Duck Season Death (4 page)

“Are you really, darling? How odd! So am I. See that perfectly sweet boy over there? His father runs a hotel at some damn-awful place called Dunbavin. That wouldn't be where you and Athol are going?”

“None other. The Duck and Dog.”

“How marvellous to think I won't be leaving civilisation behind altogether. I must go back to Jerry—he gets so jealous, poor pet! If that man ever comes back with my drink, you have it to fortify yourself for Athol. He spoke about you quite savagely after the ghosts.”

He watched her rejoin the glowering young man in the velvet trousers. He felt a touch of pity for him. Margot could be quite ruthless.

III

‘With a tender smile, Lawrence took Estella in his arms. Her lovely face, framed in a cloudy mist of tulle, looked up at him trustingly. “My darling,” he whispered adoringly. “Mine at last”.'

Heaving a sigh, Adelaide drew a bold line under the final words of her story and moved her dreamy gaze to the window. The view was not a prepossessing one; a blank brick wall of the next house of the terrace and a flutter of washing hanging on an improvised clothes-line. A slit of sky between the two roofs of rotting slates was the only possible redeeming feature, but Adelaide's vision was turned inwards on the white satin of Estella's wedding gown and Lawrence's handsome face and athletic figure.

The boarding house where the Dougalls resided was perhaps the most sordid and depressing of all they had endured over the past few years. They had been there for six months now, economizing in preparation for their annual migration to the Duck and Dog.

Retirement and the end of the British Raj in India had coincided for Major Dougall. Instead of returning to England, he had decided to settle in Australia, bringing with him his wife and daughter. The army had been the only life he had ever known, and while he had enjoyed every moment of it, his career had been but a modest one. It was not to be expected then that his civilian career would be in any way brilliant. Gullible and short-sighted in investing his small capital, it soon became a failure, and the Dougalls found themselves moving from hotel to flat and on down the scale to a succession of dingy boarding houses as the Major's income shrank.

Years of easy living and the rigid social code of Anglo-Indians had left Mrs Dougall incapable of adjusting herself to a new and cruder life. She clung to the old standards by building a protecting wall of memories of the halcyon Indian years between herself and the sordid realities of the present, behaving, speaking, thinking and even dressing precisely as she had done then. Being a strong-minded woman, she succeeded in bolstering up the Major's flagging
morale, so that he almost completely joined her in the happy self-deception. Without her, no doubt, he would have long since pressed his old service revolver to his highly coloured forehead.

Their daughter, Adelaide, however, floated half-way between fast-fading memories of life in Simla and the present. At first, she had made an effort to help the family finances. Against her parents' wishes, who could not realise the need to earn a living, she had tried a commercial course of typing and shorthand. But, unable to master either art and helped on by her mother's disapproval, she had soon given up. In the intervening years, she had picked up a little money by baby-sitting or taking a surreptitious job in a shop during the sales. She was still as immature and diffident as the eager, shy girl who had dispensed tea to the subalterns of her father's regiment on her mother's At Home day. She, too, lived on memories. These included a short-lived, barely developed romance with a junior officer, which had been squashed by Mrs Dougall on the discovery that the young man's father was in trade.

Since then, Adelaide had fallen in love hopelessly numerous times. There was the doctor who had attended her when she had jaundice, a total stranger who had travelled regularly on the same train with her during the summer sales week. She enjoyed the hopeless loves, luxuriating in her nightly wet pillow, but when a fellow-boarder at one of their places of abode showed signs of reciprocation to the extent of trying to enter her room one night, she was immeasurably shocked.

The short stories she wrote in secret, but never submitted for publication for fear of rejection, were sweetly romantic tales invariably ending at the engagement of the handsome hero and heroine—or at the most with the wedding reception and a detailed description of the wedding gown. Sex was some dark, secret thing that she kept on the other side of the wall, like her mother and father kept the harsh world at bay. She always skipped the frank passages in books and averted her eyes carefully whenever she saw a pregnant woman. Such things had nothing to do with Adelaide's ideas of
love, and even if they did come to her mind in hot unguarded moments, they were still not to be connected with—with Him.

Her new love, which she had nursed for eighteen months now, was more hopeless than any she had ever cherished before. Her masochism was heightened by the fact that the man was married. She had based a story on her plight, in which an accomplished and charming girl (which was how Adelaide sometimes dreamed herself to be instead of plain, spinsterish and inarticulate) falls in love with a distinguished and learned man some years her senior (which was how He appeared in her eyes), unhappily married to an invalid, querulous wife incapable of sharing his interests (which was how Adelaide imagined His wife to be). The poignant renunciation scene between the would-be lovers still moved her whenever she re-read the story.

Sitting at the window of her musty little bedroom, Adelaide's heart suddenly beat fast under her flattened bosom. A flush spread over her thin, sallow face as she thought of how that story might even yet come true—but with a changed and happy ending. For the first time in her life, she found herself wanting to face reality.

The change had taken place suddenly. They had been at breakfast, Mrs Dougall opening the single letter on her plate with the air of one about to deal with a pile of social invitations, and the Major with his red face and bristling white moustache hidden behind the more conservative of the morning papers. In his high, strangulated voice, which always sounded as though his uvula was in the way of his larynx, Major Dougall had said, “I see that fellah has lost his wife. Died—um—let's see the date—two days ago.”

Adelaide looked up quickly from the unappetising rissoles on her plate. ‘That fellah' could only be one person. Athol Sefton. Her father had harkened back to him several times during the year, making plain his dislike which was like a nagging tooth to be eased only by being clenched. When her father had finished with the paper, she took it up to her room. There was no doubt at all as to who it was. His querulous, invalid wife was dead. He was free!

“Free at last!” whispered Adelaide exultantly. Suddenly the wife seemed to have been the only obstacle in the way of her happiness.

From that moment on, Adelaide Dougall concentrated on an imaginary situation which to her had now become real. Each word and glance that he had ever given her was pondered upon and built up into occasions of deep significance. Their parting and the past months of separation had been as intolerable to him as they had been to her—of that she became convinced. She even looked for word from him, but when no letter came she told herself that, of course, it would not be proper for him to get in touch with her yet.

But that did not stop her from raking the crowded city streets and passing to and fro in front of the hotel where she knew he stayed when he was in Melbourne. But, of course, he intended waiting until they met again at their first place of meeting—the Duck and Dog at Dunbavin. It was the sort of romantic gesture that she could appreciate, and she began to mark off the dates on her calendar.

Thus, as the weeks went by and became days, Adelaide worked herself up to a feverish, erotic pitch which was as pitiful as it was dangerous.

IV

I should have checked in to a larger hotel, thought Jeffrey. Here I stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe if I talked like some of these Aussies—“Oi'm stying at the Hotel Broight,” he essayed aloud, and made a derisive sound.

‘Stying' is just about it, he thought, staring at the dirty curtains which shrouded dirtier windows overlooking the rubbish-littered backyard of the hotel. Lying on the bed, cradling a glass of beer on his chest, he remembered the way the chambermaid had said, “You're an American, aren't you? Just fancy!” as though he was someone from Mars.

Hell, didn't they remember the Yanks here? It wasn't so long ago. Maybe folks' memories are short when they know they should be grateful. It didn't seem that long ago to him since they had been here. Camp Pell, they had called it. He had taken a ride out there, just for old times' sake, to have a look at it—to remember himself as a kid in olive drab, sweating it out in the South Pacific Theatre. The cab driver had asked him if he had ever come up against that American soldier who murdered those three women.

Jeffrey's body grew taut and his fingers suddenly clenched on the glass. He raised his head and, finishing the beer, set the glass on the bed table which already had a film of dust on it before the ashtray overflowed with his own cigarette ends. He lay back again, his hands under his head and a wry grin on his lips. That's a word you'll have to get used to, son, he told himself.

‘But they won't get me like they got Leonski—I'm not a psychopathic strangler. There's a difference between murdering for the hell of it and—the bastard, the dirty rotten bastard!' he thought suddenly, burning up.

Funny how the years hadn't minimised his fury or mellowed his bitterness. He had carried the injury with him all this time, so that he felt almost that he had grown up with it—that it was as much a part of him and as familiar as his own body. He always knew that one day he would come back to do what he had sworn to do on that reeking, sweltering atoll somewhere in the Pacific where he had received the news. Instinctively his hand crept to his inside coat pocket, encountering first the holster where his Luger lay snug against his side, then the old shagreen wallet where he had kept the letter from that moment outside the master-sergeant's palm-thatched hut. Return and revenge had been his goal in the same way as other men's goals were to be president of a company or captain of a baseball team. He had worked towards it, preparing himself both physically and mentally.

Sometimes he had tried to fight against inexorable ambition which kept driving him on, telling himself that the years were
passing, what did it matter, what had happened to him had happened to other men and would happen again. But still he went on making plans and marking every saved dollar for a special purpose.

A knock at the door caused him to start up tensely. “Are you there, Mr Jeffrey? There's someone to see you.”

He guessed who it would be, but still he asked for the name before unlocking the door.

A neatly dressed, middle-aged man, rather like a trusted bank clerk, entered. His small eyes behind bi-focal glasses were both watchful and observant as he was as insistent on checking the American's identity as Jeffrey had been in checking his. “We have to be very careful in our business, Mr Jeffrey,” he said, more as a statement of fact than by way of apology.

“Sit down,” the other invited, shaking up a cigarette to offer his visitor, “and tell me what you've got for me.”

“Thank you, no. I don't care for American cigarettes. Regarding the party you commissioned us to trace,” he went on, pulling out a notebook and turning over the pages. “He left Sydney on the eleven thirty plane this morning and is due to arrive any moment now. He is being met by a man called Carmichael who is his nephew by marriage. His wife, just in case it is of interest to you, died a few months ago. So far we can discover no reservation made for him at any hotel. It is my belief that he will be staying with his nephew who has a bachelor flat just outside the city. I have his address with me if you want it.

“From the evening of the 27th—that is, tomorrow—the party has a booking at a hotel in the country some hundred and fifty miles away. The name of this hotel is the Duck and Dog. It is situated near the town of Dunbavin. Your party usually spends the first part of March there every year for the duck-shooting. We are unable to anticipate his movements further,” the little man concluded, as though defying anyone else to be able.

But I can, thought the American exultantly. Shooting ducks, huh? I know one who is a dead duck right now.

The private enquiry agent went on. “We were uncertain of your precise wishes, Mr Jeffrey, but following the general tone of your instructions we took the chance on booking you in at the same hotel. I trust we acted correctly?”

“Fine!” said Jeffrey, trying to keep the note of reckless triumph out of his voice. The whole business was turning out better than if he had planned it.

The agent gave a little deprecatory cough. “Naturally we do not enquire into our clients' intentions, or the outcome of the work they ask us to undertake—” he paused, his small shrewd eyes on the American's face.

The other said sharply, “Yes, go on!”

After a pause, the agent said, “Very often after much careful and discreet work on our part, our clients undo it all by behaving foolishly.”

Jeffrey's facial muscles felt stiff as he tried to grin easily. “What are you getting at?”

“Just a little advice, if you don't think it out of order. Is it your intention, now that we have finished our commission on your behalf, to continue to keep your party under observation?”