The Marvellous Boy (7 page)

As I approached the Chattertons' gates a small car swung out onto the road, moving fast. The car looked Japanese, the driver looked big, that was all I got. I drove up the path that led to the house and got out. A second later I was pressed back against the door with the flesh creeping all over me: a big yellow dog was growling impressively and showing me his white teeth about two inches from my kneecap. Then a voice came from the porch.

“Rusty! Down Rusty!”

Rusty! Carl or Fang surely, but down was where I wanted him.

“Call him, Miss Reid, he makes me nervous.”

She did. The dog went up to her like a poodle; she spoke and it went off into the shadows beside the house.

I went up the steps. “Good protection.”

“Yes, it's necessary. There are many valuable things in the house.”

“Get many night-time visitors?”

She hesitated a split second. “No.”

We went into the house and through the passages to the room I'd seen that morning. She handed me the keys to the filing cabinet.

“I trust you won't disturb anything.”

I looked her over. The tone was still severe, she was one of those people in the habit of saying cautionary things, usually because they've been spoken to themselves in that way often. But she was more obliging, or trying to be. I couldn't smell any gin and her hair was in military order, but she exuded that glow people usually have after some sort of satisfying experience.

“I was having some coffee to help me stay awake, would you care for some?”

“Thank you, yes, black please.”

She nodded, almost approvingly, and went away. I opened one of the cabinets and started working through the files. They weren't well kept—more than one person had done the job over the years and it showed in the arrangement. There were business records and papers relating to the management of earlier houses than this one. Bills paid and receipted went back forty years, so did shopping lists and bank statements. At the bottom of the second cabinet I found a folder which contained information on staff prewar. The turnover in maids, cooks, and gardeners was steady.

Miss Reid came back with the coffee and perched on the edge of the desk. It was an unusual posture for her, almost jaunty. Albie would have been surprised. I kept my finger in the file while I drank the coffee and then went back to it. Miss Reid watched me. I found it among the last few sheets. “CALLAGHAN, GERTRUDE” was printed in neat capitals and a date, “8/5/33.” This was when she'd come to work for the Chattertons as Bettina's nurse, nanny or whatever. Two hand-written references were pinned to the sheet. One was from the matron of a country hospital testifying to Callaghan's qualifications and competence; the other was from a doctor and expressed unqualified praise for her trustworthiness and abilities with children. Dr. Alexander Osborn had a practice in Blackman's Bay. I made notes from these testimonials and from the woman's letter of application. Gertrude Callaghan was a spinster, born in Liverpool, England, in 1905. She left the Chattertons in June 1946—her forwarding address was 11 Yancey Street, Blackman's Bay.

I straightened up. Miss Reid was still sitting on the desk. She was looking tired but content.

“Finished?” she said. She let go a small, polite, well-covered yawn.

“Nearly. I need the library.”

The old aggression flooded out. “You can't go there. Lady Catherine is working on the memoirs in there, nothing must be disturbed.”

“I won't disturb anything. I have to look at a medical register. The Judge must have had it. I have it myself at home but I can't go there.”

“Why not?”

She came off the desk and moved towards the door; I herded her on and she opened it.

“It'll sound melodramatic, Miss Reid,” I whispered, “but if I go home the police might be there and if they are they'll arrest me.”

She was moving, keeping me at a distance. “What for?”

“Murder. One I didn't do.”

“Who did?” she gasped. “I didn't . . . don't believe you.”

I didn't reply, just kept moving her along and we ended up at the library as I'd hoped. Miss Reid pushed open one of the high, heavily carved doors and fumbled for the light. When it came on it showed a big room with a high ceiling; two large windows were covered by heavy curtains. There was a long desk with papers laid out in neat bundles and some freshly sharpened pencils lined up.

Books dominated the room; there were thousands of them in cedar cases from floor to roof and there were two ladders on wheels ready to go. I thought of Henry Brain and his books in piles on the floor.

“Is this catalogued?” I asked.

“Yes.” She pointed to a wooden cabinet in one corner. I went over and thumbed through the cards. The medical directory was listed and numbered. I read the numbers on
the shelves and climbed the ladder. The Judge had six copies going back as far as 1930, the most recent was 1975.

Dr. Alexander Osborn was listed: born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1899, educated in the same city; medical training interrupted by two years in the army; served in France and Africa, rank of Captain. Osborn was a P & O ships' doctor in the twenties and settled in Australia in 1929. Since 1939 he had had a practice in Blackman's Bay. If he was still there what he wouldn't know about the place wouldn't be knowable. I noted the address and put the directories back.

“All ship-shape,” I said to Miss Reid.

“You look pleased with yourself.”

I was surprised and not pleased. “Do I? I shouldn't be, this is just the start. But I've started to earn your boss's money.”

“I suppose that means something,” she said acidly. “I wonder if I could go to bed now?”

I could have said something smart but didn't. I don't always. I wasn't sure how to handle her. She probably didn't know what I'd been hired to do, but there was her park assignation to consider and the half-lie I'd caught her in that night.

It seemed like the right time to do some work on her. She moved to open the door but I took hold of her arm.

“Don't touch me,” she snapped.

“I'd like to know what you plan to do about Rusty.”

“Oh.” There was relief in the sound. “I'll call him.”

“Is that what you do when your boyfriend visits? I mean the big guy in the blue car, the one Lady Catherine forbids you to see.”

“I see who I like. Get out!” She was a sabre fighter, not a fencer; it was all beat-down-the guard and thump for her. I decided to play the same way.

“What's his game, Miss Reid? Is he a chauffeur, a footman, what?”

The slur got straight to her. “He's a property developer,” she spat. “He makes more in a day than you'd scratch in . . .”

She knew it was a mistake and she hated herself, the hand that came up to her mouth almost delivered a slap. I let go her arm and opened the door.

“Thank you Miss Reid,” I said. “Be sure to call the dog.”

I heard her do some heavy breathing that seemed to characterise her anger; she didn't call the dog and my flesh crept until I had my bum safely on the seat of the car.

I wanted a drink, a shower and a sleep. I had the drink, of Jameson's Irish whisky. I still wanted the shower and sleep. Instead I drove south and stopped at the first open coffee bar. I drank two cups of black coffee and looked at the posters of Greece on the walls. Greece, that'd be nice. I like ouzo and I could run off the fatty food along the beach. I could lie in the sun, find a girl and learn Greek in bed. I pulled myself back to the here and now. For a trail thirty years old and not fresh lately it wasn't so bad. But whoever had taken the photograph from Brain would be on the trail of the Callaghan woman too. If she was still alive. It was time for some night driving.

I paid for the coffee and thought again about a Greek island. Maybe I'd get a bonus if I found young Chatterton. I put my notebook and .38 in the glovebox of the car and locked it. My jacket went on the seat along with three rolled cigarettes and the half-empty bottle. I got petrol and oil and water for the Falcon and told it we were going south and that it'd have a few hills to climb.

Blackman's Bay is on the coast, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Sydney. It's at the mouth of a river and was once a whaling port. After that it kept on with deep sea fishing for export, local fishing and tourism. I'd been through the place a few times and liked the look of it. I remembered it as a good-looking little town with a long timber and iron bridge over the river. At a pub a mile or so upstream, I'd eaten some memorable oysters. Not a Greek island, but then I wasn't on holiday.

I drove down the Princes Highway and took the freeway that skirts Wollongong and Port Kembla. The steelworks were a glowing, flame-spurting delirium too close for comfort. I hadn't been out of the city in a long time, and south of the smoke and steel I began to feel some benefit from the drive and the sense of space around me. The Falcon coughed and protested on the hills. It was adapted to the harsh, stop and start grind of city driving. I nursed it. The air tasted cleaner by the mile and drunks on the road thinned out the further south I went. I'd smoked the cigarettes and now I took a careful pull on the bottle. The clean air blew into my face sharp and fresh and I felt good.

It was a clear night; the road slid down to the coast and
the stars went on forever out to sea. I hit the Blackman's Bay bridge sometime around 3.00 a.m. The planks rattled as I passed over them and I thought I could feel a slight swinging motion in the bridge. The main street was quiet; there were no all-night joints and most of the shops still used ordinary electric light which was switched off. A few neon tubes glowed prophetically in signs and windows. There was an extra service station and a shop or two, otherwise the town didn't seem to have changed much. I drove down to the park near the beach where there was a town map on a board the way there always is in these places.

I located Yancey Street and went back to the car. Call it intuition, call it experience, but I was confident that she still lived there. There was no reason she should but I had a feeling I was dealing with something frozen in time and space. The nurse would still be there and so would the doctor. I realised I'd forgotten to check the doctor's address and I went back to the board. A big wave lifted up and crashed on the beach and I could hear the bridge creaking in the light wind. I took a few steps onto the sand and looked out to sea. I could make out a few lights moving slowly a long way out. Off to the left a cliff dropped sharply down to the water. For no reason I thought of it as a jumping-off place for suicides. Suddenly I didn't want to disturb the old ghosts, didn't want to check on whether people still lived where they had once lived and knew about things that happened thirty years ago. I wanted a future, I didn't want to rake over a painful past. I wished I was on the ship and at sea. I shook the thought off and went back to the car.

The roads threaded up behind the town into the hills. I bore left at a crossroad; Yancey Street was an unpaved track with no town lighting. I crept down it trying to pick up its
features in the headlights. There were only a few houses as far as I could tell from gateposts and signboards and they were located well back from the track. Number eleven was identifiable by a sign painted on a handsome gum near a bend in the road. There were no houses opposite and it seemed to be flanked by vacant lots. There was a lot of pampas grass along the front boundary and no welcoming lights winking beyond it. If I'd been an old lady I wouldn't have felt secure there; I was a middle-aged man with a middle-sized gun and I still didn't feel secure.

I got the gun from the glove box and a torch and locked up the note book and the spare ammunition. The trunk of the gum tree was broad and pale and reassuring in the beam of the torch. I put the car keys on top of the offside front wheel and moved towards Nurse Callaghan's abode. It was no time to go calling on an old lady, but I could poke around, get the feel of the place. And some old ladies get up very early in the morning, especially in the country.

The light danced over the springy grass and picked up a straggling track where vehicles had brushed Nature aside. I started up the incline, flicking the light to each side and bringing it back to the rough drive. Away down the hill the sea moved convulsively. Up here the only thing moving was me. Everything thickened in front of me suddenly and I realised that the track had taken a turn. I rounded the bend and was pulled up by a shape looming in front of me. I swung the torch, got an impression of shape, a car, and colour, blue, and then the starry heavens fell in on me. Pain sketched a searing yellow and red diagram in front of my eyes, all zigzags and angles, and then it blacked out and so did I.

When I came out of it a salty seaside dew had settled on me. My clothes and hair were moist and my skin was tacky and
cold. It was still dark but the sky was lightening over what had to be the east. It all swam around when I lifted my head and I crunched dirt between aching teeth. Everything ached. I stretched out my hand and felt about in a wide arc. The torch was still there and still working. The car was gone. It had passed over me or around me—I was still in one piece. I pulled myself up and stood swaying, getting my bearings. I began to walk up towards the house which someone hadn't wanted me to visit—not before they'd left, anyhow. It couldn't be good. Daylight was seeping in, a couple of birds started up singing and I swore at them. My head hurt.

The house was a modest fibro-cement job that had been reasonably well looked after. A garden bed running across the front of it had had loving care. It was a showpiece of pruned rose bushes and other flowers that didn't get that way on their own.

The house was on three-foot brick pillars and I looked under at intervals as I skirted around. Nothing moved under the house and I couldn't hear anything moving inside. I went to the front door, knocked quietly and waited. Nothing. The door was locked. I went round to the back; a flywire screen had a tear in it near the door handle. I reached through and turned. I went into a small enclosed porch cluttered with gardening tools and fishing tackle. I went through a kitchen which was tidy and neat into a short passageway with two doors off it. The door on the left let into a sitting room; in the dawn light I could make out a fireplace, some easy chairs, a television set. There was a low table with a pile of plastic-jacketed library books on it.