The Serpent's Sting (16 page)

‘You don't look murderous to me, Will, but it is extraordinary how in recent months people have been queuing up to accuse you of murder. What is it about you, do you suppose, that makes you such an ideal suspect?'

‘You should never underestimate the stupidity of other people, Brian.'

It was just after 6.00 p.m. when I reached the boarding house in Fitzgibbon Street. I stood on the opposite side of the road, and tried to look inconspicuous. The twitch of the curtains revealed that I'd failed, and I realised that coming to Geraldine's house had been a mistake. Mrs Ferrell would report to the police that I'd been hanging around, that I'd returned yet again to the scene of the crime like a dog returns to its vomit. I'd have to curtail this, and the best approach seemed to be to confront her head-on — a risky strategy, but the situation demanded it.

I crossed the street and knocked on the front door. In retrospect, I ought to have realised that Mrs Ferrell would be unlikely to open the door to a man she suspected of being a murderer. I felt, though, that I simply couldn't leave without speaking with her. Again in retrospect, my decision to enter the house from the rear, as I'd done previously, was an error of judgement. In my defence, I believed that if I had the chance to speak to Mrs Ferrell I could charm her into revealing all she knew about Geraldine. If she would just talk to me, she would know immediately that I was the last person on earth who'd want to harm Geraldine, or anybody.

The back door of the house was unlocked. I found this oddly reassuring. If Mrs Ferrell genuinely believed that one of her tenants had been the victim of foul play, surely this door would have been locked and barred? Perhaps I'd been wrong about Mrs Ferrell. Perhaps, in fact, she knew perfectly well that I'd had nothing to do with Geraldine's disappearance, because she, Mrs Ferrell, knew where Geraldine was. In order to avoid any sense that I was creeping about illicitly, I called out Mrs Ferrell's name as soon as I entered the house.

‘Mrs Ferrell!'

The name echoed through the building, and as it rang out in the silence, it sounded rather alarming, which wasn't the effect I was after at all. I moved quickly to the door of the room at the front of the house. The twitching curtains were in this room, so I knew that Mrs Ferrell was lurking within. I knocked, and called her name more gently. There was no reply, and no sound from the other side of the door. I tried the handle, and that was when the shrieking began. High-pitched and terrifyingly shrill, it was the raw expression of hysterical fear. I took my hand off the doorknob, hoping that the keening would stop. A door opened upstairs, and a young woman rushed down. She stopped suddenly at the bottom, and seemed only then to notice me. She began screaming in hideous sympathy with Mrs Ferrell. The sound of two women screaming induces a kind of contagious panic, and I felt my legs going weak. I held up my hands in a defensive gesture.

‘Please,' I said, ‘please stop screaming.'

I took a step towards her. Her screams rose half an octave. I could see no way out of this. Neither woman was going to be soothed by my voice. The only solution was to retreat. I grabbed at the knob on the front door and pulled. It was locked, which I ought to have remembered, but under such circumstances, details like this tend to get lost. I turned the key, undid the latch, yanked open the door, and fled into Fitzgibbon Street. Several people had come out of their houses in response to the screaming women, and they watched as I hurried away. There was now a chorus of witnesses to attest to my unwanted, uninvited entry into Geraldine's house.

Shaken, I headed for Camp Pell. This was a large section of Royal Park that had been converted into an army base. The Americans had been granted a section of it for their troops. It was close to the zoo, and I'd heard more than one soldier say that the deep yawp of the lions at night was disconcerting. On a still night, we could hear them in Princes Hill. When I was a boy, that strange
basso profundo
often made my dreams go awry.

I'd never been to Camp Pell. I'd imagined that it was just a great aggregation of tents that anyone might walk among. There were tents all right, and lots of them, but there were many more substantial buildings, too. This was a small town, with a perimeter fence designed to keep soldiers in and civilians out. I found the main entrance, which was busy with soldiers returning from leave and those with evening passes on their way out. No one went in or out without presenting a pass to one of the MPs on the gate. In the gathering gloaming I saw several women — prostitutes, I surmised — standing provocatively opposite the entrance. I was shocked at their brazenness, and surprised that they hadn't been moved on. Perhaps they didn't need to be moved on, given the speed with which soldiers attached themselves to even the least appealing of them. They were there, and then they weren't there. I'd been fortunate to catch them at the beginning of the night shift. I wondered briefly if this might be a way of using Brian in his alter ego.

I began to hum ‘Lili Marlene'. It was Vera Lynn's voice I heard in my head, not Marlene Dietrich's.

With no idea how to penetrate this vast establishment, I thought it best to leave the negotiating for entry to Brian. He'd be able to use the Intelligence connections he denied having to track down our brave, young marines. I walked back to Mother's house, girding my loins for the inevitable, awkward visit from Radcliff and Strachan.

The house was empty. Mother was at Drummond Street, and Brian was out people-watching with Cloris. I'd never felt uneasy about being on my own in Mother's house. It was a large house, with stairs that ascended to darkness, but even as a child I'd never imagined that anything wild and inhuman lurked in the shadows. Upstairs were bedrooms, Mother's study, and the bathroom. Perhaps I had a poor imagination. These rooms had always seemed too dull and benign to harbour a golem, goblin, or ghost.

I made myself a cup of tea and took it to the front room, where I'd wait for the police. I'd have to discipline my disdain if I was to avoid being arrested. I couldn't countenance losing my position in
Mother Goose
. I'd never been this close to a real theatrical success before. Surely the fates wouldn't be so cruel as to snatch it from me. Why had I gone to the bloody Fitzgibbon Street house? It had been the action of a fool. Bound up with this folly was the knowledge that Geraldine had produced pornographic drawings of me. I hadn't allowed myself to think about this, and now it was profoundly disturbing to me.

My excoriating self-examination was interrupted by the sudden feeling that I'd left the gas on under the kettle. I went back to the kitchen, and as I passed the staircase I was stopped in my tracks by a stunning sensation that someone else was in the house with me. Was it an odour? Or a subtle shifting among the shadows on the landing? I'd stopped breathing, although I hadn't noticed until my body jerked in a breath. It was a hot night, but I felt chilled to the bone. There was someone at the top of the stairs, looking down at me, waiting.

‘Come into the light,' I said.

There was no response. In a show of courage I wasn't feeling, I put my foot on the bottom step.

‘I know you're there,' I said. ‘Why are you cowering in the shadows?'

I sensed, rather than saw, that the figure hesitated, like a diver uncertain about his leap. Having made up its mind, the figure stepped forward and began its descent. I moved off the bottom step, thinking I needed the advantage of the flat floor should this creature leap at me.

It didn't leap. It took the steps two at a time, and fell towards me so that I instinctively opened my arms and caught it.

‘Oh, Will,' it said, and with those simple words transformed from a monster into Geraldine.

‘Geraldine!'

‘Oh, Will. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Help me.'

Geraldine sat on my bed — my sad, single, boyhood bed. I was oddly embarrassed by the room's unmanliness. I'd taken her to my bedroom because I didn't want either Mother or Brian to come upon us in the front room. She was distressed, and having sat down, it took her a moment to collect herself. She seemed dazed and disoriented, and I recognised her distraction as the effect of some sort of drug. I'd had very little experience of drugs. I'd known an actor or two who used opium and cocaine, but I'd never taken either of these. They turned people either into excited bores or enervated bores. Geraldine looked at me and said, ‘Will?' with a rising terminal that suggested she was suddenly surprised to see me, despite having fallen into my arms just a few moments before. Her confusion intensified as if she'd used the last of her coherence to find me, and was now surrendering to the full force of whatever drug she'd taken. Her eyes became unfocussed; her head lolled forward, followed by her whole body. I caught her and arranged her on the bed into what I hoped was a comfortable position. She stared blindly at the ceiling.

‘Geraldine? Can you hear me?'

Her eyelids fluttered and closed. She seemed to be breathing regularly. I breathed in rhythm with her to reassure myself that she wasn't in danger of dying, that her respiration pattern was normal. I shook her gently. There was no response, and it was while I was pondering what to do that the insistent knocking on the front door began. I knew that the man behind the knuckles was either Radcliff or Strachan.

It was Strachan. I opened the door, and he stepped inside as if he owned the place. He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at me. I raised my hands in a pacifying gesture.

‘I should be home with my wife, Mr Power. You make way too much work for us, and I'd like you to stop.'

I was about to speak and didn't see the punch coming. Strachan drew back his arm, and I felt his fist connect with my eye. I lost my balance, and then any sense of where I was.

I must have hit my head when I fell to the floor. I can't have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, a minute at the most, and when I opened my eyes I felt one of them ballooning into what the Americans call a shiner. Thank God
The Listener-In
photographs had already been taken. I was dazed, and lay where I was for a couple more minutes. Strachan had let himself out, or I assumed he had. He wasn't there, at any rate. I pushed myself up on my elbows. I'd been knocked unconscious before, and knew that nausea often followed. I sat up, dreading the urge to be sick. It didn't eventuate, but I remained seated for another minute, waiting for everything to settle. This was how Brian found me when he opened the front door and entered the house.

‘Why are you sitting on the floor?' was his hopelessly banal question.