by Robert Gott
‘Who? Who called you names?’
‘Cornel.’ Her voice lost all expression when she uttered her son’s name. Clara closed her eyes and cursed her initial curiosity about Gerald Matthews’ wife. Why, why had she made that first visit?
‘Is there someone close to you whom you can talk to? Someone who can give you some advice?’
The ensuing silence had a stunned quality to it.
‘Well, yes,’ Adelaide said. ‘There’s you. You understand. You’re the only person I know who truly understands.’
Clara had no idea what it was that she supposedly truly understood.
‘He’s run away, Clara. He ran out of the house, and he said he was never coming back.’
‘Children say things like that. They don’t mean them.’
‘Cornel means it. Can you come over? I’m frantic here.’
‘I don’t think I can, Adelaide. I have to visit a friend in Kew this morning.’
All Clara could hear were sharp little intakes of breath on the other end of the line.
‘I’ve tried, Clara,’ Adelaide said, after the prolonged silence. ‘I’ve tried, but I’m at the end of my tether.’ She hung up.
‘You look like you’ve had bad news,’ Susan said.
‘I’m sick to death of crazy people, Susan.’
‘You’re not usually a magnet for them. That’s me. I sit on the tram, and the mad person heads straight for me.’
‘Adelaide Matthews is a problem of my own making, but I can’t take responsibility for the emotional mess she’s in. I mean, I’ve met her, what, twice?’
Susan agreed that Clara had no obligations to Adelaide, however distressed she’d become since the death of her husband. Clara was glad of this reassurance, but the phone call nagged at her. She’d talk about it with Helen.
She set out for Kew with a determination to cease all contact with Adelaide. When she arrived there, she found Joe on his own. Helen and her mother had gone for a walk. This was something they’d taken to doing recently, Joe said.
‘They walk and they talk.’
Joe didn’t really understand that this intimacy between mother and daughter was new, and that for each of them these walks had become precious interludes.
‘They’ve got a lot of catching up to do,’ Clara said.
‘Have they? They’ve always lived together.’
Clara wondered yet again what Helen saw in this man. Joe reluctantly submitted to Clara’s shining a torch in his eyes and to her checking the wound on the back of his head. She changed the bandage and examined his face closely.
Despite feeling unnecessarily fussed over, Joe found himself aroused by the touch of Clara’s fingers as they pressed gently around his scalp. The excitement was brief, and he was sure that Clara was unaware of the effect she was having on him. He was right in this. However strong his response was to Clara’s touch, it failed to register with her. She sat near him when she’d finished her examination, and asked if Helen had told him that Bussell had been arrested.
‘Yes, she did. You must feel very relieved.’
Clara laughed unexpectedly.
‘I’m sorry, Joe. I know it’s mean of me, but the look on your and Tom’s faces last night was fucking priceless.’
Joe made a feint at rallying to his defence, but gave it up and simply laughed.
‘You should have seen us pumping up the tyres. Oh, and God help us, Tom pissing into the Meissen jug.’
‘Now that is funny.’
‘You and Helen must think we’re a couple of Keystone cops.’
‘It is incredible that two grown men can be so … what is the word?’
‘Incompetent?’
‘That’s not the word I was looking for, but it’ll do.’
Clara was pleasantly surprised by Joe’s willingness to park his pride and not resent her obvious enjoyment of his discomfort.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘Prudence saw you coming up the road to the house. The bandage on your head was like a searchlight.’
Joe put his head in his hands, and then looked across at Clara.
‘It is funny,’ he said.
Clara realised that this was the first proper conversation she’d had with Joe, and she found herself liking him. He was amusing, and there was something about him that was actually charming. She could see why Helen might be so attracted to him. For his part, Joe had never felt so at ease with Clara. Clara, who liked to test the mettle of men she conversed with, told Joe about Kenneth Bussell’s erection.
‘He said I should take it as a compliment. What do you think?’
‘I think God created trousers to protect women from the awful spectacle of what goes on inside them.’
Clara was so delighted by this response that she thought a complete reassessment of Joe Sable might be necessary.
When Helen and Ros returned, they found Joe giving Clara a guided tour of the pictures on the library wall.
‘The Goya is the standout,’ Joe said, ‘although there’s a good Dobell sketch. Peter knew Dobell. There are a few of his sketches here in the house.’
The Goya etching, which Clara found ugly and disturbing, made her think about Adelaide Matthews. It wasn’t the subject matter, but its capacity to alter her mood somehow. She needed to talk to Helen, and with an abruptness she hoped wouldn’t offend Joe, she said, ‘Helen, I need some proper advice, and I need you to give it to me. You don’t mind if Helen and I talk in private, do you, Joe?’
‘No, no, of course not. I do bang on about pictures.’
Clara touched his arm.
‘That’s not true, it’s just that something a bit urgent has come up.’
Joe left the library, and didn’t feel in the least deflated. Quite the contrary.
AFTER A LENGTHY conversation about Adelaide Matthews, including an admission that she should have taken Helen’s advice in the first place and stayed well away from Adelaide, Clara said, ‘In my defence, Helen, how could I possibly have known that she was disturbed to begin with? Clearly, she was mentally unstable before Dr Matthews died, but he was such an arsehole. I don’t doubt that he was unpleasant to live with, and probably abusive, psychologically if not physically. I thought I was offering consolation, not stepping into a vast pile of emotional horseshit.’
‘When you first met her, at Russell Street, didn’t you notice anything odd about her, apart from the obvious oddness of asking you around for afternoon tea?’
Clara sighed.
‘I don’t have your powers of observation.’
‘Your job is about observing people, Clar.’
‘Being able to tell the difference between a bubo and a pimple doesn’t require subtle observational skills.’ She paused. ‘I have a bad feeling about this. I didn’t like the way she spoke about her son.’
‘Well, let’s go around there.’
Clara was startled.
‘I thought you said I shouldn’t have anything more to do with her.’
‘I’ve got a bad feeling, too, and if her children are in some sort of danger, we can’t sit by and do nothing. Tell me, honestly, is Adelaide Matthews capable of harming her children?’
Clara thought for a moment.
‘I honestly don’t know. It seems unlikely. I mean, it’s such a neat, ordered household. It’s hard to believe that anything savage could happen in it. Should I have told her that the man who murdered her husband had been arrested? Maybe that would have given her some sort of solace.’
‘I doubt it. I’ll drive you there, and wait in the car while you assess the situation inside the house. The children go to boarding school, don’t they?’
Clara nodded.
‘See if you can find out when they’re due back there. I imagine it will be in a couple of days. Once that’s happened, you can relax. This should be the last time you have to have a
nything to do with her. If the children are okay and they’re going back to school, you can stop worrying. You have no obligations to this woman.’
In the car on the way to the Matthews’ house in Carlton, Clara was so preoccupied that she didn’t mention her change of opinion about Joe Sable.
17
INSPECTOR TITUS LAMBERT didn’t often conduct interviews on a Sunday. This wasn’t out of respect for a religious notion that it was a day of rest, dedicated to worship. It was because it was one of the precious days that he and Maude got to spend together. Today, he made an exception for Kenneth Bussell. Bussell had initially declined to have a solicitor present, but Titus had insisted, pointing out that the charge against him was so serious that to be unrepresented would be foolish.
The solicitor provided by the court was a man Titus respected. He was in his sixties, and close to retirement. He was a competent lawyer who provided even the most dismal clients with good counsel. With the preliminaries over, and with Alexander Forbes taking notes, Titus said, ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you, Mr Bussell. You’ve exercised an extraordinary amount of police time.’
Bussell wasn’t belligerent. He was calm, which made Titus think that talking to police in an interview room wasn’t a new experience for him.
‘You understand why you’re here, Mr Bussell?’
Bussell shook his head.
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘It has been explained to you.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You reckon I murdered a bloke I’ve never even heard of. That’s what I don’t understand.’
‘My client is mentally competent, Inspector. He simply vigorously denies the charge.’
Titus acknowledged the solicitor’s interruption with a nod.
‘What happened on Thursday, the 11th of May?’
‘I got stabbed, and the bloke who stabbed me wasn’t this Gerald Matthews character. I suppose you think it was, and that I killed him in some sort of fight. Didn’t happen.’
‘What did happen?’
Bussell looked at his solicitor, who nodded.
‘It’s not my proudest moment. I hope you’re not too prim and proper.’ He looked across at Alexander Forbes. ‘I’d hate to shock that young bloke. You’re not going to hear my story in church.’
‘I think we can hear what you have to say without falling into a swoon,’ Titus said.
‘Well, as you know, sometimes a man needs, you know, a release, and if a man doesn’t have a wife, or his girl, if she’s willing, he’s going to have to pay for it. Now, I don’t mind paying for it. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and when he has an itch he’s got to scratch it, and sometimes the hand just won’t cut it. Am I right?’
Titus declined to answer.
‘If you blokes think you’re on top of prostitution in this town, you’re kidding yourselves. The gardens opposite the circus? It’s like Bourke Street in there. When there were more Yanks in town it must have been swarming. It was dark. I found a sheila, and we went off for a bit of a knee-trembler against a handy tree. She was bit stand-offish, I have to say. Not so much as a fumble before she got paid. That’s reasonable, I suppose. What is she going to do if I fuck her and then refuse to pay? Maybe she’s got a pimp nearby, maybe not. A lot of these women are working solo, just trying to pay the bills. I respect that, so I paid what she asked. She wasn’t as forthcoming as I thought she should be, given that she had my money. I got a bit, you know, willing, and slipped my hand under her dress. She was a good-looking woman, from what I could see of her. Looked about thirty. Smelled nice. I got my hand inside her pants and felt about in her bush. I was raring to go. That’s when she opened her thighs, which had been clamped together, and you know what’s coming, don’t you? Suddenly I’ve got a cock in my hand.’
Bussell looked at his solicitor again.
‘Now, this could have gone a number of ways. If he’d had the courtesy to tell me that he was a bloke, I would have left him to it. If that’s how he wants to earn a quid, it’s none of my business, and I’m sure there are plenty of blokes who are looking for what he offers. Good luck to him. But he didn’t, and I ended up touching another bloke’s cock, which is not my idea of a good night out, so I wasn’t happy, and I shouldn’t have grabbed him by the throat, because the bastard had a knife and he used it. I wasn’t sure what had happened, so he told me. “I’ve slit you,” he said, or something like that, and this time the voice was a couple of octaves lower. I must have been in shock, I don’t know, but then he did me over. I was beaten up by a bloke in a frock. I mean, Jesus. I’m not going to dine out on that story, am I? And I tell you what, he could throw a punch a hell of a lot harder than I can.’
‘So he left you for dead.’
‘Well, at this point I don’t think he was too concerned about my welfare. He defongerated as soon as he was satisfied that I was in no condition to chase him.’
‘And then what happened, Mr Bussell?’
‘I got up off the ground, discovered that I wasn’t too badly hurt, and took myself off to the hospital.’
‘You walked all the way up to Lonsdale Street after being stabbed?’
‘Well, there were no trams, and it isn’t actually that far.’
Titus didn’t want to hurry him.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I was admitted and seen to. I was cleaned up, stitched up, and I left.’
‘Who stitched your wound?’
‘A woman, believe it or not. Dr Clara Dawson.’
‘Was there another doctor present?’
Bussell gave every indication of being genuinely puzzled by the question.
‘There was a male doctor, now that you mention it. He was a bit of a prick, actually. He was rude to the lady doctor. It was obvious he didn’t like her. She handled herself well.’
‘You didn’t like the way he spoke to her?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘So you waited for his shift to end the next day, and you killed him.’
Bussell looked stunned.
‘This is the bloke I’m supposed to have murdered? You have to be fucking kidding me.’
‘Where did you go after you killed him?’
Bussell looked at his solicitor.
‘Do I have to sit here and listen to this?’
‘You can answer the charges by answering the questions, Mr Bussell,’ the solicitor said. ‘If I feel there’s a question it’s not in your interest to answer, I’ll step in.’
‘So where did you go after you’d killed Dr Gerald Matthews?’ Titus repeated.
‘I didn’t fucking kill him. When I left the hospital that morning, I went straight to my digs, and I stayed there all day and all the next night, too.’
‘And where is home?’
‘Sixty-four Frederick Street, Yarraville. I’m not going to come all the way back into town to lure a bloke I met for two minutes into a park and kill him. I mean, come on.’
Titus decided to change tack.
‘You’ve been bringing Dr Dawson unwelcome gifts.’
‘Not gifts. Just one. I wanted to thank her for cleaning me up. I thought we had a bit of a connection.’
‘Just the one gift?’
‘Correct. I waited outside the hospital for her once, but I lost my nerve. I think she saw me.’
‘And the phone calls?’
‘Why would I telephone her? Where would I get her number?’
‘What about the first gift? What about Dr Gerald Matthews’ wallet left outside Dr Dawson’s bedroom door? What about that little trophy?’
‘How the fuck would I know where she lives? Jesus Christ. She thinks I murdered this bloke too, doesn’t she?’
Titus asked a few more questions, establishing what Bussell did for a living (odd jobs, not a railway employee, which is what
he’d told the hospital), and who he lived with (his younger brother), and then paused the interview.
Back in his office, he asked Alexander for his impressions.
‘I wouldn’t say that Mr Bussell is a diamond in the rough. I think he’s a bit of a sleaze, but is he also a bloody good actor?’
‘When people realise they could end up dangling from the end of a rope, it’s amazing how often they discover hidden theatrical talents.’
After a break of 15 minutes, they returned to continue the interview with Bussell.
CLARA AND HELEN sat in the car outside Adelaide Matthews’ house in Drummond Street. Clara wound down the window and listened, half-expecting to hear Adelaide raging within. The house was quiet.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
Clara said that the sudden appearance of a stranger would be hard to explain.
‘I’ll go in and talk to her, find out what’s going on, and with any luck it will all be fine. Cornel will have come back home, and everything will have settled. I’m glad you’re here, though. Just in case.’
‘You can’t just confiscate her kids, Clar. You do know that?’
‘Thank you. I do know that arcane little fact.’
Helen watched as Clara walked up to the front door. There was no twitching of the curtains in any of the windows. Clara knocked, and waited. She knocked again. She turned to Helen and shrugged quizzically. She knocked a third time, and then tried the door handle. The door opened. She looked back at Helen and raised her hands in a ‘What do I do now?’ gesture. Helen waved her inside.
As soon as she stepped over the threshold, she called out, ‘Adelaide! It’s me, Clara Dawson.’ There was no response. The silence in the house was unsettling, and it took all of Clara’s courage not to flee. Something was wrong here; she could feel it. She checked each of the rooms downstairs. Nothing. At the bottom of the stairs, she strained her ears. There was something — it might have been a whimper — but it was so small it might have been a timber settling. She climbed the stairs and heard another whimper, this one distinct. It was coming from a room to the left of the landing. Clara reached it and, absurdly, knocked.
