Jon Cleary - Endpeace

He glanced sideways at Malone and the latter wondered at the pain in the once-bright eyes.

2

‘We had a dinner party last week at Parliament House,’ said Enid Bigelow. ‘Only when we sat down did I realize all the ladies were members of Alliance Française. So we spoke French all evening. It was fun.’

‘Oh merde,’ said Lady Huxwood, who thought obscenities excusable if in a foreign language. ‘Not for the husbands, I’ll bet. Australian men must be the worst linguists in the world, after the Eskimos. Do police officers these days have to have a second language, Mrs Malone? All this multiculturism.’

‘Only foul language,’ said Lisa. ‘Especially when dealing with the young. I’ve tried to teach my husband Dutch, I’m Dutch-born, but he doesn’t have the ear for it.’

‘Do you speak any other languages?’ Linden seemed the friendliest of the women present; or at least the most relaxed.

‘French and German. And a little Indonesian.’ Lisa was surprised at herself; it was as if she was trying to establish her identity amongst these women. Yet she could not have cared less what they thought of her. ‘I worked on the diplomatic circuit for four years before I met my husband. And I had two years at finishing school in Switzerland.’ She was tempted to say something in French, but it would be a cheap score on the poor Premier’s wife. ‘But the languages I learned there are really not of much value to my children. They’re learning Japanese and Indonesian.’

All the women in the big drawing-room looked at the woman who had been to finishing school in Switzerland, then on the diplomatic circuit and had finished up marrying a policeman .

‘You appear to have had an interesting life,’ said the Premier’s wife, and looked as if she wished desperately to know what an interesting life was like.

‘We all have our own lives to live,’ said the Huxwood younger daughter, then had the grace to smile. ‘God, how smug that sounds!’

‘Indeed it does,’ said her mother.

The two Huxwood daughters were almost totally unlike, except that both had their mother’s large myopic eyes. Sheila, the elder, had her mother’s boniness without the beauty; she wore glasses with large fashion frames that actually made her look attractive. Linden, on the other hand, was comfortably fleshy and, Lisa guessed, wore contact lenses. Both were dark-haired, Sheila’s in a Double Bay modified beehive, Linden’s in a French bob with bangs. Both were expensively dressed in simple dinner dresses and both wore simple diamond pendants and rings that winked lasciviously at anyone who found value in jewellery. Lisa, feeling ashamed that she should even care, was glad she had worn the gold necklace she had inherited from her grandmother. She had always preferred gold to diamonds, though Scobie, bless his stingy heart, had never bought her either.

She had noticed that the other women guests had been as quiet as herself; Lady Huxwood did nothing to put anyone at her ease. The Premier’s wife sat next to Lisa; we’re the two wallflowers, thought Lisa.

Beatrice Supple sat beside Lady Huxwood, and the tycoon’s wife had not sat down at all, hovering on the fringes like a lady-in-waiting.

‘Sit down, Gloria, for heaven’s sake!’ said Lady Huxwood.

Gloria surprised Lisa by saying, ‘My bloody girdle’s killing me. Have I got time to take it off before the men come in?’

‘Go for your life,’ said Linden, giggling. ‘Get a wriggle on.’

Gloria stepped behind Lisa’s chair, grunted and gasped, heaved a sigh of relief and her girdle dropped to the floor. As if they had all been constrained by the same girdle, all the women suddenly seemed to relax. Then the men came into the room, bringing with them their air of self-importance. Or am I, Lisa wondered, becoming paranoid about this house?

Gloria Bentsen, who had now sat down, moved aside on her couch for Sir Harry to sit beside her. He did so, taking her hand, stroking it and smiling, not at her nor her husband but at his wife. Lady Huxwood smiled back, but Lisa couldn’t tell whether she was indulging his mild flirtation or not.

Malone came and stood behind Lisa, leaned down and said softly, ‘I hope you’ve got a bad headache.’

She reached up, took his hand and said just as softly, ‘Splitting. But we can’t leave just yet.’

Nigel Huxwood drew up a chair alongside Lisa. He was the handsomest of the family, with finely chiselled features; the only blemish was a weak mouth but that was disguised by the dark moustache above it and the beautifully capped teeth that were exposed when he smiled. He looked up at Malone. ‘Go and chat to my sister, Scobie, while I try to charm your lovely wife.’

Not wanting to throw up on the big Persian carpet, Malone crossed the room and squeezed into the French two-seater beside Sheila. ‘I’ve been sent to charm you,’ he said and, hearing himself, wanted to throw up even more.

‘Nigel is always doing that. It’s never let me charm you . Brothers can be bastards.’

Gallantry did not come easily to Malone; from what he had read, Irish knights had been a bit slow on the chivalry bit. But he tried: ‘Righto, let’s reverse it. I’m not really good at the charm show.’

‘Is that because you’re a policeman?’

‘That may be part of it.’

‘Is the other part because you’re out of your depth in this house?’

Malone had met snobbery before, but never arrogance like this. ‘Not out of my depth. Just a different sort of breeding.’

She leaned away from him, to get him into better focus it seemed. Then she smiled, a very toothy smile but suddenly surprisingly friendly. ‘Touché , Mr Malone. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, y’know. La Malmaison has sunk more people than you could guess at, over the years. I don’t know whether it’s the house or we Huxwoods.’

‘I think it might be the Huxwoods.’ He would never be asked again, so what the hell?

‘Is that a police opinion or a personal one?’ She didn’t sound offended.

‘Cops are not supposed to have opinions. We just gather evidence and leave the opinions to the jury.’

‘Have you gathered much evidence this evening?’

‘Conflicting.’ He retreated, because all at once she sounded as if she might be likeable: ‘Conflicting evidence never gets you anywhere in a court of law.’

‘I must remember that,’ she said, as if to herself; then she looked up as the tycoon came and stood beside them. ‘Charlie darling, pull up a chair. You’ve met Inspector Malone?’

Malone was not sure exactly what a tycoon was: how rich, how powerful one had to be. There had been a barrage of tycoons in the past decade, most of whom had been shot down like so many balloons. But the newspapers, including the Huxwoods’ own Chronicle and their Financial Weekly , called Charles Bentsen a tycoon. He had emigrated from Sweden at eighteen, one of the few Swedes heading Down Under; his name then had been Bengtssen. He had started as a labourer on a building site and within twenty years owned a corporation. He had built office buildings, shopping malls, roads and bridges: he also built a personal fortune that every year got him into the Financial Weekly’s Rich List. Like all the nation’s New Rich, he had been subjected to the suspicion that no one had made his money honestly in the Eighties, but nothing had ever been proved against him. He possessed only one home, his art collection had been bought out of his own funds and not those of his shareholders, and his charitable works were not legendary only because he did not broadcast them. His wife Gloria had been his secretary and no one had a bad word to say about her. Malone knew very little of this, since he read neither the gossip columns nor the Financial Weekly , but he was prepared to take Bentsen at face value.