Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

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 has 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 white 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 tang 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.