A Thing of Blood Read online

  ‘You know, a conscript. A chocolate soldier. That’s what they’re called. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to cheat on Darlene, but it was like the world outside that room didn’t exist. When I was with Sarah there were no husbands, no wives, no betrayal. Just us. Intense. So intense. Fierce.’

  ‘The intensity of madness,’ Mother said.

  Brian gave no indication that he’d heard her.

  ‘I saw her twice after that. Only twice. It wasn’t the same. There was something wrong between us. Sarah was highly strung. Nervy. I thought she might be worried about her husband, but she said she hated him and that she hoped the Japs would do her a favour and kill him. I found that a bit frightening. She said we could make a new life together. I’d told her I was married. I hadn’t lied about that, but she sort of assumed, I think, that I felt about my wife the way she felt about her husband. The last time I saw her — the third time — there was a terrible scene. I told her that I was returning to Melbourne, to Darlene, that I loved my wife. She said — excuse the language, Mother — she said I fucked like someone who was glad to be doing it properly for a change.’

  I hope, even under extreme emotional pressure, that I would have had the sense to omit such a hideous and telling detail. Mother, way ahead of me and unembarrassed by the revelation, said, ‘If Darlene is boring in bed, Brian, that’s your fault as much as hers.’

  Suddenly, and mortifyingly, Brian began to cry.

  ‘Sarah said that if only Darlene and Michael — that’s her husband — were dead, we’d be happy. I told her I thought she was mad to say such things, and then I told her I thought we’d better not see each other again.’

  ‘What do you know about this woman?’ Mother asked.

  ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘Is she a local Maryborough girl?’

  ‘No. She’s from Brisbane.’

  ‘Let’s assume that she followed you to Melbourne. Let’s assume that it was she who attacked and kidnapped Darlene. If she doesn’t know Melbourne, what would she do with her?’

  This line of questioning led to the ghastly consideration of the options available to the kidnapper. Would she imprison the living Darlene somewhere, or dispose of the dead Darlene?

  Brian slumped, exhausted, in a chair.

  Mother suggested that he go upstairs and put a shirt on.

  ‘You must tell the police everything you told us,’ she said, ‘and you can’t do it half naked. It all sounds so much worse somehow when one can see your nipples.’

  Brian stood up and left the room.

  ‘Honestly,’ Mother said. ‘I really do think the world would be a much better place without a single penis in it.’

  When a policeman finally arrived it was after 3.00 a.m. I opened the door and admitted him. He was decked out in the absurd Gilbert and Sullivan uniform of the metropolitan police. On entering the hall, he removed the impractical helmet to reveal a head of grey, greasy hair. If there hadn’t been a war on, I imagined he might have been retired by now.

  Not wishing to hear Brian’s story a second time, after giving my details to Sergeant Wilkinson — for that was his name — I decided to begin my career as a private investigator by wandering through the back lanes of Princes Hill. I hadn’t done this since I was a child. Then, I’d felt a frisson of fear as I’d come upon the exotic offspring of poverty, playing or fighting on the filthy bluestone cobbles that paved the alleys behind their even filthier dwellings. I learned quite early, just by breathing in, that poverty is malodorous. Despite the privilege and security of my upbringing, I was aware of the putrescent breath of the poor being collectively exhaled in grim cul de sacs all over Carlton, just a few streets to the east of our house.

  Now, the sinister air of these bluestone alleys was exaggerated by the possibility that I might come across Darlene’s crumpled corpse or, even more alarmingly, her violent abductor, very much alive and not happy about being discovered. If dark nights and back streets were the natural haunt of the private inquiry agent I began to think I might not be ideally suited to the profession. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t particularly fond of it when circumstances indicated that something nasty might be lurking under its cloak. I began to sing the ‘thingummybob’ song quietly to myself, imitating Arthur Aske’s nasally voice as he assured us that it was the girl who makes the thing, that holds the oil that oils the ring, that works the thingummybob that was going to win the war.

  I must have walked several miles. The only people I met were American servicemen, drunk, without being disorderly, on their way back to Camp Pell after a night in one of the sly-grog shops that provided liquor over and above the legal limit. Their presence was reassuring, despite the murderous Leonski having been one of their number.

  When I returned to the house, Mother was sitting in the kitchen with Brian, and Sergeant Wilkinson was slurping tea from one of the cups she reserved for tradesmen. The detritus of many of the good cups still lay, shattered, on the kitchen floor. She had, however, lavished upon the good sergeant a generous slice of the absent Darlene’s fruit cake. A stubborn crumb adhered to his rawly shaven jaw.

  ‘I couldn’t find her,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ said Sergeant Wilkinson.

  Brian lifted his head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It means that whoever took her has still got her. If she’d been murdered the body would probably have been dumped.’

  I suppose Sergeant Wilkinson thought he was being a comfort, but the confluence of “murdered” with “body” and “dumped” was not likely to provoke anything other than alarm.

  ‘Thank you, Constable,’ Mother said, ostentatiously demoting him, and she indicated by rising that she thought it was time he left.

  ‘We won’t touch anything, of course,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the detectives will want to check for prints and so forth when they arrive.’

  She looked at the smear of blood on the floor.

  ‘I suppose I shouldn’t clean that up yet.’

  ‘I’ll have to stay,’ said Sergeant Wilkinson. ‘This is a crime scene. I’ll have to wait for the detectives to do their stuff.’

  ‘Given that this is a crime scene,’ I said, ‘perhaps having tea and cake in the middle of it isn’t such a good idea.’

  Sergeant Wilkinson blushed and coughed. Mother rescued him.

  ‘Brian, you should try to get some sleep. You too, Will. I’m sure Constable Wilkinson will be quite comfortable down here for the next couple of hours.’

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ said Brian.

  ‘Darlene hath murdered sleep,’ I said without thinking. Brian shot me a glance that conveyed the energy of outrage, even through his exhaustion.

  ‘You really have inherited your father’s gift for tact, Will,’ Mother said.

  ‘Are you saying that this Darlene murdered someone?’ Sergeant Wilkinson said, suddenly alert. All three of us looked at him and knew that he would play no part in the solving of this crime.

  I went upstairs to bed, and must have managed to sleep, because the next thing of which I was aware was Brian shaking me awake and saying, ‘The detectives are here,’ followed by the resentful j’accuse of, ‘How could you sleep?’

  It was early — 7.00 a.m. There were two detectives in the kitchen when I entered. If they were annoyed at such an early call, neither of them showed it. They were both in their early forties, I estimated, and both were lean and well groomed. Beside them, the bleary Sergeant Wilkinson looked like a very poor relation indeed. Good detectives create an unsettling impression that they are in possession of information that might be to one’s disadvantage. The detectives in my mother’s kitchen were adepts in this regard. I didn’t like them one little bit, and immediately took refuge in the mildly satisfying fact that both of them were going bald, one more rapidly than the o
ther. I knew when they turned their bland and disconcertingly neutral gaze upon me that they were considering me as a suspect as well as a witness, and I had just about had my fill of being suspected of crimes I didn’t commit. Of course it was their job to believe the worst of everyone. A suspect’s innocence would always be a disappointment to them.

  Anxious to begin my move to Paul Clutterbuck’s house, I answered their inquiries graciously, at least until one of them suggested, with a mock innocuousness that was insulting, that there was something odd about my search of the lanes.

  ‘You say you left the house almost immediately.’

  ‘Yes, to search the back yard.’

  ‘And then later you wandered about the streets.’

  ‘I didn’t “wander” about the streets. I was looking for the person who had done this. Obviously.’

  ‘Yes, obviously,’ he said, but his tone suggested that for him the obviousness lay in an altogether different direction.

  ‘I don’t care for your tone,’ I said.

  ‘Oh dear. I guess that means we don’t have a future together,’ he said, with an ugly little sneer.

  ‘What Detective Strachan is getting at,’ said his companion, ‘is that you might not have been hunting for the culprit, but checking on the success of an accomplice.’

  ‘I am perfectly aware of what he is insinuating, and it is gratuitous and offensive.’

  ‘So our visit here hasn’t been a complete waste of time then,’ said Detective Strachan.

  At this point Mother came into the kitchen, and the demeanour of the detectives changed immediately. They weren’t exactly charming — they couldn’t draw on reserves of a quality they comprehensively lacked — but Mother has a way of encouraging the best in people or, at any rate, discouraging the worst. Her intervention meant that the rest of the interview went smoothly.

  They had been in the house longer than I had thought. Before I’d come downstairs photographs had been taken, the room had been dusted for fingerprints, and a sample of the blood on the floor had been sent for analysis. They left an hour after my interview had been completed. After helping Brian and Mother clean up the kitchen, I took my suitcase and headed to Clutterbuck’s house to take up residence there. It was a little more than a fifteen-minute walk across Princes Park, over Royal Parade and into Parkville. I knocked on his front door at 9.15 a.m., expecting his housekeeper to answer. There was no response, so I knocked again. I had turned and begun climbing the few steps up to the pavement, when the door opened and a woman’s voice called, ‘Paul thought it might be you. That is, if you’re William Power.’

  The woman who uttered these words was definitely not Paul Clutterbuck’s housekeeper. She was wrapped in a silk kimono, only just, and the unruly state of her glossy, hennaed hair indicated that she had come straight from bed to the door. Despite her dishevelled state, she was undoubtedly a beauty, and not at all what the Americans called a ‘broad’. She was delicate, with pale skin and with lips so pink that lipstick would have sullied them. Her cheeks were faintly roseate, and there was something breathy in her voice that was irresistibly attractive. She hadn’t been woken from sleep, I decided, but detached from sex.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, unintentionally giving voice to this supposition.

  ‘What on earth for?’ she laughed.

  ‘For waking you up,’ I said. She came out of the house towards me.

  ‘Oh, good heavens,’ she said. ‘We’ve been awake for hours. We’ve just been lolling. I’m Gretel Beech.’

  I took the proffered hand, shook it, and followed her into the house.

  ‘Paul’s getting dressed,’ she said, and left me in the living room while she repaired upstairs, presumably to get dressed also. I was struck even more forcefully than I had been the previous day by the fanatical neatness of the room. My suitcase made it seem untidy, and I was suddenly conscious that my clothes could have done with more careful pressing. I had the uncomfortable feeling that just by being there I was disrupting the general order. I was the human equivalent of a painting hanging askew.

  ‘Will,’ said Paul Clutterbuck.

  I turned and was taken aback by the sight of him; his hands on his hips, and wearing a crisp, well-cut American army uniform. His tie was tucked into the shirt below the third button, and a forage cap sat jauntily on his head.

  ‘I’ll show you the house,’ he said, clearly feeling no need to explain why he was dressed as he was. ‘And then we’ll talk about the little job I want you to do for me.’

  I picked up my suitcase, self-conscious now about its scuffed corners, and followed him upstairs.

  ‘Your room first,’ he said.

  The room he took me to was at the back of the house, but it was no servant’s room. It had the handsome proportions of a master bedroom, and next to it was a bathroom.

  ‘That’s your bathroom,’ he said. ‘You can’t share a bathroom and call yourself a civilised human being. Can you?’

  He explained that his housekeeper, Mrs Castleton, washed the bed linen twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, so I shouldn’t leave anything too personal lying about.

  ‘She’s discreet, but she does have a rather Edwardian capacity to disapprove.’

  Mrs Castleton, he told me, was a treasure, and that one of the most awful and under-appreciated consequences of the war was the limitation on the hours domestic help could be employed.

  ‘Did you know about that?’ he asked. ‘It’s supposed to free up the servants for war work. The idea of Mrs Castleton stuffing bullets into ammunition belts is ludicrous — although they’d be the neatest belts in the line. Mrs Castleton has a thing about order, and that’s why I have a thing about Mrs Castleton. She takes hair left on soap very personally, as of course do all reasonable people.’

  I felt compelled to agree with him on this point. I certainly didn’t want to give the impression that I was careless in this department, separate bathrooms notwithstanding. Mrs Castleton would find no fault with my bath soap.

  By the time I’d seen the rest of the house, I’d realised that although Paul Clutterbuck must have had a good deal of money, he couldn’t afford its upkeep without the relief provided by a tenant’s rent. Of the six rooms upstairs, two were unfurnished, and the air in them had the uncirculated dullness of the air in rooms that are never visited.

  When we returned to the living room Miss Gretel Beech was there, dressed and poised for departure. With her hair brushed into place and wearing a dress that flattered her figure, but which had seen better days — I was surprised to see that the seam at one of the shoulders had begun to come away — she was, somehow, diminished. She now seemed merely pretty. When I’d first seen her I had thought her beautiful. I wondered which incarnation the obsessively neat Paul Clutterbuck preferred. Perhaps ungroomed women were a violation of his ordered life which he found exciting. The few seconds it took for these thoughts to race through my mind were sufficient to stir in me sensations of delightful lust.

  ‘Will I see you at the show tonight?’ she asked Paul.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and turning to me he added, ‘Will you come, Will? To hear Gretel sing?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, and knew even as I did so that I should be spending the evening with Brian, supporting my brother in his anxious wait for news of Darlene. Looking at Gretel Beech, however, familial obligation evaporated, and I found myself hoping that my evening would not be ruined by the inconvenient discovery of Darlene’s corpse and the ensuing necessity of being on hand to offer condolences.

  ‘Of course,’ I reiterated. ‘I’d love to hear you sing.’

  ‘Paul says you’re an actor,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t think I’m an amateur.’

  She kissed Paul lightly on the cheek and he crassly cupped one of her breasts in his hand. She seemed unconcerned by this public intimacy.


  ‘I’ll see you tonight then,’ she said.

  When she had gone, Paul Clutterbuck sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs and indicated that I should do the same.

  ‘Is your room OK?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a generous size.’

  ‘And you can manage three pounds?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I lied.

  ‘You’ll like Mrs Castleton. She works miracles with tired shirts and trousers. What do you think of Gretel?’

  ‘She’s lovely,’ I said. ‘She’s a singer. Is that what she does for a living?’

  ‘Oh, she does a bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of the other, you know.’

  ‘Is she any good?’

  ‘She’s OK at this, better at that, and superb at the other.’ He laughed and stood up suddenly. ‘What do you think?’ he asked and smoothed down the front of his dark green army shirt. ‘Gretel says women can’t take their eyes off the Yanks’ groins. It’s the zipper, see. No chunky buttons. She says you can’t beat the zipper for ease of access. And, I have to say, she’s right.’

  ‘I’ve never had a pair of trousers with a zipper,’ I said.

  ‘As a private inquiry agent, aren’t you wondering why I’m wearing the uniform of our over-paid allies? It’s not exactly legal to impersonate a soldier.’

  I seized the opportunity to demonstrate my natural, instinctive skills in this area.

  ‘Asking obvious questions almost always leads to hearing obvious lies,’ I said. ‘The truth has a tendency to leak rather than spill.’

  He considered that for a moment and sat down.

  ‘I’m glad I hired you,’ he said.

  ‘Have you hired me?’ I asked.

  ‘Two week’s rent,’ he said. ‘Six pounds to do the job. It’s straightforward and it’s not dangerous.’

  I nodded acceptance, relieved that I’d been given a stay with regard to my precarious finances.

  ‘But first,’ I said. ‘Why are you wearing that uniform?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s ridiculously simple. I’m afraid I’ve become addicted to tinned cream and coffee, and both of those are found only in the American PX. Australian soldiers, and certainly civilians, are not allowed into those G.I. canteens. I do a passable Yank accent — sort of mid-Atlantic rather than regional — and the PX at Camp Pell is just around the corner. I haven’t been challenged yet. Do you smoke?’