The Serpent's Sting

by Robert Gott

  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.

  ‘I’m not here by choice, Brian. Help me up.’

  I filled Brian in as deftly as I could, admitting the mistake I’d made in returning to Geraldine’s house.

  ‘There are some positive aspects to this assault,’ Brian said.

  ‘You have to be a special kind of optimist to find the positive aspects of physical assault.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with optimism, Will.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘You said Strachan mentioned his wife, and then he hit you. I’m sure neither he nor Radcliff think you had anything to do with Geraldine’s disappearance or with John Gilbert’s death. He could have arrested you. Instead, he hit you. That looks to me like he’s just pissed off at having to deal with your clumsy interfering. You said yourself that going to Geraldine’s was a mistake.’

  ‘I don’t recall using the phrase “clumsy interfering”.’

  ‘I was extrapolating. The point is, Strachan was venting his anger. You’re not a suspect, just an incredible annoyance.’

  ‘Is this seriously your way of providing me with some kind of reassurance?’

  Brian looked quizzically at me.

  ‘Yes.’

  I found myself suddenly unable to argue with him, largely because the presence of Geraldine Buchanan in my bedroom upstairs crashed into my consciousness.

  ‘Brian,’ I said. ‘Oh my god. Geraldine. She’s upstairs in my bed.’

  ‘On it or in it?’

  I was too flustered to react to this prepositional impertinence.

  ‘Someone has drugged her. She was here in the house when I got back from Parkville. She came down the stairs and collapsed into my arms. She was incoherent. I took her upstairs, and she more or less passed out on my bed. I thought she might be dying, but I think it’s some kind of drug.’

  ‘Why are we down here, Will?’

  Brian hurried up the stairs. I followed, still feeling a bit woozy from my fall. Brian reached the bedroom before me and went in. I was a few steps behind. He stood at the end of my bed, ran his eye over it, and then looked at me. The bed was empty, and showed no evidence that anybody had recently lain on it. The pillows were plumped, and the blanket and sheets were taut and tidy, their hospital corners undisturbed.

  ‘She was here, just a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Drugged and comatose?’


  ‘Yes. This is not a concussion fantasy, Brian. She was here.’

  Brian sniffed the air, trying to detect a perfume.

  ‘I smell bay rum, and Peter’s Hungary Water. Nothing else.’

  ‘She wasn’t wearing perfume. In fact, she smelled rather sweaty.’

  Brian picked up one of the pillows, examined it closely, and pulled from the seam a long, black hair.

  ‘Not, I think, one of yours, Will.’

  I could have kissed him.

  ‘She can’t have gone far,’ he said. ‘She must have left when you were unconscious, which means she must have missed Strachan by seconds. That suggests a cool head, as does this bed. It’s neat, efficient, risky, and daring. What the hell is going on with Miss Geraldine Buchanan?’

  ‘The drugged state was an act, do you think? Why?’

  ‘She could still be in the house,’ Brian said, and rushed from the room. We searched every room, checked the back yard and the front yard. She would have disappeared into Princes Park. It was likely that she took the opportunity to leave when we were in the bedroom. That way, she’d have been in no danger of running into Strachan.

  I told Brian about the pornographic drawings the police had found in Geraldine’s room, and about their thinly veiled threat to release them to the gutter press. Although Brian couldn’t quite disguise his initial surprise that I’d slept with Geraldine, he said he understood now why Strachan felt able to punch me with impunity. He was confident I wouldn’t make a complaint against him.

  ‘He’s got you by the short and curlies, Will, and he’s also got pictures of your short and curlies.’

  ‘They’re only drawings, not forensic photographs. Is there any whisky in the house?’

  ‘Excellent idea. I can tell you about my evening. It’s not as incident-heavy as yours, but I’ve learned a thing or two about John Gilbert that the police don’t know, because Cloris hasn’t told them.’

  Brian poured us generous whiskies from a bottle he produced from his room. With a damp towel pressed to my eye, and with my head throbbing, I let him speak, and didn’t interrupt him for some time.

  ‘Your idea about people-watching was a good one, Will. Cloris certainly wasn’t in the mood for dancing when I picked her up. In fact, she was rather down and didn’t want to go out at all. She took some persuading. It was Peter who told her she should take the opportunity to get out of the house. She agreed finally, I think because she felt Peter and Mother needed time together. She’s very sensitive about other people’s needs.

  ‘We walked through the cemetery. Cloris wanted to see the place where John was found. I wasn’t sure that this was a good idea, but she insisted. We stood on the spot for a minute or two. I thought she might cry. She didn’t. She kicked the ground and said the word ‘Fool’ under her breath. When we got into town, we walked all the way to St Paul’s and sat under Matthew Flinders. Have you ever noticed that bulge in his trousers? It’s obscene. We watched people streaming across the intersection. It was a depressing, drab parade. We’re not a very attractive people.

  ‘Out of the blue, Cloris said that she knew exactly what the post-mortem would reveal. John Gilbert died of a heroin overdose. Heroin. Can you believe it? Who the hell uses heroin? It used to be in cough medicine, didn’t it? Where would you get heroin in Melbourne? Well, it seems John knew where to get it, and Cloris reckons he was selling it, too. He wasn’t the squeaky-clean figure he appeared to be, which makes his outrage over Peter’s and Mother’s relationship hollow and ridiculous. Unless it was synthetic, of course, shoring up his image. I was shocked, Will. I really was. Heroin. When Peter gets the autopsy results, he’s going to be appalled. His son was a drug addict. Cloris is sure he didn’t know this.

  ‘The only reason she knew is that she caught him in the bathroom sticking a syringe in his arm. He was confused at first, but as the drug took hold he seemed unfussed. He actually smiled and said, “Dad would be so disappointed, wouldn’t he? He should light a candle to St Monica, and see if that helps.” I had no idea what this meant. Cloris explained that Catholics have a sort of registry of saints, each of whom has a portfolio of duties. There’s a saint for everything. There’s even a saint who’ll help you find lost keys. St Zita. I remembered that because I’m always losing my keys, and now I know who’ll find them for me. St Monica, however, is the patron saint of parents who have disappointing children. Seriously. You couldn’t make that up. Clearly, John saw himself as a great disappointment to his father. Cloris is convinced that either he took his own life, or that his death was the inevitable, accidental consequence of his addiction.’

  While Brian was talking, my thoughts were tumbling chaotically. Drugs. Heroin. Geraldine. John Gilbert.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait, Brian. This is a lot to take in.’

  ‘I know. I’m still marshalling the information myself.’

  ‘There wasn’t any drug paraphernalia found with John Gilbert’s body, as far as we know. If he died of an accidental or a deliberate overdose, there’d have been a syringe or something. Can you drink heroin?’

  ‘I don’t know. So you think that he died somewhere else, and that someone moved his body?’

  ‘And as these things go, it was respectfully done. The body wasn’t interfered with in any way. It seemed to have been laid out in quite a composed, dignified way. I know you’re not going to like this, Brian, but is it possible that he died at home and …?’

  ‘And what? You think Cloris or Peter, or Cloris and Peter, moved him to the cemetery? To avoid a scandal? You can’t be serious. It was Christmas Day — Christmas fucking Day! You think they found him dead, and dumped his body, and then popped round to Mother’s house for lunch?’

  ‘When you say it out loud, I agree it sounds unlikely, but with every hour that passes, certainties of any kind are becoming scarce. Geraldine was here, drugged, and now she’s vanished. The police feel at liberty to assault me. I feel as though I’m in some sort of drugged, fugue state. How am I going to explain this black eye to the Mother Goose cast? I’ve got fans coming to the stage door. I’m supposed to look reasonably like the photograph on the cover of The Listener-In, not like someone who’s been beaten up in a drunken brawl. God, Strachan is such an arsehole. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how embarrassing this would be for me.’

  Brian grabbed me by my shirtfront, which startled me. He grabbed me so fiercely that he pulled off a button.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ he said. ‘Your black eye really isn’t the main feature of this situation. John Gilbert died of a heroin overdose. Perhaps you could focus on that?’

  I felt chastened. Brian was right, of course. Still, he hadn’t just been slugged in the eye by an angry and arrogant copper. I thought it was fair enough that such a blow might knock one briefly off course, as it were.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What else did Cloris say?’

  ‘She said she wants to have her mother’s body exhumed.’

  ‘Good lord. That’s extreme. She suspects her father of poisoning her mother? Just as her brother did?’

  ‘She didn’t say that. She just said she wanted an exhumation, and then she seemed to think she’d said too much. She refused to say any more, and she begged me not to tell anyone what she’d said. She backtracked and said that she wasn’t really serious, that it was just a passing thought and that she didn’t really mean it.’

  ‘Could they tell anything after this long? How long has Mrs Gilbert been dead?’

  ‘Is it six months or so? I think they could determine whether she’d been poisoned or not, but Cloris would have to argue her case very strongly, and, well, that would mean putting someone in the family under suspicion. That’d be awkward, what with the wedding and everything.’

  ‘Is she frightened of her father, do you think?’

  ‘Not in the least. I don’t believe she suspect
s him at all.’

  ‘So she thinks John poisoned his mother? Why would he do that?’

  ‘I’m stitching this together out of the flimsiest of threads, Will. Just gossamer wisps of information. I’m drawing conclusions from a muscle twitch in Cloris’s face. I don’t think she believes John poisoned his mother. She said Mrs Gilbert’s last weeks were terrible, but there was a strange point where her pain seemed to diminish suddenly, and she was strangely calm. Overnight she went from crying out in agony, to a peaceful acceptance that she was dying, and her pain seemed to almost vanish. Mrs Gilbert attributed it to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom she’d been praying relentlessly. Cloris suspects it was John’s intervention, that he was dosing her secretly with heroin, and that he overdosed her either deliberately or accidentally. Either way, he killed her, and he couldn’t live with himself afterwards, and his own heroin use increased, until it killed him.’

  The front door opened at this point, and Mother interrupted our conversation. She saw my eye, and made a remark about the dangers of trawling Princes Park for assignations. I ignored it, because to do anything else would have been to provide her with the perverse pleasure she derived from making insinuations about my sex life, and other people’s. Also, the truth would have pleased her almost as much.

  ‘Cloris and Peter needed an evening to themselves,’ she said. ‘I’m relieved, frankly. The Catholic paraphernalia in that house gives me the creeps. Why would anyone want to look at a naked man nailed to a cross while one is having dinner? There’s a crucifix on the wall in the dining room. It puts me off my food.’