much I could do about them if I wanted to bring things out right for me. But I felt unclean just being in the same room as them. I suddenly wished I was in old Sir Clive’s shoes and had the power to send the whole crew of them to the slammer for a long, long time. But I kept my voice flat and unemotional. “You could go up on a series of conspiracy charges apart from Brain’s manslaughter. And there’s the drug angle. I could tie you in with Albie and put you right out of business. Health studios, weight-lifting, see what I mean?”
Selby looked glum. Bettina was showing no interest in him at all and I had the feeling that he’d be a back number pretty soon. She was sipping her drink, not desperately, and looking curiously at Baudin.
“That brings us up to him.” I inclined my head at Baudin. “What drugs is he on? Don’t tell me you don’t know about that, James. Albie says different.”
“Speed, lots of pills, Mogadon, Largactyl, you know. Plenty of grog as well. He’s a hopeless case.”
“You helped him along. Does he know anything about this? Does he know who he is?”
“I don’t think so. He was on the skids when old Henry saw him. We tried to smarten him up at one stage, Richard had some idea of using him some way, but it fell through. He’s been pretty well out of it since then.”
“Bit of a Svengali are you, Dicky?” I said to Selby.
Selby pulled cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit up, struggling for nonchalance. “I’m not saying a word until I speak to my lawyer.”
“Lawyer!” I had to laugh. “You haven’t got a prayer there, Dicky boy. When he hears who you’ve been up against, your lawyer’ll take his holidays.”
“Christ,” Selby said. He puffed hard on his cigarette and looked at Bettina. She studied him as if she was making plans to have him mounted. He looked very uneasy but he still had a bit of fight in him. He pointed to Baudin on the floor.
“That’s your son, Bettina dear, the one you never told me about. What d’you think of him?”
Bettina didn’t take her eyes of his flushed, angry face.
“You always were pathetic, Richard,” she said evenly. “I never knew anything you planned to come out right and you’re still at it. If you think I’m going to break down you’ve got another thing coming. Henry Brain was a slug—he’s no loss, by the way, Hardy. Being pregnant to him was like having a belly full of maggots. I just got it over with and tried to get on with my life. I thought about the child a bit at first, but it was all tied up with Henry. I wanted to forget about all that and I did. I’m sorry for him, that’s all.”
Selby shook his head wildly and James gave a thin, bitter smile and winced when the movement hurt his face. He seemed to have accepted the new turn of events. The trouble was, the shape of those events had to be determined by me and I was confused. I had some ethical questions to sort out. I broke the shotgun open, took out the shell and leaned the gun against the wall. That seemed like an appropriate move towards finding a civilised solution. Among the living I had five people to consider—myself, Baudin-Chatterton, Lady C, Bettina, and Dr. Osborn. There were Brain and the nurse to consider, too; slamming the door on James, Reid and Selby wouldn’t do them any good and maybe there was a nice irony in Henry Brain’s son inheriting the Chatterton estate. As for Gertrude Callaghan, perhaps her memory would best be served by the proper preservation of the doctor’s records. I could help with that.
Bettina finished her drink and rapped the glass on the table.
“Deep thoughts, Hardy—problems?”
“I think I’ve got them sorted out. What about you?”
She looked at Selby. “I’m going to divorce him. Will he go to jail?”
“I don’t think so, I think he should go back to his business and concentrate on supporting you and the kids.”
>
“So do I.”
She jerked her head at James. “What about him?”
“He should be in a cage but bringing it all out will do more harm than good. I can sew him up in a drugs charge and that should keep him quiet. Besides,” I looked at James’s cut and bruised face, “he isn’t going to be so pretty any more. Miss Reid here is going to resign her post, aren’t you?”
She nodded; she was passive now, which was an unnatural state for her. I wondered how long she’d stay that way. I had a feeling that she would bounce back but there was nothing I could do about it.
That left the grandson and heir; the question was how much of a man was left in him after the drugs and the booze, given that he hadn’t been such promising material to start with.
“Can you help him, Hardy?” Bettina said softly.
“I have to. He’s worth money to me and a bit to a lady in Darlinghurst who needs it.” I spoke directly to him for the first time. “You remember Honey don’t you, Warwick?”
He looked at me for what seemed like an hour and then he nodded slowly.
“Sure you do. Great days. I’ll give it a try. I’ll need a doctor and some time. I can’t give him to grandma like this.”
“Goodbye money,” Bettina said grimly.
“Maybe not. It looks as if you and yours were out of the picture anyway. Maybe you can get round her if she’s doting on your son. You can try if you feel like it. Anyway, you’ll have Richard here with his nose to the grindstone.”
“It’s a nice thought,” she said.
Warwick Baudin started to shake, flesh wobbled on his big frame as his shoulders heaved convulsively. He lowered his head and big, fat tears fell on the floor.
Bettina moved over and put her arm across his shoulders, “There,” she said, “there, there.”
24
I located my Smith & Wesson in a kitchen drawer and collected up the few things Warwick Baudin had in the house. When we left, James and Selby were sitting at the table with fresh cans of beer open. They were both snappy dressers and somehow snappy dressers look all the worse when they’re knocked about. These two were—they were bloodied and bowed. They were looking at each other and not liking what they saw. Verna Reid was staring out the window like someone with a lot to think over. I tossed the two sets of car keys onto the table and left them to it.
We bundled Baudin into the Honda and took the dusty trail away from Wisemans Ferry. I locked the back doors but Baudin didn’t seem to have any fight in him which was just as well—he was a big lad. He fell asleep when we reached the highway and snored all the way back to Sydney.
Bettina didn’t say much. At my prompting she blocked in an odd fact or two about Selby. I got a picture of a man who thought big but didn’t have the ability to carry out his plans. At first she said she’d take him for every penny but she softened almost straightaway.
“Hell, I haven’t been much fun to live with,” she said. “I might go easy on him, there’s the girls to consider.” She looked at her watch as she drove. “Tell you one thing, I haven’t been this sober this late in the day for a long time. Do you think that’s a good sign?”
“Could be,” I said. I felt she was warming up towards something more intimate and I didn’t feel up to handling it just then. I had too much on my hands with the drug-soaked man in the back seat and the nagging worry that I’d let Kay Fletcher down. Bettina saw I was preoccupied and left me alone. We reached her place late in the afternoon. She kissed me briefly and helped me shift Baudin over to my car. He was like a child just learning to walk. I wondered how he’d got up to Wisemans Ferry and what the hell he’d taken when he got there. We rolled him into the Falcon.
“When do you plan to present him?” Bettina said.
“About a month from now.”
“I’ll be in touch, it should be interesting.” She peered in through the dirty window at the wreck of her thirty-one-year-old son. She shook her head, gave me a wave and set off towards her nasty house, her plain children and her problems.
I took him home to Glebe and put him in my spare bed, then I called my friend Ian Sangster who has a couple of medical degrees and an adventurous spirit. When Sangster arrived I gave him an outline of the problems—Baudin’s history, the drugs, the manipulation, and turned him loose. Then I made a drink and rolled some cigarettes and picked up the telephone. There was no answer at Kay’s flat. I called a journalist I knew in Canberra and he asked around and found that Kay had gone to Indonesia on assignment for the paper. She hadn’t left any message for me. I was thinking about that and smoking one of the cigarettes when I got a call from Lady Catherine’s residence. The caller was a Mrs. McMahon who said she’d been hired for three days as a replacement for Verna Reid. Lady Catherine was ready to retire for the night and had instructed Mrs. Mac to ring me for a progress report. It looked as if Verna had been giving herself a little elbow room. I told the woman that I’d report in half an hour and got the name of the hiring agency she worked for. Her assignment was going to run for a little more than three days.
I went through to the back of the house where Sangster was sitting in the kitchen with his long, mournful face drooping into a big glass of my scotch.
“That’s a gunshot wound, Cliff,” he said. “Should be reported.”
“Hunting accident.” I got some scotch for myself. “The rabbits were jumping over a barbed wire fence and he tried to do the same. Happens all the time.”
He shook his head and drank. Sangster has a drinking problem but no money problem, so maybe it’s not a problem.
“Your friend’s in a bad way.” He pulled out a little notebook and began checking items. “High blood pressure, furred tongue, dull reflexes, sugar in urine, obese, erratic pulse. He’s really been hitting it.”
“Or being hit,” I said. “I think he’s been pilled up and down and round about by other people for the last year or so. I doubt he’s made an independent move in that time.”
He grunted. “So what do you want to know? You want information from him, is that right?” Sangster disapproves of my business which he calls a trade. I call his a racket.
“Wrong,” I said. “First, is he going to be all right in the short term? I mean what’s he been on?”
“Heavy amphetamine-alcohol mixture. He’s disoriented, dependant, pretty paranoic too, I’d say. But yes, he’s not going to die. If he went on the way he’s been going I’d give him two years at the most.”
“He’s stopping,” I said. “He’s going off everything and turning himself into a model citizen. He’s going to wear a suit and read the Financial Review.”
He held out his empty glass. “You’re going to work this miracle, are you Cliff?”
“That’s right.” I got two more drinks. Mine would put me well down the track but it was a drinking sort of night. “What are the problems, would you say?”
“First, an incentive to be rehabilitated. It’s a boring process I’m told. What’s in it far him?”
“Money,” I said.
He drank reflectively. “That should help. He’s been going this way for a year you say?”
I nodded.
“Well, you’ll have to watch him night and day. You might get him to try, he might really want to kick it, but he’ll get pulled back and if he slips too far too often you’re gone. A twenty-four hour vigil, seven days a week. How long have you got?”
“I need results in a month.”
He shook his head. “You’ll have to get him really keen. What did he do before he started blowing his mind?”
“Not much.”
“Be uphill work then. Tell you another thing, you might have to subdue him, he’s a big bastard. Reckon you can handle him?”
“I don’t know, we’ll see. Will I need anything—drugs, medicine?”
He drained his glass and got up. He stands six four and looking up at him made me look at the ceiling which was festooned with cobwebs. The house had a rundown, seedy feel and there hadn’t been
a good solid laugh or a relaxed moment in it for a long time. Now it was to be a drying-out clinic and a jail and there’d be more ghosts and shadows and pain.
“You don’t need drugs,” said Sangster, “just luck. You look pretty beat, Cliff. You should get some sleep. I gave him a shot and he’s out for twelve hours. After that you’ll have to be on your toes.”
I thanked him and let him out. Upstairs my meal-ticket and my bonus was sleeping. I felt drained, let-down, as is usual when a case has been resolved, but the feeling was exacerbated by the uncertainty about Kay. Women. That set me to thinking about how to play it with the old woman, how to stop her coming over in her wheelchair until the parcel was ready for delivery. A version of the truth seemed like the best ploy as it so often is.
I rang the ranch and gave Mrs. McMahon a little low-key Hardy charm. It turned out she hadn’t liked Miss Reid very much on their one meeting and had found signs of neglect in the treatment of Lady C. She was against neglect. She seemed pleased at my suggestion that she might be needed for some time and more pleased at the advice to pack Verna Reid’s things and install them somewhere near the front. She passed me on to the widow.
“Mr. Hardy?” That autocratic voice came on the line with a questioning note in it that was not really questioning. She knew the answers, or all the answers that mattered, except one.
“Have you found him Mr. Hardy?”
“Yes.”
The silence was more expressive than words—dreams were fulfilled, hopes were given reality, life was full of promise as it should be.
“Are you certain?” No fakes tolerated.
“Yes, I think you’ll be satisfied on that score. I can document it pretty well, also the physical resemblance is strong—or will be.”
“Will be, Will be?” she shrilled. “What on earth does that mean?”
“He’s had a pretty bad time. He’s going to need a month’s rest and some treatment. He’s ill.”
“Nonsense. I must see him. Now!”