‘Well, he seems to be missing
‘He’s here. William’s staying with me until he gets well.’
10
She let her hand fall from her shoulder and then clasped both hands together in front of her at waist height. She was very still and her plain, bony face and the flat lines of her body made her look like the patron saint of disapproval. There was something wrong about her stiffness, but I couldn’t work out what it was. Her statement had caught me completely on the hop; I hadn’t given a thought to what I might say to Mountain, because I figured the moment of meeting was days away at the earliest.
‘Could I see him? Please?’ I said weakly.
‘He’s not in at the very moment. Would you like to come in and wait? He won’t be long.’
I’d picked her as the type that would send you off to your car to wait, where she could keep an eye on you from a safe distance through the Venetian blinds. Wrong again, Hardy. But in this business you have to be adaptable; I put the licence away and shuffled forward.
‘Thank you. Yes.’
She unhooked the screen door and stepped aside to let me pass her.
‘This way.’
I was in a small, carpeted hallway that held an upholstered chair and a highly polished table on which sat an intricately crocheted, cream-coloured doily. A telephone sat squarely in the middle of the doily. The carpet was thick and floral, and there were plastic walking strips covering it, which led off to a room at the front of the house. I followed her down one of the strips taking care to keep my balance so that I didn’t fall off into one of the bouquets of flowers.
She showed me into a lounge room that contained a glass-fronted crystal cabinet, a dresser made of the same dark wood, a couch and two chairs. A built-in briquet heater occupied one wall and the Venetian blinds were half-closed to keep the light down and protect the floral carpet which flowed into here from the hallway. With all the furniture exactly in place and not a book or a magazine in sight, the room had all the warmth and welcome of a prison shower block. She stood exactly in the centre of the room, as if she had marked the spot.
‘Won’t you sit down, Mr Hardy?’
‘Thanks.’ I sat on the nearest chair so that I wouldn’t wear out too much carpet by strolling around. She sat on the couch and we looked at each other in the dim light. I remembered that Bill Mountain had an engaging habit of lying on the floor, resting his glass on his chest and singing. He sang boisterously and the glass didn’t usually stay on the chest. I couldn’t imagine him in this room.
‘How long do you think he’ll be, Miss Mountain?’
She looked at her watch, which she wore with the face on the inside of her wrist. ‘Oh, not so very long. He went for a walk. Would you like some tea, or coffee?’
‘Coffee would be very nice, thanks.’
‘It’s just instant.’
‘Fine.’
‘Milk?’
‘Please.’
‘Sugar?’
‘No, thank you.’
She hadn’t smiled or nodded or relaxed her grim vigilant air for a second. She planted her long, thin legs in front of her and got up off the couch. With her mouth set in a tight, determined line, she marched out of the room towards the kitchen where I heard her making efficient sounds.
It wasn’t the sort of room you walked about in; there was the fear of dirt on your shoes for one thing, and the danger that you might knock something out of square. I craned forward from the chair to look at the photographs on the dresser. One was of an old, sprawling house, another showed a wedding party, pre-World War II, to judge by the clothes. The third was of a family group: the parents stood behind a boy and girl, who both looked to be about the same age, say ten. The father was a tall, angular character, closely resembling the Bill Mountain of my acquaintance and looking even more like ‘Bruce Worthington’ because he wore a short clipped beard. The mother was of average height and build, and would have been nondescript except that a hint of good humour about her mouth drew your eyes to her and away from the others.
Miss Mountain came back into the room carrying a tray which she set down on the dresser in front of the photographs. She held out a delicate china cup and saucer which I took in hands that felt like grappling hooks. She resumed her perch on the couch, cradled her cup and saucer in long, bony hands and let her eyes drift across to the dresser.
‘The Mountain family in happier days,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ I doubted that Bill Mountain would have thought so. The ten-year-old boy looked aggressive and resentful and the father looked exactly the same with more to be resentful about.
‘Would you care for a biscuit?’
I had a biscuit and drank the thin coffee. It was almost impossible to think of anything to say to her. She sipped and nibbled and took extreme care that not a single crumb fell on the floor. The only possible topic of conversation for us was her brother, but I felt myself being irresistibly drawn into the insipid artificiality of her milieu.
‘Bill’s been unwell, you said?’
‘Yes.’ She leaned forward, but adjusted her hands so that there was no risk of upsetting her cup. ‘It’s a weakness, you see, that William inherited. Our father was; i strict teetotaler, very strict, but Mother, well… and the weakness came out in William. It’s an illness, you understand. Mother died of it, and I’m sure it took years off Father’s life. William came to me for help.’
She sat back as if she was embarrassed at having spoken so many words consecutively. It seemed like an opportunity to advance my investigation. ‘ When did he come?’
‘Oh, let me see… it’s been so nice having him here, getting him his breakfast in bed and making him cups of tea. Goodness, he’s been drinking a lot of tea. It seems like longer than it really is-a week perhaps, or eight days. He’s been going for long walks as part of the rehabilitation. He said he wants to be fit for travelling. He hasn’t touched a drop, I’m sure of that.’
‘Walks?’ Hasn’t he got a car?’
‘Oh yes, it’s… somewhere.’ She ran out of steam at that point and looked vague. She drank some more coffee, a little noisily I thought, and ate another biscuit. I thought I saw a faint flush in her greyish skin and the hand holding the cup and saucer trembled a fraction.
We sat. The chinks of light through the slats of the blind faded and the traffic sounds receded from occasional to intermittent and then to less than that. The oppressive cleanness and neatness of the room got to me. I wanted to smoke just to flick ashes on the furniture and to drink just to spill red wine on the carpet. The room felt as if no-one had ever cleared a throat in it, or farted.
When I couldn’t take it any more I got to my feet. ‘Can I see his room please?’
She stood up quickly, nearly as tall as me. ‘No! Oh no, you can’t!’
No point in pretending anymore. I should’ve been on to it sooner; people don’t invite private detectives into their parlours without enquiring about their business. But her announcement that Mountain was there had taken me by surprise, probably as it was meant to do.
‘He isn’t coming back, is he?’
She shook her head.
‘When did he leave?’
‘He stayed five days. He didn’t have a single drink.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘You say you’re from Sydney? We used to live in Sydney, in Turramurra, actually. You saw the photograph of the house? That was the family home. My father left it to me and I sold it and came here.’ The flush in her face mounted and her tight mouth seemed to come loose suddenly, too loose. She clasped the hands in front again as if she was trying to control the flow of words, but she couldn’t. ‘My father left everything to me, nothing to William. He’d just have wasted it, you see.’
I nodded, and she shivered and clasped both shoulders with crossed arms, but the words kept tumbling out. ‘I’m a convert, you see. That’s St Mark’s at the end of the road. You saw it of course. Such a wonderful church. It’s so quiet here. I like it here. Of course the house is too big for me, but I couldn’t live in a smaller house.’