feeling on the day they let you hand them a chisel.’
It was several million dollars worth of old neo-Georgian house behind a high wall. Through wrought-iron double gates, we could see a gravelled driveway that turned the corner of the house. Beside the gates, a wooden door was set in the wall. I tried the handle. It was open. We went up the path to a massive black front door under a portico. I pressed a polished brass button.
The door was opened by a tall, thin man in his thirties, designer cheekbones, black clothes, short fair hair. Alternate fingers of both hands wore rings, red stones on one, green on the other. He looked at us in turn, a look for each. Charlie was in his formal wear: white painter’s overalls, clean, marked only by a faint oil stain here and there, and the jacket of a pinstriped suit he claimed to have got married in. It was not a claim anyone was going to dispute. I was in a dark suit and striped business shirt. With me carrying Charlie’s sliding measuring sticks, we made a fetching couple.
The man tilted his head, brought his hands up and clasped them under his chin. Now the ring stones alternated, red, green, red, green.
‘Stop and go,’ I said. ‘What about amber?’
He concentrated on me, unsmiling. ‘You are who? Or what?’
I looked at Charlie. He was studying the garden.
‘Here to take measurements,’ I said.
‘Oh. The carpenters.’
Charlie lost interest in the garden. ‘Carpenters build a house for you,’ he said. ‘You need carpenters?’
‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘To build some shelves. When you bring in the materials, please use the tradesmen’s entrance off the lane.’
‘Wrong house,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s go.’ He turned and set off down the path.
‘Say hello to Mrs Purbrick for us,’ I said. ‘Tell her Mr Taub is now booked up for the foreseeable future.’
‘Ah,’ said the man.
‘And tell her Mr Taub is a cabinetmaker. A cabinetmaker is to a carpenter as a Rolex is to a sundial. Find that comparison illuminating?’
‘Ah,’ he said again. ‘The library.’ He put his hand to his mouth.
Charlie was almost at the gate.
‘Mr Taub,’ the man shouted, running after him. ‘Please come back. Mr Taub. I’ve made a mistake, Mr Taub! Please!’
Charlie stopped, turned his head. His expression was unforgiving.
‘Mr Taub, I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding. We are expecting carpenters. At some time. Shelves in the…in the pantry, I believe. I’m David, Mrs Purbrick’s personal assistant.’
Charlie turned, examined David, then put out his right hand. David looked at it, hesitated, like a man offered a snake. Then he put forward four fingers held straight and tight, thumb up. Charlie’s hand engulfed them. This hand could without effort turn David’s slim and elegant digits into red slime.
It didn’t. ‘Pianist’s hand,’ said Charlie holding up David’s hand for inspection.
I could see David’s neck colour faintly, a drop of blood in a saucer of milk. ‘Very bad pianist,’ he said.
‘Nonsense,’ said Charlie. ‘The hands. Got the hands. Practise every day. Where’s the room?’
David led the way through the front door into a room the size of my sitting room, not so much a hall as a gallery, four-metre-high ceiling, polished floorboards, no cornices or skirtingboards, no furniture, half a dozen paintings. Big paintings, paintings the size of windows. The only one I recognised was a Michael Winters, a Greek landscape with an elusive brooding quality; a painting you would like to see a lot of.
We went through double doors into a corridor lit by skylights that led, eventually, to another set of doors. Halfway down, David indicated left. ‘I’ll get Mrs Purbrick,’ he said and kept going.
It was an empty room of modest size, perhaps five metres square, two long, narrow windows, each framing a bare elm. Like the hall, it was devoid of ornament. Charlie paced out the measurements. I went to the lefthand window. The garden was formal, brick paving, old hedges and trees.
‘Mr Taub. How punctual you are.’
A blonde woman of unknown age reduced to about forty by cutting, injecting and sanding was in the room, holding out a hand, palm down, to Charlie. Everything about her was short: hair, forehead, eyelids, nose, upper lip, chin, neck, torso, fingers, legs, feet, skirt. This led to a certain imbalance because her chest could not be called short. Many things it could be called. But not short.
Gingerly, Charlie took her fingers between thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he pointed at me. ‘My assistant,’ he said, ‘Jack Irish.’
Mrs Purbrick extended her left hand to me. I took it. For a second, the three of us stood there like a small ill- assorted Maypole dancing team without a pole. Then she dropped our hands and gestured dramatically at the room. ‘Mr Taub, this is yours. Yours. All yours. Do with it what you will.’
She pirouetted, arms bent, fingers pointing outwards. ‘I want to be surrounded by books. I love books. Books. I must have a room where I can breathe books. Floor to ceiling. I saw Sir Dennis’s library. I knew only one made by you would be good enough.’
She smiled at us in turn, a little longer at me. There was a certain glitter in the eye.
‘The deposit is fifteen thousand dollars,’ I said.
‘The books,’ said Charlie. ‘Big books, small books? Library, you make it to fit the books.’
Mrs Purbrick had moved over to stand close to me. I hadn’t seen any movement but a hip was in contact with my left leg.
‘Mr Irish,’ she said, ‘David will give you a cheque for the deposit. Mr Taub, build it and the books will come. To fit. David will arrange the right size books, don’t you worry.’ She looked at David, standing in the doorway. ‘Size is David’s concern.’
From the doorway, David said, ‘Absolutely. Size is my department. Isn’t it, Mrs Purbrick?’
She turned her head and smiled at him. You could see that extending her mouth sideways required effort and the lips could snap back like an old-fashioned purse. ‘Bring the car around, will you, darling.’
His lips twitched and he disappeared. Her hip moved against my outer thigh, a contact and a rub, measured in millimetres. I found the experience disconcerting but not unpleasant.
Charlie took the measuring sticks from me. ‘Write,’ he said.
I got out my notebook. Mrs Purbrick made hip contact again, smiled and said, ‘I’m in your incredibly talented hands, gentlemen. If you need anything at all, shout for David.’
At the door, she turned. Our eyes met. I thought the movement of her hairline indicated an attempt at a wink.
Charlie took about a hundred measurements and I said each one back to him before I wrote it down. Everything would be built in the workshop and brought here in sections to be installed over a few days. This meant that a mismeasurement of even a centimetre could be disastrous. When we’d finished, I found David and he let us out in a courteous and respectful manner.
I drove around to Gary Connors’ apartment block and found a park right outside. ‘What’s this?’ asked Charlie. ‘Bunkers they need in Toorak now?’
‘I’ll be five minutes,’ I said. At the front door, I pressed the button with Manager under it. A rich voice said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about Mr Connors in unit five.’
‘In what connection?’
‘His whereabouts.’
‘May I ask who you are?’
‘I’m a lawyer representing his father.’
‘Do come in.’
The doorbolt clicked. I went into the lobby. The door on the left was opened by a man in his sixties, neat grey hair on a mound-shaped head, military moustache, reading glasses half-way down his nose. He was wearing grey flannels, a white shirt and a striped tie, a school tie. He put out his right hand.
‘Clive Wendell,’ he said. He didn’t look the type to be caretaker of a postmodern bunker. A converted Edwardian mansion full of retired graziers would have suited.
I introduced myself. We went into his sitting room. It was chintzy, silver-framed photographs on every surface,
