by Peter Corris
‘No one.’
‘Not Miss Reid?’
‘Certainly not, I sent her away when I recognised Henry.’
‘Who else could have seen him then?’
‘I really couldn’t say. I have no staff now apart from Verna.’
She sounded like Bob Menzies lamenting the Empire.
‘Sir Clive had… expensive tastes and there is not a great deal of money left. But there are possibilities. The right man could revive our fortunes.’
It was sounding thinner, more fantastic. I felt less sure about my expenses but you have to give of your best.
‘Did you have any staff then — when Brain was here?’
She tilted her head back as if it took a physical effort to recall details of menials. ‘There may have been a chauffeur then. Yes, I think there was.’
‘Would you have some sort of record on him?’
‘Verna would. She should be back soon.’
She said it as if she hoped so; I wondered about their relationship. I also wondered about the Judge’s tastes. I asked for a description of Henry Brain.
He was a tall, thin man she said, but stooped over. His hair was grey and sparse and he was almost toothless. She said that the only sign that he had once been a gentleman was his hands — they were clean and well kept. His clothes sounded like cast-offs.
‘Did he tell you what he’d been doing in the past twenty-odd years?’
She paused. ‘I think he said he’d travelled. I don’t recall distinctly. It was easy to see what he’d been doing — drinking. My guess is that he’d been in and out of jail.’
‘That could be important. Any evidence?’
She shook her old head, no. But it hadn’t stopped her saying it. Her husband had sent enough men inside in his time, perhaps she had an instinct about it.
‘He didn’t tell you where he lived?’
She shook her head.
‘No. But I believe you should look for him on skid row.’
Her hands flew up to her mouth too late to stop the incongruous words. They were totally out of place for a woman so careful in her speech, so mindful to avoid the lurid. They suggested that she could be a closet television watcher and that raised another problem for me — this whole thing could be a bloody fantasy. The moment was awkward and then we were both startled by the sound of a voice screaming. ‘No!’ and the sound of a door crashing closed. Lady C brushed a scone crumb from her dress.
‘Verna,’ she said wearily. ‘Fraught as usual. Go and see her and get what you need, Mr Hardy. It will give me a respite.’
I got up, said something vague about reporting to her and went out.
The passage outside the room had a big window with a view of the drive up to the house. I took a look and saw a blue car shooting down the gravel; it skidded around a bend in the drive and took off through the gates as if someone was out there with a chequered flag.
3
I found Miss Reid two turns down the passageway. She was leaning against the wall breathing heavily. Her fists were clenched and a few wisps of hair had escaped from her bun. I told her what I wanted, got a short nod and she set off down the passageway which ended at a heavy oak door. I caught up with her and stood close while she unlocked the door. Years of training and field research paid off — her breath smelled of gin.
The room was small with a desk, a straight chair, an easy chair and a couple of filing cabinets. Without speaking she took a cheque book from a drawer in the desk and a pen from a set precisely lined up with the desk blotter. She wrote out a cheque and handed it to me.
‘Thanks. Do you sign all her cheques, Miss Reid?’
‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘For the household and the estate.’
I folded the cheque and put it in my pocket, it restored my confidence; she didn’t look like the sort of woman who wrote rubber cheques.
‘Good bit of that is there? Estate I mean.’
She bit on the end of the pen and then pulled it away, almost spitting the words out. ‘I sized you up in one look. You’re going to trade on this poor old fool’s weakness and bleed her for whatever you can.’ She threw down the pen. ‘You make me sick.’
‘I didn’t see too much weakness.’
‘You wouldn’t, you’re too stupid. She’s batty.’ She got up, opened the biggest filing cabinet and riffled through until she came upon a single sheet of paper. ‘Get out your notebook, detective,’ she said.
I did and wrote what she read out to me — ‘Albert Logan, 31 View Street, Leichhardt.’ She put the paper back and slammed the drawer home. She stood with her back to the cabinet, tight and hostile, still breathing hard and wafting a little gin across to me. She was like no paid companion I’d ever seen; that sort of job dries people out. Being paid for their responses and emotions erodes their personalities, turns them into husks. She was well and truly living and breathing. Her clothes were severe on her lean frame but they suited her. She obviously knew things, had opinions, but there was no way to make her an ally.
I dropped into the easy chair and took out tobacco and papers. She started to protest but I gave her a hard look and she subsided. She sat down behind the desk, scornful again, and watched me get a cigarette going, flip the dead match into a waste paper basket and dirty the air.
‘It’d all be easier with your co-operation,’ I said.
She gave a short laugh. ‘Why should I make it easier for you to snoop on me?’
I was genuinely surprised and nearly choked on the smoke. ‘You? I’m not investigating you.’
‘What then?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ I said weakly.
She stirred in her chair. ‘You’re a cheap liar. Snoop away, I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘Why do you stay here?’
‘So that’s it,’ she snarled. ‘You’re going to harass me. It won’t work. I’m staying until I get what’s due to me.’ She was short-fused and fierce burning.
‘And what’s that?’ I asked quietly.
‘Money. What else? Bonuses and money promised. That old bugger.. ’ Her mouth clamped down and she drew in breath as if to recall the words. She glared at me. I put the cigarette out carefully in a glass ashtray.
‘I want you to tell me all you can about the man who called here about two years ago, the one who looked like a tramp.’
It was her turn to look surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Just tell me.’
She thought about it, calculating the odds like a street fighter. ‘I remember him,’ she said slowly. ‘Dreadful smell.’
‘Was he violent?’
‘A bit. Not too much. He was too drunk to be a danger to anyone except himself.’
‘What happened? Did he just walk in? What about this chauffeur — he didn’t try to stop him?’
‘I assume he was bribed. He was a miserable dishonest wretch. That’s why I sacked him.’
‘Over this incident?’
‘Not specifically. There were a lot of things. Expenses connected with the car, using it himself. He was a cheap crook.’ She looked me directly in the eye when she said it so we were back to square one. I grunted.
‘Back to this derelict. Can you describe him?’
She did, in terms very similar to the old woman’s, but their descriptions didn’t sound collusive. Brain had struck these two very different women in much the same way which probably meant that I had a pretty good picture of him.
Miss Reid’s dislike of me was bubbling up again; she was anxious to remove my cigarette butt and ashes, all traces of me. I asked for and got the daughter’s address, a request which made her look thoughtful again but not friendly. I told her I wanted to look around the grounds and she showed me out through a side door. She didn’t say goodbye. A thought niggled at me as I was leaving the house and I trapped it as I walked across a patch of dried-out lawn. If Lady C. had disinherited the daughter and her brood, who was in line for the estate as of now? It was something to check.
The sun had c
limbed while I’d been in the house and sweat jumped out on my body as I moved. I peeled off my jacket and slung it over my shoulder. The land behind the house was taken up by a tennis court, a swimming pool, plenty of lawn and a two car garage. The garage was empty except for oil stains and some rusted tools; the swimming pool was empty except for leaves, dirt and greenish slime. I looked back at the house and the full force of its elegant shabbiness hit me. There were broken tiles on the roof and discoloured bricks showing through peeling paint. The place looked as if it was waiting for a renovator or a demolition crew. I walked across to the tennis court, recalling my athletic youth and hoping for comfort but the tapes marking the lines were buckled and broken and wind and water had removed a lot of the surface from the court.
I trudged down past the house to my car; its dull paintwork and air of neglect fitted the scene but depressed me. I had a week’s money in my pocket and an interesting case on hand and I should have felt better as I turned the car on the gravel and drove off towards the highway.
4
It was midday, too early to go search out bums on skid row. They stand out better at night when the moonlight is shining on the port bottles and their throats are dry and a dollar will buy you everything they know. It was time to deal with the daylight people. I did a mental check on how much money I owed Cy Sackville my lawyer, decided it was a flea bite to him and put through a call.
We exchanged pleasantries and I told him I was on a case which should net me a few bucks. He congratulated me.
‘I need some information, Cy.’
‘The meter is ticking.’
‘Don’t be like that. You scratch my back and I scratch yours.’
‘When do I get scratched?’
‘Sometime. Have you ever heard of a man named Henry Brain, promising barrister in the forties, went on the skids?’
‘The forties! Are you kidding, who’s still alive from the forties?’
Cy was and is a boy wonder. He refused a chair of law at age twenty-five — no challenge. He despises everyone over thirty-five. It used to be everyone over thirty.
‘Could you ask around? There must be some old buffer who’d remember him. He married Judge Chatterton’s daughter.’
‘It so happens I’m going to a professional dinner tonight. There could be some octogenarian around who’d remember him.’
‘Thanks. Do you know who handles the late Judge’s estate, legal affairs and so on?’
‘Yeah, we’ve transacted — Booth and Booth. What’s your interest?’
‘The widow is my client, confidential enquiry.’
He coughed. ‘Of course.’
‘Thing is, I’d like to know who she’s going to leave the loot to. Any chance of finding out?’
‘That’s a tall order, confidential matter, very, very…’
‘Quite,’ I said, ‘but…?’
‘Possible. Young Booth’ll be at the dinner. He might get pissed and we could discuss the earthly rewards of judges. I’ll try.’
I thanked him, asked him to find out all he could about the Chattertons and said I’d call again soon.
‘Cross all cheques,’ he said.
I headed north to have a chat with Bettina. She went by the name of Selby, now having married one Richard Selby, company director. I stopped in the dry belt, where restaurants are many and pubs are few, and bought beer and sandwiches for lunch. It was hot in the car so I wound all the windows down and sat there eating, drinking and thinking.
A full frontal attack on Mrs Selby was out of the question. ‘Mrs Selby, did you have a child in 1948? And if so where is it?’ She’d throw me out or call the cops. I didn’t expect to get the unassailable truth which she alone knew but she’d be worth a look. If she turned out to be a sober, steady woman of straight eye and piercing honesty I’d have to drop the odds on finding baby. If, on the other hand… I screwed up the wrapping and took it and the beer cans to the bin. They’re hell on litterers in this part of the world.
The Selbys lived in one of the northern arcadias that developed over the last fifteen years. None of the houses would have sold for under a hundred and twenty thousand dollars but it was remarkable what different things that sort of money could get you. The place was a map of the building fads of the sixties and seventies — quintuple-fronted brick veneers, long ranch houses with flat roofs; grey brick and tinted glass creations hung off steep slopes like downhill skiers ready to let go. There were Spanish arches and Asian pagodas, even a tasteful townhouse or two among native trees.
Chez Selby was one of the worst — a monstrosity in liver-coloured brick with a purplish tiled roof. The whole thing reminded me of a slab of old meat. It was up to scratch in the neighbourhood though, with a half acre of lawn and shrubs. From the street I could see the glint of a pool out back. I pulled up outside another heavy mortgage down the street. I looked at my clothes and decided that I was a journalist. She’d never believe I was from Booth and Booth.
The street was quiet the way such streets are in the early afternoon; the kids are at school, the old man’s at work, the wife is playing golf or gardening. The butt of a Honda Accord stuck out of one of the two car ports — Mrs S wasn’t on the links. I had my jacket on and I was hot. Up the path past the shrubs to the front door. It was a heavy number with a security screen. The bell was in the navel of a foot-high plaster bas-relief mermaid attached to the bricks. Chinese opera gongs sounded inside the house.
She wasn’t the golfing or gardening type, more the bar and bed type. She opened the door, dropped a hip and eyed me off. She was a tall, heavy woman, a redhead with fine dark eyes courtesy of her mother. There the resemblance ended; Bettina Brain Selby nee Chatterton was a chip off the old block. Her colour was high and her shoulders were broad. She carried her bulk as the Judge had done, as if heavy people were still in style.
I looked at her for just a fraction too long. ‘Mrs Selby?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was furry with liquor, sleep, sex? Maybe all three. She might have a lover there. Awkward.
I gave her a grin. ‘I’m Peter Kennedy, I’m a journalist doing a feature piece on your late father, Sir Clive Chatterton?’ I let my voice go up enquiringly the way the smart young people seem to do these days. I’d shaved close that morning, my shirt was clean, I might make it. She swivelled her hips and made a space in the doorway.
‘Come on in, Peter.’
I went past her into a hall with deep shag pile carpet in off-white and oyster walls. It felt like stepping into a bowl of yoghurt. Mrs Selby slid along a wall and opened a door and we went into a big room full of large leather structures to sit in and polished black surfaces to put things on. She picked up a glass and rattled the ice cubes.
‘Drink?’
‘Not now thanks, perhaps after a few questions?’
She looked bored, sat down and waved me into a chair.
‘ ‘Kay. Up to you.’ She sighed and a lot of big bosom under cream silk went up and down and some Bacardi fumes drifted gently across towards me.
‘You should ask my mother about all this shit,’ she slurred. ‘She’s the one who keeps the shrine, not me.’
‘That could be an interesting angle. Was Sir Clive a harsh parent? He had a reputation for severity on the bench.’
‘I can believe it.’ She sipped. ‘Christ yes, he was tough on me. Course, I’m the same with my kids so I can’t talk. He used his belt on me plenty of times. Can’t print any of this, you know.’
‘Why?’
‘Can’t afford to offend the old girl. She’s got the money. We never seem to have enough.’
‘What’s your husband’s business, Mrs Selby?’
‘Bettina. He makes weight lifting stuff, gym equipment, all that. He does all right but we eat it up. School’s bloody expensive and holidays… Christ, I live for those holidays. Ever been to Singapore, Peter?’
I said I had.
‘Smart man. Great isn’t it? We have a ball.’
‘It’s marvellous,�
� I said primly. ‘You were saying something about not offending your mother?’ I had the pen and pad out again.
‘Ah, was I? Well we don’t get along. She knows I’d belt that bloody mausoleum down and sell the land for units. But there’s the kids to consider. I try to keep on the good side of her but there’s that Reid bitch, she’s got her eye on the land. Christ, what a miserable place to grow up in. Look, I’m rambling, you don’t want to hear any of this crap you can’t use. Have a drink.’
‘All right, yes.’
‘Bacardi okay?’
‘Fine.’
Her own glass was lowish, not what you’d call empty but getting that way. Lots of drinkers don’t like to see their glasses one-third full, it looks like two-thirds empty. She was in that league and keen enough to haul all that weight to its feet and take it out to where the booze lived. She drifted out, moving like someone who knows how to move; it was part theatrical, part sheer confidence. It made her hard to assess — like a car that looks and goes all right but is a bit too old and exotic for comfort.
She came back with her own glass full and nice big one for me. The rum had been introduced to some tonic but not too closely. On top of my lunch it made the beginnings of a formidably alcoholic afternoon. I took a pull and she knocked back a good slug. I took out tobacco and cocked my head inquiringly. She pushed an ashtray in the shape of a temple at me — a touch of Singapore.
‘One vice I don’t have,’ she giggled. ‘I knew a writer once who rolled his own. He lived in Balmain. You live in Balmain?’
‘No, Glebe.’
She rolled her glass between her palms. I was sweating despite the air conditioning and started to ease out of my jacket.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Hell no, it’s hot, take if off, take off your pants.’
I grinned. ‘Business,’ I said firmly, ‘business.’
She lay back in her chair. ‘You’re going to be dull,’ she said petulantly. ‘You didn’t look dull. Everyone’s dull except me.’ She downed half of her drink to prove it. I didn’t want her to turn nasty so I put some away too.
