by Robert Gott
‘For diagnostic purposes only.’
We weren’t alone, despite the late hour. There were several people working on the other side of Fowler’s partition and the clatter of typewriters and the ringing of phones made a reassuring impression that the war was being fought around the clock. As my head cleared I became confident that James Fowler would be a useful ally, and when he asked me how I’d broken my arm I took the opportunity to give him my version of events in Maryborough. He listened attentively, and nodded sympathetically from time to time. When I’d finished, he said, ‘I admire your willingness to admit that you were a bit of a nong.’
I wasn’t aware that I’d been doing any such thing, but he spoke without malice so I let it pass.
‘When does the cast come off?’
‘Monday morning. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m looking forward to that.’
Over the next two hours James Fowler outlined how he wanted to proceed. I came close to revealing that I’d foolishly helped dispose of Gretel Beech’s murdered body but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t ready to upset his confidence in me. Besides, I could fix that mess myself. Most pressingly, I had to get home and tell Brian and Mother what I’d seen. James apologised for not being able to provide a driver to get me there quickly. ‘I’m low down in the pecking order.’
We arranged to meet the following day in the crypt of the Shrine of Remembrance. I thought this a strange location, but James said it was conveniently close to the Barracks and that he needed to be at his desk for most of the day. We made a time — two o’clock — and he escorted me onto St Kilda Road.
‘Stick to this side,’ he said. ‘The other side is the busiest queer beat in Melbourne. They call it ‘the chicken run’. We keep an eye on it but there’s never any trouble. Half the Yank army comes here, literally, and many housewives in Camberwell would be very surprised to know what hubby gets up to after dark.’ He laughed. ‘There’s this big dance hall down towards the circus, the Old Green Mill, and on Saturday nights it’s packed with Yanks. If they don’t get lucky with a woman they’ll cross the road, pop into the park with some bloke, and then head back to the dance.’
Fowler’s tone was so uncritical of this behaviour that I suspected he thought he was doing me a favour by providing me with information I might find useful. I tried not to be offended. Perhaps he was simply revealing something about himself.
It was quite late so I took the expensive step of catching a taxi to Mother’s place. Even so, it was close to midnight when I knocked on the door. To my surprise it was opened almost immediately by Brian.
‘We’ve been waiting for you. We know what happened at the Menzies. She rang.’
Mother sat in her usual place in the living room. She was bearing up, rather self-consciously I thought, under the strain of what must have been a startling piece of news.
‘I suppose I should say, “Well done.”’
Brian interjected. ‘I’m afraid I told Mother about your new job. I didn’t think you’d mind, having had this success so quickly.’
I was on the point of revealing that my finding Darlene had been an accident when it struck me that this was a small, irrelevant detail. I’d found Darlene, and if Mother and Brian chose to see this as proof of my investigative skills, so much the better. I hadn’t forgotten Brian’s crack about finding my arse.
‘What did she say?’ I asked. My tone was businesslike, prurience being anathema to a good PI.
‘Just that you’d found her and that there’d been an altercation.’
I made a derisive little chortle.
‘And did she say who that Yank was?’
‘They’re coming here tomorrow,’ Brian said. ‘Both of them.’
‘I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, Will,’ said Mother, ‘but it seems you were right to dislike Darlene.’
‘She’s asked for a divorce.’
‘But she’s pregnant.’
There was a ghastly pause.
‘Yes, well,’ said Brian. ‘Although she was only on the phone for a couple of minutes she managed to tell me that it’s not my child. It’s the other bloke’s.’
Mother stood up.
‘She’d been having an affair with him for months. Right under our noses. Neither Brian nor I noticed. It’s inexplicable. Inexplicable.’
I wondered if it was really so very inexplicable, and whether Brian’s affair with Sarah Goodenough wasn’t in some way a response to his suspicion, or knowledge, about Darlene’s infidelity. I’d press him on this point when Mother had retired.
‘How she must have hated us,’ Mother said, ‘to smile and lie so easily.’
Mother looked suddenly old; exhausted perhaps by the realisation that even someone as dull as Darlene couldn’t be relied upon to stay true to type.
‘She’s got a nerve, coming here tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Mother said. ‘I admire that, I must say. Anyway, I’m going to bed. Goodnight Brian darling. Goodnight Will.’
When Mother was safely out of earshot I asked Brian why he seemed so calm after this devastating revelation.
‘I’m relieved that the police will have to eat their words and admit that they were wrong. I haven’t started to think about the other stuff, and I don’t want to discuss it now.’
‘Do you want me to be at the meeting with Darlene tomorrow?’
Brian’s relief at no longer being a suspect had restored some of his natural gracelessness.
‘Good God, no. You can’t possibly imagine that it’d be helpful to have you in the room. You can’t stand Darlene and she loathes you.’
It would have been unfair of me to point out that Darlene’s fondness for Brian was, at the very least, under review.
‘Did you suspect that Darlene was having an affair?’
Brian’s face became tinged with an angry pink.
‘No, I didn’t, and I said I didn’t want to discuss this now. I’ll see her tomorrow and sort things out then. It’s bedtime.’
I decided to spend the night at Mother’s place. I didn’t want to walk across the park at that hour, and I wanted to put some distance between myself and Clutterbuck. It was important that I not betray that I felt I’d been duped by him, especially if I was to effectively infiltrate his creepy brotherhood. It was only as I was falling asleep that I wondered if anybody had told Clutterbuck about Anna Capshaw’s death. I suspected that it wouldn’t be news that would disturb him to any great degree. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to be the person who told him. He wasn’t a fool, and he’d want to know how I’d discovered the grim fact. It would be better if I feigned ignorance.
I woke late on Saturday morning. Brian and Mother were dressed, fed, tea’d and waiting downstairs for Darlene to arrive. I offered again to be present and Brian again insisted that it was an appalling idea. He was supported in this by our mother, who said that she wouldn’t be present either, that she would greet Darlene and withdraw.
‘I just want to look into the eyes of the creature who smashed my best china. You should go now, Will. It would only complicate matters if Darlene saw you here, and please shave darling, you look scruffy and really rather frightening.’
‘Perhaps I’ll grow a beard.’
‘Oh, no dear. You don’t have the face for it. You’d look like a prisoner of war, or a homeless person.’
‘I’ll come back later. I want to know what Darlene had to say. I’m sure she’s committed some sort of crime by staging a kidnapping.’ On the spur of the moment I added, ‘Oh yes, Brian … I want to discuss a little proposal with you. It’s to do with work.’
This suggestion arrived in my mind unbidden, but as soon as I’d made it I realised it was a good one. Having Brian to assist me now that he was out of teaching would surely make the task of infiltrating Clutterbuck
’s Shining Knights much less daunting.
As I crossed Princes Park I began to formulate a plan whereby Brian would become Fowler’s primary mole. I’d already indicated my indifference to the ideals expressed by the Knights so a sudden enthusiasm might arouse suspicions. I could introduce my brother as a person whose prejudices matched Clutterbuck’s — a fellow traveller in the war on Rome. I decided to put this idea to Fowler when I met him later at the Shrine.
Clutterbuck wasn’t at home, and as his car wasn’t in the garage I assumed he was up in Brunswick with the terrible trinity of Oakpate, Shingle and Crocker — names that conjured some bleak law firm or office of architects. I looked into his bedroom and found it restored to its former, astonishing orderliness. Mrs Castleton must have been busy.
There was a note on my bed from Clutterbuck telling me that he was driving to Ballarat and that he wouldn’t be back until Monday afternoon. Petrol rationing wouldn’t affect Clutterbuck. Like anything else he wanted, he’d purchase it on the black market. He didn’t mention Anna Capshaw so I surmised that he’d not yet been told of her death, and I doubted that news of it would reach him in Ballarat over the weekend.
Alone in the house, I wandered through its rooms and almost convinced myself that Clutterbuck wasn’t such a bad fellow after all. His politics were unsavoury, but his whisky was good and his digs were superb. Had I been too ready to see him through James Fowler’s eyes? Did I want to attribute faults to him that would make it easier for me to come between him and Nigella?
I stood in the kitchen and thought about the uncompromising order in the house. I don’t know much about modern psychiatry but I thought it might be a symptom of something unhealthy and morbid. Certainly, the alacrity with which Clutterbuck had suggested disposing of Gretel Beech’s body was symptomatic of something, and his momentarily risen stakes plummeted.
A knock at the front door echoed down the corridor and made me jump. There’s something about the unexpected knock in a silent house that is discomposing. I knew it couldn’t be anyone looking for me, so whoever it was would have business with Clutterbuck. Having met the type of troll-like people with whom he fraternised, it was with considerable reluctance that I answered the door. Nigella Fowler stood there wearing crisp white gloves and a jaunty hat, accessories which distracted the eye from her rather dull, woollen skirt and jacket. She was an unadventurous, sensible dresser, and she couldn’t quite carry off the hat; she wore it nervously as if she thought that perhaps she’d gone too far and that the hat might excite comment and outrage. It would, of course, do neither. Even in these dour, austere times, it would take more than a jaunty hat to make the horses bolt. I found her couture reticence touching, and felt an overwhelming desire to carry her upstairs like an antipodean Rhett Butler and deny Clutterbuck the gift of her virginity. I must have been staring because she raised her hand to her hat and laughed nervously.
‘The hat’s too much, isn’t it,’ she said.
‘Oh, no, I love the hat. It’s not too much. It’s too too.’
‘I’m not quite sure what that means, but I’m glad you think so. Is Paul in?’
I explained that he’d gone to Ballarat and that he’d be back on Monday. We agreed that it was negligent of him not to inform her of this, and Nigella said that Paul was sometimes careless about telling her things.
‘But he does apologise very sweetly when I point this out to him. May I come in?’
With proprietorial nonchalance she went straight to the kitchen and began to make us a cup of tea.
‘I should disapprove, but it’s a comfort to know that Paul will always have tea, sugar and milk, no matter how tough the rationing gets.’
‘We all use the black market in some way,’ I replied. ‘I don’t subscribe to the idea that a soldier dies every time someone eats an illegally acquired chop.’
‘Ah, you see, I’m failing. My job is to make you believe precisely that.’
She laughed, and my desire for her threatened to break through containment lines.
‘I went to the pictures yesterday,’ I said, ‘and I saw a terrible propaganda short. I hope it wasn’t one of yours.’
I performed it for her there in Clutterbuck’s kitchen, and she laughed so much her jaunty hat broke free and slipped to her shoulder. She pulled it off and threw it to me. I placed it on my head and struck a pose, but then remembered my gravel rashed, unshaven face, and felt foolish.
‘Don’t marry Paul Clutterbuck,’ I said suddenly.
‘What an extraordinary thing to say. Why on earth not?’
‘You don’t really know what he’s like.’
‘And you do, having known him for what? A week?’
I was reduced to stammering an incoherent apology for the impertinence of my remark. Nigella took pity on me, smiled, and said that as her brother and her father had given her similar advice she could hardly pretend that the general antipathy to Clutterbuck was unknown to her.
‘I don’t need protecting, Will.’
I wanted to ask her if she’d been warned about Clutterbuck’s political activities, but an instinct told me that my relationship with her brother needed to be kept hidden. If he’d warned her about Clutterbuck, she was choosing to ignore his advice. If he hadn’t, it wasn’t my place to jeopardise his operation against the Order of the Shining Knights by providing Nigella with information that she might take straight to Clutterbuck.
With the tea made, we settled in the austere living room.
‘So why do you think Paul is an unsuitable match? Apart from his taste in furniture, of course.’
I’d given her the right to ask such a direct question by so overtly challenging Paul’s character. But I stalled.
‘Well, good furnishings are important,’ I said lamely.
‘You mean we’ll need somewhere comfortable to sit while we’re arguing. So what do you think we’ll be arguing about?’
I stalled again.
‘The state of your underwear drawer probably.’
‘You were so adamant a moment ago. No one gets adamant about underwear. What do you think is so bad about Paul Clutterbuck that it would cause you to issue an all points warnings on our second meeting?’
‘Third,’ I said.
‘We weren’t formally introduced the first time and you were rather informally dressed.’
Her voice was light, but her tone was steely. She was determined to get an explanation for my outburst.
‘My motive was selfish,’ I said, and I didn’t have to perform embarrassment. I blushed profusely and was overcome by schoolboy awkwardness. This was the unpleasant consequence of telling the truth, or a large part of the truth. ‘I find you very attractive, and however dishonourable it sounds, soon after meeting you, Paul went from being my landlord to being my rival. I know that doesn’t say much about my character, but people sometimes do behave badly when they’re … when they’re …’
‘In love?’
‘I obviously can’t seriously declare that. It would be too silly.’
‘But terribly flattering for me, Will. No one has ever fallen in love with me at first sight.’
‘Does Paul love you?’
She took a moment to reply.
‘Now that really is an impertinent question.’
‘Is there a pertinent answer?’
‘I’m not a romantic person, Will. Does Paul love me? He’s never said so, and he can’t therefore be accused of lying to me, or misleading me. No, I don’t think he loves me. He likes me well enough. The thing is, Will, I love him, and love makes me selfish enough to claim him, whatever his motives in settling for me. I suppose that sounds dreadful, like I have a low opinion of myself. On the contrary, I have a high opinion of myself — high enough to believe that when we’re married his philandering will stop — oh yes, I know about all that — and
I don’t mean that the love of a good woman will turn dross into gold. It won’t be love that makes Paul faithful; it’ll be money. I have it; he needs it.’
‘You’re willing to buy his love?’ I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice.
‘No, Will, I’m not buying his love. I’m buying the means to express and enjoy mine.’
Her words made me feel a sickening surge of despair, and I thought that if I didn’t leave immediately I would retch, or burst into unstoppable, humiliating tears. I made a hurried apology, and bundled into it an expression of the hope that she wouldn’t repeat anything I’d said to Clutterbuck, and left the house.
My feelings about the encounter with Nigella were mixed. My desire for her was undiminished, although she was tougher and more calculating than I’d supposed. On the surface it seemed that Clutterbuck could need protection from Nigella, rather than the reverse. I was glad that I’d declared myself, and as I walked down Royal Parade, with no destination in mind, I thought that I’d acquitted myself rather well. I hadn’t revealed any of the information given to me by James Fowler, and I felt confident that I needn’t be shy about reaffirming my feelings at subsequent meetings with Nigella. She might rebuff me, but she would be neither shocked nor offended. Indeed, given her own approach to these matters, she would understand, perhaps even admire my determination to succeed with her. I couldn’t buy her love; but I could perhaps overwhelm her with mine. The idea of giving free rein to my feelings actually made me whistle, even if it was, inexplicably, bars from There’ll Always Be An England.
With several hours in hand before I was to meet James Fowler, I decided to attempt to track down George Beech. The light of day made this seem a little less frightening. I remembered that Mr Wilks, the drawing master, had offered me work at the National Gallery Art School, and with no better plan to hand, I headed towards the National Gallery in Swanston Street. If Mr Wilks was there he might be able to shed some light on the Beech marriage, even though he’d claimed to know nothing of substance about either Gretel or George. Careful questioning might reveal something that he didn’t know he knew — a piece of conversation, an off-hand remark — something. Experience had taught me that the truth can sometimes lurk behind the most inconsequential comment or gesture.