The Marvellous Boy (3 page)

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 climbed 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.

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 in. 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 marvelous,” 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 enquiringly. 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 it 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 drowned half of her drink to prove it. I didn't want her to turn nasty so I put some away too.

“We haven't talked at all yet,” I said. “Back to the judge . . .”

“No, not yet—bottoms up. Next drink we'll really talk. C'mon drink up.”

She tipped her head back and drank the stuff like lemonade. I finished mine in two swallows and she picked up the glasses and ambled off again. I tried to remember why I was there as the liquor rose in my blood and started to fuddle me. I got up—keep moving, that's the rule, sit and you're gone—and slid open the doors dividing the drinking room from the next. It turned out to be the eating room; there was a big teak table with six pricey-looking chairs around it and a bowl of flowers in the middle. A couple of nasty prints hung on the pastel walls and a framed photograph stood on a sideboard. I weaved across and picked it up. It showed the lady I was drinking with, a man and two children. Bettina looked a few years younger and a few pounds lighter. I studied the man; he was a heavy character with a round face and receding hair which he wore longish with thick dark sideburns. He was packed into an executive suit with the trimmings and had his arm around Bettina and the girls. But he was smiling as if the camera was on him alone. With him the photographer had failed to achieve the family feel. He was the type to make every post a personal winner. The girls looked to be about ten or twelve, they were round and red like their dad—their mother was right, they'd need the money.