The Serpent's Sting (34 page)

Cloris gasped at the crude vileness of Taylor's remark.

‘Oh, don't be such a prude. We all have our peccadilloes; even you, I imagine, although I can't guess what they might be. You seem very stitched up and proper.'

‘Your brother said that you were a virgin,' Geraldine said. ‘Is that true?'

‘My brother?' Cloris was disoriented. ‘But my brother is dead.'

‘Yes, I know. I was there. He said that before he died. Obviously.'

I'd never seen this vicious side of Geraldine, and I was shocked by it. Perhaps Mother was right; perhaps I had poor judgement when it came to women.

‘Oh, I'm sorry, Will,' Geraldine said. ‘Am I being too vulgar for you?'

Taylor had smoked the reefer to a stub, which he flicked into the fireplace.

‘Let's all sit down,' he said. ‘We might as well be comfortable while we wait for Brian to put in an appearance.'

Cloris got up off the floor, where she'd remained sitting even after Mother's departure, and sat in the vacated chair. Taylor sat opposite her, and Geraldine and I sat on the two-seater couch. We were uncomfortably close.

‘I suppose you think I'm a terrible person, don't you, Will?'

‘Yes, I do think that. I think you are a terrible person. You don't have any morals to speak of, do you?'

Albert Taylor snorted, and pulled another fat reefer from his pocket.

‘Morals are a luxury I can't afford, Will,' Geraldine said. ‘I've never been able to afford them.'

Taylor lit his cigarette, and took in a lungful of aromatic and stupefying smoke. It didn't seem to have much effect on him. He offered the cigarette to Cloris, who declined it. Geraldine stood up and crossed to Taylor. She took the reefer and sucked on it. She didn't exhale until she sat back down. She blew smoke directly into my face. The room was so quiet, I fancied I could hear the small roar as the marijuana and tobacco ignited in response to Taylor's inhalations.

‘She's an encumbrance now,' Taylor said, and jerked his chin in Cloris's direction.

‘So let her go,' I said. ‘What difference does it make? My mother is your insurance. Let Cloris go and help her father.'

‘Don't be so bloody ridiculous. She can't go wandering about, but she's definitely an extra wheel. I don't like having to keep an eye on both of them.'

The gun in his free hand twitched. He saw that I'd noticed this.

‘Christ! I'm not going to shoot her. What kind of person do you think I am?'

He laughed again at his own remark. He was too quick to laugh at his little witticisms. This always looked smug.

‘I'm just thinking out loud,' he said.

‘Maybe we should tie both of them up,' Geraldine said. ‘You're good with knots, Bert.'

He nodded.

‘Go and have a look for some rope. Is there rope in the house, Will?'

‘I don't know.'

‘That means yes. It's probably in the laundry. Check the kitchen, too. There might be some tough twine, which would do. If you can't find any, go upstairs and bring down some of Will's shirts. We'll rip them up and use them.'

A part of me hoped that Geraldine would find some rope. I didn't have enough coupons to buy a new wardrobe of shirts, even though I now had the money. Geraldine stood up, took one more drag on Taylor's reefer on her way out, and left the room. The corridor outside was faintly illuminated when she turned on the kitchen light.

‘Found anything?' Taylor called.

‘Not yet, Bert. Hold your horses.'

Taylor looked from Cloris to me and back again.

‘You'd make a lovely couple.'

Cloris still looked vacant, as if she couldn't quite grasp what was happening. She must have been consumed with worry about her father.

‘You left Peter Gilbert badly injured,' I said.

He shrugged.

‘It was self-defence, Will. Besides, I didn't hit him
that
hard.'

‘If he dies, they'll hang you.'

That simple observation seemed to unnerve him. Perhaps the marijuana was finally beginning to interfere with his thought processes.

‘We'll be safely out of reach, so one dead old man won't mean a thing. You know what? I hope he's dead, because your brother's besotted lover needs to know that I
will
kill Brian unless my demands are met.'

I began to protest that if Brian had a lover, I'd know about it, when a drawer crashing to the floor of the kitchen made each of us jump.

‘What's happening?' Taylor called.

There was a moment of silence.

‘Nothing,' Geraldine replied. ‘I just pulled a drawer out too far.'

‘You scared the shit out of me. Hurry up. I'd like these birds trussed before Brian gets here.'

Taylor's cigarette had gone out. He struck a match to re-light it. Another sound came from the kitchen. It was a sort of smothered whimper.

‘Gerald?' Taylor called.

There was no reply.

‘Geraldine?'

Taylor's voice was taut. He wasn't panicking, and incredibly, despite the amount of marijuana he'd smoked, he was immediately alert. He pointed his gun at me.

‘Get up and come over here. Now!'

When I was within arm's reach of him, he grabbed me by the shirtfront, moved rapidly behind me, and put one arm round my neck. He held the barrel of the gun to my ear.

‘You make a move,' he said quietly to Cloris, ‘and I'll pull the trigger and blow his unimpressive brains out. Understood?'

Cloris nodded that she did indeed understand. Taylor pushed me ahead of him into the corridor. We stood, facing the kitchen. We could see where the drawer had fallen. There was no sign of Geraldine.

‘I've got a gun to this man's head,' Taylor said. I felt all of his muscles relax as Geraldine opened the back door of the kitchen and came in from outside. She had her head down and was brushing dust from the bodice of her floral dress. Taylor lowered the gun, and stepped slightly away from me, although he placed his hand on the back of my neck.

‘Why didn't you answer? You know dope makes me jumpy.'

I hadn't noticed until she took a step forward that Geraldine had one hand behind her back. In one smooth, deft movement, she brought it to the front, revealing that it held a revolver. She raised it and fired. Taylor dropped like a marionette that had had its strings severed. He made no sound, and even if he had, I wouldn't have heard it above the dreadful din of the echoing shot. The bullet had hit Taylor between the eyes, so when I looked at Geraldine I knew that if she turned the gun on me, she wouldn't miss. She was still holding the weapon in the firing position.

‘Are you all right?' Brian said, as he lowered the gun and pulled off the wig.

In the front room of Mother's house, Cloris and I sat on the couch, and Brian sat where Taylor had been sitting. I was disoriented by what had taken place in the corridor, and I was further disoriented by the sight of Brian, his legs crossed, wearing Geraldine's floral dress. Taylor's body had been taken away by two men who had appeared behind Brian at the sound of the gunshot.

‘I suppose you have some questions,' he said, and recrossed his legs, smoothing the cloth along his thighs with his hands. ‘To pre-empt a couple of them, Peter has been taken to hospital for observation. He doesn't have a fractured skull, but he is severely concussed. Mother is also under observation in hospital. It wasn't Mrs Ferrell who drove away in that car. We snaffled her as soon as Geraldine went back inside.'

‘We?' I asked.

‘Yes. Our people, Will. I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you.'

My emotions at this moment were so confused that I was incapable of coherent thought. Having no idea where to begin, I said, ‘Let's start with the dress.'

Cloris, who'd become calm since hearing the good news about her father, echoed my request.

‘Yes, Brian,' she said. ‘Let's start with the dress.'

‘Geraldine is under arrest. She is currently wearing what I'd been wearing. When we grabbed her from the kitchen, it occurred to me that changing clothes might buy me a valuable few seconds.'

‘She's wearing your clothes?' Cloris asked.

‘Strictly speaking, they belong to the Tivoli,' Brian said. ‘Geraldine Buchanan and I take the same dress size. Isn't that interesting?'

‘I'll explain later,' I said to Cloris. I looked at her, and realised that she was going to have to re-think her growing attachment to Brian. Quite apart from the unaffected manner in which Brian wore female attire, there was the matter of his relationship with someone in Intelligence. All my instincts told me that this person was Nigella Fowler. Fortunately, I no longer had any feelings — any positive feelings — for Nigella Fowler, but it would be galling nonetheless to discover that she'd rejected me in favour of my brother.

Brian's demeanour had undergone a metamorphosis. He'd assumed complete control, and despite his ludicrous outfit, he had about him an air of authority that I'd never previously associated with him. Given that he'd saved my life just a few minutes earlier, and brought this hideous episode in our lives to an end, I restrained myself from expressing my profound disappointment at the deception he'd maintained whenever the question of employment in Intelligence had been raised.

‘I'm sorry about your brother, Cloris. I don't know what Taylor told you.'

‘He told me the truth, I think.'

‘I don't understand,' I said, ‘why John Gilbert would hire me to investigate his mother's death.' Cloris looked aghast. ‘He told me,' I said directly to her, ‘that he suspected your father had poisoned her.'

She shook her head in a kind of wonder.

‘How very odd,' she said. ‘Although perhaps it isn't so odd, really. He disliked you intensely, Will, and he wasn't too fond of Dad, either. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to pit you against each other in a pointless and nasty game. It would certainly ensure that you and Dad would never be close.'

I didn't wish to wrestle with this little
aper
ç
u
.

‘Taylor was going to take you hostage, Brian, and fly to Tasmania,' I said.

‘Taylor knew I worked for Intelligence, and he knew that because he was blackmailing someone inside the organisation. We know who that person is. He's been co-operative. You can still hang for treason, and that fact helped him decide to keep us informed of Taylor's movements — most of them, anyway.'

‘Why did you go along with playing dress-ups tonight?'

‘Oh, that was useful. I had to get you out of the way long enough for us to line all our ducks up. I'm sorry about those MPs. They were ordered to be thorough, no more. I understand that one of them punched you.'

I began to feel ire creeping through me.

‘You could have prevented Mother and Cloris having to endure what they endured this evening.'

‘No, I couldn't. Peter Gilbert's house was being watched, just in case. I'd gone, with a handful of men, to the brothel Taylor used when Fitzgibbon Street was busy with clients. We intended to arrest him and Geraldine there, but Taylor had the jump on us. Our man outside the Gilbert house saw Taylor bundle Mother and Cloris into a car. He went inside after they'd left, and found Peter on the floor. He telephoned for help and telephoned headquarters. It took a while for the message to be relayed to us, and when it was, I knew exactly where Taylor had gone. We had someone watching here as well, and he confirmed that a car had pulled up and that four people had gone inside. He'd been instructed to do nothing, except watch and wait. He saw you arrive, and we weren't far behind.'

‘So you heard Taylor fire his gun, and you didn't think that might be the time to burst in and save the day?'

‘The door to the front room was open. I was standing near the stairs. I heard immediately that no one had been hurt. If I'd burst in then, someone might have actually been hurt if Taylor fired again.'