Free The Marvellous Boy by Peter Corris

enough to have been a night light. The bed cover was smooth but not too smooth. I went back to the kitchen and looked at the pile of bills on the spike—they covered the usual things and were made out to Gertrude Callaghan. I looked at the tear in the screen door but if there’s a way to tell whether fine plastic mesh had been cut recently I don’t know it.
    Back in the bedroom I stood at the end of the bed and wondered if she’d died naturally or not. It seemed unlikely that she had and I felt guilty as if I’d brought this on her. It wasn’t true of course; totally innocent victims are few, but that’s how I felt. She was an impressive-looking old person with snow-white hair and a strong, intelligent face. The signs were around of an active and meaningful old age that should have ended better. I read somewhere about some people—Indians I think—who used to put their problems to the newly dead. I think they arranged the corpse in such a way that its head or arm could move involuntarily and a man with special powers would interpret the movements. I looked down at the old nurse.
    â€œDid Bettina Chatterton have a son?” I asked quietly.
    Not a hair stirred.
    â€œIs he still alive?”
    Nothing. I’d have to do it the hard way. I searched the place thoroughly—drawers, cupboards, books, floor coverings—for evidence of a connection between the nurse andthe Chattertons after 1946. There was nothing. I found the Judge’s reference which gave Gertrude a good character and the documentation of her employment, all on the coast, over the following twenty years. There were photographs showing how the Liverpool girl had turned into the nurse and the old gardener and fisherwoman but nothing pointing to a grandson for the late Sir Clive. There were two things of interest: a flock of intimate notes, spanning three decades, from Dr. Osborn to Nurse Callaghan and signs that someone had gone through the place before me.
    It was almost daylight when I left the house but the sky was overcast and a thin fog was hanging around the tops of the trees. I went down the track and poked around in the grass until I found my gun. Nothing was stirring in Yancey Street except the birds. My head still hurt. I touched the spot and felt dried, caked blood. I was getting less presentable by the hour but there was no one around to notice. Everything was quiet and serene like Nurse Callaghan sleeping the last sleep.

10
    When I’d cleared Yancey Street and made a few turns I stopped to take stock of things. The notebook was still in the glove box and the lock was intact. It was more than I could say for myself. My head needed a dressing and I needed a shave. That was what showed; my teeth were scummy from a day’s drinking and my body was stiff and sore from lack of sleep—lying like a log for a couple of hours in wet grass doesn’t count. My head ached fiercely. I looked at the whisky and shuddered. Then I salvaged a couple of aspirin out of the rubbish on the back seat and swilled them down with the whisky. I almost gagged but I grabbed the steering wheel and hung on to everything. After a minute or two I didn’t feel any worse, maybe even better. Time to tackle Dr. Osborn.
    He was in front of his house, bending to pick up a newspaper. He wore a checked dressing gown and the wide trousers of striped cotton pyjamas flopped around his ankles. He bent like an old man, stiffly and slowly, but he bent. I walked over and called out something polite. He looked in my direction but I had the feeling that he couldn’t see me. I reached the gate and called out again.
    â€œDr. Osborn.”
    â€œYes, wait a minute.” There was still a faint Scots twang in the words despite fifty years of exposure to Australian speech. He moved slowly down the path towards me holding the rolled-up newspaper in his hand. I waited by the gate and watched his face. A certain blankness was in it