I’d felt bad about lying to Rose North about my interest in her family, but there was some comfort in my feeling that she didn’t believe me anyway. She’d been about to press me for more details on my project when a kind of cloud had passed across her face and her mind drifted away. Mrs Saunders had chosen that moment to come in and pronounce her tired and Rose hadn’t objected. Her last words to me were, ‘They were brave, brave boys, but very, very, foolish.’
Well, one of them was foolish still. The address I had for Maria North was in Stanmore, not far from the comforts of home. I’d intended to leave her until the next day but the intriguing elements in the case had got to me. I called her number on the car phone.
‘Maria North-Barr.’ The voice was a rich, slurred contralto.
I gave her the journalistic spiel, including that I’d just come from seeing her mother, and asked if it would be possible to see her.
‘I would be positively delighted, Mr Hardy, positively delighted. It’s, been ages since I’ve talked to a journalist. It’ll be just like old times. I’m just having a little drink. You do drink, I trust.’
I told her I drank and that I was only a few minutes away. I turned off Parramatta Road and drove through the leafy, gentrified streets of Stanmore. Her house was an imposing Federation job set in a big overgrown garden at the bottom of a street that ended at the railway line. The location-the tracks were within seventy metres of the house-would have sliced thirty grand off the value. A train rumbled past as I pulled up and a plane roared low overhead at the same time. Double-glazing would be an essential.
The name of the house on the brass plate by the front door was Rosalind. It should have been Neglect. I’m an expert on neglected houses, my own being an outstanding example, but this one had mine beat to a frazzle. The tiles on the porch had cracked and lifted as weeds pushed up through them. A tangle of shrubs and weeds and creepers had invaded the porch and the window ledges. Small gardens grew in the guttering, spilling out to trickle down the brick walls.
I rang the electric bell and got no result so I knocked hard on the door, dislodging flakes of paint. High heels clicked on boards and I heard a muttered curse as a step was missed. She flung the door open and looked at me with the same deep, dark eyes as her mother. ‘Mister Hardy, please do come in.’
She was tall and thin, wearing a blue silk dress that would have fitted better if she had another kilo or two of meat on her bones. Her dark hair, with a little grey in it, was swept back and held with a blue headband in a style ten years too young for her. I put her age at about forty-five. I took the hand she extended-the free one, the other carried a glass-and shook it. ‘It’s good of you to see me like this,’ I said. I reached inside my jacket. ‘You wanted some identification.’
She waved that away and swayed slightly but regained her balance quickly. ‘Now that I’ve seen you I have no doubt whatsoever that you’re who you say you are. Not that I really care. Come in and have a drink.’
I followed her into the house, which smelled of damp and dust, through to a big tiled kitchen with French windows letting out onto a back garden more wild than the one in front. The windows were open and a train rattled by, shaking the cocktail fixings set out on an old-fashioned card table. She pointed to a pair of deckchairs with slightly torn canvas. ‘Sit you down. I was just having a martini. You’ll join me?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
She slugged back the rest of the drink she’d carried and poured two more from a crystal pitcher. Her hand shook but she managed to get the glasses two-thirds full. Then she dropped an olive in each and added more gin. ‘Gilbey’s gin keeps you thin,’ she said. ‘I believe that, I really do.’
I reached forward to take the glass, doubting her ability to get it to me. She smiled, lifted her own and steered herself into her chair. ‘Cheers.’
I drank. The vermouth bottle was on the table but it might just as well have stayed in the cupboard. The drinks were almost pure gin, diluted a bit by melted ice. Not that I minded. She took a hefty pull and extracted a cigarette from the packet on the table. It gave me a chance to study her. My original guess at her age was way off-she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, but cigarettes and booze had put ten years on her. Her hands were slender and young-looking, but the fingers were heavily nicotine-stained; the flesh around her neck was firm although her chin was sagging and her fine eyes were disfigured by deep pouches and a mass of premature wrinkles.
‘So, you’ve been out to see Rose and now you’ve come to see me. All about poor Lee. That’s strange. I haven’t thought about Lee in ages. Mind you, at one time I used to think about him a lot.’
‘It must have been a shock, to hear of his death in that way.’
‘Not really’. She sucked on her cigarette and then on her drink, taking in smoke and gin as if they were tea and toast. ‘He did two tours in Vietnam and he always said that if Charlie didn’t get him some jealous husband would. Drink up.’
She was almost through hers and staring at the blueish pitcher. She had a long start on me and I had almost twice her body weight, I reckoned I could stay the pace. When we’d replenished and she’d got another cigarette going she asked me about her mother and seemed satisfied with the account I gave.
‘We never got along, and I never got along with Peter. Only with Lee. Lovely Lee.’ She laughed and smoked jerkily. ‘Never got along with my husband either. He’s a film producer and I’m an actress. Was an actress. Bad combination. He gave me this house in the divorce settlement, the bastard. Bought it for me, and my fuckwit of a lawyer let him get away with it. What’s the name of that movie? Planes, Trains and Automobiles — that’s this place.’
The words were tumbling out, alternately slurred and too precise as the liquor got to her. She topped up her glass and raised it to her mouth. It was lipstick smeared around the whole rim and she didn’t quite make the contact, a few drops spilled down her chin. I looked away and she caught the reaction.
‘I know, I know. I’m a sloppy drunk. Can’t help it. Nothing else to live for. What d’you want?’ She gazed at me blearily through her cigarette smoke, forcing her eyes to focus, imprinting more wrinkles. Suddenly she appeared to get everything together and to have a moment of clarity. I’d seen it before in hopeless drunks- a flash of sobriety before the shutters come down. ‘You’re not a journalist. Haven’t taken a single note, not one! What do you want?’
I judged that I only had her attention for a short time and that it was worth the risk. I took out the photograph of David Trumble and put it down in front of her. ‘Do you know who that is?’
She barely glanced at the picture. ‘Course I do. It’s Lee.’
‘It’s Sean Trumble’s son, David. Trumble hired me to investigate his suspicion that Lee North was the boy’s real father.’
She threw back her head and let out a shriek of laughter. The sound was cut short as she gasped for breath. Alarmed, I got out of my chair but she made a fierce gesture for me to stay away. She gulped in air somehow and followed it with a couple of lungsful of smoke and more gin. When she spoke her voice was wheezy and thin.
‘Of course he fucking was. Of course! Lee fucked everything. He fucked me when I was fourteen and let me tell you those were the best fucks I ever had. Best ever! Best!’
‘But his mate’s wife… ‘
‘He fucked her the night of the wedding. Sean passed out and Lee did the job.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The silly bitch told me. Told me when she heard she had cancer. Wanted to know whether she should tell Sean. Idiot. Oh, Lee. Oh, lovely, lovely Lee
She was weeping now, the tears falling into her glass and down the front of her dress. She dropped her cigarette and I bent down and retrieved it from the dusty floor. I picked up the photograph and put it in my pocket.