The Marvellous Boy (11 page)

At eight o'clock I was wearing a freshened up shirt and a clean face and was ready to go calling. I got directions to Red Oak Road from the motel office and negotiated the
circles and crescents they have in those parts to take the cockiness out of strangers. The neighbourhood looked like Professor and fat-cat territory; the gardens were wide and deep in front and the houses featured a lot of timber and glass and weren't short on stone walls and terraces. The Baudin place didn't let the street down. It had half an acre of garden out front and the trees seemed to have been specially chosen for their cumulative effect of taste and order. I could see a big garage at the end of the drive which held a brace of European cars. A few more of the same were standing out in the street.

I parked and went through the open gates towards the house. It was a well set-up affair in white brick with ivy or something growing on it. Splashing and the strains of jollity from behind the house took my attention and I kept on the drive towards the back. A gate in a white trellis fence gave on to a flag-stoned patio with a low wall around it. Beyond the wall was a swimming pool and a lot of smooth lawn. There was still some light and enough warmth in the air for fun, fun, fun; water splashed up from the pool and glittered like quicksilver. There were about ten people in the pool and three times that many out of it. The dry people were wearing casual clothes and drinking drinks. The sexes seemed to be about equally represented. I took a few steps across the patio and a big man in a dark suit came quickly out of the house and barred my way.

“Private party, sir,” he said quietly.

“This is the Baudin residence?”

“A private party,” he repeated. “By invitation.”

“The night is young. I hope they enjoy it. I'm not here for a party, I want to see Mr. and Mrs. Baudin.”

“What's your business?”

I handed him a card. He read it and then looked me over
carefully; he was poker-faced but his eyes told me he was wondering how anyone could sink so low. I felt resentment.

“Who're you by the way—the caterer?”

“I'm Mr. Baudin's personal secretary.”

“And bouncer?”

“If necessary. There's been no call for it so far.”

If it was an invitation I was prepared to pass it up. He had a couple of inches and many pounds on me and none of it looked soft. He held himself well and he'd put the card out of sight so fast I hadn't followed the movement. His hands were free again.

“I don't want any trouble, just a minute or two with the host and I'll be on my way—I won't even dirty a glass.”

Our encounter must have looked intense because it had attracted the attention of some of the drinkers. A couple of them ambled across towards us. The secretary made a motion of his arm that suggested my dismissal, possibly by force, when one of the onlookers spoke up.

“Hey, Cliff Hardy, Cliff.” He lifted his glass. I recognised him as a reporter I'd known in Sydney. I'd heard he'd joined the staff of a cabinet minister. I raised my hand and my mind searched for his name. We shook hands.

“How's tricks Cliff?”

“All right.”

“Do you know Mr. . . . Hardy, Mr. Rose?”

Tom Rose.

“Yeah sure, from my Sydney days. Still enquiring privately Cliff?”

“Right. Still a fiercely independent voice?”

He laughed. Rose is a short, broad man and his laugh sounds like someone pounding on an oil drum. The laugh did for the secretary. I was in. He leaned forward and dropped a few discreet words between us.

“Mr. Baudin has been indisposed. I'll take your card in and mention that you are acquainted with Mr. Rose. He might see you.”

“Thanks Jeeves,” I said. He went off athletically into the house and I turned my attention to Rose. “You carry a little weight in this town, Tom?”

“Just a little. Come and have a drink. Look, Cliff, I'd like you to meet Richard . . .” He swung around to where his companion had been but the man had drifted away. “Shit, he's gone. Never mind, come and have a drink, there's gallons of it—the best.” His voice was a bit sloppy. It wasn't his fault there were still gallons. I fell in beside him as he moved towards the throng.

“Who's this Baudin anyway?”

He almost did a skip. “Captain of industry, mate, captain of industry. Least that's what he is now. He was a public servant once, just like me.”

“What was it? Land, rate of the dollar?”

“I wouldn't like to say Cliff. He's big in mining now. Here we are, what'll you have?”

We'd reached a trestle table covered with bottles, ice buckets, siphons, and chopped-up lemons.

“Gin and tonic,” I said.

A thin blonde in a pink pantsuit detached herself from a clutch of drinkers by the pool and came over to the table.

“Let me do your bidding,” she said throatily.” ‘Lo Tom. And who do
you
write for?” She got busy with the Gordons Dry gin and the Schweppes tonic and ice as if she knew what she was doing.

“
The New York Times”
I said.

“Stringer or staff? Do introduce us, Tom.”

Rose sighed. “Cliff Hardy, Billie Harris.”

She smiled and handed me the drink. One of her front
teeth was a little yellow but the drink was blue and cold as a good gin and tonic must be. “You don't sound American, Cliff, spent much time there?” Her hands were busy building another drink but her glittering eyes never left me. “Are you on politics with the NYT, features?” She started to move out and around the table towards me.

“I'm sort of freelance,” I said desperately.

Someone large fell or was pushed into the pool. The displaced water flew up, women shrieked, men swore and Billie Harris turned to look. I moved fast to the right, lurked for a few minutes, and came out on a landscaped higher level. Tom Rose was pouring beer into a schooner glass from a king-sized can.

“Still got your pants on, Cliff,” he crowed, “what's wrong with you?”

“Get stuffed, I'm working. Tell me more about the Baudins. What about the wife?”

“No wife, she died a few years back.” He drank some beer and dropped the question in casually. “What's your interest, Cliff?”

My throat felt dry as I formed the question in my mind; I eased the feeling with gin. “What about the son, he around?”

“Baudin has two sons I think, depends which one you mean. Come on Cliff, what's it about?”

The professional tone in his voice warned me to cover up. Rose was still a journalist, still a news-monger even if he was now a politician's errand boy. The last thing Lady C. would have wanted was for everyone to be reading about her long-lost grandson before she'd met him herself.

“Baudin's just a small part of something else, Tom,” I said. “How's your job here working out?”

He told me at some length. I hated to hear it; it was all
excuses, excuses for changing a real but uncomfortable job for an unreal one. I only half-listened and kept an eye out for Billie Harris and the secretary. I finished my drink. Rose had got through the beer and he went off for refills. I wandered down towards the pool in which there were now only two people—a man and a woman treading water and talking conspiratorially down at the deep end. The party had moved off towards a section of the lawn where a couple of portable barbecues were going full-blast. I stared down at the pool; in the fading light the water looked like slowly rippling green ink. I turned around to look for Jeeves and bumped into a woman who'd appeared behind me. I apologised and had to look her straight in the eye to do it; she was nearly as tall as me and held her head up. She looked arrogant.

“It's all right,” she said. “I should have coughed or something. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“I haven't seen you at one of these do's before for one thing and you were with Rose for another.”

“Is that interesting?”

“It could be. I watch his minister.”

“So you're a journo. What do you know about this Baudin character?”

She smiled and the arrogance fell away. “Me first—got any dirt?”

“Tons, but not on Tom's master—sorry.”

“Oh well, worth a try.” She leaned closer. “You've got a hard look to you now I come to notice. Are you a cop?”

“No, private detective.”

The smile again. I was starting to like her. “But you're not sniffing around Crowley?”

“If that's Tom's boss, no. Why not pump Tom a bit?”

“He's pissed,” she said. “He's over there with a whole box of cans.” She pointed towards the shadows. I tried to steer her over to the drinks table without doing anything as obvious as taking her arm or dragging her by the hair. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a red tie around the neck like a sailor's. She had dark, short hair and long, slim legs ending in white, high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were dark and slightly slanted in a wide, high cheek-boned face. We reached the table and she asked for scotch and ice. I made it and put two drops of gin into a glass of tonic.

I gave her the drink. “Cliff Hardy,” I said. “Who're you?”

“Kay Fletcher. What brings you here, I suppose you're from Sydney?”

There was a wistfulness in her voice that gained her another hundred or so points with me.

“Sydney, right. What's the party for?”

“Oh it's all about some deal he's pulled off, a mine of some kind I think. The government's put up some money, that's why the politicos are here.”

“And the likes of you and Rose.”

“I had nothing better to do.”

“That's hard to believe.”

“Thanks, but it's true. I went through all the possible men in this place in the first year, I don't feel like starting on the rest.”

It wasn't an invitation and it wasn't a put-down. I judged that she was ready to be interested in me if I could be interesting—fair enough. I was on a job, though, and despite myself I looked up to the house for the secretary. I saw him out by the wall looking over the guests who were gathered around the burning meat.

“Look Kay, I'm on a job.” I pointed out the big dark
man. “I have to see him and talk to Baudin, it shouldn't take long. Will you be around?”

She looked at her watch, a big one made for telling the time. “I'll give you an hour,” she said, “maybe a bit more.”

I touched her arm, which made me want to do more touching, and went up to the house. The secretary loomed up over me like a medieval knight surveying invaders from his castle wall.

“Mr. Baudin will see you.”

I vaulted over the wall, showing off for the girl, and was sorry immediately. The knight seemed not to notice and strode off across the flagstones to the house. As I went in through the French windows it occurred to me that it was strange for Baudin to be still living in the same place thirty years later, given that he'd come up so far in the world. Not that it wasn't a pretty fair shack; the carpet was thick and the paintings on the walls weren't prints. The secretary showed me into a smallish room that had a bar against one wall and some books opposite. There were four big, velvet-covered armchairs. There were two men in the chairs. One was small and wizened with wispy grey hair around his bald skull. The top of his head was baby pink, incongruous beside the ancient, lined flesh on his face. He was wearing a cream shirt, cream trousers and white shoes, like the Wimbledon heroes of long ago. The other man had on a lightweight suit with the jacket open to show his soft, spreading belly. His face was pale and puffy He was thirtyish.

Sir Galahad said my name softly and went away. The old man had my card in one hand. In the other was a glass with liquid in it the colour of very weak tea—at a guess it was the weakest of whisky and water.

“Good evening, Mr. Hardy.” He lifted the card a millimetre into the air as if it weighed a ton. “I am Nicholas Baudin. May I ask what you wish to see me about?” His voice was faint and fell away on the word endings.

Before I could answer the other man put in his oar.

“Don't be foolish Father, what could you possibly have to say to someone like this?” There was a sneer in his voice but some apprehension also; he leaned over and peered at the card. “A private detective who knows Rose and that slut Kay Fletcher. This is obviously some kind of newspaper muck-raking.”

“This is my son, Keir,” Baudin said. “This is his house.”

“It used to be yours,” I said for no reason.

Keir took another drink. “Researching the family Hardy? Won't do you any good. There are no skeletons in our cupboard.”

The skin on the old man's face tightened, his hand shook as he took a sip but he didn't say anything. I was feeling out
of my depth; here were two people very much on edge and all I'd done was present my card.

“My father is ill as you can probably see—he musn't be upset.”

There wasn't a lot of conviction in his voice and still some provocation. It crossed my mind that he wouldn't worry if Dad did get a bit upset. I decided I didn't like Keir. I addressed myself to the old man.

“I'll try not to upset you, Mr. Baudin. I'm making enquiries about your adopted son but there's nothing sinister in it.”

“Warwick!” Keir almost shouted the word and I could feel his apprehension and aggression go up a hundred points.

I said “My client . . .” and stopped. The pace had been too hot for me to think out in advance how to approach this moment. And I hadn't expected it to come up so soon. How do you pry your way into the secret vault of adoption? Except that this wasn't an ordinary adoption. That gave me some leverage. Keir's obvious disaffection could be useful too, if I could play it right.

“We're waiting, Hardy,” Keir purred. “Your client . . .”

“I can't give you the name of course,” I said, knowing how lame it sounded, “but my client believes that your adopted son is properly part of her family. She wants to establish the connection; she's old, it's important to her.”