A Thing of Blood

by Robert Gott

  It was 7.30 a.m. when I knocked on Mother’s door. I was surprised when it was opened by Brian. He looked much better, certainly much better than I did, as evidenced by the expression on his face when he saw me.

  ‘My God, what happened to you?’

  I was about to lie and say that I’d tripped in the brownout, but remembering his jibe about my being a PI, I said, ‘I was doing some work for a client and it turned nasty. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep this under your hat and let Mother think that I simply tripped and fell. How did you get out of jail?’

  ‘I never went to jail,’ he said, as we went down to the kitchen. ‘The police let me go late last night. Mother’s solicitor reckons they’re playing a game of cat and mouse. They show their hand, let me know that they think I did it, apply pressure, then release me to see what I do. They don’t have any evidence, only a theory, and their best chance is to hope that I make a mistake. That’s what Peter Gilbert says.’

  ‘God knows how anything gets solved. I thought they’d arrested you.’

  ‘They let me think they were going to, and then changed their minds.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound exactly legal. What does this Gilbert say about that?’

  Brian shrugged. ‘Tactics. He says it’s just tactics.’

  He was a different man from the badly shaken suspect I’d seen last night. He’d rallied with admirable speed.

  ‘My only worry,’ he said over a cup of tea, ‘is that, while they’re concentrating on me, Darlene is out there somewhere.’

  I was about to make Brian the rash promise that I would find Darlene, and that I would do it before the day was over, when Mother appeared and prevented this absurdly optimistic statement being uttered. I was sitting with my back to her, so I told her before she saw my face that I had had an accident and that it looked worse than it actually was. She lavished a small cluck of sympathy on me before inquiring with real solicitude about Brian’s health. She must have spoken to him when he returned the night before, so why she would expect a deterioration in his health to occur over the ensuing few hours was beyond me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Brian said, ‘but I’ve made a decision. I’m going to resign from school rather than wait to be suspended from duty or dismissed, and, even if Darlene is found and is safe, I’m not going back to teaching. I’m the only man there as it is, and anyway, I’ve had enough.’

  ‘You’ve got flat feet,’ said Mother. ‘Like Will. You can’t join up.’

  ‘I’ll get a job of some kind. Manpower will put me somewhere. I don’t care where.’

  This was certainly a surprising decision, but I could see Brian’s point about jumping before being pushed. If he did stay, the word would soon filter down to his students that Mr Power was suspected of having done away with his wife. This would make the maintenance of classroom discipline a challenge. Being taught by a murderer would unleash the natural anarchy in the most docile of boys.

  I warned Brian that the police might pick him up for another round of questioning during the day, and that he shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of being upset by it.

  ‘That Strachan character will be pissed off to find you bemused rather than frightened.’

  Mother agreed, but hoped that Brian’s bemusement would be more attractive than my own expressions of this emotion. I let the remark go, firstly because I had no idea what she was talking about, and secondly because I recognised that it was the kind of observation generated by the stress and worry that she was experiencing.

  I caught an uncomfortably overburdened tram down Lygon Street. It was so crowded that it made me claustrophobic, and I disembarked well before I’d intended to. With no clear idea of what I should do I simply headed in the direction of St Patrick’s spires, emboldened enough by what I had so far achieved to believe, like Mr Micawber, that something would turn up.

  The cathedral was filled with the smell of floor wax, stale incense, and the sound of beautiful voices. It must have been a choir rehearsal, because the music stopped abruptly and was followed by the incongruous sound of an instruction in German. The singing recommenced, was halted, and another, sharper instruction rang out, again in German. Curious, I moved up the aisle and sat where I could see the choir and its master. They were singing in English, but it was a clipped, careful, slightly accented English.

  ‘It’s the Vienna Boys’ Choir,’ a voice behind me said. ‘They got stuck here when the war broke out.’

  I’d heard that the choir had been unable to leave, but I’d never given it enough thought to wonder what had become of them. I turned to thank my informant and found myself face to face with Trezise. My immediate fear that he might have recognised me was justified.

  ‘Why have you been following me?’ he asked coolly. There was something nasty behind the coolness though, and its expression in this supposedly hallowed place sharpened its edge.

  ‘You must be mistaken,’ I said, and turned away from him. A moment later his arm was around my neck, pressing uncomfortably on my windpipe and preventing me from producing a sound more coherent than an indignant gurgle. The Vienna Boys’ Choir had stopped singing and was riveted by the spectacle. I resisted the urge to kick and scrabble. It seemed wildly inappropriate to wrestle in a cathedral setting. I’m not a religious man, but I hope I appreciate the difference between a boxing ring and a House of God. Mr Trezise didn’t share my sensitivity on this point and tightened his grip.

  ‘You’ve been following me since Wednesday. I spotted you in the bookshop, right off. If someone’s paying you, you’re crap. Now, what’s it all about?’

  He loosened his grip sufficiently to enable me to splutter that perhaps it was time for us to talk like civilised men. He stood up, grabbed a handful of cloth at my shoulder and tugged at it to indicate that I too should rise. The choirmaster issued another order in the Axis tongue, and the boys stiffened and prepared to sing. With his arm firmly through mine Trezise led me into the dark recesses of the cathedral and knocked on a door — one of many situated in different, shadowy corners. It was opened by a priest and we were shown into a small room furnished with a desk, a picture of a martyr being disembowelled, and a rack of vestments. It was stuffy and gloomy and too small for three people.

  The priest was tall and had something of Cassius’ lean and hungry look, with hollow cheeks, charcoal with freshly and closely shaved stubble. When he spoke his voice retained a slight Irish burr not yet dislodged by rubbing up against his colonial congregation.

  ‘Who have we here, Mr Trezise?’

  He smiled with all the beatific warmth of a wolf.

  ‘He’s been following me and I want to know why. His Grace warned me that there’d be people who’d want to stop the Movement.’

  The look on my face was one of unequivocal puzzlement, and the priest saw that I genuinely had no idea what Trezise was talking about. I didn’t have to act at all when I asked, ‘Who’s His Grace? What Movement? You really have got the wrong man. I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’

  ‘His Grace,’ said the priest with the patronising patience of a man who believed he was my moral superior, ‘is Archbishop Mannix.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of him. A tall man.’

  ‘He towers above us all in every way,’ said Trezise, and there was the tremor of the zealot in his voice.

  ‘The Movement,’ said the priest, ‘is the Catholic Social Studies Movement. There is nothing sinister about it. We are determined to stop the evil of communism from infecting our society. You’re not a communist, are you, Mr …? I don’t know your name.’

  The priest’s words had had the effect of calming Trezise down, and I, too, felt more at ease. I was in no danger. I wasn’t going to end up sprawled on the steps of the altar like Thomas à Becket. I decided that I would adopt the strategy of telling the truth, and present Trezise and his pr
iest with the evidence of Trezise’s infidelity. He might then be amenable to backing off, and withdrawing his support for whatever Anna Capshaw had in mind for Clutterbuck.

  ‘My name is William Power.’ I was immediately conscious that my tone was too grand for the room, too ‘Call me Ishmael’ for the circumstances. ‘I’m a private inquiry agent and I’ve been retained by Mr Paul Clutterbuck to protect his interests in relation to his ex-wife, Anna Capshaw. Mr Trezise is currently engaged in an affair with Miss Capshaw and is advising her on the best way to exact revenge on my client who won rather more than she did in the divorce settlement. I think that just about sums it up. This other business — the Movement and Mannix …’

  ‘His Grace,’ Trezise said sharply.

  ‘This other business is of no interest to me. Movements and communists are way outside my brief.’

  The priest, who didn’t return the courtesy of an introduction, seemed unsurprised by the revelation of Trezise’s sex life. He’d heard it all under the seal of the confessional no doubt. The silence was awkward.

  ‘I think we can bring this to a close with all parties walking away satisfied,’ I said, feeling confident that I was close to brokering a deal that would impress Clutterbuck.

  ‘Miss Capshaw is understandably bitter, but she has no case against my client. She is motivated purely by the ugly desire for revenge. She is, I assure you Mr Trezise, sleeping with you simply to use your expertise to attack Mr Clutterbuck. She can’t afford to hire you so she’s paying you not in cash but in kind.’

  Trezise remained impassive in the face of this unpleasant aperçu. I began to think that he might be aware of Anna Capshaw’s ploy, and be indifferent to it. So long as she slept with him, what did he care what her motives were?

  ‘I’m sure,’ I continued, ‘that it would do your career and your marriage no good if word got out that your business practices included sexual relations with clients.’

  I let that hover between us.

  ‘Of course, no word of this will get out so long as Anna Capshaw stays out of my client’s life. I don’t care how you manage it, Mr Trezise, but she must be reined in. You may have to withdraw your services along with your cock.’

  The obscenity was perfectly pitched, and hit Trezise with the force of a slap. Before he could speak the priest said, ‘This is a sacristy, Mr Power, not a bar room.’

  I turned to this thin, Irish virgin.

  ‘Trezise brings his grubby adultery into every room he enters. If he was sitting in the Pope’s lap Anna Capshaw would be there with him.’

  This was too much for Trezise. His face turned the colour of an over-ripe plum.

  ‘Blasphemy!’ He stood and raised his hand as if to strike me.

  The priest stepped between us.

  ‘That’s enough!’

  The crack of his voice acted upon us with the power of an exorcist’s command.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ I said quietly, ‘is that there’s no reason why your wife need ever be told about your indiscretion.’

  Trezise laughed.

  ‘You’re welcome to tell my wife whatever you like. You’ll need a Ouija board and a medium. She’s been dead for four years.’

  A cathedral ought to be the ideal place in which to undergo a crisis, and here I was with a priest to hand and the resources of this outpost of the Vatican at my disposal, but I felt completely disarmed, and regretted mightily that I had told Trezise much more than he needed to know.

  ‘My relationship with Anna Capshaw is my business. I’ve never heard of this Clutterbuck person. I certainly had no idea that she’d ever been married at all, let alone to someone with such a ridiculous name.’

  Trezise seemed to have had no reason to lie at this point, so to say that I felt bamboozled is to grossly understate the case.

  ‘You are a lawyer,’ I said.

  ‘I’m an engineer. So if Anna is offering sex in return for advice I could maybe help her build a bridge or pass on the secret of load-bearing walls.’

  ‘Let’s not descend into sarcasm,’ said the priest. ‘Mr Power’s misinformation is positively Masonic in its scope, but the fact that he’s been hired at all is the really unpleasant part of all this.’

  There was a certain smugness in the priest’s tone that raised my hackles. My most urgent need was to get out of this stuffy sacristy. I’d take the information to Clutterbuck, and get some sort of explanation from him as to what exactly was going on. I decided to be brazen.

  ‘Why should I believe a word you say? My job is to protect the interests of my client, and his interests are being threatened by his ex-wife. It defies belief that this person with whom you are intimate would neglect to mention her recent, ugly, and impoverishing divorce.’

  ‘Let me spell this out for you,’ Trezise said, and sighed with ostentatious patience. ‘Miss Capshaw and I have been intimate once, and that was the night you followed us. I met her for the first time at a meeting of the Movement a few weeks ago. She approached me and, you may have noticed — although perhaps you didn’t — she’s a very attractive woman. She told me that she’d been recently widowed, and naturally I told her the same. We met once or twice after that, for a meal, and we got along very well. She was keen to get involved with the Movement. Both of us knew that our meeting at the hotel was sinful, but we’re weak vessels, and although it’s no excuse, there is a war on and so we went ahead and spent the night together. I’m sure that Anna has made a good confession, as I’ve done, and we’ve agreed to wait now until we’re married before we have sexual relations again.’

  ‘So it must surprise and disappoint you to learn that she lied to you, and that she’s divorced, not widowed.’

  I felt as if I was regaining some ground, and with the memory of Trezise’s arm crushing my larynx, I didn’t spare him.

  ‘As far as I know Mr Trezise, Anna Capshaw isn’t even a Catholic. That, too, must come as something of a surprise.’

  Trezise plunged his hands into his pockets and said, ‘Frankly, Mr Power, where women are concerned, I’m not surprised by anything.’

  The priest gave a little nod of approval, indicating, by this slight gesture, that vulnerable men would always be subject to the predations of rapacious women.

  Neither the priest nor Trezise had any intention of preventing me from leaving, so I assured Trezise that I would no longer be tailing him, and slipped into the cathedral proper. The angelic, displaced Hitlerjugend were still warbling a hymn of praise. I could hear it faintly even after I’d passed through the front door.

  I saw James Fowler immediately. He was on the opposite side of the street; standing, watching. I didn’t react and he must have believed that he hadn’t been spotted because he moved off quickly, but in a studied way, as if he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. I hurried after him, and by the time I’d reached the spot where he’d been standing he’d disappeared. I couldn’t join the dots here. Why was Fowler following me? His interest, from whatever motive, was in Clutterbuck. The resolution of this puzzle would have to wait.

  I thought Clutterbuck would be relieved to hear that Trezise was an engineer and that Anna Capshaw wasn’t attempting to interfere with his engagement to Nigella. Where had Clutterbuck acquired the notion that Trezise was a lawyer? I needed to sit down and marshal the facts of these matters on paper. Maybe then I’d see connections that weren’t yet apparent to me.

  On the whole the encounter with Trezise had turned out better than it might have. I thought that Clutterbuck could rest easy, and that the outcome reflected well upon me. I’d been unprepared for what Trezise had told me, it’s true, and I’d shown my hand too early — a lesson from which I would learn — but on the whole a difficult matter had been brought to a satisfactory close. As I walked from the cathedral I began to think about Gretel Beech. She’d been buried for just over twenty-f
our hours. It was urgent that I find her killer and allow her the dignity of a decent funeral. The need to find Darlene vaguely asserted itself, too, although I’d be a hypocrite if I declared that it compelled me in quite the same way as poor Gretel’s murder.

  I walked slowly down Collins Street. The pavement was thick with drones making their way grimly to their soul-destroying, pointless jobs. I was filled with a longing to speak Shakespeare’s verse, to be elevated by the majesty of his poetry. I wanted to spread my arms, or my good arm at any rate, and declaim something grand to these drab subjects of a stuttering king. I missed the stage. My skills as a PI were growing, but how marvellous it would be, I thought, if I could combine the ecstatic joy of acting with the satisfying grind of detection.

  It was the grind that concerned me now. George Beech and James Fowler. I turned these names over in my mind and may even have spoken them out loud. Pursuing Fowler was the option I favoured. I’m not ashamed to acknowledge that Beech’s propensity for thuggery over conversation was at least partly responsible for my decision to go after Fowler. Besides, I had no straightforward way of locating Beech, and I wasn’t in the physical condition to match him if I did find his lair. I knew James Fowler was close by, having seen him, and I wasn’t afraid of him, although if he had killed Gretel Beech I might have good reason to be. Still, the educated killer was a more attractive option than the drunken, murderous brute.

  I lingered outside the Melbourne Club on the off chance that Mr Fowler Snr. might emerge. I would ask him for his son’s business address if he did do. The offices of Native Policy for Mandated Territories would surely be in the city — if such a bizarre occupation warranted an office. It sounded more like the kind of job done out of a tent. No one went in and no one came out of the Melbourne Club. I toyed with the idea of knocking on the door and asking to see Mr Fowler but, unshaven and gravel-rashed, I didn’t think I’d get a positive reception.