A Thing of Blood (30 page)

‘No time like the present, Paul.’

I could tell that the news had shocked him. His face became blank, in readiness, I think, for an upsurge of emotion. Whether Anna Capshaw was his ex-wife or not, clearly he was attached to her in some profound way. I couldn’t allow myself to feel any sympathy for him. If I stayed to watch him fill up with grief, it would blunt the edge of my detestation of him and of all that he stood for. I coldly left him to wrestle with his feelings alone.

Brian was waiting for me in Bayles Street. MacGregor had scuttled off to whatever rat’s nest he called home.

‘These are bad, bad people, Will.’

‘You did very well in there, Brian. You almost convinced me that you were crazy enough to assassinate someone.’

‘I was shitting myself, Will, absolutely shitting myself.’

As we walked I assured him that neither he nor Archbishop Mannix would be in any danger on Sunday, that the cathedral would be crawling with Army Intelligence personnel, and that the Order of the Shining Knights would be rounded up and charged with enough offences to put them away for a very long time.

‘That priest saw our faces you know,’ he said.

‘Yes I know, but I don’t see how it matters unless he sees us again, and I’ll be staying well away from St Carthage’s, I can tell you.’

‘Listen Will, I didn’t actually put the boot into him, not like the others.’

‘I know that. There wasn’t a thud.’

We were silent for a minute or so. With time to reflect on the attack on the young priest, one moment among all the frightful moments reared up and demanded to be spoken of.

‘I have to ask you this, Brian. What made you drop that match onto the priest’s clothes?’

He stopped and had to make an obvious effort to control his temper.

‘Do you really think, Will, that I’d be prepared to set someone on fire just to protect my cover and prove my loyalty to a group of lunatics? Do you really think I’m capable of that?’

‘Well,’ I said reasonably, ‘You did drop the match, Brian, and you did know that his clothes were wet with some highly inflammable liquid. It could have been petrol.’

‘You’re not a very good PI are you. I knew it wasn’t petrol. There was no smell, so I also guessed what it was, and any schoolboy will tell you that pure alcohol burns at a much lower heat than petrol. I also noticed that Clutterbuck was very careful to keep it off the bloke’s face and any exposed skin. I knew he was testing me, and I knew that he wouldn’t want a full scale murder investigation on his doorstep when he had much bigger plans.’

He paused for breath.

‘You know, Will, one thing about you, you never disappoint when it comes to disappointing.’

‘All right, Brian. You’re wound up, and no wonder, but I had to ask the question.’

‘That’s what’s so disappointing. You didn’t have to ask the question. You shouldn’t have asked the question.’

He was wrong, of course. It’s a PI’s job to ask questions, but I attempted to mollify him by apologising and pointing out that this was not the time to be arguing. We were in the middle of the most dreadful and dangerous situation of our lives, and we couldn’t afford to allow personal antipathies, many of them spawned in childhood, to interfere with our thinking. It was also essential that Brian not pull out of his commitment to model for Mr Wilks the next morning. Fortunately, as he explained when he’d calmed down, his experience in St Carthage’s had made him immovably determined to bring fifth columnists and their ilk to justice. If Lady Bailey was a Nazi spy, and Brian intended to find out whether she was (a statement that troubled me somewhat), he would unflinchingly condemn her to a traitor’s fate. I was troubled because all I wanted him to do was strike a few attitudes, not wrestle a patriotic, elderly and titled lady to the ground, especially if he was naked at the time.

I didn’t try to dissuade him from taking any inappropriate action because his current moodiness precluded his accepting such advice calmly. I supposed that there wasn’t much he could really do in the nude, although his admittedly clever handling of tonight’s crisis made me wary of underestimating him. He was capable of great courage, or maybe foolhardiness, with or without clothes. I’d have to trust that Lady Bailey’s positively über-banality would immediately convince him that I had, once again, made a mistake — a mistake he’d be more than happy to uncritically accept.

Mother was still awake when we reached Garton Street. She was on her hands and knees in the living room scrubbing at the spot where Spangler Brisket’s severed head had inconsiderately dripped blood.

‘This is the last of it,’ she said, ‘and the most stubborn. There was surprisingly little blood anywhere else, given how widely distributed he was. The umbrella stand was unpleasant, of course.’

She chatted to Brian about how very charming Paul Clutterbuck was, and she was pleased that I’d neglected to tell Brian about Clutterbuck’s theory regarding Darlene because it meant that she was now able to produce it with an unspoken ‘Ta da!’, like the surprise lurking on the last page of a whodunit. When Brian failed to express any excitement, she enlisted my support by saying that I fully endorsed the Clutterbuck version.

‘I know Darlene better than anyone — recent surprises notwithstanding — and I can’t see her taking time off from her Herbs for Victory commitments to have affairs with two men and oversee the killing of one of them.’

Where Brian saw a mermaid, I saw a dugong. Our widely differing views of Darlene meant that further speculation was a waste of time and I announced that as I had a film to shoot the next morning I would go up to bed. On the way up I ran into Peter Gilbert on his way down. I’d forgotten that he was going to spend the night. My natural inclination was to resent his presence. It wasn’t anything personal, unless you consider that the deliberately clandestine nature of his affair with my mother strays into the realm of the personal.

‘I’m glad that business in Maryborough sorted itself out for you,’ he said. ‘I was ready to go up there if necessary.’

I dismissed this as inconsequential small talk.

‘How long have you been having an affair with my mother?’

‘Four years.’ He thought for a moment.

‘Let me expand on that. When I say four years, I really mean twenty years. I was only having an affair for the four years that coincided with your father being alive. After his death, for the next sixteen years, we were involved in what is rightly called a relationship. We were, of course, discreet. Even so, it is astonishing that you never noticed — or perhaps not so astonishing after all.’

He said all this with the clipped confidence of the practised solicitor, as if he was laying before me the irrefutable evidence in an open and shut case. How I might feel about such a revelation was of no interest to him. In fact, I felt nothing in particular, except perhaps the slightly distressing realisation for a man my age, that my mother was a stranger. Not wishing to hear any more from him, I said, ‘Good night’, and went to my old room where I re-read Nigella’s dreadful script. I allowed myself to contemplate Peter Gilbert’s assertion that he and my mother had begun an adulterous liaison when I was barely twelve years old, and had continued it even through what ought to have been a period of decent mourning for a dead husband, in Mother’s case, and close friend in Gilbert’s. I fell asleep musing on the inconstancy of human emotion.

Thursday morning was grey and wet — one of those slate-coloured Melbourne days that make you feel like your spirit is being tamped down by a celestial thumb. At breakfast, which was just a cup of tea, Brian asked if there was any heating in Lady Bailey’s drawing room. I lied and said that, of course, there was; when, in truth, I had no idea. I’d been so surprised to find myself naked that the air temperature hadn’t registered. I do know that there’d been no alarming shrinkage in response to a sudden chill so it was safe to presume that the room was heated.

‘When I’m there, Will, what exactly should I be on the lookout for?’

‘Nothing in particular. She’s not going to give herself away by suddenly leaping to her feet and giving a Nazi salute. All I want you to do is see if you can find out the names of any of the other women. You might overhear one talking to another. This is low level surveillance, Brian. Even if you come away with nothing, it’s all right.’

I hoped that Brian would heed my words and not do anything embarrassing. If he could obtain a few pointless names at least he’d feel that he’d done something worthwhile.

‘How long have you known about Mother and Peter Gilbert?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Years.’

‘Years!’

‘It was pretty obvious, Will. They spent a lot of time together after Dad died.’

‘They spent a lot of time together before he died as well. Did you know about that?’

‘No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Dad was hardly ever home if you remember, and when he was he wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.’

I didn’t press Brian any further, conscious as I was that the conversation would inevitably decline into an accusation that my ignorance of Mother’s private life had more to do with my supposed self-absorption than with her and Gilbert’s subterfuge. With the greatest reluctance I had to inwardly acknowledge that there might be a grain of truth in this. It wasn’t, however, something that warranted being spoken out loud.

Both Brian and I left the house before Mother and her geriatric paramour came down from their lustful couch. My intention was to return to Clutterbuck’s house and take a deep, hot bath — a luxury that would be denied me after Clutterbuck’s apprehension. Brian headed off for Lady Bailey’s house in East Melbourne, convinced that he was embarking on a task of national importance, when in fact the only legacy of his morning’s work would be a few incompetent charcoal sketches of his slightly out-of-condition body.

Clutterbuck was having toast and coffee with the odious Mr Ronnie Oakpate. Of all the grotesques in the Order of the Shining Knights, Oakpate seemed to be the one for whom Clutterbuck had the most time. They were an odd pair; the dapper, handsome Clutterbuck—carefully shaved, perfumed and manicured—and the dwarfish, pug-ugly and frighteningly hirsute Oakpate. Their relationship had the exotic and creepy feel of an unnatural attachment between two different and hostile species. Watching them talk was like watching a chimpanzee vigorously mount an altar boy.

I said a polite good morning, although it was clear to all of us that there could be no normal social intercourse after last night’s extravagant festival of violence and humiliation, and went upstairs and drew a bath, adding a good slurp of an aromatic oil to the water. I wanted to look and smell my best for my meeting with Nigella. I closed my eyes and breathed in the sweet-scented steam. I rationalised my slight unease about not having contacted James Fowler by thinking that it would be better to hold off until I had more details. I was also nervous about his reaction to the attack on the young priest. Perhaps he’d think that I ought to have been able to prevent it. No. With his experience he’d know that going along with it was essential in consolidating my position with the Order. He still wasn’t aware that it was Brian’s position that had been consolidated. The deeper my brother and I had become embroiled with the Order of the Shining Knights the more impossible it became to tell Fowler the truth. I’d have to do it though, before Sunday, and in the calm and enervating warmth of the bath Saturday seemed soon enough.

Oakpate and Clutterbuck were in the hallway when I came downstairs. They both stared at me silently as I walked towards them, and in a strange drawing together they contrived to block my path so that I was obliged to ask if I might pass. They drew apart and provided a space sufficient to allow me to squeeze between them so that one breathed in my face and the other down my neck in a menacing way. Naturally my back was turned to Oakpate, not wishing to suffer the swampy exudation from his lungs. Clutterbuck’s breath was inoffensive and smelled only of coffee. He watched unblinkingly as I eased past, our eyes at the same level and only inches apart. This forced, physical contact between Oakpate, Clutterbuck and me felt contaminating in some profound and disturbing way. It was as if each of them had marked me with his scent in an aggressive display of ownership. If I’d had time, and a more extensive wardrobe, I’d have changed my clothes.

Out in Bayles Street I began walking towards Royal Parade, but stopped and changed direction when I realised I would pass quite near St Carthage’s. Running into a battered priest was not something I wanted to do.

I arrived at Henry Buck’s, gentlemen’s clothier, well ahead of Nigella. They were expecting me and had laid out an air force uniform in readiness. The shop assistant, a gruff, ungentlemanly type who breathed so raspingly that I thought he must have inhaled mustard gas for breakfast, said that madam had given him my measurements the day before. I was on the point of protesting how this could be so, but remembered that Nigella was well placed to know them.

The uniform fitted perfectly and confirmed what I’d always known — that blue suits me, not that the colour would be apparent on black and white film. In the half hour or so that I was in Henry Buck’s, there were only two other customers, and both of these were women. When I commented on this the shop assistant said rather forlornly that the bottom had fallen out of men’s tailoring, and that they only managed to return a small profit, mostly on the sale of ties and handkerchiefs, neither of which required coupons, and regulation kit accessories for all the services, including the Yanks. I regretted asking the question because I wasn’t interested in the least degree in Henry Buck’s sales figures. I’d only inquired to be polite, and the unnecessarily detailed reply breached the social contract which was understood by most to demand a brief, polite answer to a brief, polite question. He was just beginning to rail against a rival company called Davies Coop which had secured the contract to make service uniforms, when Nigella and a young woman who’d been designated her driver for the day, entered and rescued me. Nigella whistled and said that I looked the part. Her driver, rather a surly lump, twisted her mouth in a way that made her ugly, but conveyed no other readable response.