The Marvellous Boy (8 page)

The other door opened onto a bedroom. An old woman was lying on her back on the big bed, her hands were stretched out on the cover with the palms up. I cleared my
throat and knocked on the door jamb. She didn't move. I went closer. The gardening and the fishing and the TV and the reading were all over for her. She was dead.

There was no sign of violence on her face or in the room; the only unnatural thing was the position of her hands. I looked closely at her face but her eyes seemed to have closed naturally and the light beside the bed was soft enough to have been a night light. The bed cover was smooth but not too smooth. I went back to the kitchen and looked at the pile of bills on the spike—they covered the usual things and were made out to Gertrude Callaghan. I looked at the tear in the screen door but if there's a way to tell whether fine plastic mesh had been cut recently I don't know it.

Back in the bedroom I stood at the end of the bed and wondered if she'd died naturally or not. It seemed unlikely that she had and I felt guilty as if I'd brought this on her. It wasn't true of course; totally innocent victims are few, but that's how I felt. She was an impressive-looking old person with snow-white hair and a strong, intelligent face. The signs were around of an active and meaningful old age that should have ended better. I read somewhere about some people—Indians I think—who used to put their problems to the newly dead. I think they arranged the corpse in such a way that its head or arm could move involuntarily and a man with special powers would interpret the movements. I looked down at the old nurse.

“Did Bettina Chatterton have a son?” I asked quietly.

Not a hair stirred.

“Is he still alive?”

Nothing. I'd have to do it the hard way. I searched the place thoroughly—drawers, cupboards, books, floor coverings—for evidence of a connection between the nurse and
the Chattertons after 1946. There was nothing. I found the Judge's reference which gave Gertrude a good character and the documentation of her employment, all on the coast, over the following twenty years. There were photographs showing how the Liverpool girl had turned into the nurse and the old gardener and fisherwoman but nothing pointing to a grandson for the late Sir Clive. There were two things of interest: a flock of intimate notes, spanning three decades, from Dr. Osborn to Nurse Callaghan and signs that someone had gone through the place before me.

It was almost daylight when I left the house but the sky was overcast and a thin fog was hanging around the tops of the trees. I went down the track and poked around in the grass until I found my gun. Nothing was stirring in Yancey Street except the birds. My head still hurt. I touched the spot and felt dried, caked blood. I was getting less presentable by the hour but there was no one around to notice. Everything was quiet and serene like Nurse Callaghan sleeping the last sleep.

When I'd cleared Yancey Street and made a few turns I stopped to take stock of things. The notebook was still in the glove box and the lock was intact. It was more than I could say for myself. My head needed a dressing and I needed a shave. That was what showed; my teeth were scummy from a day's drinking and my body was stiff and sore from lack of sleep—lying like a log for a couple of hours in wet grass doesn't count. My head ached fiercely. I looked at the whisky and shuddered. Then I salvaged a couple of aspirin out of the rubbish on the back seat and swilled them down with the whisky. I almost gagged but I grabbed the steering wheel and hung on to everything. After a minute or two I didn't feel any worse, maybe even better. Time to tackle Dr. Osborn.

He was in front of his house, bending to pick up a newspaper. He wore a checked dressing gown and the wide trousers of striped cotton pyjamas flopped around his ankles. He bent like an old man, stiffly and slowly, but he bent. I walked over and called out something polite. He looked in my direction but I had the feeling that he couldn't see me. I reached the gate and called out again.

“Dr. Osborn.”

“Yes, wait a minute.” There was still a faint Scots twang in the words despite fifty years of exposure to Australian speech. He moved slowly down the path towards me holding the rolled-up newspaper in his hand. I waited by the gate and watched his face. A certain blankness was in it until he was about ten feet away, then interest came into his eyes. He fished out a pair of spectacles from the dressing gown pocket and hooked them on.

“Yes young man?”

“I have to talk to you, Doctor, about Gertrude Callaghan.”

“You'll do me the favour of telling me who you are.”

“I'm sorry—my name is Hardy. I'm a private investigator from Sydney. Does the name Chatterton mean anything to you?”

“You'll not be referring to the poet?”

“No, not the poet, the Judge.” I rattled the gate a fraction. “Can I come in and ask you a few questions?”

“Perhaps. You mentioned Gertrude. What of Gertrude?”

“She's dead, Doctor. She died this morning. I came from Sydney to see her but I didn't make it in time. That's why I'm here.”

Emotional control of the kind that is generations deep fell away from him in a split second. He clutched at the gate and the newspaper fell; I held his arm to steady him and we stood there like father and son mourning a wife and mother. I opened the gate with my free hand and helped him up the path towards the house. He was a portly man with a weatherbeaten face. His eye sockets were sunken and surrounded with dark, puckered skin as though a stain was seeping out of the eyes into the tissue. Flesh sagged on his cheeks but his chin and neck were firm; it was as if he'd aged selectively, in patches.

The house was a big, plain weatherboard, painted white with a glassed-in verandah running along three sides. I eased him up three steps and across to a cane chair. He sat down stiffly, like an old horse sinking to its knees for the last time.

“Can I get you something, Doctor?”

He spoke slowly and remotely, as if from far away. “I was making coffee.”

“I'll get it.” I went into the house and through a couple of well-ordered rooms to a neat, bright kitchen. I collected mugs, milk and sugar and took the pot off the stove. When I got back to the verandah Osborn had straightened up a little in the chair, lifted his head and seemed to be looking through the window to a far distant point. I poured a black coffee for him and he nodded and took it. I made one for myself and sat down opposite him.

“I'm sorry to hit you with it like that.”

He seemed not to hear me. “Forty years,” he said. He moved his head and looked directly at me. “It was her, you're sure?”

“Yancey Street,” I said. “A handsome old lady, white hair.”

The coffee slopped and he set the mug down before covering his eyes with his hand. I drank some coffee and waited. After a minute or so he made an effort, palmed tears from his face and drank the coffee. He didn't look at me but pulled himself up out of the chair.

“Excuse me,” he said. He walked slowly through into the other room and I heard him lift the phone and dial. There was silence and then the sound of the phone being put down. I poured more coffee and sipped it while he resumed his chair.

“No answer,” he said. “I can't just leave her there, all alone.”

“I'm sorry, Doctor, I've got the living to consider.”

“Yes. You're a detective you said? A policeman?”

“No, I'm a private detective. I'm sorry about Nurse Callaghan.”

“Nurse, Sister, Matron,” he said softly. “The most wonderful woman.” I drank some more coffee and he watched me critically.

“You should put milk and sugar in it,” he said. “I'd guess you were a drinker, a drinker with an empty stomach. Your metabolism needs something to fuel it.”

“I've also been hit on the head,” I said defensively. I leaned forward to give him a look. He put down his cup and eased the hair gently aside. I brought my head up and he looked directly into my eyes.

“Nasty,” he said. “A possible concussion. You should be at a hospital. I'm afraid I don't practise any more.”

“You did though, until recently.”

“And how would you know that?”

“From the medical register.”

“You've been researching then. You're right, I retired two years ago. You should go to the hospital, there's a good one here.”

“Maybe later.” I sipped some coffee. “I want to ask you about Gertrude Callaghan and things that happened here thirty years ago.”

“Do you now? You come here bleeding and smelling of spirits and you ask me that. How do I know you didn't kill Gertrude?”

“Would I have come here and told you about her if I had?”

“Perhaps not,” he said wearily. “But I doubt I have anything to tell you.”

“I think you do. Thirty years is a long time but I need information and you're the man that knows where the bodies are buried.”

He winced and a sharp breath came out of him; he tried to cover it by lifting his cup to his mouth.

“Just an expression, Doctor. Why does it startle you?” He didn't answer and I pressed on. “I'll dig for it, Doctor. I'll be working in the dark and things will just have to fall out as they may. It doesn't have to be that way though.”

“What are you saying?”

He was good, very good. Without trying he'd got me to say more than I meant to while he hadn't volunteered a damn thing himself. I had to plunge on with my uncertain knowledge and try to flush him out. I had hints, clues and guesses and just one piece of hard information on him—knowledge of his feelings for Gertrude Callaghan.

“I've seen a photograph of Nurse Callaghan with a pregnant woman taken down here. The photograph was authentic and I've identified the locality.” This was a lie but it seemed like a safe one. “My interest is in that woman specifically and the child, I'm not concerned with the wider issues.” I chose the words carefully but they still sounded thin.

“May I see this photograph?” he said.

“No.”

“And why not?”

“It's a crucial piece of evidence and I don't carry it around with me.”

He leaned back in his chair and drank some coffee. “You mean you don't have it,” he said confidently.

“The man who had it is dead. He was murdered, probably by the same person who killed Nurse Callaghan.”

The smugness left his face. “Murdered! You didn't say that before. No, not Gertrude. Did she . . .”

“Tell me anything? I'm not going to answer that, Doctor, it's time for you to open up a little.”

I finished the coffee, thought about a cigarette and decided against it. It wasn't a time for betraying weaknesses. He sat back further in the chair and his eyes seemed to sink deeper into those cavernous, dark-rimmed sockets. He looked like a man letting his mind run back. I waited. When he spoke it was carefully and slowly with the Scots accent more pronounced.

“I'm going to talk in generalities, Mr. Hardy, at least to start with. Do you understand? A lot of reputations and lives, good lives, are at stake in this. A lot of harm could be done.”

I nodded.

“Let me say for a start that I know nothing about anyone by the name of Chatterton. I might have had some dealings with a Chatterton but if so I've forgotten. I'm an old man and I have forgotten many names.”

“But you remember some?”

“Aye, and with good reason.” He ran a hand over his head and plucked at the dewlaps on his face. “This is hard for me. I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. I know nothing about you.” He groaned. “Tell me about Gertrude, was she . . . hurt?”

“She was in bed. I didn't see any signs of violence but someone had searched her house, probably the same person that hit me. Something happened up there.”

He suddenly looked every day of his age. Gertrude Callaghan was woven into his past and he wanted to talk about it, but secrecy had become a habit.

“You seem to be having some trouble starting your story, Doctor,” I said. “Let me help a little. There was an
establishment of some sort down here thirty years ago, a place where women came to have babies. Or not to have them. I assume it was a well-regulated place. I'm not a moralist.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Myself, I'm a radical, a reformer and a radical. I am a moralist you might say.” His eyes, which had been focused on my face, drifted away. It looked like he was going into the mind-cranking stage again. I was impatient but judged it better to let him set the pace. I leaned forward to get some more coffee. He didn't notice.

“I love this place, Mr. Hardy, these people, I've been here nearly fifty years. Did you know that?”

I nodded, took milk.

“I went back to Edinburgh once, detested it! I found the Scots ungenerous and narrow. Well, that's by the way. Do you know what used to be the single greatest cause of human misery in a place like this?”

I said “No,” which was true.

He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. “Unwanted children. Forced marriages and unwanted children. It was behind most of the crime, nearly all the drunkenness, most of the trouble.”

“A problem,” I agreed. “Still is, I suppose.”

“It's different now, more information, better methods. And there's some support for the girls bringing up the babies.”

“Come down to cases, Doctor,” I said gently.

“Aye. I ran a clinic here for twenty years, abortions and births, adoptions. Proud of it.”

“It was a secret though.”

“It was. A secret entrusted to a few.”

“Nurse Callaghan?”

“Helped me, the whole time. Wonderful woman, she believed in the work.”

It was more than that and I tried to keep the knowledge out of my response. Unsuccessfully.

“I was unhappily married,” he said simply. “A daughter died in childbirth with no one to help her.”