by Meg Keneally
How, thought Monsarrat, can those who control this place be so dense when it comes to feeding the hungry, but so creative in their punishments?
‘I can see from the little that’s grown back,’ he said, ‘that shaving your hair would be a sin against all things handsome.’ And then he scolded himself, wondering who had instructed his lips and tongue to form those words, as it certainly wasn’t him.
‘You are kind, Mr Monsarrat, but you should compliment only those women who have freedom over their own beauty.’
Monsarrat gathered himself and asked quickly so as to banish the Monsarrat who allowed unguarded statements to escape him, ‘So that’s what sparked the riots?’
‘That was what convinced a lot of the girls to join, yes, along with being hungry.’
‘Ultimately for nothing, though. You were all rounded up.’
‘For nothing? No – the others did not have to endure having their hair taken. And we ate better for a little while. Shopkeepers in the town threw their wares out onto the street at us to prevent us breaking in.’
‘The rations – did they stay sufficient?’
Grace O’Leary snorted, a noise which might have been disgust, or the symptom of some sort of congestive complaint.
‘The bread got smaller. A little bit got shaved off each time. And the meat – they would assure us it was there, in the stew – that it had just been boiled down. But I certainly didn’t taste any. So, no – as soon as Church’s masters stopped looking in this direction, the rations began to shrink. Although he had the wit not to substitute salt for sugar again.’
‘So,’ said Monsarrat. ‘You have engaged in a campaign of correspondence against Mr Church. And you have instigated a riot against his administration. Yet you ask the world to believe that you are not the one who attacked him.’
‘You have a Frenchy name,’ she said, as though she had not heard him. She started to chuckle, but the laugh betrayed her and transformed into a cough. She stood, walked to the corner and spat some phlegm into a rag which Monsarrat noticed she clutched in her hand. She turned back to him, wiping her mouth. ‘Are you French?’
‘No. It’s a relic, my name. A remnant from a time of persecution, long gone now.’
‘Well, Mr Monsarrat … Monsarrat …’ She rolled the name around her mouth as though tasting it. ‘You can be thankful your persecution was long ago,’ she said. ‘Mine continues.’
‘I understand.’
‘You do not.’
‘Miss O’Leary, I did not myself come to this place as a free man.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Mr Monsarrat. That would only make you like most here. But to claim you know of persecution, when you came here in a male form rather than a female one – forgive me if I don’t believe you. Tell me – have you heard the name Emily Gray?’
The convict Homer Preston had mentioned. The one who had starved to death.
‘Emily died in this room,’ said Grace. ‘She was so hungry she ate the bones from her ration, then started on the weeds on the drying ground. And to punish her for that, for chewing on His Majesty’s weeds, Church had her held here. She had a metal collar, ropes tied to it, and the other end tied to spikes in the floor. When she started thrashing about in here, they put her in a straitjacket. That’s how she stayed until she starved to death. Look.’
She pointed, slowly, deliberately, to four deep indentations in the floorboards. She had positioned herself in the middle of them. Where Emily would have sat. Where Emily would have died.
‘Church wanted to rob me of hope, to sap my spirit. He failed. I lost hope a long time ago. I have nothing tethering me to this earth. So I have no reason to let fear or anything else temper my actions when it comes to stopping the worst of the abuses.’
‘Please don’t say that to anyone else,’ said Monsarrat. ‘In some lights, it could be seen as a confession.’
‘It’s not.’
‘What was done to you recently – your head – that is wrong, I can certainly see that. And by someone whose objective was to demonstrate power rather than punish an offence.’
‘Well, I think he was happy to do both.’
‘Yet for all the short rations, the overenthusiastic discipline, you have not taken one of the chief options available to you, which would enable you to leave here.’
‘To marry, you mean? Or be assigned? I’ve never had the opportunity.’
‘Miss O’Leary, I have not come here with any preconceptions, nor with the intent to find you guilty if you are not. But I must ask you, please, for your honesty.’
‘You have it. You’ve had it since the moment I opened my mouth.’
‘I’ve been told you made yourself disagreeable to potential suitors. Deliberately did everything you could to ensure you weren’t chosen.’
‘Who told you that? The magistrate?’
Monsarrat said nothing.
‘I imagine it would have been him,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t one of Church’s admirers, that is certain. But he’s a lazy man, and it takes far less effort to believe any lie the superintendent tries to feed you than to try to ascertain the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’
‘That I was never brought out and marched in front of the men. That Church wanted me right where I was.’
She leaned forward, covering her mouth and expelling another cough, a moist rumbling in her lungs demanding release.
He waited for her to finish, looked up at the splintery timber ceiling so she would not feel embarrassed. The public humiliation she had already endured was more than enough.
‘Why?’ he asked when she had finished and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. ‘I’ve been given to understand you were a significant problem for the man. Why would he not be happy to get rid of you?’
‘Do you know, Mr Monsarrat, how Church and that sottish wife of his, and the rest of them, are paid?’
‘One presumes in money.’
‘Then one would be presuming incorrectly. They get some money, certainly. But it wouldn’t do for them to be too much of a drain on Governor Brisbane’s purse. So they also get centage. A proportion of everything we produce here. Cloth, twine, everything. And that’s where the real money is. If they were paid as they were in the old country, they’d make half as much. And if they were paid what they’re worth, they’d make nothing.’
‘Yes, I can see how such a system might be open to abuses. But why would that prevent you from marrying?’
‘I was a seamstress, you know. In Galway. Quite good. And of course my talents came with me over the seas, and I applied them with great industry when I first arrived. Thinking it might be a way into the good graces of the rulers, you see. Better rations, wheat flour instead of that India stuff. Indeed, work by my hand tended to fetch a higher price than that done by a housekeeper or a dairy maid. Church wanted me at my work table, making a valuable product for him. So even though I was in the First Class at the time, I was never paraded before such men as came here to select wives.’
‘But surely that’s against regulations.’
‘Whether it is or not, I can’t say. Those on whom the laws rest most heavily are not often told what those laws actually are.’
A scraping sound now slid underneath the crooked door, followed by one of the milder and less imaginative of the curses regularly employed by the colony’s men. Monsarrat opened the door and the guard, key in hand, gave a startled jerk, then lowered his head and looked at Monsarrat as though he had just grown horns and was about to charge.
‘You’ll not be mentioning to anyone that the door was unlocked, I trust. After I went to the trouble to procure this for you.’
‘This’ was a low wooden bench, perhaps long enough for one and a half well-fed people to occupy.
‘Thank you for the seat. As for the table …’
‘The bench will serve as a table,’ the guard said.
‘And I should sit …’
‘The floor is sturdy enough.’
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�Thank you. I shall test its sturdiness while I decide how much detail I shall put in my report.’
The turnkey jutted his chin out. ‘Do as you please. There are no tables to be had.’
He dragged the door back into its frame, and this time did lock it, using a few more expletives and leaving Monsarrat with the impression he may not be disposed to unlocking it.
Monsarrat laid out his writing implements on the bench like a priest preparing a ritual, aligning his pen precisely with the edge of the paper, uncapping the ink and placing its stopper to the side. He bent and brushed the floor near the bench, but a glance at the muck which adhered to his hand told him it was futile. At least his trousers were dark, but he would have to brace himself for an assault with Mrs Mulrooney’s cloth for putting her to the trouble of washing them.
Then he carefully knelt in front of the bench and got from his pocket the paper and pencil which he used for shorthand.
We will choose our words carefully, now our friend is back at his post, he wrote.
He had no idea whether she could read, but she must have been able to as she nodded. Using words carefully was a skill Monsarrat had developed, consciously working at it, gnawing it into a shape, a tool appropriate for any purpose he needed to put it to. It was a matter of survival. Grace, he imagined, would have a keen understanding of its importance.
He held the pencil suspended over the page.
‘I charge you to tell me, Grace O’Leary, whether you did take the life of Robert Church on Thursday last.’ It was theatrical, overly so for him, and he had an uncomfortable suspicion that some colour had begun to rise on his cheek. Certainly, Grace had noticed his discomfort, if her small smile was any indication.
‘No, sir, I did not.’
She took an obvious inventory of his face before deciding to fix her gaze on his nose. She seemed to him altogether too perfect in her denial.
‘And why should you be believed?’
‘Sir, you have seen the security under which I’m held.’
She was smiling openly now. Monsarrat raised his eyebrows, motioned his head towards the door. A warning. Getting lost in wordplay could carry a cost, such as the secondary sentence that had followed a particularly elegant comment he had made about natural justice to Reverend Bulmer two years ago.
‘Now, yes. But at the time of the murder?’
‘Why, the very highest level. It was night-time, of course. They do not wish to allow us the opportunity to wander, in case we decide to sample the delights of the town. I was in a room with five other women, just down the corridor at the end of the building. I am not the only person who sleeps in this building.’
‘Were any of your cellmates missing at the time of the murder?’
‘I couldn’t tell you, Mr Monsarrat, having been asleep myself at the time.’
Her eyes left his nose to its own devices for a moment, flicking towards the window. She was very possibly unaware of their momentary rebellion.
‘So your contention – to which you will be required to swear – is that you were under guard, sleeping, but in the company of others, at the time the superintendent was killed?’
‘Yes.’
Monsarrat nodded. He dashed off a statement to that effect, cursing the conditions for interfering with his penmanship while taking a perverse pride that it was still better than any other clerk in the colony.
‘I will read your statement now.’
‘No need. I am perfectly capable of reading it to myself.’
‘Had you an education, then, in Galway?’
‘None that didn’t involve needle, thread and cloth. No, I received my letters here, courtesy of Mrs Nelson. As did many of the other girls. Now, if you would give me the paper?’
He blotted it and did so. As she read it he had a strange sense she was checking for errors in spelling or grammar. Evidently finding none, she looked up at him, nodded and reached out for the pen, using a florid signature which Monsarrat observed was common to the newly literate, who enjoyed stretching their wings in this manner. Hannah Mulrooney liked to curl the edges of the first letters of her name, and tended to give the ‘y’ an elaborate tail.
Grace handed the statement back. She may believe this is an end to it, thought Monsarrat. She may not be aware that this place’s most senior law officer has already mentally convicted her. And Monsarrat was not entirely convinced Ezekiel Daly was wrong.
He stood, rapping on the door with the back of his knuckle. He heard weight shift on the other side but the guard seemed in no hurry.
‘Mr Monsarrat,’ Grace O’Leary said, taking the opportunity the delay afforded. ‘I did not do this. You have my statement. I know it is what you’re expecting me to say, whether I’m guilty or not. And I am happy it was done, but it was not done by me. There are others you may care to look to. The rations which didn’t come to us must’ve gone somewhere. And there is Mrs Church – rum disagrees with her. Gives her something of a temper.’
‘I see. Well, thank you for that information. Coming as it does from someone who I believe has something of a temper herself. Was it that, I wonder, which prompted the superintendent to visit such violence on your scalp?’
‘No. A few new ones came in. One reasonably young – I’m surprised they weren’t assigned straight off the boat. And during muster the superintendent decided to give one of them a more detailed inspection. He took off her neck handkerchief, made to put his hand down the front of her dress.’
‘And?’
‘I hit the bastard. And I will happily sign a sworn statement to that effect when next you visit, as I’m sure you will. Good day, Mr Monsarrat.’
The guard had obviously decided enough time had passed for him to make his point, and the key was driven home into the lock and twisted, with a few attempts before it decided it would move the latch.
Monsarrat saw that as he left Grace was already lying down, her back to him, her head on the dirty wool which, despite its filth, would hopefully provide at least a fraction of the protection her hair no longer could.
‘What’s your name?’ Monsarrat asked the guard.
‘Felton. Tom Felton.’
‘Well, Felton. I have a lot of work to do, and I may not get around to noting that the door to O’Leary’s cell was unlocked for quite some time if you are able to show me the room she was in on the night of the murder.’
Felton nodded, set off down the corridor. The room he led Monsarrat to was small but amply served by windows. They had once had panes, judging by the few jagged teeth jutting from the frames. The women here had the relative luxury of bedrolls, which had been pushed into the corners of the room, probably to avoid the worst of the summer rain when it lashed in through the pointless windows. At the end of the room a small, barred round opening let in a little light. Monsarrat wondered why anyone would bother barring a hole barely large enough for a child to fit through while leaving the windows unrepaired.
The window yielded only a view of the Third Class women at their work and the overseer, who seemed to have given up on the birds for now. But the round opening looked out on the widest part of the Third Class yard, and the storeroom opposite. And from this perspective Monsarrat noticed something he had overlooked before: a sturdy wooden gate set into the corner of the yard.
‘Felton – where does that gate lead?’
‘To the wood yard and then down to the river. It’s always locked, before you ask.’
‘Who has the key?’
‘The superintendent – or he did, anyway. Maybe the management committee. The storekeeper and a few others. Not me, so it’s not my doing if it’s unlocked. Not that it’s used much. The woman from the Ladies’ Committee – she’s got her fingers in everything, can’t stand mess – was in here cleaning the muck out of the keyhole the other day. I told her not to bother but she said the sight of the dirt clogging it up irritated her.’
‘Hmm,’ said Monsarrat. His eyes traced the path he had taken an hour ago, when he walked from th
e First Class yard, which still bore a smear of Robert Church, through a gap in the wall to the Third Class yard, until he was standing just a few feet from the gate, without noticing its existence.
Had Robert Church’s killer known of it, perhaps had a key? It would be a very convenient route down to the river and away.
The murderer might not have needed to get away, of course. He or she might have only had to climb the stairs to one of the bedrolls in this room. He was disconcerted by an image which suddenly placed itself before him, a picture of Grace standing by this small aperture, her eyes absorbing what light they could from the moon while someone who was happy for her to bear the consequences slid through the gate to the river.
Chapter 7
‘She denies it, of course.’
‘Naturally,’ said Eveleigh. ‘And I’d assume she was telling the truth if the security of the Third Class penitentiary was as it should be, but I’ve gathered it’s not.’
Monsarrat decided not to tell Eveleigh about the unlocked door. Even though he wasn’t sure whether he believed Grace, he did feel there was scope for further investigation.
‘She told me she had written to the governor about Church, sir,’ he said. ‘If you can spare me, perhaps some time in the cellar might prove illuminating?’
‘Hmph. Not just trying to escape the heat?’
The cellar had thick stone walls surrounded by earth, and in Eveleigh and Monsarrat’s estimation was the coolest place in Parramatta aside from the river itself. But it was the administrative version of the Augean stables. Monsarrat had only been down there for a short time, so had only briefly been able to assess the state of the shelves, with ledgers and scrolls jumbled together, many of them wearing a fine coating of dust. The place also housed all the correspondence, files and documents that nobody had got around to organising yet, some of which dated back to the previous decade.
‘Certainly not,’ Monsarrat announced. ‘I thought I might be able to locate her letters to the governor, if we still have them. I also think it would be wise to acquaint myself with the details of her original offence. It might provide me with some idea of how to approach her when I’m at the Factory next.’