OPEN FOR INSPECTION
Read Chapter
One and also a review from The Canberra Times
Copyright © Carmel Bird
2002.
All rights reserved.
A new Courtney Frome novel
Chapter One
LUXURY OASIS WITH BAY VIEWS
Thick candles burning low around the spa. They are flesh pink, gleaming pearls, arranged in clusters of soft light along the marble counters. Imitation gold taps the shape of dolphins. Nostalgia radio wails on, forlorn, strangely discordant among misty mirrors and shimmering tiles. It is late morning, the sky, bruised with smog, glows apricot, flecked with lilac. And the vast curved window, a shining echo of the thirties, looks out across the treetops – which screen the red roofs of rows of houses – to the bay.
The jets throb and rush through the water so the tub is filled with a cloud of pinkish bubbles. An empty champagne bottle, a half-empty flute. A golden cockle shell holds the butts and ashes of two cigarettes, and the heavy crystal lighter has fallen onto the floor, cracking the marble. One pale salmon towel neatly folded on an overhead rack. The door to the sauna is open, steam is pouring out, and two soggy peachy towels lie abandoned in a heap.
Lizzie Candy
is lying in the spa
a strawberry blonde
she is thirty-two
she is
gorgeous
she is
dead
The shiny little paring knife has slipped down into the tub, and through the churning water Lizzie’s leaching blood supplies the blush that suffuses the surface bubbles. Hair, soft red-gold, floats and undulates in the water. The body has slid down into the spa, the face almost submerged, surrounded by a cloud of shifting bubbles. A thin trail of vomit traces its way from the edge of the bath to form a little slimy puddle on the floor, and a few splashes of blood mark the gleaming pearly marble walls.
Beyond the death scene, life goes on. Outside the closed door of the ensuite Lizzie’s white toy poodle Binkie is crying, scratching at the door, and pattering frantically back and forth, back and forth. Nobody is listening to Binkie, because people seldom take any notice of her. She is known to Dennis, the late Lizzie’s husband, as ‘the bloody French excuse for a dog’. The upstairs areas of the house, where Lizzie lies in the tub, are empty; downstairs the housekeeper Clytie is vacuuming the oriental rug in the study. The children are at the park with Raine, their nanny. Yobbo, the black labrador, is asleep underneath one of the teak lounges beside the pool. Nick the pool guy is sweeping the pebble pavement around the edge of the water. Vinegar and Chips, the tabbies, are chasing a dragonfly on the long smooth lawn. A driver in a white Winemaster van is delivering a case of Famous Grouse, a case of Hunter Valley Merlot Shiraz and one of Red Cliffs Chardonnay at the door of the cellar which is at the side of the house, beneath a drooping passionfruit vine. Winemaster has sent a free case of cheap champagne.
First sniff unfurls lifted fresh fruit aromas with creamy yeast nuances. A zippy clean finish that lingers.
Up above, a police helicopter hovers around in the shimmering azure haze of the lovely morning, describing wide circles as it tries to locate an armed robber in a stolen car. Over the house and out over the water it goes, and comes back. On the high brick fence at the front of the Candy home there is a huge and elegant auction sign:
Luxury Oasis With Bay Views.
We invite you to inspect this rare opportunity,
designed in the mid-nineties by the late Vincent Rush-Robarts.
The mansion-style dwelling wraps around the indoor/outdoor/controlled environment pool designed by Rocky da Sousa. Synthetic grass tennis court.
Five living areas, eight bedrooms with ensuites, master-to-ensuite marble complex with spa, sauna and gym, media complex, opening onto outdoor oasis-style living area, wine cellar with romantic in-wall view of pool, five-car garage – access corridor to master refresher suite – travertine slab floors throughout, eighteen-foot ceilings, wistaria walk, orangerie, roof-garden, telescope, glass ceiling foyer, teenager wing.
The front mirror facade captures the moods of sea and sky, taking mind and spirit into the realms of purest fantasy. From the foyer the family or visitor is offered a view corridor to the pool.
Computerised sound system throughout. Full computerised security system unmatched in efficiency. Studded steel exterior doors.
Total design and detail by international Feng Shui consultant Xynia.
Enough, enough.
A young man and a young woman press the security buzzer at the gate, described, although the young man and woman don’t know it, as ‘the entry statement’. They look up at the helicopter. Sean Rolfe and Courtney Frome are here to write up and photograph the mansion for a feature advertisement in the newspaper. Real Estate Section. They look like a regular part of the scene here – beautiful young media people getting the soft story from the surface of the glamorous lives of the rich.
‘It doesn’t say anything on the billboard about not hearing the doorbell,’ says Courtney.
‘Gotta have some secrets, baby,’ says Sean. ‘Our faces are being beamed to the control tower. The bell’s just something for our own diversion, something to keep us occupied while they check us out.’
‘It could be that the unmatched security system just never lets you in, or that you have to pass a special test.’
‘Yeah. And could be there’s a real news story overhead in that chopper. Why are we fooling around down here?’
‘Do you think the chopper’s filming us?’
‘In your dreams. Anyhow, we’re on the security tape already here. We’re in the movies. We are the beggars at the gate. Let us eat cake and the hell with it.’
Clytie finally hears the bell, speaks to them and lets them in. They step into a short rocky area where exotic ferns and palms emerge from crevices like creations of moulded plastic. Sparkling waters tumble over rough granite surfaces. The door in front of them is vast, studded with bulbous steel nails.
‘They are expecting a peasant revolt, you see,’ Sean says as the door swings silently open and they step inside, a little nervously. Courtney looks up at the domed glass ceiling of the foyer. The sky through the glass is a shiny new sky, framed by arching aluminum struts, blue with that weird little blush of pink, one fluffy white cloud floating into view. And sure enough this view corridor offers the visitor the sight of a sparkling blue, blue swimming pool. Clytie the housekeeper is a woman in her thirties with long brown hair, wearing a bubblegum pink uniform so that she resembles a girl in an ice-cream parlor or a maid in a fifties Hollywood movie. She has huge brown eyes, and she wears shiny silvery high heels which suggest a certain lack of efficiency. She tap taps across the travertine floors. She looks faintly startled and flustered.
‘Oh, you are so early. Mr Candy said eleven. I’m quite sure he said eleven.’
‘We can wait, if you’re not ready. Um – it’s five to eleven.’
‘Oh. Oh yes it is. Everything’s been a bit hectic. With the sale. Keeping the place up to scratch is a full time job at the best of times.’
‘Would you like to show us round now? Or later on? Like I said, we can wait. We can go outside and get a few shots of the pool. Or the wistaria walk. Or whatever. ’
‘Oh!’ was all Clytie said to that. Whenever she did her ‘Oh!’ she widened her eyes like a doll.
Courtney never got used to the glamour and luxury of some of the houses she had to write up. Eight bedrooms. What would you do with eight bedrooms? She saw that Clytie held in one hand a full plastic bag from a kitchen tidy, and the plastic bag was imprinted with the logo of Louis Vuitton. Clytie led Courtney and Sean through the vast family room where not a toy, not a newspaper ruffled the marble, glass and suede surfaces, through a conservatory and past some tall Greek statues and gleaming palms, out to the pool area where Nick was still at work on the pavement. Not a leaf, not an insect disturbed the surface of the blue water. Yobbo the black dog lay as still as a perfect dark statue.
There is always something eerie about the Real Estate coloured pictures of interiors, exteriors and gardens, all empty of human life, all frozen in a moment of bright light and spotlessness. And although this house was lived in, it felt to Courtney to be about as eerie as they come. It was perfect for photography; still as the grave, and yet gleaming, sparkling, reflecting itself in its own surfaces. Where sunlight did not bathe the scene there would be a strategic placing of artificial light, spilling or glowing or filtering. Shadows played across walls, across mirrors, across ceilings and paths. Sean, followed by Courtney who was taking notes, began to prowl about with his camera. Clytie went back indoors to put the finishing touches to whatever she was doing in the house, leaving the back door to the pool area wide open.
Suddenly the a white toy poodle came screaming and bouncing, flying through the doorway. She rushed frantically up to Nick, jumping high, hitting him in the chest – his beautiful golden muscled chest.
‘Steady, Binks. Steady on.’
But the dog was on a mission, and she ran back to the door, and yelped and cried and rushed at Nick again.
‘What is it? What are you trying to tell me?’
Yobbo opened an eye and pricked up his ears. What was that silly little poodle trying to say?
Nick put down his broom and followed the poodle indoors. He removed his thongs and seemingly from nowhere produced a pair of black leather slippers. Binkie led him up the stairs to the master bedroom.
‘No Binks, we can’t go in there you know. That’s private.’ Then he called out to Clytie. ‘What’s the matter with Binkie? Is there something wrong? What’s got into her? Can you come up here for a minute Clytie?’
And Clytie hurried up the marble stairs, her spiky silvery tik-tacking shoes ringing on the gleaming surface. She entered the master bedroom and crossed to the ensuite. She knocked. No reply. Called out. No reply. The radio was playing ‘Red River Valley’, the spa on full, steam billowing out of the sauna.
Then, at five minutes past eleven on a sunny summer morning, Clytie found her employer dead in the spa with her wrists slashed. Time seemed to stand still.
Clytie screamed and turned off the jets. Then she rushed to the head of the stairs and screamed for Nick. Get the ambulance. Get Mr Candy. Get Doctor Harris. Get security. Get the police. Get Doctor Silver. Where are the children?
It was like a mantra she had practised for times of emergency. She was desperate to surround herself with people who could help. Even the presence of the journalist and the photographer gave her a sense of being supported by some kind of network for the house of mirrors was in fact a kind of fortress, cut off from the everyday world. It operated by its own rules, but there were no real rules for the present situation. Clytie was a caricature of a demeted servant – her arms whirled as she shouted at the air, Oh, Oh, Oh, and her eyes flew open over and over again, like somebody was shaking the doll.
She turned off the piped singing of the radio, turned off the sauna, and the room fell silent. The bubbles began to dissolve, pop, go flat, leaving a few puffy remains here and there on the surface of the water. The ensuite became a sad, damp little death-chamber where the corpse lay in deep pink water, her long red-gold hair floating on the surface, and sticking to the side of the tub. Her body lovely beneath the water, perfection wasted in death. Surely you could run the tape back here, turn on the bubbles, zip up the knife wounds, re-animate the pretty mermaid corpse. Turn on the music? Where is life’s director?
The ambulance came . The chopper already overhead was joined by two more, clattering away above the Candy mansion, hungry for the blood that had drained out of lovely Lizzie, excited by the sight of the ambulance and all the other cars that were gathering outside the house. It was Clytie’s job to get in touch with Dennis Candy, spouse of the deceased. You can live in a fortress castle, and have all the mirror facades and wine cellar views in the world to insulate you against the truth, but when it comes down to it, and your wife has been found in the spa with her wrists slashed, you have to pick up a phone somewhere and hear the news. Clytie tried to ring Dennis Candy at the office of Candy and Bruce, Real Estate, but he was not answering his phone. She left a message with Holly the receptionist: ‘Oh please ask Mr Candy to call home. It is urgent. Very urgent.’ The receptionist heard the drama in the housekeeper’s voice, sensed the tension behind the tight and simple words.
‘Something’s happened in Candyland,’ she said to Lavinia Kay, an older woman who had worked for Dennis for ten years, and who nurtured an (almost) secret passion for him, although her feelings were often masked by an affectation of cynicism. She was tall and thin and dark, with a long pointed face like a figure by El Greco. She had great legs and displayed them to advantage whenever possible, wearing only the best hosiery, lace topped, held up by incredibly glamorous suspenders – the kind she knew that Dennis liked. Dennis often made a point of admiring her legs, half joking in fact, and Lavinia would blush. She was something of an institution around the place, and in fact a great deal of the power at Candy and Bruce resided in Lavinia.
‘Well that’s not so very unusual. It’s just one thing after another round there Holly. I remember when they thought the baby had drowned in the pool. This was before your time. And all it was – the nanny had taken her for a walk in the park. But Lizzie was out of it, and couldn’t remember anything about a nanny. Or anything else. Then there was the time the gardener or someone fell out of a first floor window onto a slate courtyard. They just got another gardener. Simple, believe me. If the light globe blows, you get a new light globe. You might imagine you’ve got a steady job here. Don’t you believe it. Maxine was here for seven and a half years and then one morning Bricey Bruce the Big Baboon caught her – I should say he allegedly caught her writing personal emails on the sacred office computer during sacred office hours – and she was out of here before you could say Sold!’
Lavinia was quite adept at entering the sensibility of anyone she was speaking to. She gave Holly the impression she was sympathetic to her and the other juniors in the office, but in fact she would like to see them all dead, or at least gone. It was Lavinia’s desire to be the only woman in the office, the woman to whom Dennis – in particular Dennis – would turn for – well, for every little thing. People knew you couldn’t trust Lavinia, and yet they fell for her tricks most of the time. If the truth were told, it was Lavinia who had put Brice Bruce onto the track of Maxine’s misdemeanors in the first place, Lavinia who really got Maxine dismissed.
‘But it sounds like something really serious has happened at the house, really serious. Clytie sounded incredibly, incredibly stressed.’
‘Clytie’s always stressed, my dear. Have you noticed those shoes she wears? They’re part of it all. Lovely Lizzie makes her wear stilettos – don’t ask me why – well, I think I know – it’s so Lizzie can hear her coming, for one thing – and anyhow she totters around the place chasing her own tail, forever running late. You’d think, with all those electric doors and high tech this and high tech that they could get the servants functioning, wouldn’t you? Robots, next it’ll be robots. And you’d have to say the nannies are always a disaster. Dennis chooses the nannies – but of course he chooses them – for the size of their bosoms and the shape of their backside. What’s that one they’ve got now? Raine? Or has she gone? I can’t keep track.’
‘I still think it sounded really serious.’ Holly was becoming frantic. She hated it when Lavinia started to go off on one of her raves about Dennis.
‘Nothing’s really serious around here. Except money.’
‘Maybe it was money then,’ Holly said, eager to shift the focus.
‘No. How could it be money?’
‘Well it could be – armed robbery. Maybe it was armed robbery. What if Lizzie got shot. Or it could be kidnapping. The nanny’s boyfriend might have decided to take the children and hold them for ransom. Money, you know. People are always nicking children lately – it’s practically trendy. Well, it’s being going on forever hasn’t it, really. Think of the …um…Lindenburg…Lindburgh case.’
‘ What’s that?’
‘They kidnapped the baby of some American millionaire. It’s famous.’
‘Maybe. I’m sure I don’t know much about that. Anyhow, if Lizzie got shot, that would only solve problems, not make them, wouldn’t it?’
‘But Lavinia, Dennis really adores Lizzie – even if he does get around a bit. That’s only natural isn’t it. So what do you mean – like – what problems would it solve if Lizzie got shot?’
‘Holly, don’t be so naïve. Dennis and Lizzie, they’re splitting up. Don’t you pay attention to anything aroudn here? Why do you suppose they’re selling the house, suddenly? You mark my words, the Candys are splitting up, there’s nothing surer.’
‘Oh, really? Splitting up? Oh, I didn’t think of that. No, surely not. I don’t think.’
‘Well, that’s probably a good way to be. The less thinking you do around here the better.’
The young receptionist’s eyes flew wide with amazement. She had never seen Lavinia in quite this mood of bitterness before.
It was over half an hour before Mr Candy was free to make the phone call home. For Mr Candy was in the board room where he and Samantha Chappell, one of the juniors with the kind of short pale boyish hair and the long smooth legs Mr Candy really, really liked, were locked in a passionate embrace, complete with bloody marys, black stockings with lacy tops and scarlet suspenders, on the long blonde boardroom table.
See review below--------
REVIEW
of Open For Inspection
Giving a novel a genre label may be a way of
putting it in a box and rendering it harmless. There it is, safely
packaged, to be taken out and taken up when the reader feels like
it.
Carmel Bird’s new novel is labelled crime fiction, and indeed it is a fiction about a crime or rather a series of them. But it is no more fictional than the best of contemporary novels, since its concern is the dark truths of the society we live in. Its subject is no less than language, and how it is difficult to live an honest life if the words in which it is presented are lies. Enormous glamorous beautiful lies, some of them, and all the more dangerous for that. It is serious, and it is satire; it is black and it is very funny. No neatly labelled box will hold it, it will grapple or slither its way out of the most severe nomenclature available.
As is often the case with genre novels, it is part of a series, of which Unholy Writ was the first, and again features as detective the lively young aspiring journalist Courtney Frome, an endearing character. The title gives a clue to its area of interest: Open for Inspection is about real estate, as fertile a field for dishonest wordsmithery as you could hope to find.
The city is Melbourne, which has a habit of putting large boards outside its houses for sale extolling the beauties and amenities to be purchased. Fragments of these provide epigraphs (and sometimes epitaphs) to the chapters. ‘Twenty-first century luxury in a bed of roses’ is a forbidding windowless warehouse conversion promising that you will be safe and sound in paradise. ‘If you lived here you’d be home by now’ – the implications of that are as usual sinister. ‘Hideaway in the hills with hidden extras’ – that one’s a mental clinic. ‘Safe haven fortress in rural area’ this is a more successfully security conscious building than most: it’s a jail.
Bird exploits the evil poetry of the developers’ language, its carelessness with the truth, its manipulation of people’s dreams and fears and hopes and terrors. These contemporary con men offer mansions masquerading as fortresses - ‘futuristic security’ - whose safety is an illusion. Build your walls, bar your windows, set up your computerised door codes, you can’t shut out death, not even the violent and unnatural kind, and you are certainly not safe from despair. Live your own fairytale, proclaims the Copenhagen, a suburban palace complete with statue of Little Mermaid in an ornamental pond in front. Never mind what happened to Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid, fairy stories are believed to be happy-ever-afters, not tragic tales of loss.
And there’s a school called Wildwood, famous for keeping ‘the nasties in fairyland hidden in the woods somewhere’. Its pupils are certainly not innocent maidens, though being rich little druggies does not mean they deserve the fates that befall them. Spoilt children they are, in every sense of the word. The three little girls dressed as golliwogs who run past the window waving flags while Courtney is taking tea with the headmistress could be cute, or an anachronism, or a brief embodiment of the ‘sad dark secrets of the school [that] must always be concealed’. This being a Bird novel, they are certainly all three and probably more.
Her writing is never didactic, her deployment of the jargon and vagaries of real estate and heritage precincts and private schools is playful and funny and full of wit, but the values of society are caught in all their glamorous emptiness. This makes it a sinister book. But it is also poignant: these are our lives she is evoking.
The Internet is important to the novel. The schoolgirls and the real estate agents use it as a tool and a plaything. There are clues to be found in it, not just to the murders but to other mysteries. A colleague of one of the dead girls says: ‘cyberspace is just the book of life … you realise, really realise, someone’s dead when you can’t email them anymore’. Courtney replies that you can’t see them or talk to them either, but the woman insists that erasing someone’s email address is the final erasing of them from life.
I have to confess to a fondness
for crime fiction. I enjoy its patterns, its rituals, its
dependable outcomes. Bird offers all of these. But she also offers
the edginess and unexpectedness of a novel of our times, set in
the present moment. There are all too few of those around these
days. Have you noticed? So many contemporary Australian novelists
can only write via history, they need to locate themselves in the
past. This is that most exciting thing, a novel about what it is
like to live in this country now. It is not comfortable, but it is
full of life. And full of wicked - and daunting - thrills of
recognition.
FROM CANBERRA TIMES
- written by
Marion Halligan
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