The Unfortunate Victim

by Greg Pyers

  Late that afternoon, Alice returned from town to find Joe at home making repairs to a chair. With her were four of their girls: Maggie’s half-sisters. In expectation that Maggie might accept her invitation after all, Alice was made anxious seeing him still there.

  ‘Aren’t you going out drinking at the Union?’ she said.

  Joe looked up from his work. He was a short man, broad and muscular, with sandy hair and eyes that were blue from the scantest pigmentation. They lent him a menacing mien, which he was not loath to exploit.

  ‘In good time,’ he said, in a practised tone that let it be known that he considered himself the master of his own life.

  Alice was just as practised at ignoring the implication.

  ‘Of course, Joe. Only let me know when you might be home for dinner.’ She smiled and went inside. Joe followed, hammer in hand.

  ‘I won’t have her in this house, you hear me?’ He didn’t shout the words, which for Alice didn’t make them any the less tiresome.

  The girls were by their mother, watching their father as sheep watch a dog. Alice motioned for them to go outside.

  She turned to her husband. As usual, she would hear him out, so as not to provoke.

  ‘Margaret defied me,’ he said. ‘If she don’t respect the rules of the house, she’s got no place in it. Simple.’

  ‘Why are you still tellin’ me this, Joe? I know this is how you think —’

  ‘Because, woman, I don’t think you give me the support a wife should give her husband. I turn my back, and she’ll be here, laughin’ at me. Both of you, most like. Well, I won’t have it, you hear me?’

  ‘I think you need to calm yourself, Joe. All them angry words do you no good —’

  ‘You went behind my back, you did, Alice, givin’ permission for a marriage that should never be.’

  ‘I did what I thought was right, for my daughter, for all of us. And now she’s happy. Don’t you want her to be happy, Joe? And please, Joe, would you put that hammer down?’

  Joe glared at her a moment, and began to leave the room. At the door, he turned and said, ‘George Stuart is no man for Maggie. He’s twenty years older, whatever he says; soon enough she’ll be alone, with no means of support. How fuckin’ happy will she be then?’

  He turned and kicked open the door; he was going back to work.

  ‘More happy than stayin’ here,’ Alice muttered as she turned her back and began to unload her basket. For heaven’s sake, she thought, the wedding is five weeks past. And to support her husband, she hadn’t even attended it. To think of it, having to miss her own daughter’s wedd —

  Her wrist was suddenly up by her ear, and she was being swung in close. Joe’s eyes and nostrils flared. She flinched from his breath, and braced herself for whatever she had coming.

  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, Sarah Spinks fornicating with Angus Miller all Christmas Eve! Yes, and her with six children and a husband, such a good man he is.

  Sarah could hear the gossip. When blissful thoughts should be stirring her mind on this walk home, imagined conversation drove them out. Well, they can all be damned, she thought. What business is it of theirs? They know nothing! She and Edward had not been matrimonial in a year or more, not since the mine accident. Who would know that two days alone in the dark under collapsed rock could so change a husband? Well, it changed hers. Edward had turned anxious, he jumped at shadows, was feverish in thought, quick to temper. He wasn’t the husband, let alone the man, she’d wed. Who knows the mind of a woman in her place? Who knows that her love could evaporate as fast as a summer puddle? She hadn’t deserted him, and never her children. It’s just that there was Angus now, for the manly company, and where was the harm in that, she kept asking herself.

  She passed by the Stuarts’ house and began down the Perrins Street hill. It was six o’clock, and she ought to have been home an hour ago. Edward would be there from the mine — they all said what a good worker he must be for Roman Eagle to keep him on up top, since he would no longer go below — and the children would be circling for dinner. And thus, with every step closer to home, she felt the weight of the everyday increase.

  The sun was still strong in the west, and she paused a moment to lift her face to it. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that it had been a grand afternoon, and ought not be spoilt by guilty thought …

  She heard their happy squeals before she saw her children. Across the hill they were, all six of them: Anna holding the baby, the others spearing sticks into a fire and shrieking at the spitting sparks. There was a man sitting there, too. He could have been the man she’d seen these past few days on her way into town. She began walking across the rough ground of debris and stumps of the bygone forest. She drew close and saw that it was him, with his imitation sealskin coat and high-domed hat; the man who had given the children sweets. Had she not told Anna that strangers offering treats were not to be trusted! And didn’t Anna know that a fire was not for playing with, and in the summer dry, too!

  She reached the children, and their mood became at once respectfully subdued. She took the baby from Anna and admonished her eldest with a look.

  David Rose twisted at the waist and looked up.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said.

  ‘Good evening.’ She hesitated a moment. This man was polite enough, but so brutish. His face was thick-boned, thick-whiskered, and with eyes dark and deep-set. What was she to make of such a man keeping company with young children? Her young children?

  He tapped his hat rim, nodded, and turned away. Quickly, Sarah marshalled her brood and left him alone.

  6

  SUNDAY, CHRISTMAS DAY

  THREE DAYS BEFORE THE MURDER

  REVEREND WILLIAM ‘CALIFORNIA’ TAYLOR stood tall in the pulpit and held out his arms in a grand gesture of greeting to the early-morning congregation. The murmur died away and, save for sporadic coughs, the crowded church was silent. From a pew at the rear, Maggie Stuart looked up at the preacher, standing there in his black vestment, his bearded head held high, waiting, as if for a sign from his maker that it was time to begin. She felt the gentle squeeze of her husband’s hand around hers. There was such expectation in George’s face, in all the faces around her. And so many people were there, and not just the Wesleyans. George had said on the way in that it was for all people that the Yankee evangelist had come, to save them from the profanity, immorality, and drunkenness that had taken such pernicious hold in the goldfields these past years.

  Still the minister waited. He waited while, outside, cockatoos screeched, even more as a horse cantered by, and yet more as men greeted each other raucously across the road. Only when the faces before him began to turn to one another did he speak, in the rich and resonant baritone one might have expected.

  ‘Twelve murders in twelve years,’ he said. He shook his head and let his chin drop to his chest, as if he had known each and every one of the poor victims as a dear friend. He looked up, and in the gravest cadences, completed the pairing of the awful fact with its starkest interpretation. ‘Friends, you don’t need me to come across the vastness of the great Pacific Ocean to tell you that something is terribly wrong in this beautiful little town.’

  And so began a sermon like no other Maggie had heard. Sermons had always been so dour, incomprehensible, removed from experience. It was for the singing that Maggie came to church. How she loved the singing! Sermons were boiled cabbage; hymns were pudding. But this Christmas Day, this visitor, with his voice, his great gestures, his striding up and down, his vehemence — his charisma — simply insisted that she listen. And believe.

  ‘WE WILL GO TO hell, I think.’

  ‘Then hurry up and climb in here with me, my beautiful Latin lover. You know Lawrence will be home soon, bellowing for his Christmas lunch.’

  ‘And I don’t want to be on the menu!’

  ‘No, but you’re on mine. Now l
et me at you!’

  Serafino Bonetti had been fornicating with the ample, libidinous, and neglected Mrs Lawrence Telford every other day since the day he first met her. That put their affair at a fortnight — the most exhilarating two weeks she’d had since arriving in the town as the dissatisfied wife of a dour country police sergeant. Serafino was young, attentive, and priapic, and conveniently and fortuitously building the extension to the police cottage, where the sergeant lived. They’d had to be careful, with the cottage immediately adjacent to the police camp, though not so careful as to kill the frisson that the risk of discovery brought to their lovemaking. Still, by now there were times that Penelope wouldn’t have minded her husband finding out, if only so she might show herself as a woman of spirit and independence, and not the dutiful, unquestioning accessory he assumed she was.

  ‘Can you sing?’ she asked her man. The timing puzzled him.

  ‘What, now?’

  Mrs Telford chuckled. ‘If you like, though I’d rather you keep your mouth free! No, I mean, do you like to sing? Because if you do, you could join the Philharmonic Society — we’re rehearsing The Messiah for our opening night in March. At the Theatre Royal. It would be fun!’

  Serafino smiled. ‘I will think about it.’

  MARIA MOLESWORTH HAD WORKED at Pitman’s Refreshment Room for more than a year now, on her way, she hoped, to greater things; specifically, a husband and a house. And children, too, of course. But she was nearing thirty, and lately a creeping dread that her dream would never be realised was sinking her into bouts of melancholy. In these troughs, she would dwell on her unchanged circumstances: she was no respectable wife keeping house, but a tart at a goldfields grog shanty. Then sober self-examination would pull her back from the lip of despair, and she would find comfort in acknowledging that at least Pitman’s presented her with a steady stream of prospects, and fixed though her lot seemed, her world could change with the very next customer. And until it did, she had room and board, and was safe. She earned good money, too; no one knew better than she how to pout and preen a way into a punter’s purse.

  Christmas Day was a busy day for Pitman’s, and to cater for the holiday patronage, the house standards of beer and whiskey had been augmented with grog of a more eclectic taste, such as absinthe, champagne, claret, and sherry. Yet, with limited kitchen facilities, the menu kept to its standard offerings of meats, bread, and cheese — the kind of tucker most amenable to the palate of the drunkard. And indeed the west end of Albert Street was the haunt of the drunkard, with Pitman’s on the West Street corner, the Union Hotel a few doors along, and the West of England Hotel across the road. These establishments didn’t so much compete as collude for trade in their luring of clientele from other drinking precincts of the town. Cut-price liquor and pretty young women with a willing disposition were the chief enticements of this informal cartel.

  Nonetheless, as a self-interested businessman, Pitman strove always to give his modest premises an edge on his larger neighbours, and so he invested in women he fancied were a little more willing, if not prettier, than those next door or across the road. For this Christmas season, he’d secured the services of Ellen and Susannah. The girls arrived mid-morning from Castlemaine, saucy-dressed and painted. Pitman did the introductions.

  ‘This is Maria,’ he said. ‘Our grande dame. Ain’t that so, Maria?’

  Maria stretched her mouth to approximate a smile. For her boss, it was adequate. He turned back to the recruits.

  ‘Any questions?’

  They shook their heads, but Pitman was already gesturing to Maria that the girls were in her hands.

  WITH HIS CHRISTMAS LUNCH eaten, his wife out, and his afternoon entirely at his disposal, Sergeant Lawrence Telford sat himself on a chair at the front of his residence, the police cottage, and searched through The Argus of the 22nd. There was something of the poking at an aching tooth about this, he knew, but he wasn’t going to take on faith the report of ‘brilliant detective work in Melbourne’ that Tandy was going on about. Tandy was barely a constable and barely knew Otto Berliner, much less how pompous and difficult an officer he’d been in the few years he’d endured at Daylesford. It was the cold that Berliner said his health couldn’t abide. Ha! Some detective. And there was never a hair out of place; that said enough. Telford scanned the newsprint, muttering, ‘Forgery … forgery …’ He found it.

  ‘Apprehension of a Forger of Bank Notes,’ the headline read. ‘Patrick Lennan was charged with committing forgeries on the Bank of New South Wales to the amount of £10,000 …’ Telford swallowed, resentful in anticipation of what was sure to follow:

  Detective Otto Berliner … stated that for two months he had been keeping watch over Lennan, who had been accustomed to change his residence every seven or eight days, and his style of dress — sometimes in blue shirt and trousers, or in a suit of black.

  There was nothing brilliant about basic surveillance. Telford felt the tension within him ease a little, and read on:

  Lennan had approached engraver Troedl of Collins Street, to make engraved plates for the forging of £5 notes. When Troedl informed the police, Berliner conceived to work in a disguise of wig, whiskers, and spectacles as assistant to Mr Troedl. Under Berliner’s direction, Troedl completed the plates and handed them, with two thousand forged notes, to Lennan, with Berliner witness to the whole transaction. It is supposed that Lennan intended to take the spurious notes up the country and buy gold with them. It will thus be seen that Detective Berliner has saved a great number of people from being victims of a most impudent fraud, and it is satisfactory to know that the accused was not able to get rid of any of the notes, for the detectives have not lost an hour in watching him since they were put upon the scent. Detective Berliner has actually been in his company several times, and this circumstance induced him to adopt the clever disguise …

  Telford folded the paper, placed it on the adjacent seat, and decided that an aching tooth really ought to be left be.

  7

  MONDAY, BOXING DAY

  TWO DAYS BEFORE THE MURDER

  PEARSON THOMPSON STRODE ALONG the sweeping and newly tree-lined gravel drive of Wombat Park, feeling conflicted, for it brought crisply to mind the day he’d first walked Montpellier, his father’s estate, as its ambitious new owner. He’d been just twenty-six, home free from chambers at Gray’s Inn, with a head full of vision and drive — and a fat inheritance — to see his vision realised. And how! To think, he was hailed as ‘The Maker of Cheltenham’, no less. False modesty it would be to dispute the accolade, for the lovely gardens, the grand buildings, the wonderful entertainments had made Cheltenham a town of wide renown. It may have been the father who discovered the spa, but it was the son who turned it to gold! So, yes, he was conflicted, for here he was now, an aged man of very modest means, back practising law in an outpost of empire — a spa town, too, just to render the comparison all the more odious — confronted, nay, taunted, by this reminder of what he once was and once had.

  At the end of his tormented walk, he found the sun-bathed lawn by William Stanbridge’s splendid house comfortably populated with townsfolk gathered there at the owner’s pleasure to picnic. A most convivial scene it was, with women seated on chairs and blankets, men standing and drinking by a beer tent, children chasing one another, and dogs wandering for scraps. Beyond, people strolled along meandering paths through tidy young gardens, and in an adjacent paddock, a football match was on. All this diverse activity took place amid jaunty tunes being played by a bright little band set up beneath an ancient eucalypt, a relic of a time long gone when another people gathered here. Pearson Thompson stood at the edge of the action, awkward in his aloneness and searching across the scene for someone he might talk to.

  THE BALL BOUNCED FREE, Constable Robert Tandy swooped and gathered it, shoved an opponent aside, and ran on to kick it high and long between two trees serving as goal posts. The small crowd of spec
tators cheered — none more enthusiastically than pretty young Susannah, there to be seen with Ellen, her friend and colleague from Pitman’s. Tandy strutted for his admirer, and reached out a hand to pull to his feet the player he had flattened.

  ‘Nothing broken?’ he said.

  David Rose reassured the policeman with a shrug that all was in working order. Tandy righted Rose nonetheless — a gesture he knew would be sure to impress those at the fence.

  ON A BLANKET BY a line of shrubs at the back of the busy lawn, Maggie Stuart sat with Louisa Goulding. A neighbour in West Street, Elizabeth Shier, came by with bottles of mineral water, taken from a dray put there by their host for the refreshment of all. She saw Maggie and offered one. Maggie took it.

  ‘You must look after that lovely complexion of yours, Maggie. The sun’s fierce today, so drink plenty.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Shier. That’s very thoughtful of you.’

  Mrs Shier smiled. ‘Your mother’s here,’ she said. ‘Over by the beer tent.’

  Maggie nodded, and felt the familiar gnaw in her stomach that Joe might be with her. She looked about. The lawn was crowded, and as Joe was likely to be in the company of drinking companions all afternoon, she decided she would just stay put and enjoy the day. Besides, Louisa was with her for company, and now, two more arrived to share their patch of lawn.

  ‘Hello, Maggie Stuart! How lovely to see you.’ Mrs Buckley and her husband were precisely the kind of company Maggie might have wished for. They were elderly and respectable, people with whom she could feel safe.