Girl of Shadows

by Deborah Challinor

  Her heart almost in her mouth, Sarah shot a glance at Friday and Harrie, then demanded, ‘Now sign it.’

  Jared put down the pen. ‘No. Fuck you, I won’t. I don’t trust you.’

  An almighty rattling and scratching came at the window: Sarah, Friday and Jared all cried out in alarm and turned towards the racket.

  Only Harrie remained calm. She crossed to the window and drew back the curtains. Outside, its wings beating wildly against the glass, hovered a bat. Its belly was covered with pale fur and in its sharp-eared head glittered round, intelligent eyes.

  Harrie grasped the bottom of the sash and thrust it up.

  ‘No!’ Jared shouted, and dashed for the door into the hallway.

  But Friday gave him a shove, knocking him into the chiffonier. Emitting a furious, high-pitched chittering, the bat launched itself up off the windowsill and flapped clumsily into the dining room, its wings — two feet from tip to tip — brushing the wall and the ceiling. It tumbled, tried to gain height, hit the wall again and flapped over Jared, who shrieked and struck out at it. The thing retaliated, tearing at his scalp with the sharply curved claws on its feet. He ducked and flailed wildly but it dropped again, raking his face this time, then landed on the table where it came to rest on its belly, wings half folded and pointed elbows raised, staring beadily at him.

  Then, to Sarah’s appalled fascination, it began to drag itself towards him, bony, membrane-covered arms working, mouth agape to reveal sharp little teeth, that ear-piercing chittering filling the room again.

  As blood poured down his face and soaked into his collar, Jared snatched up the pen, scribbled his signature on his confession, made a break for the back door and wrenched it open. They heard him tear down the yard to the gate, the rattle of the bolt as he wrestled with it, an echoing slam as the gate flew open and bounced off the fence, and then … nothing.

  ‘Well,’ Harrie said, looking around the dishevelled room.

  A picture had fallen off the wall, a pair of candlesticks and a vase lay on the floor, the vase in a dozen pieces, and blood had spattered across the wallpaper above the chiffonier and onto the dining table, a few garnet-red drops on the confession letter.

  The bat gave a single chirrup.

  Harrie gathered it carefully in her hands and carried it to the window. ‘Time to go,’ she said, and launched it into the air. ‘Take care!’

  The creature flapped its wings, found the evening breeze and rode upwards in ever-increasing spirals until it disappeared from view.

  ‘Was that …? Oh my Christ,’ Friday said in an extremely shaky voice.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have opened the window,’ Harrie said with a tiny smile. ‘Bats will get into everything if you’re not careful.’

  Sarah sat down at the table and burst into tears.

  The next morning Sarah rose with the sun, filled the copper, lit the fire beneath it, and cleared out Jared’s room. She hauled his trunk down from the top of the clothes press, helped herself to one or two of his papers, and filled it with everything else of his she could find. She dragged the trunk downstairs, bumping heavily on every step, and outside to the back porch. That way, if he came back for his things, he’d have no reason to enter the house.

  Then she stripped his bed, threw everything into the copper, and scoured the room from floorboards to ceiling. The more she scrubbed, the better she felt. At nine o’clock, she put a sign on the door saying the shop would be closed for the day. She had more to do today than just wash away the grubby vestiges of Jared Gellar’s presence.

  At a little after ten she changed into one of her better dresses, brushed her hair, chose a decent bonnet, locked the house and set off up George Street for the police office. On the spur of the moment, she reversed direction completely and headed for Harrington Street to ask Friday to come with her. She’d been determined to do this by herself, but now that the time had come she wasn’t sure she could. She needed her friends with her.

  Friday, of course, agreed.

  In the yard behind the Siren’s Arms, she remarked as she fiddled with the ribbon on her hat, ‘But I hope we don’t have to stand in a bloody queue all day. I have to start work at one. If it takes ages, shall I see if Harrie can get away? One of us should be with you, eh?’ She gave Sarah’s hand a squeeze.

  The gate leading to the brothel opened, and Elizabeth emerged. ‘Good morning, girls. Going shopping?’

  Sarah and Friday exchanged a glance.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do I want to know?’

  ‘Can I tell her?’ Friday asked Sarah.

  ‘Might as well. It’s no secret.’

  Grinning hugely, Friday said, ‘We got Jared the Bastard Gellar to sign a confession last night, admitting he framed Adam.’

  ‘Oh, well done! Should I ask how you managed that?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Sarah replied. The less said about the previous night’s odd climax the better.

  Friday said, ‘So we’re off to petition Captain Rossi.’

  Elizabeth looked both thoughtful and amused. ‘Fancy that. As it happens, I know Francis Rossi rather well. Not in a biblical sense, of course — I’m far too old for that these days — but I have had business dealings with him.’

  ‘What sort of business dealings?’ Friday waggled her eyebrows.

  ‘Confidential, and staying that way. But can I suggest it could be to your advantage, Sarah, and certainly to your man’s, if I came with you? Would that be acceptable to you?’

  It most definitely would be — Sarah shared a grin with Friday.

  Half an hour later they arrived in the gloomy waiting room outside Captain Rossi’s office, crammed, as predicted, with folk hoping to petition the police magistrate for clemency — or at least leniency — on behalf of husbands, wives, offspring and lovers currently snagged in the cogs of the colony’s judicial system. Someone had brought with them a crate of chickens, whose incessant squawking was doing nothing to lessen the din.

  ‘Christ, we’ll be here for bloody ever,’ Friday grumbled.

  ‘We will not.’ Elizabeth patted the auburn curls peeking from beneath her smart hat and approached a window in the wall, behind which stood a young clerk, his head down as he perused some documents.

  ‘Excuse me, good morning,’ Elizabeth announced.

  ‘One moment, I’m busy,’ the clerk responded through the grille, not bothering to look up.

  Sarah glanced at Elizabeth, whose lips were now clamped in a straight line paralleling her narrowed eyes. That had been a mistake.

  Elizabeth said, ‘Do you not value your job, young man?’

  Finally, the clerk raised his head. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Captain Rossi is a personal friend of mine. I don’t imagine he’ll be overly pleased to discover what a rude pup he has out here embodying his public face. Do you?’

  The boy rolled his eyes at the waiting crowd: it hardly mattered what a roomful of criminals’ relatives thought.

  Elizabeth nailed him with a terrible glare. Gone was the attractive, cuddly, mother figure Sarah knew; here instead was the hard-faced, iron-willed businesswoman who’d built up a chain of brothels in London, survived transportation, then clawed out a very comfortable life for herself in Sydney. The full transformation was perhaps somewhat wasted on this smart-arsed boy, but still a treat to see.

  He swallowed audibly. ‘How may I be of service?’

  ‘That’s better. We need to see the captain immediately. Please arrange it.’

  He consulted his list. ‘May I have your name, please?’

  ‘Mrs Elizabeth Hislop, on behalf of Mr Adam and Mrs Sarah Green.’

  ‘He’s with someone at the moment, but you can go in next.’

  Friday elbowed Sarah and smirked.

  ‘Thank you, young man. I appreciate your assistance.’ Elizabeth produced a card from her reticule and slipped it through the gap beneath the grille. ‘This is the address of my establishment. Please feel welcome to visit, with my complime
nts. Just the once, of course.’

  The clerk’s face reddened as he realised what he was being offered, but he tucked the card carefully into a pocket all the same.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Francis Rossi’s office was reasonably spacious and comfortably furnished. He himself was in late middle-age with a crest of silver-white hair brushed back from his forehead and matching muttonchops, and was quite a striking-looking man.

  ‘Elizabeth! How delightful to see you!’ he said, coming out from behind his desk to take her hand. ‘Not in trouble with the law, I hope?’ he added, smiling at his little joke. She operated a brothel, a fact of which he was clearly aware, an activity just as illegal in New South Wales as it was in England.

  He was a Frenchman born in Corsica, and Sarah had to listen to his odd accent carefully. She looked at Friday, who shrugged. Apparently, however, Elizabeth understood him perfectly.

  ‘Please, do take a seat,’ Captain Rossi said as he returned to his own.

  They all sat, on uncomfortable, ladder-backed wooden chairs clearly designed to encourage people to get off them and leave Rossi’s office as quickly as possible.

  ‘What can I do for you? I take it you are here on business?’

  ‘We are,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘Sarah? Would you care to explain to Captain Rossi what has happened?’

  Sarah’s mouth was suddenly bone dry and her belly felt oddly hollowed out. So much depended on the next few minutes. If Rossi accepted Gellar’s confession, Adam could be on his way home in as little as a week. If he rejected it, she had no idea what to do next. She just couldn’t bear to think of Adam languishing in gaol hundreds of miles away for the next five years. She fought back tears and cleared her throat. To her horror a big lump of phlegm came up. Desperate to spit it out but knowing she couldn’t, she swallowed instead, suppressing a shudder as she felt it slide down.

  Devoid of all her usual confidence, she hesitantly recounted the background to Adam’s arrest. Halfway through Rossi waved his hand, saying he recalled the court case. It hadn’t been that long ago, after all. So she focused on her suspicion that Jared Gellar had framed her husband and operated in tandem with Augustus Evans to see him convicted. She told Rossi she’d simply put it to Gellar that he’d planted the brooch for the purposes of taking over Adam’s business, leaving out everything to do with Rachel, and Bella, and certainly last night’s episode with the bat, and that he’d confessed. She produced Gellar’s scrawled confession and passed it to the captain.

  He read it carefully. ‘What are these brown marks? Surely they are not blood? Where is this Gellar person now?’

  ‘It is blood, but it’s mine,’ Sarah replied quickly. ‘I nicked my finger slicing a loaf. I haven’t seen Jared Gellar since last night, after he wrote that.’

  ‘How do I know this is Gellar’s own hand and not a forgery?’

  Sarah whipped a document from her reticule and placed it on the captain’s desk. ‘These are papers certifying he paid customs duty on an inbound cargo at the end of last year.’ It had been the only evidence she’d been able to find among his papers demonstrating he’d paid import tax of any kind. ‘See the stamp and the Customs officer’s signature at the bottom? They’re genuine. And that’s Gellar’s signature there. It matches the signature on the confession, and the rest of the writing in general.’

  Rossi studied the papers, then gave her a long, measured look. Finally he asked Elizabeth, ‘Is this all true?’

  ‘I wasn’t present last night when Gellar wrote his confession, but I can attest that, as a master, his conduct was extremely unbecoming towards Mrs Green, and that word on the street suggests he did indeed frame her husband, Adam,’ she replied, carefully not answering Rossi’s question.

  ‘Why did you not make a complaint against him and request to return to the Factory?’ Rossi asked Sarah. ‘You would have been safe from him there.’

  ‘Why the hell should I?’ Sarah replied, her spirit flaring. ‘That’s my husband’s business he was trying to steal. That’s my husband he framed. I wasn’t going to give up!’

  Then she recalled to whom she was speaking, and shut her mouth.

  The captain gave her another pointed look, but all he said was, ‘You do realise you will have to return to the Factory now, anyway? As a convict without a ticket of leave, you may not remain at liberty if this Gellar has absented himself, and while your husband is in gaol.’

  ‘But what about her business?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘Her husband’s business. She will have to close it.’

  Sarah and Friday exchanged a dismayed glance.

  ‘But I can’t do that,’ Sarah said. ‘What about our customers? The good will? Our income?’

  Rossi shrugged as though he was not particularly bothered, and she realised he probably wasn’t. His concern was managing the constabulary and the judicial business of the town, not the commercial affairs of individual citizens. And Sarah wasn’t even a citizen. She was a convict.

  ‘The confession, Francis,’ Elizabeth prompted.

  He read it again. ‘Yes, I will consider it.’

  Elizabeth persisted. ‘And you’ll consider it in a favourable light? Oh, but of course you will. I am, after all, aware of how very generous you can be when the mood takes you.’

  His head remained bowed, unmoving. For a moment he was very still.

  Then he met her eye. ‘You understand, Elizabeth, that this would mean all favours have been called in and all debts repaid?’

  ‘I accept that.’

  Sarah realised she was holding her breath.

  He nodded, satisfied. ‘Then I will authorise the release of Adam Green from Port Macquarie penitentiary as soon as possible. And the arrest of this Jared Gellar.’

  Sarah slumped forwards on her chair, put her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

  Dimly, she heard the captain add, ‘But you, Mrs Green, must go back to the Factory until your husband’s return.’

  Friday and Sarah stood on the street outside Bella’s house. As always, the dogs were watching, snouts pushed against the railings of the carriage gates, strings of spit dangling from slack jaws. But they weren’t going in that way — today they intended knocking on the small side door at the other end of the building.

  ‘Ready?’ Friday asked.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘I hope Gellar’s found himself somewhere clever to hide.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Friday tugged at the hem of her jacket and straightened her hat, and they crossed Clarence Shand’s manicured lawn, rounded the end of the house and knocked on the low door recessed into a tiny porch. Clearly it was a tradesman’s entrance — the knocker was nothing fancy and the door itself was on the street side of the wrought-iron fence, so that anyone using it wouldn’t be torn to shreds by the dogs.

  Nothing happened. Sarah knocked again, harder this time.

  Eventually they heard footsteps, the squeak of bolts shifting, and Becky Hoddle opened the door. She remarked, ‘You’ve got a cheek, coming here.’

  Friday said, ‘Nice to see you, too, Becky. We want to speak to Bella.’

  ‘Have you got an appointment?’

  ‘No, we haven’t got a bloody appointment.’

  ‘Then no, you can’t. She’s busy.’

  ‘It’s business, Becky,’ Sarah said. ‘Can you go and get her?’

  Becky dithered, clearly debating whether to do as they’d asked or slam the door in their faces and risk Bella’s wrath if what they had to say was in fact important. ‘Hold on.’ She pushed the door onto the latch and disappeared.

  Back a minute later she said, ‘She says you’re to come in.’

  Friday and Sarah followed her through the house and into the parlour both girls had already seen. Bella was at her desk, writing in a ledger. Christ, Friday thought, doesn’t she do anything but work? And blackmail people and drive around town in that gig of hers scaring the shit out of folk? All
her bitter rancour for the woman rose up as a hard, sour lump in her throat and she felt her face grow warm as she struggled to contain her temper.

  Bella put down her pen. ‘You can go, Becky.’

  Becky left.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Same rude bloody cow. Friday bit back a smart reply. And still wearing too much make-up, and still as skinny as a rake, if not skinnier. God, how did she stay alive with so little meat on her bones? The veins on her hands stuck out like blue worms against her white skin and her weasel eyes were huge black pits ringed with kohl. Her clothes, though, were gorgeous, the bitch.

  ‘To make a deal,’ Friday said bluntly.

  Bella snorted a laugh. ‘Then I won’t offer you a seat. You won’t be here long enough.’

  ‘We don’t want to pay you any more extortion money,’ Sarah said. ‘We have information we think you might find useful. We’re willing to exchange it for an end to you blackmailing us.’

  ‘Give me the information and I’ll think about it.’

  Friday snorted this time. ‘Fuck off. How barmy do you think we are?’

  Bella sat back and raised her eyebrows.

  Ignoring the implied insult, Sarah said, ‘It doesn’t work like that. You give us your word there’ll be no more blackmail demands, and we’ll give you the information.’

  ‘All right. I give you my word,’ Bella said.

  Friday said, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘No.’ Bella smiled unpleasantly, revealing long, yellowing teeth. ‘And so you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Suit yourself, then.’ Friday shrugged. ‘Don’t hear what we’ve got to say. But that’s no way to get ahead, is it? Or four heads, to be precise.’

  The smile disappeared from Bella’s face. She sat forwards again. ‘Are you referring to my upoko tuhi?’

  ‘Yours?’ Friday said. ‘They’re not yours if you stole them in the first place. And it’s illegal to traffic in them now. As I’m sure you know.’

  ‘What information do you have?’ Bella asked, addressing Sarah.