Peter Corris - Beware of the Dog

I pulled her to her feet. One of her shoes fell off and she propped up awkwardly balanced, pressing into me. I was gasping for breath and so was she. We broke the kiss and our hands moved urgently. Then she brought her hands down sharply in fists, knocking my hands away from her body. She stepped back.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Roberta. I…’

‘We’re friends.’

I reached for her. ‘We can still be friends.’

The banality of what I said cut through the lust and confusion. We both laughed. I struggled to recapture the moment. I got close to her and cupped my hands around her firm buttocks, pulling her towards me. She was rigid with resistance. Her legs were locked together. I released her and moved back.

‘Cliff, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. I cleared my throat, fighting to get out of the rutting mood, fighting off disappointment and anger. ‘You’re probably right.’

She flopped down into her seat. She looked as exhausted as I felt. ‘Did you ever go to bed with that lodger of yours, Hildegarde?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t she still a friend?’

‘She’s married to Frank Parker. They have a son named Cliff.’

We sat in our respective chairs, both silent. A snatch of doggerel ran through my head:

Higamons bogamotis, women are monogamous,

Hogamons, bigamous, men are polygamous

Right, I thought. Women are smarter. Like a lot of men, maybe most, I’d dreamed of attaining a perfect polygamy, a different woman for different situations and moods. Experience had taught me that it was a difficult condition to organise and an impossible one to sustain. Most of the women I’d had anything to do with seemed to know that instinctively. Even Helen Broadway, who’d let it run to the sixth tackle, had known in her heart that it couldn’t work.

‘Cliff?’

I’d left her adrift in her own thoughts, memories and regrets. I forced a grin and picked up my notebook. ‘Tell me everything you can about Paula Wilberforce.’

Roberta’s finely sculptured face lost its bruised look and its tension. ‘Dogs,’ she said. ‘Mad about dogs. Can’t understand it myself, darling. I was terribly keen on horses.’

The woman who opened the door of Phillip Wilberforce’s house was about the same age as Roberta Landy-Drake, but she hadn’t made a career out of looking younger. She was of medium height and plump. She wore her grey hair short and very little make-up. Her dress was a plain blue worn with a heavy white cardigan. A pair of spectacles hung on a light cord around her neck. She looked intelligent and capable.

‘My name’s Hardy,’ I said.

‘I’m Pamela Darcy. Please come in, Mr Hardy. He’s expecting you.’

That got us off on the right foot as far as I was concerned. I was relieved that she hadn’t said, ‘Sir Phillip…’ the way some people working for titled employers do when they want some of the gilt to rub off on them.

‘How is he, Mrs Darcy?’

‘Not strong, but fighting. He’s got a touch of lung trouble which is worrying at his age. I’d ask you not to tire him and so on, but I know it’d be a waste of time.’

We were climbing the stairs. ‘How’s that?’ I said.

‘He’ll do exactly as he pleases.’

We stopped outside the master bedroom. Mrs Darcy knocked firmly and walked straight in. I got the impression that an interesting battle of two strong wills was going on here. The old man was sitting up in the big bed propped on a heap of pillows. His tan had faded to a sallowness and his hair lay flat on his skull. He looked like an old China hand who’d spent so long in the east he’d taken on an oriental appearance. This was emphasised by the embroidered silk dressing-gown he wore over a black pyjama top. Gold-framed half-glasses balanced on his nose.

‘A decent pause before entering is customary, Mrs Darcy,’ Wilberforce growled. ‘What if I’d been doing something you wouldn’t like to see?’

‘It’s hardly appropriate for you to invoke what is customary,’ Mrs Darcy said. ‘Have you taken your medicine?’

‘Damn you, yes.’

‘Damn you, too. Would you like a drink, Mr Hardy?’

‘Of course he would,’ Wilberforce said. ‘And get one for me while you’re at it. Scotch, Hardy?’

‘That’d be fine.’

I sat down in a chair that, as I recalled, had served for Wilberforce to throw clothes over. Now the room was tidy but not fussy. A coat hung on the back of the door, there were books and magazines on the bed and bedside table and the several bottles of pills, glass and water jug hadn’t been neatly arranged.

Wilberforce snorted as he saw me taking in the details. ‘She wanted to put flowers in here but I wouldn’t allow it. I told her flowers remind me of death.’

‘I prefer them outside, myself,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, how’s she treating you?’

‘She’s worth talking to. What’s that you’ve got there?’

I was unfolding the photograph. The intense interest in his voice suggested that he lacked stimulation. I hoped I wasn’t going to give him too much. I leaned forward and put the picture in front of him. He pushed his glasses up into position.

‘Huh, out of focus. Typical.’

‘Have you ever seen it before? Do you know who took it?’

Mrs Darcy came in and handed me a solid scotch in a heavy glass. The glass she gave her patient contained about half as much. I refused water. She poured a generous amount into his over his protest.

‘Drowning good whisky. My grandfather would have had you shot for that.’

Mrs Darcy was a last word specialist. ‘And your great-great-grandfather would have turned in his grave.’ She smiled at me and left the room.

‘That Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘Freed the slaves?’

‘Silly old fool didn’t live to see it. Died a month too soon.’ He sipped his whisky and made a face. ‘It’s always too soon. Now this photograph, it could be one of Paula’s. Where did you get it?’

‘From the house in Lindfield. Is she a painter as well?’

‘Yes. Competent, no more.’ He sounded indifferent, even dismissive, but he let his fingers rest on the surface of the photograph. ‘What’re these shapes in the background?’

The overhead light falling on the picture highlighted several vague forms behind the subject in the foreground. I hadn’t seen them before. Interesting, but not as interesting as the next question I had to ask.

‘Do you recognise the face?’

He adjusted his glasses and peered more closely. ‘No. She’s taken a brush to it by the looks. Well, that’s Paula. Who is it?’

‘I believe it’s Patrick Lamberte.’

‘Oh, step-daughter’s husband. Funny chap. Yes, it could be. Odd, though.’

He doesn’t know they’re dead, I thought. I took refuge in my drink. It was good whisky. ‘Why odd?’

‘Paula and Verity hated each other on sight as children. Wouldn’t have thought they’d had any contact as adults.’ He drank again and appeared to be listening to a replay of his words inside his head. ‘Trouble, Hardy? More trouble?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

I told him what had happened at Mount Victoria, giving it to him as gently as I could. He nodded as he listened, sighed and occasionally shook his head. Our drinks were empty by the time I’d finished. My throat was dry, and the old man was quietly weeping.

‘Karen,’ he said huskily. ‘Selina’s girl. Selina said she was mine and she may have been. Certainly the resemblance was there. But, you know, I was so busy in those days I can hardly remember her. Those poor, poor children. I made a terrible mess of things.’

‘There were mothers and other fathers involved. You don’t have to take all the blame.’