drying out. They walked slowly as if they had a lot of time, too much time, which is a feeling that oppresses alcoholics when they’re not drinking. So I’ve been told. The couple of women could have been visiting wives, except that there were no cars in the visitors’ space except mine.
Through a tall stand of trees I caught a glint that could have been a swimming pool. Nothing inappropriate about that. Hydrotherapy. The place looked perfect. It just felt wrong. I finished the cigarette and was beginning to think my tactic hadn’t worked, when I saw a man coming down the steps from the south wing. He wore a cream suit and, as soon as he reached ground level and stepped out into the sun, he carefully placed a Panama hat on his head. Then he put on sunglasses. Then he took out a gold cigarette case and lit up. I waited for him to wipe his face with a silk handkerchief and shoot his cuffs, but he didn’t. He strolled towards me, one hand holding his cigarette, the other in his jacket pocket.
Not that there was much doubt about it, but the ginger bristle on his top lip confirmed his identity. He stopped about twenty feet away and took a small automatic from his pocket. His big pink hand, with a large signet ring on one finger, concealed most of the gun which he pointed at my middle shirt button.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Tall, dark and not very handsome. What the fuck do you want?’
‘You can put the gun away, Dick. I just want to talk.’
He smiled. His teeth were tobacco stained and uneven. He had a blotchy damp-looking complexion. ‘I dislike the word “dick” except as an affectionate term for the male organ.’
His accent was BBC English grown a little lazy. He lifted his cigarette and puffed stagily. His gun hand was fairly steady but he was beginning to find the pose, or standing in the sun, a strain. I was under strain myself. I’ve had too much to do with guns to like them, and I particularly don’t care to have them pointed at me. I eased away slowly from the car and looked around. There was a bench under a tree twenty yards away.
I pointed ‘We could go over there and sit in the shade. This sun can’t be good for a man in your condition.’
He licked his thin lips. He had a cold sore, cracked and angry looking, just below the moustache on the left side. ‘You’re absolutely right, dear boy. You toddle over first and don’t you dare go near that pistol.’
‘It’s empty.’
‘So you say.’
We walked into the patch of shade. I sat down at one end of the bench and put the briefcase on the grass beside me. Maxwell undid his double-breasted jacket and fanned himself with his hat before he sat at the other end. He was almost completely bald and, with the jacket open, I could see his belly straining at the band of his trousers. He wore a tailored shirt with a long peaked collar and a paisley cravat. He’d finished his cigarette. He still had the gun. ‘Show me your miserable credentials.’
I passed them across. He glanced down, sniffed and threw the folder back. ‘A licence to starve or prosper, depending on how you use it.’
‘I haven’t been at it long.’
‘You say you know Ernest Glass?’
‘I know him well. He told me you were here. He said he stumbled on the information by accident. I gather you don’t want people to know. That’s why you’re talking to me now.’
‘Very acute.’ He probed with his tongue at the cold sore. Suddenly, he put the gun away and took off his sunglasses. His eyes were red and he rubbed them redder. Then he lit another cigarette and drew on it deeply. He coughed.
‘Is this really a drying-out tank?’ I asked.
‘It performs other functions. A bolt-hole, you might call it. But yes, goddamnit. I’m taking the cure. Tea, fruit juice and coffee. Coffee, fruit juice and tea. It’s making me ill. My body chemistry’s all awry.’
‘Why’re you really here, Maxwell? What are you afraid of? What’s your involvement with Virginia Shaw?’
He threw back his head and laughed. It was a rich, melodious sound but practised rather than genuine. I was beginning to doubt Ernie’s assessment of Maxwell’s intelligence-he seemed like a set of poses and mannerisms with nothing behind them. ‘You do like to ask the right questions, don’t you, Hardy?’
‘Saves time,’ I said. ‘You know about Charles Meadowbank getting shot, I assume. Did you know a woman who worked for Andrew Perkins was killed, too? Someone also took a shot at me. I’m thought to know things I don’t know.’
‘Better you shouldn’t.’
‘Wrong. Better I should. The police are looking to use me as a bait, or a beater or whatever the hell you pheasant-shooters want to call it.’
Maxwell laughed again, but this time with a less stagey note. That’s all an act, dear boy. I’m from South London. Pick any gutter you like. I’ve lived on this accent and my wits for forty years.’
‘Ernie Glass said you were smart. I must say I can’t see much sign of it-holing up in a drunk tank, dry as a day-old dog turd and jumping at shadows.’
‘Glass is all right. I’m alarmed that he knows I’m here, though.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I improvised. ‘I’ll hear from him if anyone else inquires. And I’ve asked him to keep quiet about where you are.’
‘Good, good.’ Maxwell took off his hat and fanned himself again. He made it look natural but I was ready for something like that. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Matthews pull back from a position he’d moved to about fifty yards away.
‘If I seem a little slow-witted, Hardy, it’s because this enforced abstinence is causing my brain to seize up. You’re quite right, of course. I’m in hiding here. I…’
I opened the briefcase, took out the gin bottle and unscrewed the cap. ‘It’s warm and there’s no tonic, ice or slices of lemon.’
He eyed the bottle like a desert traveller stumbling across an oasis. ‘You’re utterly unscrupulous. I have been trying.’
‘I don’t give a shit,’ I said. ‘Your weaknesses are your problem. I want information because my life’s in danger and I believe this one’s all I’ve got. Oil your brains and talk to me. Maybe I can even help you.’
The last remark tipped the balance. Maybe it just enabled him to rationalise his action. He grabbed the bottle, swivelled a little to shield himself from view and tilted it to his mouth. He swallowed deeply twice before I took it away from him.
‘Oh my God, that’s better. Christ, I wish I could be sure I could trust you.’
‘If you were sure it wouldn’t be trust. It’d be something else.’
He shot me a surprised look. ‘Having a drink yourself?’
Warm neat gin wasn’t my drink of choice, even if the lip of the bottle hadn’t touched his cold sore. ‘No,’ I said. Tell me what’s going on and you can take the rest back to your cell.’
He looked glum. ‘They search you when you’ve been in contact with a civilian. I’ll have to drink it here and smoke like mad and chew gum leaves. Give me another tot, and I’ll tell you what I can. I don’t know everything, not by a long chalk, and I don’t want to.’
I handed him the bottle. He took a long pull and used his hat again to signal to Matthews. He didn’t bother to conceal the action this time. Out came the cigarette case and lighter and he got himself set. He told me that some prominent Sydney identities were involved in a conspiracy to get themselves trouble-free, reputation-saving divorces. Charles Meadowbank was one and he named two others-Bruce Redding, who was a member of Parliament, and a surgeon named Molesworth. He said there were more, possibly bigger people, whose names he didn’t know.
‘My belief is,’ he said, ‘that a certain amount of wife-swapping has been going on in high places. Now these people want to make the swaps permanent, but they don’t want fuss or the precious names of their various intendeds to be sullied.’
I said it sounded like a difficult thing to organise. He agreed but said it had been done through the agency of several lawyers like Perkins, a number of women like Virginia Shaw and several private investigators like himself.
‘Perkins claimed to know nothing about the Meadowbank killing. It looked as if this woman who worked for him had some involvement. She’s the one who was killed.’
‘He probably used her as a front and she exceeded her instructions. This whole thing has got out of
