The Cruel Peak

by Gil Hogg

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me now why you’re so sure Dad is -”

  “No, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “But -”

  He heard raised voices in the hall. He identified Stuart’s voice. He and Robyn moved into the hall to find a circle of guests around a young man whom Stuart was pushing into an armchair, his fist crumpling the man’s shirt and tie. With his other hand, Stuart was wrenching at a video camera that was secured by a strap around the man’s neck. The man himself was choking under the pressure of Stuart’s fist. Stuart dragged the strap over the man’s head, flung the camera to the floor and stamped on it. The crowd were silent with amazement. He hauled the man to his feet and bundled him out of the front door.

  “Ted!” he shouted at the handyman who was on the path. “Get this trespasser off the property!” He pushed the man down the steps into Ted’s arms and stood panting. Ted walked the man away down the drive.

  “Bloody creep!” Stuart said, as he faced the guests. “Snooping around here taking pictures and asking questions.”

  “This is it. The press are here. It’s Mt Vogel,” Tom said to Robyn.

  12

  The party had started to wilt soon after the bride and groom left the table in the afternoon. The dark mood of Stuart and his father had infected the gathering. The guests knew from the newspapers and television that a scandal was brewing, enough to set them on edge, but little more. Many guests approached Tom privately, and all were bemused by the prospect that Ernest’s greatest achievement was a fiction; it was almost more than they could believe. Tom gave no support to the stories, but neither did he refute them. He was aware that his failure to deny the truth of the rumours tended to give them credence, but he thought that was just too bad.

  Ernest had coasted around the groups of guests, being received on the rim of various parties as the paterfamilias he was, and in no cooler fashion than he was accustomed to. People had heard but could make no judgement. Tom met him as he was leaving the dining room, rocking unsteadily.

  “You’ve got your little girl off, have you? What a very good job you’ve done,” Ernest slurred.

  “Thanks, Ernest. Praise from you is indeed praise.” Tom was equally cold.

  “I was pleased to see you didn’t try to give her away at the church. Not your place, as I told Robyn long before the wedding. Not you, not the vanishing man.”

  “That was helpful and well-meant advice I’m sure. I’ve always thought of you as the guardian of propriety.”

  “And fortunately there wasn’t a space for you to jump up and make a speech and tell us what a splendid chap the father of the bride is, ha-ha!”

  “You, at least, Ernest, already know how splendid I am. Sleep well. Be wary. As I’ve hinted before, take care your son doesn’t come in the dark to kiss you goodnight.”

  Ernest’s alchoholic jollity froze. His lips parted as though he was going to take a bite. “I’ll take care.” He swayed through the door toward the stairs.

  What had been planned by Robyn as a banquet with unceasing hospitality lasting late into the night had become a desert of scattered tables and chairs by early evening, with dirty dishes, twisted tablecloths and table napkins collapsed on the floor like dead doves. The string quartet had played ever more quietly in the late afternoon and ceased when they had nobody except waiters to play to. The catering staff moved in to clear the tables and the air resounded with the warlike crashing of crockery and the rattle of cutlery. The marquees and rooms became desolate. Those who might have stayed to party preferred to go to friends in Springvale, or Geraldine.

  Tia appeared to have summed Stuart up as immovable in the evening when he was in the library, drinking. He refused her invitation to go upstairs with her and she whispered to Tom, “I’ll leave him with you, Tom. He needs looking after.” Even Robyn, before she left for the Currans’ party in Springvale - to which Tom had been invited - made him promise to stay with Stuart.

  “I’m very worried about those two,” she said, “and it’s spoiled the wedding party. I was hoping we would have a wonderful time here, but it’s dead.”

  Tom had this duty put upon him, but it was one he would have performed anyway, without the requests.

  He and Stuart continued drinking in the library when the guests had gone and the housekeeping staff had been banished from the room. Tom put aside his abstemiousness of earlier in the day and they consumed beer and a large part of a bottle of whisky. Their talk was drunken and desultory, memories and trivial argument, and Tom would have been glad to have retired at about midnight, but for Stuart’s morose focus on his father, to which the dialogue always returned. He listened to Stuart’s rambling monologues of hatred and despair, only to be sure that Stuart would eventually go safely to bed. It was 3am when he levered himself upright and tossed down what was left of his drink, his patience gone.

  “I’m for sleep, man. What about you?” he asked.

  “You haven’t mentioned the notebook,” Stuart slurred.

  “Let it rest. This isn’t the time.”

  “Ish time.”

  “Let it rest then, forever. Let’s think the notebook doesn’t exist, Stu.”

  “You mean that?”

  “It’s the way I feel.”

  “But it does exist, and if you want to forget it, give it to me.”

  “Resting forever isn’t enough? You have to ask for more?”

  “I’m a supplicant at the altar of Thomas Stavely. I beg for more. Please answer my prayer and give me the notebook.”

  “It’s my father’s book, the record of something he did in life. Can you understand as a creative and sensitive man, knowing my history, that the notebook is something I would want to keep?”

  “Your very fine feelings! What about my feelings, having you holding my neck under a guillotine, the guillotine of loss of reputation!”

  “You don’t trust me to keep the notebook privately?”

  “No, I don’t. Would you want your reputation in somebody else’s hands to destroy at a whim?”

  “You’re my friend. I don’t act on a whim. But I’ll think about what you say.”

  They both stood up. Stuart managed a cracked smile and put his arm around Tom’s shoulders. “I ought to beat your head in and take the notebook, but I’ll think about what you said,” he laughed.

  They both left the library and stumbled up the stairs, supporting each other.

  When they reached the landing, Stuart turned in the wrong direction. “No, this way,” Tom said.

  “I’m going to talk to Ernest.”

  “Not at this hour.” Tom pulled him back.

  “My house. My father, Tom.” Stuart pushed his arm away.

  “You’re not capable of talking to anybody.” He grabbed a handful of Stuart’s shirt, stopping him.

  “Piss off and leave me alone!” Stuart fended him off.

  “Don’t go there, Stuart. Give up these mad dreams of celebrity. They’ve possessed you. Your father is a truly vile man. Just let him be that. You can’t punish him; he’s beyond punishment. Old and diseased. You can’t get a reckoning from him. He won’t be held to account. If your reputation is lost, it was founded on a lie - his lie, not yours. You have to find a new direction. There’s no other way.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be publicly known for… something considerable… and honourable… and distinguished,” Stuart hissed.

  “What’s your reputation but what you think other people think of you? You yearn to be famous and well-regarded, and you have been. But you haven’t any particular right to celebrity…” Tom realised his liquored tongue had perhaps flapped too much.

  “Rights? And will we have claims and tenure? You sound like a lawyer. Don’t lecture me on celebrity when you know nothing about it!”

  “Yours is built on your father’s lie. That’s a fact. You’re right that I don’t know anything about the adrenalin
which puffs you up, but an idiot can see that you have to accept what can’t be changed and get beyond it.”

  The words were said, but he hadn’t meant to hit Stuart this hard.

  Stuart swayed close to him. “I think you’re enjoying this, you faceless, legal scribe!” He shoved Tom, who staggered away.

  Tom lost any restraint. “You’re a dick, Stu! A huge erect, scarlet penis, bigger than a Ferrari!”

  Tom took a few steps toward his own room and stopped. He turned to see Stuart’s swerving path down the hall toward Ernest’s room. Even in his inebriated state, Tom thought that the confrontation between him and Stuart, despite the passage of years, was still between a son of the manor and a farm boy, just as that between Ernest and his father on Mt Vogel would have been the confrontation between master and man. No matter how deeply overlayed by friendship and even love, who he and Stuart were was wrought in steel in their minds.

  As Stuart departed, Tom was left with enough regard to be fearful of what might happen and he tried to decide whether he should shout and make a fuss, or shut up and go to bed. If he made a noise, who would come? Tia was the only other person upstairs in this part of the house. Would she be able to control her drunken husband? Never. And the half dozen people who had stayed over from the wedding were in the guest wing.

  On the instant, he compromised and turned to follow Stuart. By the time he had lumbered to Ernest’s door, Stuart was inside. The room was lit only by the moonlight, which drenched the cold downs and illuminated the room through the open curtains. He stumbled into a contortion of shadows and human cries.

  Stuart and Ernest were on their feet, locked together, groaning, cursing and struggling. He had a picture from the doorway as they clinched. He knew this could only last a few seconds, because although Ernest looked strong, he was frail and no match for his son. It seemed harmless and pointless.

  “Break it up, you stupid buggers!” he shouted, and stepped forward to separate them.

  At the same moment, there was an explosion which plugged his ears and cut off his hearing. A hot shockwave hit his face and shoulders and peppered his eyes. He fell to his knees. Stuart’s head was snapped backwards at an impossible angle and he collapsed to the floor. Invisible to Tom at first, but apparently tangled between the bodies of the two men, was a shotgun which thumped on to the carpet beside Tom. The old man fell back, half lying on the bed. Tom forced himself up from the floor, his mind gyrating crazily, and flicked the lights on.

  The shot, which must have come from under Stuart’s chin, had blown away all the front of his head. The old man was blue and panting like a dog, his eyes fixed on the body, while a scarlet fringe spread out like a halo around what was left of the head.

  “You’ve shot your son, you evil bastard!” He bent down and touched Stuart’s wrist, but there could be no pulse.

  “Haaah. I was ready for him. He was going to kill me. I had my faithful Purdey ready.”

  The old man glinted with triumph, then flinched. The flame in his eye sockets flickered. His chest heaved. He tried to turn his head toward the table by the bedside.

  “The pill - there…”

  A white pill, placed on top of its packet in readiness to relieve the seizure, a water jug half full and a glass all waited for this emergency. Tom reached for the pill instantly, and then his eyes met Ernest’s eyes, pools of mud and green weed.

  Ernest’s pathetic look said, ‘After all that’s been said and done, you’re going to save me, aren’t you?’

  His thoughts in response were as clear for Ernest to read as if they had been written or spoken. ‘Do I really have to help a swine like you?’

  “I know, you’re not prepared to help me. I expected that,” Ernest gasped in a moment’s hopelessness, and then, when he must have read the drooping lines of Tom’s expression correctly, he had a different message, silent and sneering. ‘No, you haven’t the guts to do what I’d have done. You’ll save me!’

  Tom’s fingers curled slowly around the cold glass handle of the jug. He raised it and poured water into the glass, delaying while the level rose.

  “Hurry, Tom…” Ernest croaked.

  Only a drop was necessary really.

  “Please, Tom…” Ernest’s breath rasped in his throat; he had turned a dark, bruised tint.

  Tom stopped now, straightened up and looked again at the drooping figure on the bed paralysed in pain, and Stuart’s faceless body on the floor. He picked up the pill between finger and thumb, following it with his eyes as it travelled over the small distance from the table, to the gullet which hung open expectantly. Then, instead of dropping the pill in the orifice, he slopped the water in. The old man erupted in a choking convulsion.

  When Ernest’s spasm had subsided, Tom held up the pill before him.

  “Please, Tom…” His voice was faint.

  Tom dropped the pill on the carpet and kicked it under the bed. “How do you like that, Ernest?”

  Ernest was choking, his chest heaving. He couldn’t reply. He tried to rise. It wouldn’t have taken much for Tom to put his fingers around Ernest’s throat and restrain him. A gentle gesture would do it. He had the thought, but dimissed it. His brain was curdled. After a couple of surging breaths, Ernest was unconscious.

  Tom replaced the water glass, stepped carefully over Stuart’s body and went out of the door.

  He was not reeling drunk now, but scarcely sober; the events of the night were churning their confusing possibilities in his head. He went to his room and splashed his face with water in the bathroom. His body had the heaviness of metal. The destruction of Stuart was an event too monstrous to grasp. He hadn’t looked after his friend. He had let Tia and Robyn down. The lawyer in him warned that he had just witnessed a brutal crime, and may, in his passion and drunkenness, have committed a crime himself; there would be consequences.

  What he had done hadn’t been thought out. It had happened. He slumped on the bed for a moment, while he tried to order his thoughts. He had a desire to black out everything that had just happened, the memory of that charnel-house room, but he had to tell Tia now, and call the police. No, call the ambulance service, that would be would be smarter…Why disclose that he knew they were both dead? Why…?

  13

  Moments later, he awoke with a leaden head, nearly deaf, his eyes glued shut. He opened his eyes. It wasn’t moments later; it was dawn!

  At first he thought he had awakened naturally, but then he realised that somebody was knocking insistently at the door. He sat up. The door opened before he could speak or get off the bed; it was a young uniformed policeman.

  “Mr Stavely? I’d like to talk to you.”

  His vocal cords were slimed and slack. “By all means… but give me a chance to…”

  “You’re already dressed, I see.”

  “Sure… The wedding party…” He coughed.

  The constable moved into the room and looked around, examining. “And you haven’t slept in your bed.”

  A new constable from the local station. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.

  “Do you know what’s happened, Mr Stavely?”

  “I’m not sure… I had a lot of drinks.” His mind had no traction, but at least he realized that he should keep his mouth shut for his own protection.

  “You’ve got blood on your shirt, I see.” The constable’s voice moved up a few notes.

  He looked down. The chest of his shirt was flecked with a fine spray of blood. The memory came back. He was sickened. The cop was going to shove him into a hole, a prison hole. “Will you get out of here? Give me a chance to get up, go to the lavatory, if you don’t mind, have a wash, and then I’ll go downstairs to talk to you!”

  The constable, unabashed, looked at Tom curiously. “You haven’t answered my question, Mr Stavely. Do you know what’s happened?”

  “Do you have a warrant, officer?” The constable’s keenness was blunted by this random shot. “Breaking into my bedroom, asking questions like the
Gestapo!”

  Tom didn’t think the constable needed a warrant, but the constable was uncertain; it was probably the biggest case in his experience. Tom stared him out. “Remove yourself!”

  “I’ll see you downstairs,” the cop said abjectly as he retired.

  Tom’s head boiled. It was 7am. He had to think out his story. He tore off his shirt and stuffed it in the laundry bag. He dropped the rest of his clothes on the floor and soaked for a couple of minutes under the shower, trying to blot out Stuart’s bloody body and the old man’s blue corpse. No time to shave. He pulled on a clean shirt and trousers, then brushed his fingers through his hair.

  Who found the bodies? Almost certainly Beryl Dilsey, who prowled the halls before breakfast. Did nobody hear the gunshot last night? That was possible. The house was built like a castle. And what of poor Tia, whom he had meant to see, and really intended to see last night? Beryl Dilsey would have broken the tragedy to Tia as if she was announcing dinner.

  He couldn’t go down to meet Tia and Robyn without going to Ernest’s room first. The hall was empty and quiet. Robyn’s bedroom door was open; the room was unoccupied, the bed undisturbed. She hadn’t returned from her party. The door of Ernest’s room was closed. He opened it, and went in, expecting to find a cop on duty, but there was nobody.

  The room had a heavy, sickly metallic smell. The gun was on the floor where it had fallen, a web of blood on its mother-of-pearl inlaid stock. Stuart’s body was still on the floor, but covered by a stained white sheet. Ernest’s bed was empty; the covers thrown back. He lifted the sheet on Stuart’s body; it seemed to have partly sunk into the carpet, distorted in death, the head unrecognisable. His stomach heaved. He dropped the sheet back over the body.

  Assuming that the crime scene had been left until a forensic team arrived, the empty bed could only mean that the old sod had survived and been taken to hospital. That was a complication. What would Ernest say about the pill? What would he say about the encounter? He closed the bedroom door on a scene which was as confused as a partly-arranged stage set.