When I left the hospital I intended to finish yesterday’s job by checking on the residence of Mr Walter Chalmers, but sitting in the car with the engine running and the street directory beside me, I changed my mind. It suddenly seemed a hundred times more important to track down Bryn and his inquisitorial mate. Bryn was my starting point for this twisting, turning affair and it seemed like the right moment to check back to the beginning. And I was looking forward to a meeting with the man with the cigarette butts and the razor blades. I turned off the engine and reflected. Men like Bryn, with money like his, have houses scattered about the countryside — mood houses, hobby houses. I’d known one millionaire who kept a $50 000 hunting lodge on land which cost him $5000 a year to lease because he liked to go deer shooting about once every three years. He got shot to death up there on one of his rare visits but that’s another story. It was a sure bet that Bryn had hideouts on the sea and in the mountains, but they wouldn’t be public knowledge. How to find out about them? Easy. Susan Gutteridge, the lady on the mend. I tried to remember whether I’d mentioned a particular diabetes doctor or not and decided I hadn’t. But there was no doubt as to who was the best diabetes man in Australia, Dr Alfred Pincus. He charged like the six hundred, but there was more information about diabetes in that polished, clever dome of his than in a shelf of textbooks. I’d seen him on the subject on television and he was so interesting about it he almost made you wish you were a sufferer. Susan Gutteridge would contact him as sure as her bank balance was in the black.
I walked back to the hospital lobby and looked Pincus up in the directory. His rooms were in Macquarie Street naturally, a half mile away. I went back and locked the car. This was as close as I could expect to park to the address anyway. I tramped down the street which was lined with coffee bars and chemist shops the way streets around hospitals and medical offices are. I found the three storey sandstone building which Pincus shared with a dozen or so other top-flight men on top of the hill which gave it a commanding view of the water. The brass nameplates told me that several of Pincus’ co-occupants were knights. The lift was ancient like the one in the police building, but it had been better serviced and it slid up its cable like a python up a tree. I got out at the second floor and fronted up to a door which had Pincus’ name and degrees and memberships of this and that engraved on it in a prince’s ransom of gold leaf. I pushed the door open and looked straight into the eyes of the secretary. She was worth a look, a Semite with raven dark hair and a pale golden face like the image on a Mesopotamian coin. Her nose jutted and her brow sloped back to where the sleek mane of her hair began. Her voice was deep and sweet coming up from well below a pair of heavy, firm breasts.
“Are you Mr Lawrence?”
“No,” I said, “I’m Hardy, who’s Lawrence?”
She smiled to show she understood but withheld approval. “He telephoned, he’s been referred to Dr Pincus. Have you been referred?”
“No, I don’t want to see the doctor, at least, not yet. I want some information.” She picked up a pencil and tapped it against her big, strong white teeth. “About what?” she said.
“I want to know whether a Miss Susan Gutteridge has contacted Dr Pincus and whether she gave her address.” There’d been no number listed for her in the directory.
“I can’t possibly tell you that.”
“Then she has contacted him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You as good as did. Look, I referred her to Dr Pincus. She was having trouble with her diabetes, I knew he was good, the best.”
She unbent a little. “I still can’t help you, Mr Hardy,” she said, “I can’t give out information about patients.”
I took out my wallet and showed her my card. I found Bryn’s cheque with his name stencilled on it to establish my connection with the family. She was inclined to help but a tough professionalism held her back. I noticed a copy of The News tucked into a basket beside her chair.
“Look, Miss…?”
“Steiner, Mrs.”
“Mrs Steiner, this is a serious business, it’s connected with things that happened last night. The story’s in your paper. I’m mentioned. Take a look.”
She pulled out the paper and ran her eyes over the story. She looked up at me with huge dark eyes that seemed to invite you in for a swim.
“I haven’t time to explain,” I said. “Miss Gutteridge was at that place last night, I saw her. I advised her to see the best diabetes man in Sydney and now I need to see her again. I don’t know where she lives.”
She gave a convinced nod. “I believe you Mr Hardy.” She flicked over the pages of an appointment book. Pincus looked to be booked solid until the end of the century. “Miss Gutteridge has an appointment for tomorrow,” she said, “she gave her address as 276 Cypress Drive, Vaucluse. She called from a private phone so I assume she was at home.”
I thanked her and took back my licence folder. I gave her a smile and a half-bow as I left, but she was too busy re-reading the story in the paper to notice.
I went back to the car and drove out to Vaucluse again. Life went on out there as it always would, the traffic flowed smoothly as traffic does in places where no one has to get anywhere at a particular time. Cypress Drive was a notch down from Bryn’s lofty eminence, but it was still nothing to be ashamed of. The house was on a rise and the grass, shrubs and trees had never lacked fertiliser. A concrete driveway led up to the house like a stairway to paradise. There was no way the Falcon could have coped with the grade, so I parked it outside the wrought iron gates and took my exercise for the day — keeping my promise to myself to do more walking.
I was short of breath and sweating when I reached the top of the drive. The house had too many arches and white-painted, sculptured pillars and railings. It looked like a wedding cake by a baker who’d let his passion for decoration run away with him. I sat on a set of marble steps to catch my breath and then went up two more flights of marble to the door. The bell was the eye of a tightly curled, plaster moulded snake. I shuddered and pushed it waiting to hear the William Tell Overture inside. In fact a few clear, plain notes sounded inside. It was loud and audible even through a house of twenty squares, but it got no response. I tried again with the same result. I pushed at the door but it didn’t give an inch. I went down the steps and around the house on the right side; pebble-strewn garden beds bordered the house from front to back and the windows were at least fifteen feet from the ground all around. There was a slight look of neglect about the lawn edges and shrubs as if they were feeling embarrassed to be caught in such a state.
The back door of the house was reached by a railed set of concrete steps that lead to a tiled patio, but the garage took my attention first. It would hold four cars but there were signs of frequent occupation — tyre marks and oil stains — in only two of the bays. A third bay had a very slight tyre mark and a small grease spot. Above the garage was a long, low structure which looked like quarters for the staff.
I went up the steps to the flat and pushed the door open. I stepped straight into a neat kitchen and announced my presence by rapping on the wall. There was no answer. I went through to the next room which was pleasantly furnished with a good timber table, a serviceable divan and some built-in cupboards. A man was lying on his back on the divan, snoring quietly. There was a two-thirds empty brandy bottle and a sticky glass on the floor beside the couch. The sleeping man was short and spare, beak-nosed like a jockey, with thin, sandy hair and bad teeth. His mouth was open and he smelled like the Rose and Crown on a Saturday night. There was a rinsed glass on the kitchen sink indicating that someone had helped him on his way to oblivion.
I went out fast and took the steps to the back of the house three at a time. The back door was locked, it looked solid but wasn’t, it sprung open at my third kick. The house was an exercise in total comfort, total push button luxury, total soullessness. It was intended to be clean and tidy at all times but it wasn’t now; the bed in one of the large bedrooms was a tangled mess, the mattress was slewed off the base and there were clothes, books and make-up strewn about. A sleeve ripped out of a satin nightgown lay on the floor in a passageway and objects had been knocked and spilled from tables through the house. Susan Gutteridge had given whoever had carried her off quite a fight, but it appeared to have been a fight with rules because I didn’t see any blood.
I went back into the bedroom and began a search of Susan’s belongings. One thing was clear — whoever had taken her wasn’t interested in her papers or possible hiding places. Nothing was disturbed in the dressing table drawers, there were no edges lifted, no seams ripped, no books disembowelled. It wasn’t money either. Susan’s purse was on a sideboard in the living room; it had all her personal tickets in it as well as four hundred dollars in cash. It also had what I was looking for — an address book. There were four addresses for Bryn listed along with telephone numbers — one in the city, Vaucluse, one near Cooma in the snow country and one at Cooper Beach on the Central Coast. I slipped the book into my pocket and wandered across to a window. There was a harbour view of course. The early rain had cleared and the day had turned into the sort of Sydney special that persuades Melburnians to give up their football and settle. I saw in a series of mind-made movie stills images of Bryn Gutteridge sitting on his sun deck potting at sea birds with his air pistol. His skin was saddlebag brown and he was a heliophile if ever I’ve seen one. He’d be at Cooper Beach. The scene around me screamed for a telephone call to the police, but I’d had enough of desks and blotters and forms in triplicate for a while. The guy in the flat should wake up in a few hours and would probably call the cops. That left me with a fairly clear conscience and about as much of a start as I needed.
I was congratulating myself on having thought this out when a slight sound made me turn. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman. There were flared purple slacks and a flowered shirt, shoes with metal buckles and a stiff brimmed black hat on top of a head as pale and fair as a lily in a snow field. I decided that it all belonged to a man, and that the man was holding a gun. He was almost albino, slightly pink around the eyes and he spoke with a high voice, lisping a bit.
“Hold your hands out like this.” He fluttered a hand at full arm stretch. “If I do, can we be friends?” I said. He didn’t move a muscle in his face and the gun was steady on my navel.
“Just do it!”
I did it.
“Now turn around.”
“Oh, don’t take advantage of me.”
He’d heard it all before and it didn’t touch him. I felt as if I was digging my grave with my teeth. I knew I should stop riding him, but the words seemed to come out wrong.
“I might have what you want,” I said.
Still no reaction.
“Just turn, I’ll let you know when to stop.”
I had nothing to lose. He looked as if he’d enjoy killing me and his only problem would be where to put the bullet for maximum enjoyment. I reached into my pocket. He did none of the things an amateur would do. He didn’t clutch at the trigger or move back; he knew he had me cold and maybe he just wanted to see what sort of gun he was up against. I flicked the address book out of my pocket and threw it at him with a jerky movement as I dived for his legs. The book missed him by a mile. He sidestepped a fraction and swept the side of his gun down onto my perfect target of a skull. The blow hit the same spot as before and the blood must have flowed like Texas oil. I blacked out for a second and when I came to I couldn’t breathe and my heart seemed to be missing three beats for every one it caught. I heard the paleface say, “Shit, he’s dead.” I thought for a minute that I was but that was quickly replaced by fear. If he thought I was dead that was fine with me, even an animal like him wouldn’t want to kill me twice. Through half-shut eyes I saw him pick up the address book and go off towards the back of the house. I tried to pull myself up but my arms and shoulders couldn’t take the strain. I went down hard and blacked out again.