A Thing of Blood

by Robert Gott

  From the expression on his face I knew that I had hit upon something that he recognised as being a likely consequence of knowing Gretel.

  ‘So she owes you money,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find that there are quite a few people with a prior claim. How much?’

  ‘Only two pounds, but still, I don’t have two pounds to spare.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You’re way down the pecking order, Mr Power. Forget your two pounds. As to where she might be …? You might find her in the Petrushka café, or the Alexander Hotel. The Australia Hotel might be worth a look, too. I think she does quite well out of the Yanks.’

  ‘You don’t know the names of any of her friends?’

  ‘I wasn’t on social terms with Miss Beech. I can tell you that the fellow she sent along in her place last week was named George. He didn’t give a last name. Just George. He had a very large penis, if that helps with your identification further down the track. I’m sure if you asked at the Petrushka for George with the big cock somebody would be able to help you. It’s that sort of place.’

  With nothing more to be learned from Mr Wilks, I thanked him and made to leave.

  ‘As I said, if you ever need work, contact me. We’re always looking for models.’

  It was too late to do any further investigation into Trezise and his connections. I wanted to call into Mother’s place to check on the situation there before joining Clutterbuck and the Fowlers for afternoon tea. I suppressed any consideration of how I’d greet Nigella Fowler, given that she already knew more about me than I was ever likely to know about her.

  Brian wasn’t at home, having been obliged to return to teaching, misplaced wife or no misplaced wife. Mother’s eyes were red from weeping.

  ‘Don’t mind me, dear,’ she said. ‘I always cry when the postman fails to bring a letter from Fulton. It’s how I manage. It’s a sort of ritual.’

  ‘He’s fine, I’m sure. If something had happened you would have been told by now.’

  ‘It depends where he is though. If he’s out in the sticks somewhere there mightn’t be a way of getting a message through. I went to Darwin once, you know. With your father. Before you were born. It was an awful, awful trip and when we got there it was hideous. There was practically nothing there and I had never been so hot and uncomfortable in my entire life.’

  Mother had never mentioned this little autobiographical detail before.

  ‘What on earth were you doing up there?’

  ‘Your father had business interests there. In Broome, too. We must have spent the best part of a year in Broome and in Darwin. If I hadn’t been young and in love I would have high-tailed it out of there, I can tell you, even if I’d had to walk through the Tanami Desert to do it. I really can’t abide the tropics. One never looks one’s best. The humidity does dreadful things to one’s hair. I’m sure I’ve told you about our year of heat. I’m sure I have. You probably weren’t listening, darling. When you were growing up you never actually listened to what you were being told. It was one of your most annoying qualities.’

  I let that pass. My mother had not told me the story of what she’d called her ‘year of heat’, despite her claims to the contrary. This wasn’t the moment to contradict her.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me about it again some time, and next time I’ll give you my full attention.’

  ‘Yes dear,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure you’ll be far more interested in the news one of those detectives brought me today. They have the results of the blood they analysed and they’re rather puzzling. It isn’t human blood.’

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ I said. ‘It is Darlene we’re talking about after all.’

  ‘Don’t be catty. The blood is bullock’s blood.’

  I lifted my eyebrows to indicate that I had always known that Darlene was more bullock than beauty, but allowed this satisfyingly amusing reflection to persist for only a moment.

  ‘Do the police have a theory?’ I asked.

  ‘If they do, Will, they didn’t share it with me.’

  ‘Why would someone kidnap Darlene and splash bullock’s blood around the kitchen?’

  ‘Well, I have a theory,’ Mother said. ‘I think Darlene is still alive. Whoever took her has no plans to kill her. Yet. The blood — they must have known it would be analysed — is a sort of warning on the one hand, and a reassurance on the other.’

  ‘But why haven’t we been contacted?’

  ‘Yes, I’m worried about that. I have a bad feeling that something has gone wrong. Maybe Darlene lost the baby and she’s ill and they’ve panicked and left her somewhere. If they’re amateurs they might have bitten off more than they can chew, and just walked away from it.’

  ‘It’s certainly very strange. I can’t see that it’s all being directed by this creature Brian had an affair with. I wonder if he’s told us everything about his activities in Maryborough.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering if this has anything to do with Brian at all. What if the person who took Darlene, wanted Darlene?’

  The possibility that Darlene could be of such interest to somebody as to prompt an abduction struck me as ludicrous. I had never really thought of her as having a life away from Brian, or as having had an existence prior to Brian. I reluctantly admitted to myself that she had as much right to a biography as anybody else.

  ‘That little detective, Strachan, was asking questions about Darlene’s friends,’ Mother said, ‘and I was embarrassed to have to admit that I knew very little about her. As far as I know she doesn’t have any close women friends. No one calls here for her and she has never invited anyone. Her life is very bound up with Brian. The police are coming back to ask him some more questions this evening.’

  ‘They’ll want to speak to me again, no doubt. Strachan took an instant dislike to me. Did you notice that?’

  ‘Well, dear, perhaps you were rude to the poor man.’

  ‘Oh, Mother. Don’t take his side. Poor man indeed. Don’t trust the police to find the truth. They’ll settle for a quick solution and they won’t care too much who gets hurt along the way. I know. Believe me.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘No, seriously Mother, I think you have too much faith in these detectives. They don’t find evidence and work out who’s guilty from that. They decide who’s guilty and then select evidence and make it fit.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Will. They are professional policemen and they know what they’re doing. Of course we’re under suspicion and of course it’s an unpleasant feeling, but I don’t believe for a minute that the jails are filled with innocent men, locked up on the basis of manufactured evidence. It’s too absurd. I think your experience in Queensland has given you a jaundiced view of things.’

  ‘I won’t argue with you, Mother. All I’m saying is that you and Brian should be careful what you tell that Strachan character.’

  I left Mother’s house feeling agitated by our conversation. I hadn’t expected her to be quite so naïve about the motivations of investigating officers. Like most people, she believed they were moved to solve crimes out of some sort of moral outrage, as if the solving of the crimes somehow made the world a cleaner place. She seemed to think they were like priests, dedicated to tipping the balance in favour of all that was good and decent, and banishing evildoers into the outer darkness of the prison or the hangman’s drop. I had no doubt that what actually motivated them was the scramble for advancement in their careers.

  As I was walking across Princes Park towards Clutterbuck’s house, the awful reality of Gretel Beech’s death hit me forcefully and I was obliged to sit down on a bench for a moment. It was imperative that I find the well-endowed George. After tea and cakes with the Fowlers, I would return to the Petrushka and begin my sleuthing in earnest. As I stood to continue on my way, I became suddenly dizzy and had to sit down ag
ain. I was overwhelmed by the events of the past three days: I’d been back in Melbourne such a short time, and already I found myself grappling with the stress of an abduction, a murder, moving house, and the demands of a new and uncertain career. I almost envied Brian the monotonous safety of daily teaching.

  The Fowlers and Clutterbuck were already drinking tea and nibbling at Mrs Castleton’s cakes when I arrived. There was an unbearable froideur in the room and I didn’t have the sense that I’d interrupted a lively conversation, but rather that I could provide a welcome relief from awkward silence. I was introduced to Nigella Fowler first. She betrayed by only the slightest smile that she recognised me as the person whose body she had spent the morning drawing. I guessed that her discretion had to do with the probability that her father wasn’t aware of his daughter’s artistic ambitions. She was no great beauty, and she didn’t reveal the evidence of her father’s wealth in her dress, the cut of her hair or her maquillage. She was determinedly dressed down, and unselfconsciously plain. For all that, there was something about her that was immediately and strongly attractive to me.

  Individually, none of her features was remarkable, but she emanated a quality that hinted at great reserves of kindness and sympathy. When I shook her hand, her smile ignited in me a profound desire to remove her from Clutterbuck’s influence. His frankness about his intentions and his feelings, while admirable in its way, now seemed cruel.

  Mr Fowler, who shook my hand, but who didn’t rise from his chair to do so, was pear-shaped. His tweed trousers were secured around a tautly rounded belly and curved down so tightly that there was no doubt at all that he dressed to the left. He was bald, except for sparse, reddish remnants that were slicked wetly above each ear. His most prominent feature was his mouth, which was fleshy, with a glistening under-lip that was almost repellent. He was not a handsome man, and the fact that he was not happy at this moment did nothing to soften his features. I didn’t like Clutterbuck’s chances of winning this man’s approval.

  James Fowler, the son, was a slimmer, much better-looking version of his father, with thin, glossy hair of a vulpine shade. He looked younger than his sister, and there was something wry and detached about him, as if all this was amusing, but of no consequence — the amusement deriving from his father’s obvious discomfort.

  Clutterbuck was unexpectedly jittery, his normally suave demeanour was clearly unsettled by Mr Fowler’s antagonism and its potential to dash his hopes of marriage to Nigella.

  ‘Will is an actor,’ he announced to the room.

  Nigella raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Would I have seen you recently?’ she asked with mischievous ambiguity.

  ‘I’ve been in Queensland with my company, bringing Shakespeare to the barbarians.’

  ‘Shakespeare won’t win the war,’ Mr Fowler said dismissively, ‘unless you’re going to bore the Japs to death.’

  ‘Dad has a narrow view of combat tactics,’ his son said. ‘He’s not too keen on my profession either.’

  Mr Fowler snorted.

  ‘Patting boongs on the head,’ he said.

  ‘What my father means is that I work in the department that looks after the Native Policy for Mandated Territories. He’d rather I shot them than found them work. The fact that I’m not in uniform is something of a disappointment to him.’

  ‘Damned right,’ Mr Fowler said quietly.

  I could see that Clutterbuck’s civilian status would seriously besmirch his prospects as a son-in-law. My being an actor would only have confirmed Mr Fowler’s no doubt bleak view that he was surrounded by shirkers and cowards. Afternoon tea must have been a torture for Fowler senior, and his sullen silence was a testament to this fact.

  ‘You’re in propaganda?’ I said to Nigella, in an attempt to begin a conversation.

  ‘Yes, I write scripts for cinema shorts. The Diary of Diana. That’s one of mine. Have you seen it? It’s on at the moment.’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I liked it.’

  Nigella laughed.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you like. It’s what you endure to get to the feature.’

  Her brother James launched into a recitation from the short, just as Clutterbuck had done.

  ‘ “Are you in a war job? Are you? It’s a haunting question you know.” ’

  Nigella laughed again, and my desire to remove her from Clutterbuck’s influence quickened.

  ‘There’s a new short just out,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s go tonight,’ said Clutterbuck. ‘What film’s on?’

  He looked at me as if my being an actor meant that I would be up to date with cinema programming.

  ‘There’s Suspicion on at the Regent,’ said Nigella. ‘Yes, let’s do that. Will? You’ll come?’

  Without confirming by a glance at Clutterbuck whether this was all right by him, I agreed.

  The conversation, after this, moved in fits and starts. Mr Fowler ate more than his share of Mrs Castleton’s cakes, contributing little to the conversation apart from wondering where she had procured the butter for her sponge, and suggesting that his son, James, was too facetious for his own good. He also added that his daughter was naïve if she really thought the Japanese would be marching up Swanston Street any time soon.

  ‘Not long ago,’ he said, ‘your people were telling us that the Japs were short-sighted and didn’t fight at night. Now you’re telling us that they want to make us all slaves.’

  Nigella calmly turned to her father and said, ‘Fear is much more effective than ridicule in rallying people.’

  It was clear to everyone in the room that she wasn’t just talking about propaganda, but the complete absence of emotion in her voice gave her father no cause to leap to his own defence, to fuel old fires of familial discontent. It felt as if whatever had transpired between Mr Fowler and his children had been regulated by time into a dull acceptance of a mismanaged childhood. Where was Mrs Fowler in all this? No mention had been made of her; and knowing that Mr Fowler disapproved of divorce, I suspected that he had long been widowed.

  ‘These chairs are bloody uncomfortable, Clutterbuck,’ he said.

  Clutterbuck looked as though he was about to lay the blame for the furniture at his ex-wife’s door, but thought better of drawing attention to his late marriage.

  ‘They are a triumph of design over common sense,’ he said lightly.

  Nigella laughed, but Mr Fowler shot Clutterbuck a look that eloquently diagnosed him as a damned fool. I could almost hear him thinking that if Clutterbuck didn’t have enough sense to own a chair he could sit on, the demands of being his son-in-law would tax him beyond his abilities. It was clear why Clutterbuck wanted me to be present at this awkward little tiffin. Whatever personal questions Mr Fowler might want to ask could not be asked in the presence of a stranger. Despite his born-to-rule demeanour, Mr Fowler conformed, on this occasion, to social niceties, of a sort.

  The grim festivities broke up with Mr Fowler declaring that he couldn’t sit about all day drinking tea. He departed with his son, while Nigella stayed on. She and Clutterbuck decided that they would walk into town for an early dinner, and meet me afterwards at the cinema. Clutterbuck and I went upstairs. He wanted to fetch a coat and I wanted to take a bath, my first since the discovery of Gretel’s corpse. There was a faint odour of carbolic in the bathroom — Mrs Castleton must have been instructed to scrub and disinfect the tub — and while I was glad that she’d done so, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she now thought that I was suffering from some sort of infectious disease.

  My initial distaste on slipping into the bath gave way to pleasure under the soporific influence of the hot water. Even though I had by then become so used to the cast on my arm that I barely noticed it, its removal in four days time would end the annoyance of having to keep the wretched thing dry. Thankfully,
my body was recovering well from the various traumas visited upon it in Maryborough. The only scar I carried was the bullet wound just above my collar bone. I wondered if Nigella had noticed it when she had drawn me that morning. I also wondered what I should do next. The picture didn’t begin until ten to eight, which left me a few hours in which to either continue my surveillance of Anna Capshaw and Mr Trezise, pursue the generously endowed man named George, or attempt further to unravel the kidnapping of my sister-in-law.

  I settled on visiting Brian, certain that I would winkle useful information out of him by subtle questioning. I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the steaming water. Clutterbuck seemed to have no shortage of wood with which to fuel his hot water service, or his stove, or his open fires. While the rest of Melbourne’s citizens bathed themselves in a mean five inches of tepid water — firewood was in desperately short supply — the house in Bayles Street appeared untouched by the dead hand of austerity, restrictions or shortages. I knew he couldn’t have secured his luxuries, let alone what in peacetime were considered necessities, without recourse to the black market, but I was in no position (up to my neck in hot water) to cast moral aspersions his way.

  I was turning such matters over in my mind, and drifting into a half sleep, when a footfall in the corridor outside gave me a little rush of anxiety. Whoever was out there was moving with the stealth of an intruder. With a mixture of annoyance and trepidation, I clambered as quietly as possible out of the bath, wrapped a towel around my waist, and opened the door just sufficiently to see into the hallway. There was no one there. While I was considering my next move, I heard what must have been Clutterbuck’s bedroom door open. When I reached it, it was ajar and someone was moving about inside. I pushed it slightly and saw a man bent over the open drawers of Clutterbuck’s wardrobe. His search was careful, almost finicky; he was lifting each item to see if anything lay beneath it, and replacing things with great deliberation. He was kidding himself if he thought Clutterbuck wouldn’t detect his disciplined rummaging. Clutterbuck’s fiercely obsessive eye would detect the smallest alteration as a seismic shift.