The Serpent's Sting

by Robert Gott

  ‘Found anything?’ Taylor called.

  ‘Not yet, Bert. Hold your horses.’

  Taylor looked from Cloris to me and back again.

  ‘You’d make a lovely couple.’

  Cloris still looked vacant, as if she couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. She must have been consumed with worry about her father.

  ‘You left Peter Gilbert badly injured,’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘It was self-defence, Will. Besides, I didn’t hit him that hard.’

  ‘If he dies, they’ll hang you.’

  That simple observation seemed to unnerve him. Perhaps the marijuana was finally beginning to interfere with his thought processes.

  ‘We’ll be safely out of reach, so one dead old man won’t mean a thing. You know what? I hope he’s dead, because your brother’s besotted lover needs to know that I will kill Brian unless my demands are met.’

  I began to protest that if Brian had a lover, I’d know about it, when a drawer crashing to the floor of the kitchen made each of us jump.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Taylor called.

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘Nothing,’ Geraldine replied. ‘I just pulled a drawer out too far.’

  ‘You scared the shit out of me. Hurry up. I’d like these birds trussed before Brian gets here.’

  Taylor’s cigarette had gone out. He struck a match to re-light it. Another sound came from the kitchen. It was a sort of smothered whimper.

  ‘Gerald?’ Taylor called.

  There was no reply.

  ‘Geraldine?’

  Taylor’s voice was taut. He wasn’t panicking, and incredibly, despite the amount of marijuana he’d smoked, he was immediately alert. He pointed his gun at me.

  ‘Get up and come over here. Now!’

  When I was within arm’s reach of him, he grabbed me by the shirtfront, moved rapidly behind me, and put one arm round my neck. He held the barrel of the gun to my ear.

  ‘You make a move,’ he said quietly to Cloris, ‘and I’ll pull the trigger and blow his unimpressive brains out. Understood?’

  Cloris nodded that she did indeed understand. Taylor pushed me ahead of him into the corridor. We stood, facing the kitchen. We could see where the drawer had fallen. There was no sign of Geraldine.

  ‘I’ve got a gun to this man’s head,’ Taylor said. I felt all of his muscles relax as Geraldine opened the back door of the kitchen and came in from outside. She had her head down and was brushing dust from the bodice of her floral dress. Taylor lowered the gun, and stepped slightly away from me, although he placed his hand on the back of my neck.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer? You know dope makes me jumpy.’

  I hadn’t noticed until she took a step forward that Geraldine had one hand behind her back. In one smooth, deft movement, she brought it to the front, revealing that it held a revolver. She raised it and fired. Taylor dropped like a marionette that had had its strings severed. He made no sound, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have heard it above the dreadful din of the echoing shot. The bullet had hit Taylor between the eyes, so when I looked at Geraldine I knew that if she turned the gun on me, she wouldn’t miss. She was still holding the weapon in the firing position.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Brian said, as he lowered the gun and pulled off the wig.

  In the front room of Mother’s house, Cloris and I sat on the couch, and Brian sat where Taylor had been sitting. I was disoriented by what had taken place in the corridor, and I was further disoriented by the sight of Brian, his legs crossed, wearing Geraldine’s floral dress. Taylor’s body had been taken away by two men who had appeared behind Brian at the sound of the gunshot.

  ‘I suppose you have some questions,’ he said, and recrossed his legs, smoothing the cloth along his thighs with his hands. ‘To pre-empt a couple of them, Peter has been taken to hospital for observation. He doesn’t have a fractured skull, but he is severely concussed. Mother is also under observation in hospital. It wasn’t Mrs Ferrell who drove away in that car. We snaffled her as soon as Geraldine went back inside.’

  ‘We?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Our people, Will. I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’

  My emotions at this moment were so confused that I was incapable of coherent thought. Having no idea where to begin, I said, ‘Let’s start with the dress.’

  Cloris, who’d become calm since hearing the good news about her father, echoed my request.

  ‘Yes, Brian,’ she said. ‘Let’s start with the dress.’

  ‘Geraldine is under arrest. She is currently wearing what I’d been wearing. When we grabbed her from the kitchen, it occurred to me that changing clothes might buy me a valuable few seconds.’

  ‘She’s wearing your clothes?’ Cloris asked.

  ‘Strictly speaking, they belong to the Tivoli,’ Brian said. ‘Geraldine Buchanan and I take the same dress size. Isn’t that interesting?’

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I said to Cloris. I looked at her, and realised that she was going to have to re-think her growing attachment to Brian. Quite apart from the unaffected manner in which Brian wore female attire, there was the matter of his relationship with someone in Intelligence. All my instincts told me that this person was Nigella Fowler. Fortunately, I no longer had any feelings — any positive feelings — for Nigella Fowler, but it would be galling nonetheless to discover that she’d rejected me in favour of my brother.

  Brian’s demeanour had undergone a metamorphosis. He’d assumed complete control, and despite his ludicrous outfit, he had about him an air of authority that I’d never previously associated with him. Given that he’d saved my life just a few minutes earlier, and brought this hideous episode in our lives to an end, I restrained myself from expressing my profound disappointment at the deception he’d maintained whenever the question of employment in Intelligence had been raised.

  ‘I’m sorry about your brother, Cloris. I don’t know what Taylor told you.’

  ‘He told me the truth, I think.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘why John Gilbert would hire me to investigate his mother’s death.’ Cloris looked aghast. ‘He told me,’ I said directly to her, ‘that he suspected your father had poisoned her.’

  She shook her head in a kind of wonder.

  ‘How very odd,’ she said. ‘Although perhaps it isn’t so odd, really. He disliked you intensely, Will, and he wasn’t too fond of Dad, either. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to pit you against each other in a pointless and nasty game. It would certainly ensure that you and Dad would never be close.’

  I didn’t wish to wrestle with this little aperçu.

  ‘Taylor was going to take you hostage, Brian, and fly to Tasmania,’ I said.

  ‘Taylor knew I worked for Intelligence, and he knew that because he was blackmailing someone inside the organisation. We know who that person is. He’s been co-operative. You can still hang for treason, and that fact helped him decide to keep us informed of Taylor’s movements — most of them, anyway.’

  ‘Why did you go along with playing dress-ups tonight?’

  ‘Oh, that was useful. I had to get you out of the way long enough for us to line all our ducks up. I’m sorry about those MPs. They were ordered to be thorough, no more. I understand that one of them punched you.’

  I began to feel ire creeping through me.

  ‘You could have prevented Mother and Cloris having to endure what they endured this evening.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. Peter Gilbert’s house was being watched, just in case. I’d gone, with a handful of men, to the brothel Taylor used when Fitzgibbon Street was busy with clients. We intended to arrest him and Geraldine there, but Taylor had the jump on us. Our man outside the Gilbert house saw Taylor bundle Mother and Cloris into a car. He went inside after they
’d left, and found Peter on the floor. He telephoned for help and telephoned headquarters. It took a while for the message to be relayed to us, and when it was, I knew exactly where Taylor had gone. We had someone watching here as well, and he confirmed that a car had pulled up and that four people had gone inside. He’d been instructed to do nothing, except watch and wait. He saw you arrive, and we weren’t far behind.’

  ‘So you heard Taylor fire his gun, and you didn’t think that might be the time to burst in and save the day?’

  ‘The door to the front room was open. I was standing near the stairs. I heard immediately that no one had been hurt. If I’d burst in then, someone might have actually been hurt if Taylor fired again.’

  ‘My God. You people will put any of us at risk to get what you want. You were willing to put Mother in danger, let alone Cloris and me, just to prevent Albert Taylor exposing you as an Intelligence agent.’

  Brian bridled.

  ‘This wasn’t about me, Will. Albert Taylor knew who all our agents were. He knew about the Northern Australia Observer Unit. You know as well as I do that that is particularly sensitive information.’

  ‘Which you’ve just revealed to Cloris.’

  ‘I meant that he knew precisely where those men are. He knew their positions. Would he have sold this information? He’d have sold his own mother. He just hadn’t found anyone to sell it to yet.’

  ‘Tell me, Brian, did you know who he was when he turned up at Christmas lunch?’

  Cloris was listening with rapt attention.

  ‘No. I thought he was an American soldier, just as you did. My notes for that day mention Anthony Dervian and Harlen Quist only in passing.’

  ‘Your notes? You take notes?’

  ‘It’s my job, Will. I’m new at it, but I’m good at it.’

  I stood up. Acid began to rise from my gut into my throat. I stared down at Brian. Mother’s perfume came off him, and his face was disfigured with poorly applied lipstick and blotchy powder.

  ‘Albert Taylor wasn’t actually a traitor, was he? He was a pimp and a drug pedlar, but he wasn’t actually a traitor.’

  ‘He was a deserter and a potential traitor.’

  ‘You killed him for a crime he might have committed? Your conscience can accommodate this?’

  ‘There’s a war on.’

  ‘So all conscience is suspended.’

  ‘I need to use the lavatory,’ Cloris said.

  ‘It’s upstairs on the right,’ Brian said. ‘Are you all right, Cloris?’

  ‘Oh yes. I do feel a little odd, as if I might be sick. It’s the shock, I think.’

  She hurried out of the room.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. It’s right up there. I’ll go on ahead and turn the light on for you.’ This was an American voice.

  ‘How many people are in this house right now, Brian?’

  ‘Half a dozen. They’ll all be gone as soon as the truck arrives to collect Taylor’s body, which is in the kitchen at the moment. You don’t know any of these people. Strachan and Radcliff will be briefed in the morning, and you won’t be hearing from them. Captain Holtz will already have been briefed. This investigation is over, and it was successful. And you were a part of that, Will.’

  ‘Why do I feel so shitty?’

  ‘Because you’re a decent man.’

  ‘And decency is a weakness that Intelligence can exploit, but which it won’t reward.’

  ‘That isn’t true. You’re about to make a great success in Private Lives.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a reward when I know now that Williamson’s don’t want me, but were instructed to take me.’

  Brian shrugged.

  ‘It’ll be a hit. They’ll make a lot of money. They’ll be happy enough then.’

  ‘Who’s your lover, Brian?’ I shot the question at him, hoping to shock him into an admission. He remained unperturbed. ‘Albert Taylor knew,’ I added.

  Brian raised his eyebrows in surprise, and this declined into an expression of concern.

  ‘His informant must have passed on a rumour.’

  ‘Who is she, Brian? Is it Nigella Fowler?’

  He leaned forward in his chair, and with conspiratorial quiet he said, ‘Close, Will, very close, but no cigar.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Helen Murnane, who reads early drafts with patience and wisdom, and whose suggestions always turn out to be pitch perfect and which, if ignored, would result in a poorer book; Henry Rosenbloom, my publisher and editor, whose eye and ear are superbly tuned to infelicities of tone and plot; Greg Pyers, a fellow writer and friend, who loves talking about writing as much as I do; Ted Gott, my brother and champion, who reads my stuff with unbridled enthusiasm; and my parents, Maurene and Kevin, who brought us up in a world of books, and never said, ‘You can’t read that.’