The Orchard Murders

by Robert Gott

  8

  ZACHARY WILSON’S MEMORY of what had happened at Fisher’s farm began to reform itself piecemeal, and it reached a point where it crashed in on him, fully realised in all its hideous detail. How could the police think that he was the perpetrator of these atrocities? His head ached terribly, so terribly that it made him nauseous and made sleep almost impossible. He’d been told that his wife was coming to see him that afternoon, and his initial reaction was to feel ashamed that she should see him like this, in prison. Of course she knew he was innocent. Of course she did. And yet there was a tiny seed of doubt. She’d lost faith in his common sense when he’d fallen victim to Fisher’s absurd claims. He could barely credit it himself now. Had the suggestion that he might be guilty, that he might have wreaked terrible vengeance on the man who’d exploited him, come from Meredith? What other explanation could there be for his incarceration?

  The pain in his head was fierce, but not so fierce as to obliterate his horror at his surroundings. His bleak cell, among the cells attached to the Magistrates’ Court, did not reflect the presumption of innocence accorded to prisoners on remand. The lavatory, with no lid or seat, was doubtless an extravagant improvement on the nineteenth-century facilities, but it was foul-smelling nonetheless, and the sounds that came from the cells around him excited in him an emotion he’d never before felt, even at the lowest points in his life — despair. He sat on the edge of his mean bed, aware suddenly that one of the sounds that echoed around him was coming from him. It began as a groan and declined into a guttering whimper. This was how the guard found him when he opened the door and announced the arrival of his visitor.

  ‘Your wife’s here, mate. You might want to clean yourself up a bit.’

  Zac felt in his pockets for a handkerchief to mop at his streaming eyes and nose. There was nothing there. With no other option, he lifted his shirt to dab at his face.

  When Meredith saw her husband, the first thing she did was give him a handkerchief. He cleared his nose and wiped his eyes. She’d known it was unworthy of her, but as she’d driven from Nunawading to Russell Street in the city, she’d been more concerned about the amount of fuel being consumed than about the welfare of her husband. She’d assumed that Zac would be uncomfortable, but that the discomfort would be temporary. She hadn’t been expecting to find him broken. She couldn’t contain the gasp that escaped her when he was brought into the room. He barely noticed her response. He felt dizzy and on the edge of fainting. He sat down opposite her, accepted the handkerchief, and began taking deep breaths. Meredith reached across the table and took his hand.

  ‘Zac, look at me.’

  He raised his distracted eyes, but was unable to speak.

  ‘I have a lawyer, Zac, and there are people, private people, not just the police, investigating this.’

  ‘The baby,’ he said. ‘They killed the baby. They killed the baby.’

  He began to sob, and the sobs escalated quickly until his body shook. Meredith, who’d never seen her husband weep, was disconcerted and appalled.

  ‘They think I did it. How? How could they think that? A baby? Why am I here? Meredith, you have to tell them. I didn’t do these things. I saw Fisher blow himself up.’

  Meredith leaned towards him and spoke sharply in the hope that her voice would cut through Zac’s hysteria.

  ‘You have to pull yourself together, Zac. Of course you’re innocent. You’re here because you were there, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m remembering things. Awful things.’

  ‘You have to tell the police.’

  ‘I can’t stay here, Meredith. I can’t stand it. It will kill me.’

  ‘It will not kill you, Zac. Axes kill people. Ropes kill people. Unpleasant prison cells do not.’

  Zachary was too distraught to be wounded by his wife’s seeming lack of sympathy. Meredith looked at the floundering man in front of her and found herself unable to be moved by his suffering. She felt that he was weak and that his behaviour was degrading. Of course he was weak. He’d been conned by Peter Fisher. She realised that he’d never won back her respect after that. Their lives had returned to a kind of normality — he farmed, she cooked and cleaned, they made love — but for Meredith, everything had a dulled, muffled quality about it. She didn’t want to be here in this room with him, and she couldn’t contain the impulse to get away. Without a word more, she stood up and left, leaving Zachary bewildered and the guard smirking.

  SUNDAY WAS A day of rest on Anthony Prescott’s property. That is to say, it was a rest day from working in the orchard and the fields. There was no respite from the demanding schedule of observances, prayers, and sermons in the Church of the First Born. Guy had been expecting a large crowd to arrive, but there were only two people from outside the property. Fuel shortages and the decreasing roadworthiness of many vehicles made this unsurprising. The visitors were a married couple, neither of whom spoke, but both of whom sat rapt by Prescott’s theatrical mix of thundering, hectoring, and cloyingly reassuring warmth. These were the tactics of the bully.

  The congregation sat with their heads bowed. One hour into the service, Prescott stopped. There was silence for a moment and, as if unbidden, but obviously the result of custom, each of the congregants rose to his or her feet and declared his or her faith in Prescott as the way, the truth, and the light. The women gave thanks that they’d been chosen as handmaidens. The men offered to lay down their lives in defence of the Master and to root out false prophets and those who made sacrilegious claims to being the source of revelation. No mention was made in the course of the service of the deaths at Fisher’s farm, but perhaps this had been addressed at earlier services and was now considered done with.

  The afternoon was spent in silent contemplation. Having returned to their room together after the service, Nepheg told Guy — although he called him Absalom — that four hours of silence would begin at 1.00 pm, and that this silence could not be broken without penance being exacted. The penance was determined by the Master: it might be harsh or gentle, depending on his mood, but it was always just. You were not required to keep to your room, but could walk about the property so long as you kept close to the house. No one was to enter the orchards or the paddocks. The temptation to bend and retrieve fallen fruit had to be avoided. Eye contact with others was to be resisted during this time, and physical contact was a breach that would be punished severely. These strictures seemed absurd and pointless to Guy, but given the small number of people who lived on the place, he didn’t suppose anyone found them too onerous. The mention of punishment unsettled him. He should have known, he told himself, that obedience was guaranteed by fear as much as it was by faith. Self-appointed messiahs didn’t bind people to them with love. Always, always there was fear.

  Nepheg said that he’d stay in the room and pray, although Guy suspected that by pray he meant sleep. Guy had no intention of traipsing around the outside of the house for four hours, but he was curious to see how the others managed this forced contemplation. One of the women was walking about. The other, the woman called Prudence, must have remained in the building. Abraham was seated on the veranda next to Prescott. Their postures were so self-consciously contemplative that Guy suspected they would begin chatting to each other as soon as everyone was out of sight. Despite the stricture against eye contact, Guy was conscious that Prescott was watching him as he passed by the veranda. Prescott was suspicious of him. Why? His suitcase and his clothes had been thoroughly searched. Had he left some tell-tale clue that he wasn’t a serious acolyte? He didn’t think so. The pen and the notebook were ordinary objects carried by lots of people.

  After half an hour of mindless perambulation, Guy began to realise that four hours was a very long time indeed. Around the back of the house, he stopped and looked across at the small outhouse that was forbidden to men. Had Prudence retreated there? As he was considering this, Prudence appeared beside him, as if he’d conjured h
er up. She paused for a brief moment, and spoke, in contravention of the rules.

  ‘You have to leave.’

  That was all she said before quickly moving away. He would have followed her, but Prescott walked into view, and Prudence headed towards him. They passed each other without acknowledgement. He couldn’t possibly have heard Prudence’s words — Guy himself had barely heard them. Prescott, though, had an extraordinary ability to read signs in others. Had Prudence betrayed herself with some small shift in her demeanour as she passed him?

  Prescott approached Guy, and, instead of passing him, he reached out and placed his open palm on Guy’s chest. Could he detect the sudden change in Guy’s heartbeat?

  ‘Absalom.’

  His voice was low. Obviously, the rules forbidding physical contact and speech didn’t apply to Prescott. Rules rarely applied to the people who made them. Guy had known this since childhood. Nevertheless, he was taken by surprise whenever he saw it realised.

  ‘Nepheg has come to me with a confession. He lay on his bed during this silence and fell asleep. Sleep is not contemplation. He has requested penance. Come to the chapel at 5.30. You will be a witness to his acknowledgement of weakness.’

  Guy was about to respond when Prescott said, ‘Do not speak, Absalom. 5.30.’

  Prescott moved away, and Guy returned to his room. Nepheg wasn’t there. Guy sat on the edge of his bed. He wished he could put trousers on. The tunic might have been comfortable in summer, but the late-autumn coolness played along his bare legs, and Guy had never liked being cold. Joe would be expecting a note detailing his first impressions of Prescott and this community. He’d make the long trip from Kew early the following morning, and he’d find nothing in the tree stump. There was no way that Guy could warn him unless he entered the main house when people were sleeping and used the telephone. That was too risky; he’d be discovered. The only solution was to get down to the stump later in the evening and leave something there to signal that he was all right, something that Joe would understand to mean that his pen and notebook had been confiscated. Could he spell something out, just a word or two, with twigs? This seemed so much like some sort of schoolboy jape that it made him laugh. This was, however, the only solution.

  At 5.30, Guy entered the chapel. Prescott, Abraham, and Nepheg were already there. Nepheg was standing, bare-chested, his arms stretched out. There were welts across his back — some almost healed, the legacy of earlier whippings.

  ‘Absalom,’ Prescott said, ‘Nepheg stands here before us, guilty and penitent. What is it that you want from us, Nepheg? How do you wish to atone?’

  ‘I slept, Master. I slept in the room I share with Absalom, and I have defiled that place with my weakness. I ask forgiveness from Absalom.’

  ‘Do you give it, Absalom?’ Prescott asked.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I ask that Absalom exact my penance.’

  Guy felt sick. He saw what was expected of him.

  The old man handed Guy a thin, whippy branch, stripped of its leaves but with sharp protrusions along its length. These weren’t thorns, but the ragged ends where twigs had been snapped off.

  ‘Nepheg has requested ten strokes,’ Prescott said. ‘If no blood is drawn, the penance will not be complete, and ten more strokes will have to be made.’

  Guy took the branch. He felt his hand shaking, and it was at this point that he lost consciousness. When he woke, he was seated on a chair against the wall. Anthony Prescott was standing in front of him. The branch was lying across Guy’s lap.

  ‘You fainted,’ Prescott said.

  ‘No. I fell asleep.’

  Prescott laughed. ‘You were so bored that you fell asleep?’

  ‘Narcolepsy.’

  Guy explained his condition, and said that it was this that he’d hoped to cure.

  ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, Absalom.’

  ‘Soldiers in the first war were afflicted by it. Some of them would fall asleep even as they began to run towards the guns. I feel fine afterwards. It’s not like fainting. I don’t feel peculiar.’

  ‘Good, because Nepheg is waiting to do his penance.’

  Nepheg was still standing, his arms outstretched.

  ‘How long was I unconscious?’

  ‘Less than a minute.’

  ‘How did I get to this chair?’

  ‘Nepheg carried you. Are you ready now?’

  Guy nodded. He stood and willed his body not to let him down, although simultaneously he wondered how he would bring himself to whip Nepheg until he bled. He approached him and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Absalom.’

  Prescott said, ‘Begin.’

  ‘If he bleeds after the first stroke, will that be sufficient?’

  ‘He has requested ten strokes.’

  Guy raised his arm and brought the branch down sharply across Nepheg’s back. Nepheg flinched. No blood had been drawn. As Guy raised his arm again, he consoled himself that this was a fetish of Nepheg’s and that, far from doing him harm, he was satisfying some peculiar urge in him. The fourth stroke produced a thin beading of blood. The fifth and sixth opened a partly healed welt, and by the tenth blow Nepheg’s back was sufficiently running with blood to satisfy Prescott that Nepheg’s penance had been achieved. Abraham stepped forward and, with a tenderness that surprised Guy, sponged Nepheg’s back with carbolic. The muscles twitched and jumped, but Nepheg didn’t utter a sound. He pulled his tunic back over his shoulders.

  At dinner, no mention was made of Nepheg’s penance. The spots of blood on his tunic were evidence enough of what had happened. Prudence avoided Guy’s eyes, and Prescott spoke with sudden fierceness about false prophets and apostates. Guy didn’t speak. He assumed what he hoped was an attitude of humble attentiveness. As he listened to Prescott, he knew with awful certainty that this was a dangerous man and that he wasn’t safe. Why had Prescott named him Absalom? Who was Absalom? Before going down to the tree stump to leave Joe his coded message, he would scour the pages of the Old Testament and find out who Absalom was. Prescott didn’t name people by accident.

  CLARA’S SUNDAY-NIGHT SHIFT had been quiet. A baby had been born; an elderly man had died; a young man had broken down and been transferred to the secure ward at Willsmere Asylum. There was talk among the nurses of Gerald Matthews’ death, and Clara overheard a reference to Adelaide Matthews as his ‘uppity wife’, although little affection was expressed for Gerald.

  By the time Clara left the hospital, the dawn had broken, and the day promised to be cool and grey. The street outside the hospital was already busy, and Clara’s eye fell on a figure standing stock-still among the pedestrians. He was some distance from her, on the opposite side of the street, but Clara recognised Kenneth Bussell. His hands were in his pockets. Their eyes met. Bussell smiled, took one hand from his pocket, and made a gesture that might have been a small wave. Clara froze, uncertain how to proceed. What was he doing here? She thought about going back inside and telephoning Inspector Lambert, and she half-turned to do so. She looked down at the ground, and when she raised her eyes, Bussell was gone. Clara saw a man who might have been him joining the general hurry. As Clara walked towards her flat in East Melbourne, she felt that Bussell was somewhere behind her. She checked over her shoulder again and again. By the time she reached her flat, she was both panicked and angry. Pat and Susan had left for work already. She made doubly sure that the doors were locked. It was too early to telephone Titus Lambert, and it was him, not an underling, she wanted to speak to. She made herself a cup of tea, and telephoned Helen at home.

  ‘You can’t stay there, Clara.’

  ‘I have to get some sleep, Helen. The doors are locked.’

  ‘Get in a taxi and come here. You can sleep in one of the spare rooms. No one will disturb you.’

  ‘He didn’t follow me
home, Helen.’

  Helen, her frustration evident, snapped, ‘He’s watching you, Clar!’

  That bald statement pulled Clara up short.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘I’d get Joe to pick you up, but he’s taken the car out to Nunawading. I’ll wait until you get here, and then head off to the office. Does Bussell have a car?’

  ‘I have no idea. I doubt it. He didn’t strike me as wealthy man. I’ll keep an eye out for a car following me.’

  Clara arrived at the house in Kew with her nerves jangled by constantly checking the traffic behind and around the taxi. She was confident that she hadn’t been followed, but she asked the driver to circle around the block before dropping her three doors up from her destination. The driver didn’t query her instructions. The last woman who’d made odd requests had been a high-class prostitute. This woman didn’t look like a prostitute, but then neither had the other woman.

  Clara checked her surroundings before walking towards Helen’s place. By the time she reached the gate her courage had returned, and with it came anger that a creature like Kenneth Bussell was controlling her life.

  Ros Lord welcomed Clara into the house, and Helen showed her the room where she could sleep. Clara then telephoned Inspector Lambert, who took down the details and expressed his relief that she was staying in Kew. He reassured her that they were doing as much as they could to track Bussell down, but that they weren’t having much luck. No one of that name had a criminal record. They’d checked boarding houses and hotels, and had distributed the sketch of him far and wide. Thus far, they’d had no luck.