A Thing of Blood (27 page)

‘So the only person who has done anything even remotely similar in the way of setting Brian up, is Darlene,’ Clutterbuck said gently. ‘I wonder if this is a double blind. What if this Spangler Brisket was deliberately chosen to be nothing more than a convenient victim. What if there’s a third man, the real father of Darlene’s baby and the real object of her attention.’

‘Darlene bakes fruitcakes,’ I said. ‘Reading the recipe is as close as she’s ever come to literature. She wouldn’t have the nous to execute such a slippery plot.’

‘She mightn’t,’ he said, ‘but what about her partner?’

‘Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t,’ I said.

I could tell from the rigidity of Mother’s posture that Clutterbuck’s hypothesis had run through her like an electric charge. She’d just that morning opened the cutlery drawer and found four severed fingers and a thumb. This was bound to affect her sense of what was or wasn’t outlandish, and what Clutterbuck had said wasn’t outlandish at all — not to me, and not to Mother either.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ was all she said.

By the time Mother was settled in Clutterbuck’s house it was past midday. She’d contacted her solicitor, Peter Gilbert, so she knew that Brian’s interests were protected. She was surprisingly sanguine about his removal for questioning, as if the shock of the first time around couldn’t be repeated. It was also remarkable how rapidly she seemed to have assimilated the awful desecration of her house. She’d never been superstitious though, and had always insisted that the dead were just that — dead. The idea that they could annoy the living was primitive nonsense. She thought about religion in much the same way.

‘Churches,’ I remember her saying when I was quite young, ‘are places where people with no common sense gather to express their stupidity. It makes them feel better to know that there are lots of other people as silly as they are.’

Clutterbuck suggested that we join him and Nigella for lunch at a café in Collins Street, and he took the extravagant step of driving us there.

‘You have to eat,’ he said, ‘and it might take your mind off things.’

His Studebaker, unencumbered by the ugly charcoal burner attached to the back of so many vehicles, drew attention to itself by virtue of its sparkling duco, polished to a high sheen that made any car near it seem grubby and shabby. He parked out the front of the café and hurried round to open Mother’s door, as if she were a dowager empress. I’m afraid she’s prone to taking enormous delight in such old-world etiquette, and Clutterbuck’s manners were impeccable. A polite fanatic always says ‘excuse me’ before pulling the trigger.

When Nigella arrived she did so with her brother in tow. Clutterbuck made a good show of being pleased to see him, and James took a well-acted moment to recall that he’d met me at afternoon tea the week before. They were, of course, enthralled by Mother’s version of the morning’s discoveries. James Fowler listened with the air of a man hearing decent gossip, and Nigella uttered small gasps at appropriate junctures. I could tell that behind Fowler’s bland response a great deal of agitation was lurking.

When Mother told them about Clutterbuck’s theory, they both nodded and said that it was so clever it must be true. I was glad that I hadn’t told James about Brian’s being my eyes and ears among the Shining Knights. If he’d known this he might have leapt to an unfortunate conclusion about Brisket’s murder, and regretted trusting me with this sensitive task. He did catch my eye at one point, and I detected the slightest narrowing of the lids, indicating I think, no more than that he was pleased with the ease with which he and Clutterbuck were speaking. Clutterbuck was never guilty of an unguarded action, and his complete absence of suspicion as to James Fowler’s real position reassured me that Brian and I had been successful in establishing a usefully ambiguous relationship with him and his unsavoury Knights.

The meal was filthy, even for these straitened times. No one commented on this — the lamentable state of Melbourne’s kitchens now being an accepted part of daily life. The conversation became more general, with Clutterbuck asking Fowler if the natives under his jurisdiction were becoming restless, and Nigella complimenting Mother on her dress. My eyes strayed around the dim café and settled on a startling poster affixed to the wall opposite me. A top-hatted, big-toothed, short-sighted, Japanese gentleman sat in a rickshaw being pulled by an obviously decent, Australian man in striped shirt, suit and sensible hat. Behind them rose Flinders Street Station, its face marred by Japanese lettering above the clocks, and the Rising Sun fluttering from the dome. A tram trundled evocatively to one side. ‘A united, fighting mad Australia can never be enslaved!’ screamed the tag. ‘Beaufort bombers are the key to victory!’

‘Did someone in your department come up with that?’ I asked Nigella.

She turned to look at it and couldn’t contain a charming chuckle.

‘It’s good, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘in a hideous kind of way.’

The poster seemed to give Mother something of a fright, and she closed her hand over Nigella’s arm and asked, ‘You don’t really think they’ll come to Melbourne, do you?’

‘I’d like to say no, Mrs Power, but we’ve spent most of the war underestimating them, to our cost. Anything is possible.’

This wasn’t a comforting answer, but I could see that Mother appreciated Nigella’s frankness. I knew that she’d embrace her as a daughter-in-law without hesitation. Nigella’s intelligence was self-evident, and she lacked Darlene’s bovine complacency. My marrying Nigella was hardly a foregone conclusion, of course, and even though I knew that Clutterbuck’s exposure as a member of a vicious circle of misfits would be accomplished soon enough, Nigella’s insistently proprietorial attitude to him was discouraging. She touched him again and again, and drank from his water glass. No one watching would have doubted that intimacy of some kind existed between them.

‘Oh, Will,’ Nigella said suddenly, ‘I’ve got a small acting job for you, if you’re interested.’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ I said unthinkingly. There are some things I’m not prepared to do, especially if they stray too far from the notion that acting is an art.

‘We’re filming one of our information shorts tomorrow afternoon, and we’re looking for someone to play the sort of male lead. It’s really quite straightforward and the pay is good.’

Nigella briefly outlined what passed for the plot of this short film. When all was said and done I was to play an air force chap who gets on to a tram and is very pleased to be confronted by a female trammie. I had no dialogue, but Nigella said that she thought she had enough influence to get the narration job for me.

‘Jack Davey doesn’t have to do them all,’ she said, referring to the ubiquity of Davey’s voice on propaganda reels.

I was actually pleased to accept the job, not only because I quite liked the idea of hearing my voice intoning jolly, morale-boosting pap from the cinema screen — or, if more narration came my way, dire warnings of impending invasion — but because the work would almost certainly bring me closer to Nigella.

‘So what do I need to do?’

‘I’ll give you the script after lunch, and we’ll meet tomorrow at Henry Buck’s in Swanston Street. They’ve agreed to fit out our man with an air force uniform. It’s much more photogenic than the army uniform, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed. Do you want me there early?’

‘No, we’re not filming until after lunch, which is convenient for me. I’ve got my drawing class at ten.’

When she said this my stomach lurched and my heart sank. Was tomorrow Thursday already? I’d promised Mr Wilks that I’d pose for him, and when I’d made that promise Thursday had seemed an age away. I couldn’t let him down, having no desire to antagonise anyone even remotely connected with Gretel Beech. Even though I have an actor’s indifference to personal modesty, the prospect of standing exposed and examined before the object of my as yet unreciprocated affection was not one I could face with anything approaching equanimity. I wouldn’t have minded if we were already lovers — the gaze of the matrons who were her drawing class mates was of no consequence to me — but as things stood I felt at a considerable disadvantage. The element of surprise was all on her side.

A solution presented itself when I heard Clutterbuck comfort Mother with an unfounded reassurance that he was certain that Brian would be released from custody before nightfall. Brian. Brian could take my place in Mr Wilks’s class. I’d have to explain to him that you couldn’t expect to work for Army Intelligence and not be required to do some odd things. Look at Mata Hari and what she’d been willing to do. At least he wasn’t being asked to sleep with any of the matrons. I thought that he’d take some persuading and possibly a hefty amount of cash. If he refused I’d be in a bind, so I’d have to proceed on the principle that whatever his state of mind after his interrogation, refusal was not an option. My determination had to secure his acquiescence.

After lunch we all walked to Nigella’s office, which was little more than a flimsy, temporary structure in the grounds behind Parliament House. It seemed peculiar to me that neither James nor Nigella, both of whom were doing what I thought was important work, had decent space in which to do that work. I suppose all the ritzy offices were the demesne of pompous, career public servants who didn’t do anything, but who had come to expect that they’d have elegant rooms in which not to do it. I fell back on our way up to Nigella’s office and managed to say a few words to James Fowler.

‘I hope you don’t think all this business with my brother compromises my intelligence work.’

‘Not at all. Your mother and Clutterbuck seem to get along very well.’

‘Mother doesn’t share his views,’ I hastened to assure him. ‘She only met him this morning and he’s gone out of his way to charm her socks off.’

‘That’s good, Will. It might be a way of showing you some loyalty, of letting you know that he trusts you.’

This was a reasonable supposition for Fowler to make, but I knew it was wide of the mark. If Clutterbuck was showing loyalty to anyone, it was to Brian.

Back at Clutterbuck’s, Mother composed her daily letter to Fulton.

‘You’ll have plenty to write about today,’ I said.

‘Oh no. When I write to Fulton I’m like a one woman propaganda ministry. I won’t have him worrying about us. He can be cross with me for keeping things from him later.’

We had the house to ourselves. Clutterbuck had dropped us at the door and continued elsewhere, up to Oakpate’s house in Brunswick probably, where their plan to assassinate Archbishop Mannix was taking shape.

Mother retired for an afternoon nap and I lay on my bed and read the script Nigella had given me. She’d warned me that it was set in concrete, that it had been approved and that not a word would now be changed. I read:
Women tram conductors have replaced trammies, and are the citizens glad of it! Smart and trim, they’re a credit to their city which expects to heavily increase its tram traffic immediately! Tram travelling now has ooomph!

At this point the script called for a shot of an air force man waiting at a tram stop. He boards.
He’s up in the air about it. They don’t say mind the curves any more, but you’d better just the same!

Drivel; pure, unmitigated drivel, which I was to deliver with all the faux cheeriness I could muster. Still, I’d bring what I could to the part of the air force officer, putting in a bit of business — perhaps even suggesting something of the doomed airman as counterpoint to the vulgar narration.

Nigella had slipped in another job for me, and a note: ‘We need you to record this at the same time as the other one. It won’t take any time at all, and you’ll be paid separately for it, of course.’

This propaganda gem featured women painting army vehicles, and as they smilingly daubed the chassis I was to intone:
Their knowledge of camouflage — a woman’s secret weapon — is useful in this sort of work. It’s grease instead of hand lotion, lubricant instead of lipstick, for these ladies of little leisure.

It wasn’t exactly ‘Once more unto the breech’, and I knew that whatever dignity I could impart to it would be undercut by the ludicrous, rollicking music that invariably accompanied these shorts. The only satisfaction to be derived from the job was financial, and I’d use the money to pay Brian to take his clothes off for Mr Wilks’ ladies.

Brian was set free late that Wednesday afternoon. He came, as arranged, to Clutterbuck’s house accompanied by Mother’s solicitor, Peter Gilbert. Brian didn’t look haggard or drawn. He said that the police had been quite pleasant, that they genuinely believed that Spangler Brisket had been carved up elsewhere and delivered piecemeal to Garton Street — a cursory examination of the body had convinced the police pathologist that it had done most of its bleeding at a different location. He told us that there’d been an American military policeman present during the interview, and while he’d seemed more hostile than Strachan or Radcliff, he’d accepted their general assessment of the situation. It was their belief that the manner of Captain Brisket’s death pointed to someone with a long held antipathy towards him — a rage against him that had built and built over an extended period of time. This meant that whoever killed him, also knew something about his private life. Brisket’s friends and associates at Camp Murphy — the American army camp set up at Melbourne Cricket Ground — were also being investigated.

Brian’s position, as the offended husband of the woman Brisket had taken up with, naturally provided a ready-made suspect. I was waiting for Mother to postulate Clutterbuck’s theory about Darlene’s possible involvement, but she was silent on this point, I think because she believed that despite all that Darlene had done, and despite Brian’s recent, obscene description of her, he wasn’t yet ready to hear her characterised as a cold-blooded killer, or killer’s accomplice. I certainly wasn’t going to provoke him by mentioning the theory, not when I had to convince him to model the next morning.