A Thing of Blood

by Robert Gott

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So life goes on. Nigella and her father and brother will be here at three o’clock. Mrs Castleton will prepare afternoon tea and I’ll ask her to include you in her baking. I want you to meet these people. I also still want you to find out as much as you can about Cunningham and Anna. You might get lucky and kill two birds with one stone, as it were. I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if Anna paid someone to set me up.’

  This seemed ludicrous to me. I wasn’t completely discounting the possibility that the purpose of Gretel’s murder was to undermine Clutterbuck’s reputation, but there were other scenarios. Gretel had lived among a dissolute crowd. She’d mixed with criminals and strip-tease artistes and God knows who else. It was among this crowd that I thought her killer lurked and it was this crowd that I would need to infiltrate.

  ‘How much do you know about Gretel Beech?’ I asked.

  ‘Practically nothing. I met her at Maguire’s a few months ago and we enjoyed each other’s company. I never met any of her friends and I never went to her place — she had a room in a boarding house in St Kilda, I believe. I don’t think she was from here. She mentioned some family connection in Horsham, or somewhere in the bush. There was something of the country girl about her, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘Although I didn’t know her as well as you did obviously, stripping in a speakeasy isn’t my idea of rural manners.’

  ‘It’s what happens sometimes when country girls get lost in the big city.’

  ‘Where are her clothes?’

  ‘I’ve bundled them up. I intend to burn them.’

  ‘I want to look through them. I might find something that will help me locate somebody who knew her.’

  Clutterbuck looked sceptical, but led me upstairs to a chest in one of the unoccupied rooms where he’d placed her clothes.

  ‘They were stuffed into my wardrobe,’ he said, ‘and were obviously meant to be found there by the basset noses of the constabulary.’

  Gretel’s garments smelled of perfume and were slightly acrid with sweat. There were no pockets, but a small, beaded purse was caught up in the folds of one of her scarves. It was empty except for a torn piece of paper on which was scribbled an address in East Melbourne, a time, and a date. Gretel’s rendezvous was later that morning, and I immediately determined to turn up in her place.

  ‘This isn’t where she was staying?’ I asked.

  Clutterbuck looked at the scrap of paper.

  ‘Heavens no. That’s a good address.’

  I didn’t mention my plan to Clutterbuck. He was more forthcoming about his plans for me.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you how to run your business,’ he said, ‘but it might be relevant that Anna likes to have a late breakfast. So if you hurry you’ll probably catch her and her lover in the dining room of the Menzies Hotel. She isn’t the kind of woman who would pass up a free feed.’

  Clutterbuck was right about his ex-wife. I entered the dining room at the Menzies Hotel at nine-thirty, and saw Anna and Cunningham seated at a table, the detritus of a recently eaten meal before them. They gave every appearance of being a respectable couple, and didn’t betray by expression or gesture that there was anything illicit about their relationship. The same couldn’t be said of the several US Army officers who clutched the hands of the women opposite them with proprietorial and post-coital vulgarity. There were no Australian Army uniforms in the room.

  I sat in the foyer reading the paper and hoped that they would leave the hotel soon. Gretel’s meeting was for eleven o’clock. I couldn’t form a plan beyond that until I had ascertained the nature of the appointment. I suspected it might be sexual, in which case her client would be unwilling to help me. The important thing was not to give away the hideous fact of her death. I would have to think on my feet.

  As I was half-reading the paper and half-pondering how I would approach Gretel’s assignation, Anna Capshaw and Cunningham came into the foyer and passed outside into Collins Street. On the pavement they said a few words and went in different directions. I followed Cunningham. He began to half run, half walk as if he was late for an appointment. At Spring Street he turned left and increased his pace so that in a few minutes he had reached St Patrick’s Cathedral. He moved quickly up its steps to the entrance and disappeared inside. There was so little alteration in his stride that I formed the impression that this monolithic, intimidating edifice was a familiar haunt. I didn’t enjoy the same familiarity; despite having grown up in Melbourne, I’d had no occasion to enter this earthly manifestation of Catholic power. I did so now with some trepidation.

  The soaring Gothic space was obviously designed to diminish the congregation, rather than celebrate God, and the odorous silence, broken only by the echoey footfall of someone hidden in its depths, frankly gave me the creeps. I saw Cunningham kneeling in a pew outside what I presumed were the confessionals. I sat several pews behind him and waited for something to happen. A person emerged from one of the cubicles and knelt to pray. I wondered what tawdry little sins she had divested herself of. Cunningham took her place. He would probably unburden himself of the terrible sin of fornication. I didn’t know yet whether or not he was married, but I supposed that the virgin priest listening to his tale of lust would take a pretty dim view of the transgression. Three Hail Marys as penance certainly wouldn’t cover it. He was in there for a very long time and when he came out he didn’t kneel to begin his penance but headed for a side door. Before he reached it a voice called, shockingly loud in the respectful silence:

  ‘Mr Trezise!’

  Cunningham turned and met a priest who was coming towards him. He smiled and held out his hand. The priest shook it, and they walked together behind the enormous altar. By the time I got there they’d gone, but it was impossible to discover where. The cathedral seemed to me to be a rabbit warren of mysterious doors and side chapels.

  So Cunningham was really named Trezise. I wasn’t surprised that he’d given a false name at the hotel; no doubt he was married. Now I could begin the real work of finding out the information that Clutterbuck needed.

  With Cunningham, or more correctly, Trezise, occupied with the priest, I decided to make my way towards the address scribbled on Gretel Beech’s scrap of paper. It was a house in East Melbourne. With an hour to spare, I thought I’d walk the distance rather than spend money on a Red Top taxi or a tram. The walk would clear my head, and give me time to think about Gretel’s murder and Darlene’s kidnapping. I couldn’t shake the notion that there was something amiss there. Having just disposed of a body myself, I realised how difficult it would have been to have snatched Darlene and effectively made her vanish in only a few minutes. This was surely more than a single person was capable of achieving. Could an embittered woman thousands of miles north organise a gang of thugees to do her bidding in punishing the man who threw her over? It seemed unlikely.

  Perhaps it was Darlene’s life that needed to be examined, but this was too absurd. She was socially inept certainly, but not to the point of provoking someone to take her out of circulation by abduction. She was too drab and boring to attract the attention of professional ransom-raisers, if such people existed outside cheap Hollywood programmers. There had been no demands for a ransom thus far. If squeezing money from her nearest and dearest had been the intention, I imagined that her kidnappers would have been filled with despair when they spoke to her, or saw her in the harsh light of day. If I’d been one of them I would have argued for an immediate reduction in the asking price; realistically, I would have realised that, far from expecting payment, the kidnapping gang could possibly be held liable for cartage costs.

  I smiled to myself as my ruminations became more extravagant and unseemly, and arrived at my destination just before 11.00 a.m. It was a large house, double-storeyed, with a beautiful cast-iron railing around the upper veranda. It was, without doubt, a good add
ress, and an unlikely rendezvous point, at this hour of the day, for a prostitute and her client. I rang the bell. The woman who answered the door was obviously the help. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but the lady of this house would not have been seen dead in such ill-fitting attire, made entirely of shoddy.

  ‘I’m here on behalf of Miss Gretel Beech,’ I said.

  ‘Wait in the hall,’ she said. ‘Mr Wilks won’t be happy.’

  She climbed a broad staircase and entered a room off the upper landing. A babble of voices escaped when she did so. A man in his fifties emerged and came down the stairs towards me. He was wearing a ridiculous beret and a pleated smock. All that was missing was a carefully trimmed moustache and a French accent, and the cliché would have been complete.

  ‘Not again,’ he said in broad Australian vowels, which immediately mollified the effect of his costume. ‘Gretel is so unreliable. This is the second time she’s done this and she swore solemnly it would never happen again. The ladies will be so disappointed. They were looking forward to a woman this week. We had a bloke last week.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but it seemed wise to behave as if I sympathised with whatever inconvenience Gretel’s absence had caused him.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, but Gretel isn’t the most reliable girl in the world.’

  As soon as I’d said this, I realised I was quoting Paul Clutterbuck.

  ‘But she sent me instead.’

  Mr Wilks sighed. ‘Well, you’d better come up and get ready.’

  He stood back and looked me up and down.

  ‘You’ve got a broken arm. I suppose that might be quite interesting. You’re not fat, which is a pity. It would be so much easier for them if you were fat.’

  I thought it strange that he hadn’t formally introduced himself, and he hadn’t yet asked my name. I followed him up the stairs and into the room from which he had emerged. There were eight ladies there, each seated behind an easel and each wearing the loose clothing of the amateur artist. One of them had tied a scarf around her head in what I presume she thought approximated fascinating bohemianism. It was evident from the perfume that hung in the air and from the various pieces of jewellery I glimpsed that none of these women was so poor or unconnected that they would need to consider the grim possibility of taking on a war job.

  ‘Our model has done a bunk,’ Mr Wilks said. There was a collective groan. ‘She has, however, done us the courtesy of sending a replacement. It wasn’t what we were hoping for, but what is art without sacrifice, struggle, and disappointment? I’m sure Mr … I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to me, ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Power,’ I said. ‘William Power.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr William Power will provide us with enough dramatic poses to get our creative juices flowing. If you would like to step behind that screen, Mr Power, and prepare yourself, we will begin.’

  It was with some relief that I now understood the nature of Gretel’s work here. These ladies were gathered for a weekly drawing class, for which Mr Wilks no doubt overcharged them. It was almost quaint. They had obviously progressed from the tedium of still lifes to the discipline of the figure. Whatever costumes were waiting for me behind the Japanese screen would have been chosen with a female model in mind, but I knew I could adjust them into something resembling a toga or a tunic. I imagined that the standard modelling outfit for a woman was a shapeless but diaphanous bolt of cloth designed to be wrapped about the body in simulation of a figure on a frieze somewhere. I would have to make do, and think of this as a performance piece with gestures, but no words. When I ducked behind the screen, there was nothing there but a chair. I poked my head around and said, ‘There’s just a chair here.’

  ‘Do you need a second chair?’ Mr Wilks asked.

  ‘Well, no, but the … the costumes. There’s no costume.’

  ‘Why would you need a costume, Mr Power? You have done this sort of work before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I thought Gretel mentioned a costume, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘We did that once early on with Gretel, but we draw the body now. You can’t draw the clothed figure properly unless you know how the body is moving beneath. As I’m sure you are aware.’

  My eyes circuited the room. The eight ladies, the oldest of whom looked to be approaching sixty, and the youngest barely in her twenties, were watching me expectantly, but not lewdly. They each had the carefully studied look of the professional artist, even though they probably were no more than bored socialites indulging in a daring hobby.

  ‘Are there any particular poses you would like me to strike?’ I asked Mr Wilks.

  ‘We’ll decide as we go along. If you could get ready now please,’ he said, a little testily.

  I began undressing and draping my clothes over the chair. I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the screen.

  ‘I wonder if you would mind taking your socks off, Mr Power. They are distracting and we need to see your feet.’

  I peeled off my socks and stood before the half-circle of easels, physically naked, but mentally armed.

  ‘The first pose will be ten minutes. If you would strike an attitude, Mr Power?’

  I placed the hand with the cast on it on my hip and raised the other towards heaven, like a languid Grecian athlete. If it had been carved in marble, it might have been labelled ‘After Praxiteles.’ The ladies began to concentrate and there was a scratching of charcoal on paper. Mr Wilks walked among them, scrutinising their lines and scrutinising me to determine the discrepancies. After ten minutes he said, ‘Next pose please. Another ten minutes.’

  I turned my body as if throwing a discus. This proved uncomfortable after only a few minutes and I took my hat off to the chap who must have modelled for Myron in Ancient Greece. Two more ten-minute poses — one of which had to be changed when I was asked if I could not, on this occasion, bend over in quite that way — and two twenty-minute poses followed, and suddenly it was all over. The ladies packed away their charcoals, I got dressed, and Mr Wilks pressed ten shillings upon me saying that he hoped Gretel wouldn’t let him down again the following week.

  I made a noncommittal movement of the shoulders, and said, ‘Is this your place?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he snorted. ‘I take drawing classes here because Lady Bailey pays me to do so. It’s her house. She’s a widow and I’m teaching her how to draw. She invites her circle and it’s her ten shillings in your pocket. Very generous, wouldn’t you say?’

  I had to admit that, after the initial awkwardness, the work wasn’t very demanding. It didn’t require skill, just immodesty. I wondered if Mr Wilks wasn’t hopeful of Lady Bailey’s patronage, or matronage, extending beyond its current generosity. It may have already done so for all I knew.

  Mr Wilks took off his beret and his smock.

  ‘I hate these,’ he said. ‘Lady Bailey thinks I should look the part.’

  ‘Was she there at that session?’

  ‘Of course. She was the oldest of them. On the end. The oldest and the least talented. Not that any of them have any real talent, except for Nigella Fowler. She’s got something. She’s good at likenesses and she can draw hands and feet.’

  It took a moment for the name to register with me.

  ‘Nigella Fowler was one of the students?’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard the name, that’s all. I don’t know where.’

  ‘Well, there’s talent there, but she’ll waste it. She’s got herself engaged to some bloke no one knows anything about. Her father isn’t happy about it apparently — so Lady Bailey told me at any rate, and she should know. She’s in with all that crowd. Her husband was a cousin of Nigella’s father. I think that’s right.’

  I couldn’t figure out what relat
ion this made Nigella to the widow Bailey, something with ‘once removed’ appended to it probably, and I never understood what that was all about. It made no difference to my situation. I was due to have afternoon tea with a young lady who had spent the morning staring hard at my naked body. This discombobulating thought made me determined to get the information I had come for.

  ‘How did you meet Gretel?’ I asked.

  ‘At the National Gallery School. She was modelling there for a class I was teaching. I haven’t seen you there. Have you done work for them?’

  ‘I don’t do this sort of thing for a living, Mr Wilks. I’m an actor.’

  ‘I see. Between engagements, as they say.’

  ‘I’ve just returned from engagements interstate.’

  ‘If you need the work, I can fix you up with a few jobs at the Gallery School. They’re a bit prudish there. You’d have to wear a posing pouch. And it doesn’t pay as well as Lady Bailey does.’

  ‘May I be frank with you, Mr Wilks?’

  ‘Is there something you need to be frank about, Mr Power?’

  ‘It’s about Gretel Beech. It’s a sensitive matter.’

  He stopped gathering up bits of broken charcoal and looked at me.

  ‘Miss Beech isn’t suggesting that she has been the victim of inappropriate behaviour while under my tutelage, is she?’

  ‘No,’ I said, and knew instinctively that something intimate had occurred between Gretel and Mr Wilks. I didn’t for a moment think that it had been forced intimacy.

  ‘No. Certainly not,’ I said. ‘I actually don’t (I almost said didn’t) know Gretel very well, but she spoke highly of your classes.’

  This didn’t sound like anything Gretel would ever say, but I was making it up as I went along. He raised his eyebrows when I said it, and I knew that he’d detected my slight miscalculation.

  ‘She owes me money,’ I said. ‘She’s been avoiding me for the last couple of days. I was hoping that you might know where she meets her friends. That sort of thing.’