by Janet Lee
His face looks sad, and I think mine must too. He brings me paper and pen and ink.
I write a letter to my mother.
The Botany Murder Case
Extracts from the Murderess’s Letters
He was tall and handsome, he was good, loving, attentive, sober, honest, respectable, fond of children, and very kind to my four little children. The love he had for his own firstborn infant was beyond all I could describe …
This man was everything a woman could wish to have. He was the apple of my eye. His voice was music to my ear. He was all I wanted in this life.
If I was between him and death, do you think I would let him go?
Oh, no fear.
Evening News12
17.
When I visit the chaplain the next day, we begin our talk by a discussion of how I have been sleeping, and whether I am well, which is what people talk about when they have nothing to say, or when they really want to speak of other things.
Then he turns to my story, and asks me to tell him more of my time in Merriwa.
I had no training to be a servant, sir, I say, and for the first few weeks I was lost as to what I should do to care for a grand house. I was the maid of all jobs. I cleaned the house and polished the silver and did the sweeping and the light washing of the underthings, although Mrs Rainer continued to come for the heavy linens every Monday, regular. And she was a strong woman who could wash a full set of sheets and wring them and hang them herself. She had some sixteen children, and she always looked tired, sir, but then, well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Cook was kind to me in my new position. She was more of a mistress than a cook, and she did as she said she would and helped me to learn, for she liked to come and tell me what to do and how to do it and when I should be doing it. Still, she said it all most politely and it gave me some satisfaction to have her say I had done a good job, or to give me an extra scone at morning tea for my good work. She supervised everything, really. She would make sure Bert cleaned the boots properly, and help me mix the treacle and beer for him to do this. We always mixed it together in the kitchen, with Bert helping, as once the beer was open it would be a shame to waste it. They would each have a small glass and I would be sure to help myself to a spoonful of the treacle, for I did not drink beer then, and we all got on very well.
Cook herself would set the table for the meals, and I was grateful for her help, for I had no idea how to set a proper table.
It was a terribly dusty house being as it was right on the road with only the roses to stop the dust. You see, the road was not cobbled at all, though Merriwa was a busy town, and when the roads were dry you could be sure there would be a wind to blow the dust right through the house. No matter how many times you dusted, there would still be a fine layer to show up on everything. Big houses need a lot of cleaning and dusting and window washing. And even though there are not so many people who might live in a bigger house as live in a smaller house, and you would think that would mean fewer people to make a mess, the bigger ones nearly always have more things about that need dusting.
I soon learnt that the house had a routine which the Missus would always follow. In the morning she would tend the roses, and pick the blooms and prune the bushes, with Bert at her side to help her. Sometimes she would just sit among the roses and look at them, or if it was raining, she would sit on the verandah and look at them. I would do my dusting and cleaning inside while the Missus was out in the garden, and I would wear a white apron over my dress when I did my work, which looked very proper.
Then the Missus would come in for a cup of tea and wait for the Master to come home for dinner, and Bert and I would go down the road to the Church of England graveyard and I would clean a headstone which belonged to the Missus’s baby. The headstone was a large one, taller than I was, with a weeping angel at the top and the angel needed cleaning every day as the birds liked to sit upon the wings and watch the snakes. And there was an urn and the Missus would place fresh roses in it each day. It had all these grooves and curves in the stone, that urn did. Roman-inspired, the Missus said it was, but those grooves did ever hold the dust.
Bert would carry a chair for the Missus to sit on and he would put the chair beside the grave and then walk back to the house. I was to wait for the Missus and the Master to walk to the graveyard and she would be carrying a bunch of roses, and she was so particular that there had to be roses upon the grave, fresh roses every day, which was very hard when it came pruning time or they were out of season.
I used to think, as I watched the Master and Missus walk down the street, that they looked like a bride and groom, except she was all in black and they both looked so sad.
The Master would pause for a few minutes and then help her to sit on the chair that Bert had brought and then he would go back to his office for the afternoon. I think he was glad to go, for it was a sad sight to see this woman sit and stare at a headstone.
After the Master had gone, the Missus would bid me to take the roses from the previous day off the grave and she would let me spread those roses on other graves nearby, even those that might not have a headstone, and clear away any I had spread the day before. I took to liking this placing roses on other graves, and it gave me something to do when the Missus sat deep in her thoughts.
The Missus could sometimes spend hours sitting on the chair, just holding her parasol and staring at the grave. Then she might suddenly stand and walk home, without any word, and I was to walk behind her, and find Bert and ask him to retrieve the chair. Cook would make the Missus a cup of tea, and the Missus would sit in the parlour with her book. I soon learnt she never read very much of the book, just sat with it upon her lap. So the day would pass without the Missus really doing anything with it, which was a shame.
There were times when the Missus did not tend her roses, and on those days the doctor would come and see her in her bedroom, and Cook or the Master would go in with him, so it was not improper.
And Cook told me about the Missus’s baby and said she was so sad when her baby died that she had not wanted to give it over – had not wanted the baby to be buried, she meant – and that the doctor had to come and give her something so that they could take the baby from her, for she did not want to be parted from her child, and it was all very sad.
I did not know that type of grief then, sir, but I have since had this sadness myself and now I do understand how the Missus felt. It is such that you do not want to go on living, and you care for nothing but your own sorrow.
Cook said the Missus’s baby had only lived for about six months, and that it was such a tiny thing when it was born that it had mewed like a kitten when it cried because its lungs were not very strong, but that it had the sweetest little face and the most beautiful brown eyes, which was very unusual for a baby. And the Missus had said her baby would grow into a great beauty.
The baby’s lips were always blue, she said, as though it were cold, and when the doctor had looked at the little baby when she was first born, he had told the Missus she must prepare herself that the child would not live long. He said there was something wrong with her heart.
The Missus said the doctor was mistaken and there would be a cure for whatever the illness was and that doctors were often wrong and what would they know, as she was the child’s mother and knew better than anyone. All the same, the Missus had bought a great many toys and dresses, and material and ribbons, as though she was trying to hurry the child into growing up, but it had made no difference.
One morning, the baby didn’t wake and the Missus had taken the shock badly and been in mourning ever since.
That had been some six years previous, and the Missus had not been able to have another baby since, even though there had been two who had been started, but never been along to the finish.
After the second time, the Master had taken all the baby things and locked them in the room up in t
he attic, the one which was beside my room, and to which only he had the key, as he had not wanted baby things around the Missus in the hope that her not seeing baby things might shake her from her sadness.
It didn’t.
Sometimes, after the Missus had been sitting at the graveside, she would go into the church and kneel and pray. And I would sit in the back of the church and wait for her, and sometimes she would be a long time. Or it seemed a long time to me as I would be wanting to go home to have my own dinner, which I did not take until after we had been to the cemetery. One time, she had been in the church for so long that I grew worried and went home to get Cook, who sent Bert for the Master, and the doctor was called and the Missus took to her bed for days.
So it was a grand home, sir, but it was a sad and sorry place as well.
I would not want to give the impression that my time at Merriwa was unhappy or that the Missus was unkind, sir. She was very kind to me.
But the Missus had become like this because she was allowed to dwell upon her sadness for so long. Sometimes folk who suffer a tragedy can pick themselves up and dust themselves off and keep going on through life, and it is often the poorer ones who do this because they don’t have the luxury to stop and mourn or to sit by a grave and spend the day weeping and saying nothing. It is just as well too, for many a woman has lost a child and if they all stopped and mourned over it, no meals would be cooked and no clothes would be washed.
Mourning and feeling feeble is a luxury, and it is my observation that only the rich have that luxury, sir.
Look at the Queen and her husband, and him dead of the typhoid this many a long year, and she still mourns and wears her black, but then she doesn’t have to get up and cook and scrub floors and feed her little ones, does she?
It was the same for the Missus. She had other people to do the living for her and she became content to be doing her mourning, and to just sit and let her life be lived by other people, until after a while she forgot what living really was, and thought sitting beside a statue all day, then reading a little, was enough.
I do not want to speak badly of Cook, but she was very comfortable to be soft with the Missus and pander to her unhappiness, and why should she not? She had a good position and had been with the Missus a long time, so the Missus was very comfortable in her ways.
Cook was like a mother to the Missus, the chaplain says.
I think on this.
No, sir, I say. A mother has to smack her children and tell them to behave and the like. Cook did none of this, and I think a good mother would have. The Master allowed the Missus to be sad and take laudanum, for that was what the doctor would give her when he came, and continue on in her grief.
It might have been kinder if they had told her to get on with living. Because then the Missus might have. Lived, I mean.
And I was very sad for her because she held on to her grief and let that become her life, which is not much of a life at all.
I have had my own tragedy in life, sir, and I find myself in a sorry state now, but I need to pick myself up and move on. Though I might keep on mourning for myself and what might be coming for me in January, I need to go about in the world pretending that I am not, for the world will not mourn with me. It is not that I am hard-hearted, sir, but just that I am practical.
I need to continue to have hope that I will be reprieved from my troubles, or I might begin to feel feeble myself.
18.
When I next visit the chaplain, he asks me if I have been reading my Bible.
I say that I have. That I sit in the mornings and read through some passages after I have taken breakfast.
He says he is pleased and he hopes I am finding some comfort. Then he asks me if I have been thinking any more of Merriwa. And did I ever go back to the property where my parents lived. I say that I did not, although I thought about going home, because even though I enjoyed my work, and my new life, I did miss my parents and my brother and sisters. But Mr Waldock was true to his word and on that very next Thursday he called to collect a letter for my mother.
It was only a letter on that occasion for I had not yet been paid, but I made sure I sent my wages when I had them, and the first month I sent my mother every penny, as I wanted her to have money for new boots. After that time, I kept some of the wages for myself, although when I had a large family of my own, I did look back and wish I had sent her more of my wages because I know how hard it may be to have so many mouths to feed.
And my mother came in with Mr Waldock to visit on a few occasions, when he ran his errands, although it was several months between when I left and when I saw her again, and there had been Christmas besides.
She only came to Merriwa twice that first year I was there, and she said the house looked very well, although she only saw it from the street, of course, sir. I did not take her inside, you understand. And when she visited she brought my little brother and sisters with her, and I bought some treats at the shop and we walked up to sit near the church and she told me of all the news from the property and my father, for he could not be spared from his work.
The Missus let me off on those afternoons, for it was only a couple of times, although that was still a nice kindness on her part.
I never saw Harry again, although I wrote to him, but he did not write back. Perhaps he did not receive my letters – I have always thought that this might have been the case – but it did make me sad to lose my childhood friend.
One day I did think that I saw Blackie tied up in Merriwa, but by then I was a married woman and so perhaps it would not have been proper for me to seek Harry out, and maybe it was not Blackie at all.
I kept the ribbon for many years, as the bluebirds were so pretty.
And so time went on at Merriwa and I would send a letter with Mr Waldock each month. I would tell my mother of the beautiful house and all the details of the fine silver and the curtains and the roses and the velvet chair where the Missus sat in the afternoons, thinking that my mother might like to hear of these pretty things.
And over time, Cook took a liking to Mr Waldock as he often called for letters and he was very respectful of her cooking.
I found I settled into the routine of the house and was happy to be there.
When the Missus was having a good day, she would spend only a little time at the graveside, and then when she came home, she would sometimes ask me to go and sit in the parlour with her and I would polish the silver and she would watch me and ask me to tell her stories about my growing up on the different properties. On occasion she had the thought she would like to press some flowers and so I would sit beside her at the table and we would pull the petals and place them in the sand and smooth the paper and make a picture, and put the petals this way and that. Oh Louisa, she would say, which is your favourite? And so it was that she found something to do with her time, sir, and I think it was good for her.
Later, when the Master came home, well, sometimes, he would admire her handiwork and say how beautiful the flower page was, and she might say, Louisa chose the ribbon, and then he would look to me and give me a little smile. Once or twice he said, Thank you, Louisa, you have made a fine choice, and I knew he was really thanking me for keeping the Missus from being sad.
Then the Missus said she would allow me to make a picture of my own and I said that I would be too afraid to paste anything down, for fear of making a mistake.
Now I remember when I said this the Missus gave a small laugh, and I jumped at the noise, for I had been with her for quite some months by that time and I had never heard her laugh.
The Missus was kind to me in other ways too. She gave me some patterned material for a new dress, saying she had it sitting in the cupboard and it was brightly coloured and she would not ever wear such a colour again, but that it would suit my eyes. And she arranged for Mrs Rainer to sew me a dress, and a white one besides, and she paid for these he
rself.
And sometimes the Missus said I might take three roses from the garden to have beside my bed.
I suppose I became something of a daughter for the Missus, sir, or so I thought at the time.
And another time, when I had been with them for well over two years, the Missus and the Master had a photographer come to the house, which was a very big thing then, sir, as photographers did not often travel out of the big cities. And I do not know if they do now even. But this one came to Merriwa. He took some photographs of the front of the house with the Missus and the Master sitting in the cane chairs on the verandah. The Missus said she wanted another photograph, one with Cook, Bert and me standing in the back, behind their chairs. We had to stay very still for the camera, but it was a nice photograph, and the first one I had ever had taken, and the Missus bought one of the photographs for each of us and said that I could send mine home for my mother so that she may have a remembrance of me.
She also bought one for herself, and placed hers upon the chiffonier in the parlour, and there I sat inside a silver frame, gazing out on all the finery of the house. And I did use to think it odd to dust myself each day, but I used to take up the photograph and look at the picture and marvel at it.
I sometimes wonder where that photograph is now, and if I still sit on a sideboard and look out at a parlour and if someone dusts me.
My mother did not like her photograph, sir, although she did not tell me this until some time after.
We went to church every Sunday and Bert and I would sit in the rows at the back of the church, and the Missus, the Master and Cook would sit up the front. Cook said she would sit with the Missus in case the Missus had one of her fainting spells, although I never saw the Missus have one of these myself.