Peter Corris - Beware of the Dog

‘It happened at this place in the country we used to go to. I found a shotgun in a shed. It was old and very rusty. I pointed it at Rudi and it went off. I was terrified by the noise and the gun hurt me when it fired. I was terrified of Paula, too. Rudi was her dog. She came running up. She grabbed the gun and I think she would have beaten my brains in with it if someone hadn’t stopped her.’

‘Mummy,’ Robert said, which, under the circumstances, wasn’t very enlightening.

‘Instead, she took dozens of pictures of Rudi. She used to leave them on my bed, put them in my books. It was sickening.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You all used to hang around together, even after the divorces and so on?’

Robert nodded. ‘It was horrible. The Brady Bunch was on TV then. Verity and Nadia and I used to look at it and laugh. Our lives weren’t anything like that.’

Verity turned the page. ‘I suppose they were trying to make some sort of family life, even though they’d screwed up their own lives. I mean Paula’s father and my mother and Robert’s.’

‘Is that what you called him-Paula’s father?’

‘I didn’t call him anything to his face,’ Robert said. ‘I just couldn’t. I never saw my own father after they divorced. It…’

He retreated to a chair and sat down. ‘God,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’ve never married. I never wanted to put anyone through any of that. The fights they had, the savagery. It was all lawyers and courts and houses being sold.’

Verity was crying now. ‘And kids being put in boarding school. I hated boarding school.’

I turned over the pages of the albums, occasionally asking for an identification or a date, which one or the other of them gave me indifferently. They were both sunk in depression induced by memories of childhood. It was sad to see but I had work to do. Eventually I accumulated pictures of all the wives and kids. A tall, dark girl with a gypsy mane of hair was identified by Verity as Nadia.

‘She’s dead,’ Robert said. ‘She had an accident.’

‘What sort of accident?’

He thrust out his underslung chin, ready to take another unhappy memory on it. ‘She was washed off some rocks in Queensland. She drowned.’

I grunted sympathetically and made a note. ‘No pictures of Paula herself. Why’s that?’

‘Paula never let anyone touch her camera,’ Verity said.

‘There must have been other cameras around.’

Robert shook his head. ‘Paula never let herself be photographed. She wouldn’t even sit for the school photograph session. I remember we once tried to force her

‘Who’s we?’ I said.

‘Nadia and I. I tried to hold her while Nadia took the snap. Paula fought like a tiger. I couldn’t hold her. She scratched Nadia’s face and broke the camera. No-one tried again after that.’

‘What was Paula’s attitude to you?’

‘She despised me, as she despised all men.’

‘What about her and Karen?’

They exchanged looks as if considering cooking up a story. Then Verity shrugged. ‘She and Karen got on fine. Karen was the only one of us Paula had any time for.’

‘It was strange,’ Robert said. ‘Karen wasn’t his child any more than the rest of us, although Paula said she was. They looked rather alike, but Karen’s mother had been such a slut anyone could’ve been the father. Paula called Karen her real sister, but I think it was just because she shared her liking for dogs.’

I was drawing lines on the page of my notebook, connecting names. ‘I don’t get it. You were just kids. You couldn’t have known anything about…’

‘We did!’ Verity snapped. ‘We knew all about it. They never talked about anything else except who was screwing who, and who had whose nose and eyes. It was sick.’

‘It was baronial,’ Robert said. ‘He liked to accumulate the women and children and dogs and cats around him like a medieval baron. Actually, I think the Wilberforces ran cotton factories or something.’

‘Barons need acres.’ I tapped the photograph I’d detached of the dead dog. ‘This place in the country, Does Wilberforce still own it?’

‘Fitzroy House, near Mittagong,’ Verity said. ‘No, it was sold off some time back in one of the divorce settlements. I’m not sure, but I don’t think he’s got anything left now except that ghastly place in Randwick. Randwick!’

I drank some more of the wine and felt a terminal tiredness creeping over me. Running into dead ends didn’t help. I asked them if they could give me the names of any of Paula’s friends. Verity cracked the first smile I’d seen from her that night.

‘None,’ she said. ‘Zero.’

‘Come on. Her father told me she’d lived with a man for a time.’

Verity shook her head. ‘Not in that way. I’d bet anything she’s a virgin.’

Robert blushed and plucked at the skin on a bit of salami. ‘I’m getting a bit sick of all this about Paula. We’ve spent more time thinking about her tonight than she’d have spent thinking about anyone else in her whole bloody life. What’s so important about Paula? What about Verity’s problem?’

I could see his point. I told them about the gun and how Paula had used it to shoot Phillip Wilberforce. I told them that the pistol might still be loaded. They were both stunned.

‘She couldn’t have meant to kill him,’ Verity said. ‘Not unless she’s gone completely crazy. If you kill someone you can’t inherit their estate, right?’

‘As far as I know,’ I said. ‘I thought there wasn’t much of an estate. Just the house.’

For some reason, all the talk and drama had restored some vitality to Verity. She pushed back her hair; the wine had done something for her colour and her eyes were brighter. ‘D’you realise what that dreadful pile is worth? I remember Patrick put a valuation on it once-a couple of million.’

‘Not in this market,’ I said.

‘Still, a million five, at least.’

Robert seemed to find all this distasteful, or perhaps he just had good powers of concentration. ‘Verity, Hardy-what’s she going to do?’

I rubbed my long dark stubble and felt my injured back stiffening, the skin on the burnt patches growing tight. The itch in my fingers where the split skin had only just healed made me want to scratch. ‘Paula’s psychotic, it looks like. She’s got things against you both. She had something against Patrick Lamberte.’

Verity snorted derisively. ‘She didn’t! Patrick? She scarcely ever met him.’

I took the defaced photograph from my pocket and spread it out on the table. ‘This is Paula’s work. I’ve reason to believe that she treated a painting of Patrick in the same way.’

Verity gaped at the creased, well-worn picture.

‘He’s naked. I can’t believe it. Patrick and Paula? No.’

‘What’re those shapes in the background?’ Robert said.

‘Who cares about fucking shapes in the background?’ Verity screamed. ‘This is my husband, posing naked for that crazy bitch.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘She could have air-brushed the photo, doctored it in some way. I haven’t had a chance yet to find out.’

Verity slumped back in her chair. ‘That bastard! That slut! I want a cigarette.’

‘You don’t smoke,’ Robert said.

‘I stopped, now I want to start again.’

Robert stopped staring at the photograph and flapped his hands uselessly. ‘Hardy?’

I shook my head. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go and see your solicitor, Mrs Lamberte. Then we’ll trot along and you’ll make a statement to the police. I’ll support everything you say. You’ll be off the hook, I’m sure. You can get to see your kids again.’

Verity let go a long sigh. ‘Thank God.’ Robert was the only one who didn’t seem to think it was a brilliant strategy.