‘Except it was the night he died.’
The three women looked at each other.
Lil rose to her feet, towering above Eliza. ‘What we tell you goes no further, promise?’
Eliza nodded. ‘You have my word. I just want to know why Will died.’
‘Will had come in a few weeks before,’ Nell began. ‘I’d never seen him so excited. He told Sissy that the mine had hit a major seam and was producing four ounces of gold. You don’t live on the goldfields and not learn something of the business. We all know that is a better than good yield.’
The other women nodded.
‘And?’ Eliza prompted.
‘Sis was so excited. She thought this was it,’ Jess said. ‘He told her their fortune was made. To hell with the town and their gossiping tongues. She was going to have a proper house and coach and servants …’ Jess trailed off, unable to hide the yearning in her own face.
Lil leaned forward, her hands clasped in front of her. ‘But that last night, it was like ’e was a different man. Even Sis couldn’t cheer ’im up. ’e told ’er ’e’d been to see ’is uncle and they’d ’ad a flaming row.’ She cast a glance at Jess. ‘Like Jess says, they argued. She was all for telling ’im to go to ’ell.’
Eliza’s heart skipped a beat. Here was a detail missing from every account she’d heard of Will’s last night. ‘The coroner’s report said nothing about a meeting with our uncle.’
‘’e’s your uncle, you ask ’im why ’e didn’t think fit to mention it.’
‘Did he tell you what the argument was about?’
‘I was behind the bar. I wasn’t listening to the conversation.’
Nell cast her employer a contemptuous glance. ‘Go on, Lil, we all know you were listening in. What did Penrose tell Sis?’
‘Whatever you might think, Nell, I only caught snippets of the conversation. Something about gold being stolen.’
Eliza’s pulse quickened. ‘You didn’t mention any of this at the inquest?’
‘I don’t ’old with ’elping the law more than I ’ave to, Miss Penrose, and it didn’t seem relevant to ’ow he died.’
‘But it might be if he went up to the mine to search Cowper’s office for the evidence,’ Eliza said. ‘That would imply that he thought my uncle was involved.’
‘May explain why he went to Cowper,’ Nell said. ‘God knows they hadn’t been near each other for months.’
Eliza took a breath. This all tied in with the information Alec McLeod had in his possession, the stealing of gold from the Shenandoah to bolster the Maiden’s Creek returns.
‘How much did he drink that night?’
‘That I can tell you,’ Lil said. ‘One whisky.’
‘Only one? Everyone seems to think he was drunk, which is why he fell.’
‘As I said, just one while ’e was ’ere. Can’t account for what ’e did after ’e left. ’e ’ad ’is conversation with Sis and the two of ’em disappeared upstairs for a bit. When ’e came down ’e left without a goodbye to any of us.’
‘What time did he leave here?’
Jess looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Just before midnight.’
And half an hour later he was dead. Hardly time to go and get so drunk that the fall could be attributed to alcohol consumption.
‘Alone?’
Lil rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, alone.’
‘He sometimes took a room at the Britannia if it was too late to get back to the Shenandoah,’ Jess volunteered.
But not that night. If Will had left Lil’s Place just before midnight and died at the time shown on his watch, what had he done in that last half-hour? Had that been when he slipped his plans under Alec’s door? And what about the light a witness had seen in Cowper’s office? Had Will been looking for evidence of the missing gold?
Eliza forced a smile. ‘Thank you. You’ve all been most helpful.’
Lil laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Your brother is dead, Miss Penrose. ’e was a good man but not without ’is faults. If I was you, I’d leave well alone. There are people in this town with the gleam of gold in their eyes and cold steel in their ’earts. Take my advice and get on with your school teaching and let the dead lie.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Mrs White.’
‘From what I hear, you’re pretty free with advice too,’ Nell said. ‘I heard you had words with Mad Annie about her daughter.’
Eliza felt the heat rising to her face. ‘That’s none of your business.’
‘She’s right, Nell, it’s not your business.’ Lil leaned toward Eliza. ‘But remember this, Miss Penrose, Annie loves that bairn more than life itself and if there’s a reason the child looks like she’s been dragged through a log, remember who Annie’s callers are. There are some that aren’t particular and might ’ave a fancy for the young ’uns.’
It took Eliza a moment to comprehend what Lil meant and when she did, she felt a wave of nausea. In her sheltered upbringing it never occurred to her that such things could happen.
‘Does Annie … Is she …?’
‘Is she one of us?’ Nell suggested. ‘No, she’s not. If she takes a man to bed, it’s cos she likes him. She makes her living selling grog and food but not her body.’ She glanced at Lil. ‘Told Lil to mind her own business, she did.’
‘You seem a good woman, Miss Penrose, and I wouldn’t want you to think badly of me,’ Lil said. ‘I offered Annie a place here, working in the kitchen if that suited ’er. At least she would be safe. But she likes ’er independence and wouldn’t take no ’elp or advice from me or the girls. She’s made ’er choices in life. Pity of it is, the girl ’as to suffer for ’er mother’s sake.’ She shrugged. ‘But it’s an ’ard world. For all of that, she’s done ’er best by that girl. But don’t you forget the child ’as a mother who loves ’er.’
‘Thank you for the advice,’ Eliza said, chastened. ‘I won’t forget.’
Lil gave her a curt nod. ‘This way, Miss Penrose. I’ll see you to the door.’
Eliza left by the back door and as she trudged up the hill to Cowper’s house, her footsteps slowed.
Leave well alone, Lil had said. But how could she? Not now she knew the mine was far from being a failure and that Will knew his gold was being stolen. It seemed as good a reason as any for him to die and whichever way she looked at it, her uncle lay at the heart of her brother’s troubles.
A shiver ran down her spine as a chill southerly wind blew up the street, winding icy fingers around her ankles.
Sixteen
15 July 1873
Alec had been waiting on an opportunity to confront Tehan about the break-in and his chance came the following Monday. Cowper requested he go out to the Blue Sailor Mine to sort out a problem with the stamper. The mine had been badly damaged during fires the previous year and the water supply that drove the stamper could be erratic.
Alec set off at first light on Sam, Sones’s bay gelding. An hour out of Maiden’s Creek, he came on Annie O’Reilly’s hut. A thin trickle of smoke rose from the chimney and as he came closer, the woman came to the door, no doubt drawn by the dog’s furious barking. She leaned against the door jamb, the swell of her pregnant belly visible beneath the grimy apron.
‘Lookin’ for some breakfast, McLeod?’
His stomach growled. He had stopped here before and her food was good and plentiful.
She came forward and took the reins of the horse. ‘I’ve fresh eggs and bread if that’ll do you?
‘That sounds grand, Annie.’
She could have once been beautiful or at least passably pretty, but a hard life had etched lines of bitterness around her eyes and mouth and her smile held no warmth. She’d seen enough of the worst of men to hold no illusions about them.
Alec tethered his horse and ducked his head to enter the gloom of Annie’s hut. The scent of brewing hops hung in the air. Despite everything the townswomen may say about Annie O’Reilly’s slatternly ways, he always found the hard-packed floor swept c
lean and the surfaces dusted. A square, roughly made table and four stools were set up in the middle of the room and a couple of chairs made by the same hand stood before the fire over which a large cauldron bubbled. The end of a homemade bed, covered in a faded patchwork quilt, could be seen behind a partially drawn curtain at the far end of the room. Despite the poverty, the simple cottage had a homely feel.
Annie gestured at the table and he pulled up a stool as she turned to her cooking, busying herself with eggs and bacon.
‘What brings you this way?’ she asked.
‘Business up at Blue Sailor.’
The shaggy dog had followed him in and laid its head in his lap. He fondled the silky ears. ‘Not much of a watch dog.’
‘Kick ’im out, McLeod. ’e knows ’e ain’t allowed in the ’ouse.’
Alec shooed the reluctant animal out into the cold and resumed his seat.
A child poked her head around the curtain at the far end of the room. She gave him a shy smile.
‘Good morning. You must be Charlie,’ he said.
The child gave a quick nod of her head.
‘This ’ere’s McLeod,’ Annie said. ‘You best get off to school. There’s bread on the table.’
Charlie scurried past Alec, grabbing a couple of slices her mother had cut from the loaf.
Annie waved the knife she was using to tend the frying pan at her daughter. ‘Mind you stay outta trouble today.’
Charlie grinned and, with a half-wave at Alec, shut the wonky front door behind her. The door did little to keep out the draughts that whistled in through the cracks.
‘Miss Penrose tells me that your Charlie’s a bright girl,’ Alec said.
Annie sniffed. ‘Miss Penrose ought to mind ’er own business.’
She slapped a tin plate, well loaded with food, on the table and Alec tucked in with enthusiasm as she pulled up another stool and sat down with a sigh, her hands resting on her pregnant belly.
‘You’ve got learnin’, McLeod,’ she said. ‘If me Annie is as smart as Miss Penrose says she is, what good can it do ’er?’
Alec set the fork down and considered the woman. ‘I was blessed with a schoolteacher like Miss Penrose,’ he said. ‘My family had no money and I would have ended up down the pit like my father and his father before him, but the schoolmaster encouraged me to sit for a scholarship to a good school. I did well and got another scholarship to study at university.’
‘But you’re a man,’ Annie said with a curl of her lip. ‘It’s all right for men.’
‘If Charlie has the right opportunities there is nothing to say she can’t find decent work.’
‘But she won’t get those opportunities livin’ like this.’
‘Then make the opportunities, Annie.’
She gave a snort of laughter. ‘Easy for you to say. ’ow’s the eggs?’
Alec mopped the last of the eggs up with the bread and pushed the plate to one side. ‘Best breakfast in town.’
She stood up and picked up his plate as he fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a pound note.
‘For breakfast. Keep the rest for the bairn,’ he said.
She looked at the paper he held out to her, her eyes wide as she shook her head. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said.
He dropped the paper on the table. ‘I mean it, Annie. For the bairn.’
He left her standing with an empty plate in one hand, staring at the note.
As he swung into the saddle again, he glanced up the track toward Pretty Sally, hesitating only momentarily before turning the horse up the narrow, muddy path. Best to see to his business with Tehan before going on to Blue Sailor.
The ragged township of Pretty Sally clung to a ridgeline and consisted of a few bark huts with mildewed canvas roofs, a general store and a grog shop which, even at this early hour, seemed to be trading. No one acknowledged Alec but he was conscious of the hidden eyes watching his progress.
He had only been to the Shenandoah Mine once during Will Penrose’s lifetime and remembered it lay in a gully about a mile beyond the settlement. A rough signpost on the track beyond Pretty Sally pointed to SHENANDOAH and he turned the horse’s head down the tortuous slope. As he descended, the steep hills closed on him and the gloom seemed to penetrate his very soul. To his surprise, he found further progress barred by a stout pair of gates he did not recall from his previous visit.
The sound of men’s voices drifted up the hill beyond the gate, accompanied by the steady rhythm of the three-headed stamper that Penrose had bought from the Maiden’s Creek Mine when he had started up here.
Alec dismounted and tied his horse to a tree. It was not hard to scramble up the hill and around the gate. As he slithered down the slope on the other side, he came face to face with a stocky, black-bearded man sitting on a rock at a point where the track turned back on itself. Alec recognised the black-bearded thug who had caused the commotion at the dance. What had Tehan called him … Johnstone? No, Jennings.
Jennings thrust his still smouldering pipe into a pocket and fumbled for a rifle that had been leaning against the rock. ‘You’re trespassing,’ he said, levelling the weapon at Alec. ‘What’s your business?’
Alec decided on prudence and raised his hands. ‘I’m unarmed. My business is with Jack Tehan.’
The man frowned. ‘You’re the boss up at Maiden’s Creek. Got a message from Cowper?’
‘I told you my business is with Tehan, not with you, Jennings.’
The man’s eyes narrowed at the use of his name. ‘Do I know you?’
‘You upset a lady at the dance the other night.’
Jennings’s mouth curved into a sneer and he spat on the road. ‘No such thing as a lady,’ he said and jerked the weapon up, firing into the air.
Three armed men came running up the hill.
‘He says he’s come to see Black Jack,’ Jennings said.
‘What’s your business with Jack?’ one of the other men demanded.
‘My business is exactly that, my business. Now either take me to him or bring him here.’
‘No need. I’m here.’ Tehan pushed through his men. ‘Get back to work, I’ll see to Mr McLeod.’
Muttering, Tehan’s men turned away and shuffled down the hill. Jennings returned to his post on the rock and Alec and Tehan moved down the track out of earshot.
‘What are you doing here, McLeod?’
Alec swept his hat from his head and squinted up at the trees. ‘I want to know why you, or your men, thought it necessary to rampage through my house while my brother and I were at the dance the other week?’
Tehan’s eyes widened. ‘I’ve already had that fool Maidment around asking questions and I’ll tell you what I told him: I know nothing about it.’
Alec closed the distance between them and curled his fist into Tehan’s shirt, almost lifting the slighter man off the ground. ‘I don’t appreciate my home being violated. I just hope that whatever you and your men thought to find there, you came away empty-handed.’
Tehan pushed Alec’s hand away and took a step back, straightening his waistcoat. ‘I repeat. It was not me,’ he said in a low voice flaming with heat.
‘But you know who it was. What are they after, Tehan?’
Tehan swallowed and glanced up at the slope rising above them. In a whisper, he said, ‘What if someone else knows, or suspects, that you have Penrose’s design for a new boiler?’
‘Then someone would be wrong.’
‘You are a logical person, McLeod. I know it wasn’t here. I turned Penrose’s crib inside out after he died.’
‘On your behest or Cowper’s? Does Cowper know about it?’
The momentary hesitation gave the lie to Tehan’s following words. ‘I don’t know what Cowper knows. I only manage this bloody mine, I’m not his keeper.’
Alec hesitated, almost, but not quite, prepared to believe him. ‘Let’s be clear, Tehan. That plan, if it exists, is not yours or mine or Cowper’s. It is the property of Penrose’s sister and i
f you or any of your thugs come near my home again, there will be hell to pay.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Tehan said. ‘Get off my property before I fetch the lads back again.’
The unmistakeable click of a rifle behind him caused Alec to straighten. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jennings moving around to stand beside Tehan. Discretion being the better part of valour, Alec half raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Stay away from my family and from Miss Penrose.’
A smile curled Black Jack’s lips. ‘Or what, McLeod?’
Jennings jerked the rifle in the direction of the gate and Alec sauntered toward it, waiting for the man to unlock it. As Alec passed through, Jennings leaned forward and whispered, ‘I don’t like cats and I don’t like people what keep cats.’
Alec turned to face him but the gate slammed shut.
Seventeen
16 July 1873
Two figures sat huddled together on the top step of the school house when Eliza arrived early on Wednesday morning. As the school gate squeaked, the woman rose to her feet. Swaddled in a grey wool shawl, Annie O’Reilly looked small and slight, despite the bulge of her pregnancy.
‘Good morning. What can I do for you, Mrs O’Reilly?’ Eliza asked.
Annie hauled Charlie up by the arm and pushed her toward Eliza. The child’s face was swollen, tear tracks plain on her pale, sulky face.
‘You wanted ’er, well ’ere she is. Give ’er the schoolin’ you say she needs, cos I don’t want ’er moonin’ around me any more: “Miss Penrose this, Miss Penrose that”. She’s yours, Miss Penrose, make of ’er what you will.’
Annie pulled her shawl closer around her swollen body and walked away without a backward glance.
‘Ma—’ Charlie said, so quietly that Eliza could hardly hear her. As Annie turned on to the road and out of sight, Charlie’s head drooped and heavy tears dripped onto her shabby boots.
Eliza laid a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. The child shook it off and raised a face contorted with anger.
‘Why’d you have to poke your nose into my business, miss? She was just looking for a reason to be rid of me. Now who’s going to look after her when the baby comes?’
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