Tibald was standing by the Aga, a saucepan in one hand and a sauté dish in the other. The sound of the door swishing water before it as it opened made him turn.
‘You nearly killed Arthur, you stupid bastard,’ he said.
While I hadn’t expected him to embrace me with his huge, leg-of-mutton arms, I hadn’t expected this ill-informed invective either. No one seemed in the least bit interested in my welfare.
‘How do you know about Arthur?’ I asked.
‘He’s in the hospital. He’s still unconscious. They don’t know if he’ll ever come round.’
‘How do you know about Arthur?’ I repeated.
‘Peter Topaz took him to the hospital and came round to the Royal afterwards. He said you hit Arthur over the head.’
Tibald looked at me with ill-disguised loathing.
‘He said you tried to kill Arthur.’
The hand holding the saucepan drew attention to itself by rising and falling slightly.
‘And did he tell you why?’ I asked calmly.
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘I’d give up the amateur detecting if I were you, and stick to acting. Better still, find something you’re good at.’
‘So Topaz has pulled the wool over your eyes.’
Tibald sniffed derisively and said, ‘Why don’t you just piss off, Will? You’re your own and everyone else’s worst enemy.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor bloody Arthur.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Poor bloody Arthur — only not quite so poor as the people he killed.’
‘The fact that you actually believe that is an indication of just how big a dickhead you are.’
‘I suppose Topaz gave you his side of the story, did he?’
‘His side? His side? He’s a copper. He doesn’t have a side. He investigates. He looks for evidence. He follows clues. You, on the other hand, are clueless.’
I nodded sagely, trying to create an impression of both condescension and patience. I would accept Tibald’s apology gracefully when the time was right, along with all the other apologies due to me.
I left Tibald to grieve over his extinguished Aga, and splashed my way to the stairs, climbed them, and approached my bedroom door on the third floor. I opened it to find Peter Topaz seated on a chair in the corner of the room. He was holding a gun, and it was pointed at me.
‘Gedday,’ he said.
I sat on the bed and waited for Topaz to speak. He was shaking his head slowly, and the muscles in his face were tense.
‘You think you’ve solved it, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You think you’ve worked it all out.’
‘I have worked it all out.’
‘OK. Why don’t you tell me all about it?’
He settled the gun into a comfortable firing position, indicating that he intended to pull the trigger whether I spoke or not. This was not the time for obfuscation.
‘I don’t know everything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the why, only the who.’
‘Really?’ he said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.
‘I know that Arthur killed at least some of those people, maybe all. I also know that he’s your brother.’
His eyes widened.
‘Given,’ he said, ‘that Arthur might yet die as a result of your assault, it would be inappropriate to fall about laughing at this point. That, however, would be the natural response to what you have just said.’
‘If you’re planning to kill me anyway, why don’t you just tell me the truth, Peter? What does it matter?’
He sighed.
‘I’m not planning to kill you, Will. I’m planning to take you to the hospital to meet someone. If I have to shoot you somewhere painful to do it, I will. Otherwise you could just come quietly.’
‘Why would I want to do that? I don’t want to speak to Arthur.’
‘Arthur’s unconscious. It’s not him I want you to meet.’
He stood up and indicated that I should do the same.
‘There’s a car up the hill a bit,’ he said.
The car, the same one that had taken me to and from the courthouse, was driven by a constable whose face was familiar. Topaz and I sat in the back. I thought it a most extraordinary demonstration of gall that he would continue to use the resources of the police force even as his guilt stood in peril of exposure.
The car didn’t pull up at the front door of the Maryborough Base Hospital, but drew up round the back. We entered the building through a narrow service door and passed through the kitchen with its stale, unhealthy smell of unpalatable, overcooked, and probably poisonous food. Tibald’s kitchen most certainly did not smell like this. We passed through a ward, and I saw Arthur lying on a bed, his head bandaged, his scarred chest exposed above a sheet pulled only as high as his waist. We didn’t pause, but entered a room which, by its size, was never intended to function as a place where a patient might be put. It was the matron’s station. Her presence, seated behind a desk that had been relocated to a corner, attested to this. It had been moved to accommodate a bed. Lying on the bed, propped on pillows, and almost unrecognisable behind swollen eyes and facial bruising, was Joe Drummond. He seemed to be sleeping.
‘Mr Power,’ the matron said, ‘the circus left town a week ago. What are you doing here?’
I looked at Topaz. He obviously hadn’t told her that I was responsible for Arthur’s injuries. I had a sudden and sickening presentiment that my world was about to be turned upside down.
‘I’m not with the circus,’ I said dully.
‘Mr Drummond is quite able to speak with you,’ she said to Topaz. ‘But please, be brief.’
She left the room.
Joe’s eyes opened, but they were little more than slits, with the pulpy red of the whites just visible.
‘You’re getting stronger,’ Topaz said. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
‘Can’t believe I let him take me by surprise like that,’ he croaked.
Topaz nodded.
‘Insane people are much stronger than sane ones,’ Topaz said.
In an effort that clearly pained him, Joe moved his head slightly so that he could see me.
‘If you hadn’t come out of Flint’s house when you did, he would have finished me off,’ he said.
Did he mean Arthur? I remembered there was that brief period when I was in Flint’s bedroom and Arthur was, I thought, in the kitchen.
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?
Joe looked at Topaz, who nodded.
‘You can tell him,’ he said. ‘He needs to know what a complete dickhead he’s been.’
‘It was that red-headed bloke from the hotel. Augie. Augie Kelly.’
This struck me as so ludicrous that, for a moment, my brain failed to put a face to the name.
Topaz was leaning against the police vehicle and I was standing with my free hand in the pocket of my trousers. My head was lowered, and I was trying to come to terms with what I had just heard.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What is the connection between Augie and Arthur?’
Topaz pushed himself away from the car and grabbed my shirtfront.
‘Both their names start with A,’ he said, and pushed me backwards. I staggered, but kept my feet. He raised his hand to his face and rubbed at a spot between his eyebrows.
‘This is like trying to explain something to an elderly, demented aunt,’ he said. ‘There is no connection between Arthur and Augie. None. Have you got that? None. Now, I’ll try to keep this simple.’
I saw the constable in the driver’s seat smirk.
‘Arthur, your friend Arthur, who is lying in there unconscious, has got nothing to do with these crimes. He is
not
my brother. You are a fucking idiot. Is there anything so far you don’t understand? If there is, please tell me now, because if I have to go over this again, I think it would be simpler to shoot you.’
He paused. I said nothing, but was unpleasantly certain, with his real, rather than imagined, face before me, that he looked nothing at all like Arthur.
‘Good,’ he continued. ‘Augie Kelly is the perpetrator of every single one of these deaths — not including Fred Drummond’s, obviously.’
‘How long have you known about Augie?’ I ventured.
‘I’ve suspected for a while, but he’s a smart man and I couldn’t catch him out. I’ve known for sure only since yesterday when Joe was able to speak. I can’t guess at his motive. That’s a mystery.’
‘And Conroy?’
‘He knows. There are people out looking for Kelly. Naturally he’s disappointed, and not entirely convinced either. I need hardly remind you that escaping from custody is still a crime, so next time you see him I wouldn’t piss him off any further. Bashing Arthur over the head is also a crime, so don’t think for a minute that you’re off the hook.’
‘How did Joe get here? Why didn’t we find him?’
‘You were looking in the wrong place. Augie knew you were going to see Flint — I presume one of you told him, or he overheard you — and he got there ahead of you. He only had a few seconds to deal with Joe before you and Arthur went outside. He knocked him about and pushed him under the house at the side — there’s a space there. I don’t know whether he thought Joe was dead or not, but he took off into the bush before he could make sure. Maybe he was going to come back and finish the job.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
‘Because Mal Flint found him first. After you two goons had finished torturing him — also a crime you could be charged with — he heard Joe moaning, and discovered where Kelly had stowed him. He could see that Joe was in a bad way, so he got him to hospital.’
‘How?’
I was astonished to learn that Mal Flint was capable of Samaritan behaviour, and was even more astonished when Topaz said, ‘He carried him as far as the Granville Bridge, and an army truck took him the rest of the way. Flint didn’t go with him, but the driver recognised him and told me. Flint hasn’t been around since then, but I left him a note asking him to call on me. He saved Joe’s life, so without Flint it would have taken much longer to nail Kelly. In fact, you might have been given a life sentence before then, and the investigation might have been closed.’
‘I saw Flint this morning,’ I said. ‘He was at your place.’ I could not prevent a sheepish expression from crossing my face.
‘Where is he now?’ Topaz asked.
‘He’s tied up in that cupboard,’ I said, and added quickly. ‘It was self-defence. He was about to attack me when Adrian kneed him in the nuts, and then we … well, we were obliged to restrain him. For safety reasons.’
Topaz spoke even more slowly than he usually did.
‘So the man responsible for saving your bacon is trussed up in a broom cupboard. Is that about the size of it?’
‘Well, to be fair, he didn’t know he was helping me, and he would have killed me, I’m sure of it, if he’d been given the chance.’
‘Get in,’ he said suddenly, his voice edgy with exasperation.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m dropping you at the Royal, where the rest of the troupe is, and you’re not going to move from there until I tell you to. Understand?’
I wanted to say that my arm needed attention and that, as we were here at the hospital, it might be a good idea to have it looked at. Somehow, though, my instincts told me that it might seem tasteless to request medical attention while Arthur lay unconscious nearby. Besides, I was feeling rather vulnerable to disapproval, and could not face the matron’s hectoring. Facing the troupe was going to be bad enough, if Tibald’s reaction to me was any guide.
Topaz deposited me at the front door of the Royal Hotel. I took a deep breath and went into the foyer. It was empty. When I went into the dining room there were only half-a-dozen people there. Two of them noticed my entrance but, after a desultory glance in my direction, returned to their conversation. One of the six, seated with his back to me, was Kevin Skakel. The sudden rush of affection I experienced for this church-going, club-footed, McGonagall-admiring, journey-man actor indicated to me how desperate I had become to experience sympathy rather than the more familiar enmity. Skakel, of all people, Skakel, who’d perversely chosen to love the God who had so afflicted him, would appreciate the awful circumstances which had forced upon me the choices I had made. When I tapped him on the shoulder, however, the look on his face fell somewhat short of Christian charity.
‘How’s Arthur?’ he asked coldly.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks for asking.’
‘I can see you’re fine,’ he snapped, ‘and I don’t really care whether you are or not anyway. How is Arthur?’
‘He’s still unconscious,’ I said, and felt keenly how this dismal fact put me at a disadvantage. Why couldn’t people understand that I had attacked Arthur in good faith?
‘Thinking that Arthur was … well, it wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion to jump to,’ I said peevishly. ‘I mean, it did look like … Arthur was there and … I mean, what was he doing there in the first place?’
Kevin Skakel had the nerve to sound impatient.
‘I don’t know, Will. But he didn’t break out of prison to get there, and he didn’t bash you over the head, so he hasn’t actually broken any laws. You, on the other hand …’
Annie Hudson’s voice broke in before Kevin could leap to his good foot.