A Child's Book of True Crime (27 page)
Read A Child's Book of True Crime Online
Authors: Chloe Hooper
“Did you see that?” My hand didn’t move.
“Of course.”
“A kangaroo, wonderful.”
“A wonderful pest. But I’m glad you liked it.”
There was a sign for the Grampians National Park, which was a few miles on, although we turned off down a corrugated dirt road, red gravel hitting the sides of the car. This land had been cleared for grazing. I could make out the gray stumps of felled trees, and those that remained looked vigilant. If I glanced away, then back, they seemed to shift on the horizon.
“Who’s that up there?” Determined to be a genial guest, I pointed to a bird waiting on a wire.
“A hawk of some kind,” he answered. “It’s the hunting time.”
“He’s picked a desolate position.”
“This is my land, actually.”
“Excuse me.”
“I didn’t take it personally.”
There came a low bluestone wall framing a driveway. A wooden sign hung here, marked in faded black cursive
WARROWILL
. We turned and the driveway stretched on, a road unto itself.
“So this is home?” I asked, bewildered.
Ahead of us was a stone building with a pitched roof, machinery strewn around it.
“No, that’s the old woolshed.” On the other side of the drive Alexander pointed to a windowless wooden cottage with a series of blank doors. “And there are the shearers’ quarters.”
The driveway became an avenue of poplars, their thick trunks sending up hundreds of leafless sticks. White cockatoos clung to these branches, and the air was filled with their dinning: a killing sound like nothing I’d heard before.
Alexander was driving slowly, reverentially. We turned a corner—there was a spread of lawn and then the house rose up from the bare treetops. The second story came into view: eight upstairs windows and each chimney intricate as a small mausoleum. As the car pulled onto a landscaped circle of gravel, there was the rest of the house. The physical fact of it struck me first: a grand Victorian mansion seemingly carved out of gray-black volcanic rock. The logistics of its construction seemed as complicated as that of a temple in a jungle. Erected in homage to the Old Country, to replicate a stately home, the house had all the period refinements one would expect—a columned vestibule, finials on the roof, classical molding around the windows—but it was also swathed in a cast-iron veranda to shelter the ground floor from summer heat. I wondered how much the whole place, land included, would be worth.
My instinct was to laugh: a juvenile reflex that often comes upon me when I am in trouble. Mansions require a special quality of awe. But I wanted to laugh at how jarring it was to find this one in the midst of all that was weather-blasted and dirty and hard, and yet I suspected my host would take this as a sign I was delighted by the grandeur, by his choosing this moment to unveil himself as a prince.
“Well, we’re here.” Alexander stared at the building with undisguised pride. “Welcome.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”
It was a cue to say something expansive about his house. Despite being paid to indulge him, though, I felt myself growing stingy with praise, and I climbed out of the car as if I were merely here to give a property valuation.
We were under a big sky, stars emerging. The garden beds and gravel were already covered in dew.
He took my case and led me to the vestibule.
The house had been built precisely so one would feel at its mercy. Following him up the stone steps, I told myself, Do not react. The front door was double regular size and trimmed in stained glass patterned with birds. To the right of the door’s eaves was a swallow’s nest; a ribbon of shit trailed down the gray wall. But next to it, in the glass, the jeweled birds perched on emerald boughs, garnet berries in their beaks, thinking, Maybe we won’t fly north after all.
Opening the door, ushering me into the refrigerated air, Alexander reached for a light switch.
My eyes adjusted and we were standing in a tiled entrance hall with an absurdly high ceiling and elaborate plaster, paint, and wallpaper—the full Victorian works.
Do
not react.
Straight ahead of us was a staircase. The stairs began broad enough for a procession, and at the landing split off dramatically and became thinner, steeper, curving up on either side to the next floor. Above the landing was an enormous arched window the height of the second floor and outlined in blue glass.
We looked at each other; if I’d wanted to, I might have set him at ease.
“Once I turn the heaters on this will warm up.” There was the slightest tremble now as Alexander spoke. He cleared his throat and looked around, checking all was in order. “Right.” His gaze settled back on me. “Let me show you to your room.” Picking up my case, he waited. “After you, Liese.”
The house’s first floor was not so finely decorated. One long corridor, closed doors on either side, it had the look of an institution, a sanatorium, perhaps, with bare walls and old carpet. He walked down to one end and pushed open a door to a pink room with a rosebud-quilted single bed and a suite of white furniture. I gave him a sly smile.
“Well,” he glanced at the bed, “I hope you’ll be comfortable here.”
At this familiar moment I expected him to move toward me, to start to touch me. But he stayed where he was.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked.
What was not happening between us had a presence of its own.
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“An electric blanket’s on the bed.”
I stared at him. “Thank you.”
“Turn it right up to three,” he said, hands on his hips, businesslike. “The bathroom’s across the hall if you want to freshen up.”
When he left, I stood for a moment staring at the closed door. There was nothing coded about the message of the room. All the white furniture was slightly undersize: the wardrobe built to accommodate a child’s party dresses, the chest of drawers, and the dressing table with matching fine-legged chair designed as if for a sprite. That queasy feeling children get in other people’s houses washed over me: time suddenly bending and flexing, to fill fragile hearts with the uncertainty of how it will pass.
I took the cash out of the envelope and stared at it. This was the most money I’d ever had in my hand. Counting it would show the gods how it held my interest, and so instead I started unpacking the clothes I’d brought for this weekend into the too-small drawers, hiding the envelope safely underneath.
Cold in the roots of my hair, I walked across the hallway. The bathroom was almost arrogantly unrenovated. My eye went to a heavily stained toilet bowl, and then the antique chain operating the thing. All of it was grimy, although there were signs that after long neglect someone had recently made an effort to clean. On a rusted rail hung two new white towels; little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion were lined up hotel-like by the sink. These gestures made the rest seem worse.
Leaning against the vanity, my head spinning, I tried to breathe deeply. One of the washbasin’s taps had a red enamel disk, the other a disk that read
COLD
. Icy water spurted from both. Splashing my face, I raised my eyes and caught myself shiver in the small mirror. Feeling like an intruder, I did not look quite right. I did not look worth the money.
CHLOE HOOPER was born in 1973 and was educated at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Columbia University, New York, where she studied on a Fulbright Fellowship.
SCRIBNER
Cover design by Alese Pickering
Cover photograph by Glen Erler/Photonica
Cover painting: John William Lewin/ The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images
Author photograph © Monty Coles
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Chloe Hooper
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003 Published simultaneously in Great Britain by Random House
SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.
Designed by Kyoko Watanabe
Text set in Adobe Caslon
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Scribner edition as follows:
Hooper, Chloe, date.
A child’s book of true crime : a novel / Chloe Hooper.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PR9619.4.H66 C47 2002
823'92—dc21
ISBN 0-7432-2512-0
0-7432-2513-9 (Pbk)
ISBN:13 9-781-4391-2591-5 (eBook)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: A Whimpering Echoed Underground
Chapter 2: Scouring Every Hidey-Hole!
Chapter 3: Kitty Spied the Stainless Steel Instruments
Chapter 4: “That Old Pussycat’s Seen It All”
Chapter 5: Missing is Such a Polite Word
Chapter 6: All the Old Concerns Flooded Back
Chapter 7: Improvising With Great Aplomb
Chapter 8: “And What Should I Laugh At?”
Chapter 9: The Bushland Gang were Watching Over Him