‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Your brother’s will.’
Eliza took the document from him. The body of it had been written in a clerical hand and it confirmed everything Cowper had told her. All interest in the Shenandoah Mine passed to Charles William Cowper. The rest and residue of Will’s estate to his sister, Eliza Jane Penrose. No mention of the boiler plans but Cowper hadn’t known about those until recently. Kennedy confirmed that the plans fell under the ‘rest and residue’.
And there at the end of the document, Will’s signature and the two witnesses. She drew a sharp breath: Jack Tehan and Mary Harris. She set the document down on the desk with shaking hands and stepped away.
‘That’s not his signature,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
She pointed at the twisting characters of the signature. ‘It’s close, but it’s not Will’s writing.’ She opened her handbag, her fingers closing on the much folded and read paper she carried. ‘Here … this is the last letter he wrote me. He always signed himself WJ Penrose in his letters to me. It was a joke between us.’
Kennedy unfolded the letter and set it against the signature at the bottom of the will.
‘See, the W is wrong and he always looped the J,’ Eliza pointed out.
Kennedy nodded. ‘This is very interesting and even to my untutored eye would seem conclusive.’ He refolded the letter. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I want what is mine, what Will intended me to have,’ Eliza said. ‘Mr Kennedy, what do you need to challenge this will?’
Kennedy tapped the letter. ‘I have some examples of his handwriting from correspondence I’ve had with him but if I could keep this for a little time, I shall find a graphologist to study this document.’ He hesitated. ‘It is one thing to know the document is a forgery but proving it will be a costly business.’
A heavy stone sank to the pit of Eliza’s stomach. ‘I understand.’
The money would have to be obtained from somewhere and she had no security for any loans.
The lawyer gathered the legal documents together and gave them back to the clerk.
On their return, Kennedy gestured for her to enter his office and shut the door.
‘Do you know what may have become of the original will? Of course I advised your brother to leave it with me for safekeeping, but he insisted on taking it with him.’
Eliza shook her head. ‘I can only assume that whoever forged the second will destroyed the first.’
The lawyer sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘I fear you may be correct. The question is, who perpetrated such a fraud?’
Eliza stared at him. Surely it was obvious. ‘Why, my uncle,’ she said. ‘Who else benefits the way he has done?’
‘And do you believe your uncle may be responsible for the theft of the boiler plans?’
She nodded.
‘Dear, dear. I have not met Mr Cowper, but this tale of duplicity concerns me, and I hate to say this of my fellows in the law, but Prendergast has some explaining to do.’ The lawyer shook his head. ‘Do you think your uncle will try to lodge these plans?’
‘I would imagine so, no doubt using his lawyers. That’s why my copy must be lodged today.’
Kennedy leaned forward. ‘I am becoming extremely concerned for your safety, young lady.’
‘Thank you for your concern but while my uncle believes he has the plans and the mine, I am no threat to him.’
‘But if he suspects that you have uncovered his deception? I’ve seen gold lust before, Miss Penrose, and blood kin or not, if Charles Cowper has his eye on the gold then God help anyone who stands in his way.’
A shiver ran down Eliza’s spine. ‘I hope you are wrong, sir,’ she said. ‘But I have friends.’ She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. There were still a couple of hours until her meeting with Mrs Wallace. ‘If you will excuse me, I have an interview for a post at a school here in Melbourne this afternoon.’
They shook hands at the door and Kennedy laid his hand over hers. ‘Please do not hesitate to call on my help, my dear. As I said, I liked your brother and if your suspicions are correct, it may well be his death was not accidental. You must take care.’
As she descended the stairs, Eliza allowed herself to smile. The thoroughly respectable Mr Kennedy would have been appalled and not a little concerned that after that interview she would be visiting the notorious Little Lonsdale Street.
Clutching the piece of paper bearing the scrawled address that Nell had given her, Eliza walked the few blocks from the opulence of Collins Street to Little Lon, the street of brothels, opium dens and criminals. Eliza had seen poverty in the industrial cities in England but the grim lanes and dark passages of Little Lon, even in the middle of the day, filled her with trepidation.
Nothing from the outside of the single-storey red brick cottage, one of a row of six in Casselden Place, proclaimed its purpose and she presumed that to be a promising sign that Lil’s sister could be choosy about her clientele. Eliza had no doubt that the proximity to the legislative chambers of the colony attracted the prosperous and the powerful to Maggie Scott’s door.
A girl hung out of the doorway of an adjoining cottage. She looked barely old enough to be out of pinafores, her skinny frame visible beneath a soiled chemise and a much-mended scarlet petticoat. Seeing Eliza glance her way, she thrust out her hip, pouted her lips and curled a lock of lank brown hair provocatively around her finger, her dead eyes willing Eliza’s disapproval.
A wave of nausea washed over Eliza. She wanted to take the child home and ensure she had a bath and a decent meal. She’d read the accounts of Josephine Butler, the social reformer who campaigned for the rights of women such as this. These girls had no future, pregnant by fifteen, infected with syphilis or similar by twenty and dead before thirty.
She steeled herself and turned back to the door of Maggie Scott’s house of ill repute, lifted the well-polished brass knocker and let it fall.
A maid in a conservative black dress and frilled white apron and hat answered her knock. The girl’s face had been disfigured by a burn that had melted the left side like wax and Eliza had to school herself not to react. The maid bobbed a curtsey before enquiring Eliza’s business. On being told she wished to speak with Mrs Scott, the maid showed Eliza into the front room. It could have been the parlour of her mother’s house, filled with heavy furniture, overstuffed chairs, dead animals in glass display cabinets and copies of famous paintings.
‘Who can I say is calling?’ the girl asked.
Eliza gave her name. She declined the offer of the overstuffed red velvet day bed and settled into a comfortable chair beside the fire.
She did not have to wait long, and stood up as a tall woman entered the room. Maggie Scott could have passed unnoticed in the most respectable salons. As tall as her sister but slender, she wore a gown of dark blue figured satin in the latest cut, with a sizeable bustle behind and good quality lace at her wrists and neck.
Eliza held out her hand. ‘Mrs Scott?’
The woman smiled and after a small hesitation, lightly touched Eliza’s fingers. ‘I apologise for keeping you waiting. Can I offer you some refreshment?’
Eliza declined.
Maggie Scott tilted her head to one side and considered her visitor. ‘What brings you to my door? I have no need of—’
The heat rose to Eliza’s cheeks as she realised she may have given the impression she had come seeking employment. ‘Oh no. You mistake me. I have come to speak with one of your girls—Sissy.’
‘Have you indeed. Did Lil send you?’
Eliza shook her head. ‘No. My business with Sissy is personal.’
‘Sissy’s time is money,’ Maggie Scott said.
Eliza looked around the parlour. ‘It is somewhat early in the day for business, Mrs Scott. I promise you I will not be long. Sissy was acquainted with my brother and I just have some questions to ask her about Will’s last days.’
‘Did you say your na
me is Penrose? Ah yes, the man Sissy believed was going to marry her.’ Maggie Scott threw back her head and laughed.
‘I’m not sure what you find so amusing?’
‘Because Sissy’s not the first whore to be taken in by the sweet talk of a man. He would never have married her.’
‘I don’t know what William’s intentions were and, as he is dead, I can hardly ask him, but I have every reason to believe his feelings toward Sissy were genuine,’ Eliza said. ‘Sissy was one of the last people to see him alive and I have a few questions for her, that’s all.’
Maggie Scott put her hands on her hips and studied her for a long moment. ‘Aye, well, as you say, he’s dead, so what’s done is done. You can see Sissy if she wishes to see you. Wait here.’
The woman swept from the room and the minutes ticked by before the maid appeared at the door.
‘This way, miss,’ she said.
The maid led her down a narrow corridor. Eliza counted four closed doors. The maid stopped at the last door and knocked, opening the door before whoever was inside the room responded. She stood aside for Eliza to enter.
Despite it being midday, the only light came from a narrow window, thinly disguised by a lace curtain. The window offered an unedifying view of the narrow yard of the house, flanked by brick walls that cast the room into gloom. A white iron bedstead covered in a scarlet silk bedcovering took up most of the room.
Sissy sat before a mirror at a dressing table, brushing hair an unflattering shade of blonde and clearly from a bottle. Eliza struggled to recall the girl’s hair colour on their first and only meeting but would have sworn it was darker. She wore a silk peignoir over corset and petticoats in an artful arrangement, designed no doubt to charm the gentleman visitors, but seeing Eliza in the mirror, she set the brush down and rose to her feet, swinging around in a cloud of silk and lace to face her, pulling the robe closed in a fetching display of modesty.
‘What are you doing here, Miss Penrose?’
Eliza held up a hand. ‘You left Maiden’s Creek before we had a chance to talk. I have so much to ask you.’
Sissy resumed her stool, crossed her legs and laid her hands in her lap. She waved at the bed. ‘Take a seat, Miss Penrose. What do you want to ask me?’
Eliza perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Can we start with why you have left Maiden’s Creek?’
Sissy shrugged. ‘Nothing to keep me there. And maybe I didn’t want to have to put up with you asking me questions.’
‘I knew nothing about you,’ Eliza said. ‘Will never mentioned you.’
Sissy gave a humourless laugh. ‘He wouldn’t have done, would he? He ran into enough trouble with that uncle of his—of yours. What he and I had was special but he had his reasons for keeping it quiet.’
Hardly quiet when the whole of Maiden’s Creek knew about the affair.
Eliza leaned forward. ‘Sissy, you can trust me. There are things I have discovered about my uncle. Things he has done.’
Sissy looked up. ‘He hasn’t hurt you, has he?’
It took Eliza a moment to get her meaning. ‘No, nothing like that, but I have very good reasons not to trust him.’
‘Yes, well, he stole Will’s mine,’ Sissy said with such certainty, Eliza caught her breath.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Will told me that you were to get everything if he died. Unless we were married, but he said he would leave me some shares in the mine, even if we weren’t married. After he died, I went to see old man Cowper and asked him when I could expect my shares. He laughed and said that Will had been leading me on. There weren’t no shares for me or you. He had ’em all. I knew that wasn’t right. But who’d take any notice of me?’ Sissy curled a lock of hair around her finger. ‘It was only a matter of time before … before he worked out that the split between Will and me was a sham and I knew more than was good for me.’
‘Did my uncle threaten you?’
‘That one wouldn’t dirty his own hands when he has a dog to do his biting for him.’
‘Tehan?’
Sissy looked genuinely startled at the mention of that name. ‘No, not him. That goddamned Jennings. Ugly sod with a black beard.’
Eliza’s face must have revealed her revulsion because Sissy laughed.
‘Met him, have you?’
‘Yes.’ Eliza shuddered at the memory of his filthy hands on her body. ‘How did he threaten you?’
‘He said what happened to Will could happen to me if I didn’t leave Maiden’s Creek.’
Eliza’s breath caught. ‘He implied Will had been murdered?’
Sissy nodded. ‘Jennings caught me in the cemetery. I’d been visiting Will most days and he must have been following me. No one to hear … no one to see.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Did he hurt you?’
She shook her head. ‘He called me a dirty lying whore and said if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, I would end up in the cemetery like Will.’
‘So he didn’t exactly say Will had been killed?’
‘No, but he scared me, Miss Penrose. I didn’t care about the shares. Cowper was welcome to them. I told Lil I wanted to go back to Melbourne.’ She fixed Eliza with an unblinking stare. ‘Did I do wrong?’
‘No. You did what you had to do.’
Tears stained Sissy’s cheeks and the kohl she had drawn around her eyes was beginning to smudge. ‘Nothing’ll bring Will back.’ She swept a hand around the room. ‘This is it for me. The doctor says I have consumption. I’ll not make old bones. Will was well shot of me.’
In the dismal light from the window, Sissy’s artfully painted face looked like that of a doll, but Eliza could see now that the fetching colour in her cheeks came from a pot, not from nature, and her eyes were strangely large and bright. If she had consumption there was little that could be done for her, except make her last days comfortable. Her heart broke for this girl who never had a chance, and her brother, who had loved her.
‘I’m sorry, Sissy.’ The words seemed inadequate.
‘Don’t be. Maggie’s good to work for. Like Lil, she looks after her girls. Makes sure I see a doctor regular.’
‘She knows you’re sick?’
Sissy nodded. ‘She’s promised to send me to a place in the country when I can’t work no more. I’ve said I want to be buried with Will, but I guess that won’t be possible. Doesn’t matter—we’ll be together.’ She cast her eyes at the ceiling and forced a smile. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Miss Penrose. You should know that’s how it is for us working girls.’
She picked up a handkerchief from the dressing table and wiped her eyes, smudging the paint further. She coughed, pressing the handkerchief to her mouth. Eliza crouched in front of her, waiting until the coughing had finished.
Sissy twisted the square of linen stained with the tell-tale spots of blood.
‘What can I do, Sissy?’
Sissy shrugged. ‘Spare me your pity, Miss Penrose.’
‘I think, for all his faults, my brother truly loved you,’ Eliza said.
‘I’d like to think that too, Miss Penrose. God knows, I loved him.’
Eliza stood up. ‘Just one last thing to ask you, Sissy. Did you see Will on the night he died?’
Sissy nodded. ‘He came to Lil’s Place in a right state. He was ranting about Cowper and Tehan. Said there was no one in the world he could trust. Said that someone was stealing the gold from the mine and he would prove it.’
‘He didn’t say who?’
Sissy shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t even have a drink with me. Went storming out and I never saw him again.’
Eliza blinked. ‘He didn’t have a drink?’
‘No. He may have downed one whisky, but when he walked out the door, he was sober as you and me.’
Sissy’s recollection confirmed what Lil had told her: Will had not been drunk when he went up to the Maiden’s Creek Mine.
Eliza took Sissy’s hand. ‘Thank you, Sissy.’ She smiled. ‘Is that re
ally your name?’
The young woman smiled. ‘I was christened Cecily Brown,’ she said, ‘but I’ve been Sissy since I was fourteen years old. I don’t remember Cecily any more.’ Her fingers tightened on Eliza’s. ‘It’s been nice to talk to you. I can see Will in you. Do you miss him?’
Unbidden tears sprang to Eliza’s eyes. ‘Like a wound in my chest that refuses to heal.’
‘I’m not so good at my words, Miss Penrose, but is there anything I can do to help you with that bastard Cowper?’
‘Would you be prepared to come with me to my lawyer and sign a statement of what you just told me?’
Sissy seemed to consider this proposition for a long moment. ‘I’ve nothing left to lose,’ she said. ‘I’ll do that for you and for Will, but it’ll have to be tomorrow. Got to get Mrs Scott to agree to give me the time off.’
‘I’m staying at the Menzies,’ Eliza said.
‘Ooh, lah-de-dah,’ Sissy said with a smile. ‘Give me the address for your lawyer and I’ll meet you there at ten tomorrow morning. I’d like to see old man Cowper brought down. My sister’s husband was working in his mine up in Bendigo. When he broke his leg, Cowper turned him out without a penny in compensation.’
‘I’m sorry. What did he do?’
Sissy laughed. ‘Mrs Scott employs him to ensure a gentleman does not outstay his welcome and my sister works for a seamstress in Flinders Lane. Between them they manage.’ She turned back to her mirror, squinting at the damage caused by her tears. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got to get ready for my callers. I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Penrose.’
Maggie Scott waited in the parlour, working on a piece of embroidery. She looked up as Eliza entered the room, setting her needlework in her lap. ‘Did you get what you came for?’
‘I did, and I’d be grateful if you could give her some time off tomorrow.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ve asked her to come with me to my lawyer and make a statement.’
Maggie Scott considered her for a long moment. ‘Very well. Was there something else, Miss Penrose?’
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