She put her hand on my good arm, reassuringly.
‘Not even Bill Henty?’ I asked.
‘What about me?’ Henty had come into the kitchen just as I had spoken his name. He was wearing khaki shorts and had a towel draped around his shoulders. He had been exercising vigorously, and was sweating profusely.
‘They’ve found that girl’s body,’ said Annie. ‘I was just assuring Will that none of us believe he’s got anything to do with it. Not now that, you know, she’s actually dead.’
Henty wiped his face with one end of the towel and sniffed.
‘Like Tibald said, we’re all capable of murder.’
‘Bill,’ Annie said. ‘You don’t really think …’
‘Let’s wait and see. That’s all I’m saying. What do you say, Tibald?’
Tibald turned from the stove and said that as far he was concerned a man was innocent until proven otherwise. I was glad to hear him say this — it seemed to be a retreat from his earlier position — but the effect was spoiled when he added that sometimes this tenet was difficult to justify.
Henty then said, smugly, ‘Augie, get us a beer, will you? I can’t go into the bar like this.’
I got to my feet, threw Henty a contemptuous if bruised glance, and went up to my room. Before leaving, though, I leaned down and kissed Annie lightly on the cheek.
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly. She reached up, covered my hand with hers, and gave it a squeeze. Through all the hideousness, and despite my rising anger at Henty’s words — and, for some reason, his bare, obsessively sculpted chest exacerbated that anger — through all this, that small squeeze sent a charge through me that travelled directly to my private parts. I had to stop myself from saying out loud that Annie Hudson did indeed resemble Greer Garson.
I lay on my bed, trying to get things in order. I knew that Topaz would arrive soon with more questions and impertinent accusations. I was surprised that he hadn’t come last night. He couldn’t arrest me, although he no doubt wanted to. At any rate, I assumed that he couldn’t arrest me. I was a bit murky on this area of the law and whether it applied anyway in such a remote town. He would surely need some substantial evidence before he consigned me to the earthen-floored hell of a Maryborough jail. I was not, however, confident about this. Perhaps suspects were thrown into prison here as a matter of course.
My arm was aching, my eye was tender, and I had a headache that felt as if all it needed was a gentle push to result in bleeding from the ears. I also had an erection. The images flooding my brain, and by extension my penis, were, my God, images of me making love to Annie Hudson. What was wrong with me? Was I aroused by a woman’s pity? Knowing that women responded positively to wounded men, I suspected that Annie’s sympathy was partly the result of my injuries. I could not explain my own attraction to her so neatly. She was, after all, receiving the priceless gift of Peter Topaz’s nocturnal emissions. I wasn’t sure of this, but I had every reason to believe that it was so. My sudden desire was not unreasonable, or inexplicable. She was, after all, a woman of considerable charms. My attraction could hardly be an expression of some kind of as yet undescribed fetish.
I was about to relieve myself of this unwanted, but not unwelcome, bout of erotic yearning when there was a knock on the door. It opened before I had a chance to call ‘Wait!’, and Augie Kelly entered to the sight of me fumbling with my flies. At least I had brought nothing forth.
‘It is customary to wait until you’re invited in,’ I snapped. If I hadn’t been so cross, and therefore obviously guilty of something, he would not have realised that he had caught me in flagrante delicto solo, as it were.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and then, in an attempt at conciliation, ‘It must be difficult with only one hand free. You should get someone to help you.’
It would be an understatement to say that I was flabbergasted by his lewdness. I suppose he thought he was being blokey, or letting me see that he was a man of the world, unfussed by the libidinous pursuits of others. Well, I wasn’t going to behave like a shy teenager.
‘And who would you suggest, Mr Kelly? Do you have a sister who is looking for work?’
He laughed the laugh of a man who was sisterless.
‘I don’t think you need to look any further than Miss Hudson,’ he said.
Those weird, green eyes missed nothing. I had underestimated Mr Kelly. Perhaps, though, he was alert to what had passed between Annie and me because his own interest in her had not gone unnoticed by me. Jealousy improves eyesight. Indeed, it improves upon eyesight. I pushed the pillows against the bed-head and propped myself up.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Kelly?’
‘Please, call me Augie. There’s no need for all this formality. I just caught you having a toss, for God’s sake.’
I coughed uncomfortably, and to cover my embarrassment said, ‘It’s an unusual name, Augie is.’
‘It’s short for Augustus,’ he said, letting me off the hook, but letting me know that that was exactly what he was doing.
‘Augustus Kelly,’ I said, and thought it was rather too grand a name to wear in a town without trees. I didn’t say so because I didn’t think I had the upper hand. He pulled a chair up and sat at the foot of my bed.
‘Even if people stop coming,’ he said suddenly, ‘you can stay here.’
I was surprised by the intensity with which he said this. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible tremor in his voice.
‘People won’t stop coming, Augie. If anything, they’ll come in droves, hoping to get a glimpse of Jack the Ripper. It’s a bargain. They get a good meal and a shiver of horror, and all for a few bob. It’s better than the pictures.’
‘I’m just saying, you can stay here, whatever happens.’
There was that tiny tremor of emotion again. Had he been drinking?
I felt grateful for this show of support, especially as he seemed so sincere about it, but I changed my mind when I looked into his murky eyes. He was acting. He was good, but he was acting. I knew what Kelly was up to. He thought that I would be out of the way soon, that I would be carted off to jail. That would ensure that Tibald would stay. Without me the troupe would disband, and they would all need jobs. Augie would have an already broken-in workforce at his disposal.
‘To be perfectly honest, Will,’ he said, reading my mind and retreating from his sentiment. ‘Tibald is the real reason you don’t have to go. The man is a genius. I just tasted this soup thing he’s made for tonight. Everyone gets just a mouthful. We’re not even counting it as a course.’
‘It’s called an
amuse gueule
,’ I said coolly.
‘That’s what he called it, but I don’t speak Latin.’
‘It’s not Latin. Look, never mind.’
Augie’s frank admission of the basis of my remaining welcome had taken a good deal of the warmth, even if it had been acted warmth, out of the earlier gesture.
‘He’s made it out of chokos. Can you believe that? I hate chokos, but this is …’ He groped for the word.
‘Sublime?’ I offered, wishing that he would take his hairy arms and return to the kitchen.
‘Exactly,’ he said, and his face was lit momentarily by the rapturous recollection of the taste of Tibald’s choko reduction. ‘I’m getting the boiler fixed,’ he added, ‘so we’ll have hot water. Soon.’
‘Any moment you’ll be telling me people want to stay here.’
‘But they do. I’ve had several RAAF officers interested in moving their wives across from the Royal. But we’re not ready for that yet. It’s all a bit rundown.’
‘But it’s good enough for a murder suspect.’ And his leading lady, I thought, but didn’t say it. Augie smiled. Although it wasn’t quite as calculated as the Topaz smile, it lacked the generosity of the real thing.
‘Yes, Will,’ he said. ‘It’s good enough for a murder suspect.’ With that he patted my knee, stood up, and said, ‘It’s probably a good idea if you don’t help at dinner yet. Your eye is, well, it’s unsightly and … people eating, that sort of thing.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
Augie Kelly had barely closed the door when three short, sharp raps preceded the entry of Peter Topaz. He was brusque and to the point.
‘This is now officially a murder investigation, and I need you to accompany me to the station.’
Wearily I rolled off the bed and held out my good hand as if to receive handcuffs.
‘Don’t be melodramatic,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a Hollywood gangster picture.’
I walked with Peter Topaz from the George to the police station. He said very little. He seemed preoccupied. The silence made me uncomfortable, which perhaps was what was intended. I felt conspicuous, too, with my arm in a sling and with a police escort. Several people stared at us, and I fancied that more than one of them whispered to their companions.
‘This is humiliating,’ I said. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. It looks like I’m being taken in for questioning.’
‘You are being taken in for questioning.’
‘Outrageous,’ I said sulkily.
‘Why don’t you do yourself a favour and accept the fact that you were the last person to see her alive and that we might be interested in that small fact.’
‘I was not the last person …’
‘Shut up, Will.’
He said this so savagely that I was shocked into silence.
I took Topaz’s coolness towards me personally. It might seem odd, but it bothered me that his certainty about my guilt was getting in the way of his liking me. As we approached the police station I had the ghastly realisation that I had been looking forward to impressing him with our production of
Titus Andronicus
. Let me tell you, your chances of showing off are severely diminished by the possibility that you might have murdered someone.
Inside the police station, Topaz put me in the room where he had interviewed me previously. He left, and I sat for ten minutes breathing its foetid, dead air. I presumed this was a police device for unsettling a suspect. It worked. When he returned he brought with him a tall, unnaturally thin man with dark, straight hair in need of a trim, and with a prominent Adam’s apple. He was wearing a suit. It was not a very good suit, but a suit nonetheless.
‘This is Detective Sergeant Conroy,’ said Topaz. ‘He’s heading the investigation, and he’ll be asking the questions.’
Conroy had large, brown eyes, and one of them quivered in its socket in the most disconcerting manner. He took in the person before him — me — and sat down. Topaz sat at his side, but slightly behind him. Before Conroy spoke, he cleared his throat noisily.
‘I ‘spose you’re gonna tell me we’re pickin’ on you because you’re with the circus.’
Who on earth did he think he was talking to? I felt a rush of indignation that he would mistake me for one of those squalid, shifty, slightly sinister circus types. Hadn’t Topaz briefed him at all? These thoughts crashed through my headache and came out in the form of an incredulous ‘Whaaaa?’
Conroy, who had affected to be checking some notes, looked up at me.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘I am not,’ I said, trying to summon the dignity that would support what I was about to say, ‘I am not a member of a travelling circus. I am an actor. Do I look like some swarthy gypsy?’
‘To be frank, Mr Power, just at the minute you look like shit.’
‘Obviously, you’re not seeing me at my best.’
I caught Topaz’s eye and detected a smirk.
‘We won’t keep you, Mr Power,’ said Conroy. ‘This isn’t a formal interview. We’re not keeping a record of it. I wanted to introduce myself, get a few details from you, and let you know that you’re not to leave town for the time being. OK?’
The ‘OK’ was spoken with the condescension usually reserved for the very young or the very, very old.
‘Just ask your questions and get it over with,’ I said resignedly.
At the end of my informal interview with Detective Sergeant Conroy, I felt wrung out by the conflicting emotions raging within. On the one hand, I felt mortified by Conroy’s failure to make even the slightest feint at an assumption of my innocence; and on the other, I felt a sort of elation at having been able to provide him with a list of alternative suspects. There was Smelt, who’d come with Polly to the first dinner at the George, and there was the chap who’d told Polly to warn Fred about the money he owed — the same chap who had inadvertently rescued me from Fred’s fists. There was Fred himself, of course, although his being dead was inconvenient. Apart from anything else, he was the only other person who could have corroborated that when I left the Drummond house Polly was still alive. Mrs Drummond could not be relied upon to give an accurate account. The fact that Polly had left soon after wasn’t helpful, but Fred would have told the police eventually what he told me — that he knew I was innocent and that he knew who was guilty. There were the circus people and the RAAF people …
‘Thank you, Mr Power,’ Conroy said when I ran all this by him. ‘We are not stupid.’ He made a play of writing down the names of the individuals I had mentioned, but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it.
‘And I,’ I said, ‘am not guilty.’
He managed an ugly little grin when I said that, and his quivering eye seemed to quiver just a little bit more.
By the time I reached the point where I was to cross Kent Street it was four o’clock, and the bicycle exodus from Walkers Engineering had begun. I scanned faces as they whizzed past in their hundreds, but I did not see the man who had belted Fred Drummond so viciously at the ACF dance. He was bound to be among the riders, but spotting him would have been like trying to identify a particular bird in a flock of flamingos. I didn’t have any clear notion of what I would do if I saw him. It occurred to me, though, as the moving blur of cyclists passed, that I could not sit back and allow Topaz and Conroy to build a case against me unopposed. I had an advantage over them. I was able to eliminate their chief suspect. I wasn’t hamstrung by the limiting belief that this murder had been committed by William Power.