‘He found a letter saying that? After all this time?’
‘Apparently it was among some family papers he was sorting recently.’ Mungo smiled sardonically. ‘Naturally he had no idea of its existence. Now it has come to light he is anxious that the injustice should be cleared up straight away.’
Knowing Arthur Dunstable as she did Catherine found it hard to believe. ‘You’ve seen this letter?’
‘Better than that,’ Mungo said. ‘I dictated it to him.’
She stared incredulously, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps both.
‘I thought that proving you had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice would ease the path for a pardon,’ he said.
‘But why should he do that? If I was hanged he’d buy tickets.’
‘True. But for a consideration he was willing to oblige. Seeing the choice was that or bankruptcy.’
‘Consideration?’
‘I paid him.’
‘How much?
‘Enough. He will be able to continue his pursuit of Miss Alicia Delamere. Hook that fish and his troubles will be over.’
‘Until he has run through her fortune too.’
‘Very true.’
‘Let’s hope she leads him a merry dance.’
‘I believe we can bet on that,’ Mungo said.
‘And there will be a pardon?’
‘No question. London has to approve but that should be a foregone conclusion. My understanding is the petition is on its way now. A few months and we shall get confirmation.’
‘And the money?’
‘A small consideration to my friend at the Governor’s House. Otherwise I see no problem.’
‘All these considerations… Will there by any money left?’ Her eyes glinted at him as she smiled. ‘After you have finished handing out what I think we agreed would be my money?’
‘One or two pennies perhaps.’ He took her hands. ‘Darling Cat, you’ll be the richest woman in Tasmania.’
‘It’s too big a notion for me,’ she said. ‘I can’t get hold of it at all. Mrs Byfield will be that vexed.’
‘Mrs Byfield will be your dearest friend,’ he corrected her. ‘You’ll find money has that effect also.’
‘That one a friend?’ Cat said. ‘I’d boil her down for glue, given half a chance.’ A sudden doubt stabbed. ‘Nothing can go wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
She knew he would continue to mourn his two lost men but for the moment and in public he had put regrets behind him. She who had experienced the trauma of the mutiny and Dirk Giles’s death knew she had to help him in this, as he had helped her in so much.
‘You really are the most marvellous man,’ she said.
‘I have often thought the same. And what is my reward?’
Her smile was a fire warming them both. She brought all Somerset into her voice. ‘Why, Mr Jackson, what can ’ee ’ave in mind?’
He told her.
‘My dear life,’ she told the ceiling. ‘Insatiable, that’s what ’ee be.’
But sounded very comfortable about it.
FORTY-SEVEN
Arthur Dunstable was smashing glass.
Systematically and deliberately he was prowling around his dining room picking up random pieces of china and glassware and flinging them against the walls while his terrified servants cowered in the kitchen. Had Maria Hack been with him he would have wanted to work off his anger on her too but Maria was long gone and he hadn’t brought in a replacement for fear of queering his pitch with Alicia Delamere. He daren’t risk that.
He picked up a cut glass decanter and weighed it in his hand before replacing it on the sideboard. No. His rages came and went. Now his frenzy had come off the boil. Time to sit down and think what he must do.
He sat at the head of the table and shouted for rum. When it came he drank straight from the bottle.
‘And tell one of the girls to clear up this rubbish.’
He drank, thinking. At least the arrangement he had made with Mungo Jackson – the Honourable Mungo Jackson, he thought, teeth bared – would keep him in funds until he had secured the Delamere filly but the insufferable arrogance of the man, laying down terms to someone whose ancestor had fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth… That was what had set him off. To be spoken to as though he were no better than a groom! But however much he had resented it he’d had to swallow his pride. The fact was that Jackson had offered him money and without money he had no future. Get Delamere to the altar and all would be well but in the meantime he could only work off his humiliation on the furniture.
He knew why Jackson was doing it, of course: all the colony knew of his ridiculous liaison with the Haggard bitch. That was the real source of Arthur’s fury. Was he to be bedevilled by that damned woman all his life? Twice he had tried to destroy her because of what she had done to him at their first meeting. What he had intended as an hour of casual dalliance had become an ongoing nightmare. Twice he had hoped to see her hanged; twice she had escaped. Dear God, she was as slippery as a basket of eels! And then had come the catastrophe of Antares and the destruction of his dreams of vast wealth. When he heard that the marine officer had said the pirates had been led by a masked man and there had been a woman with him, his suspicions had been confirmed. Cat Haggard again!
He ground his teeth. He would ruin her if it was the last thing he did. But how? The bottle was half empty by the time he came up with a solution. He looked at it every way. This time nothing would go wrong. His mistake in the past had been trying to do everything himself. This time he would handle it differently. He would get other people involved. This time, he told himself, he was on a winner.
FORTY-EIGHT
Joanne
‘Colin! I was just going to phone you.’
‘Then maybe it’s just as well I got in first.’
I listened, frowning. The grey voice didn’t sound like my Colin but a much older man.
‘What’s happened?’ Because I knew without his telling me that something had.
‘Listen, I won’t be home for supper tonight.’
‘Is that all? I thought it was something serious.’
Silence.
‘It isn’t serious, is it?’
‘I have to go away.’ Still the strange voice. Cold too, I thought.
‘Colin, what’s wrong?’
‘Something’s come up. I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it now.’
‘But –’
‘I’m sorry, Joanne. I have to go.’
‘Go where?’
There was no one there. He had rung off and not even thought to ask what I had been going to phone him about. I sat with the dead phone in my hand, apprehension in my heart.
Not good enough.
I tried to text him. Nothing. His phone was switched off so I rang the Governor’s House and spoke to the switchboard.
‘Gov…ernor’s House…’
Like a choir of angels.
‘Mr McNeil, please.’
‘One moment…’
‘Can I help you?’
A voice I did not recognise; getting through to Colin was like trying to speak to God.
‘I wish to speak to Mr McNeil.’
‘I am sorry. He’s not here.’
‘Can you please tell me when you expect him back?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say.’
‘A state secret, is it?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ The voice sounded offended.
‘I need to speak to him urgently.’
‘I am sorry.’ She did not sound sorry at all. ‘If you would care to leave a message?’
‘No, I would not care to leave a message. It is confidential. It is also very urgent. I need to get hold of him without delay.’
‘I’m afraid that is not possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr McNeil is on his way to Brisbane.’
Brisbane?
‘Do you have a number for him there? An address? It is real
ly very urgent.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You remind me of an American Civil War general,’ I said in my nastiest voice.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Stonewall Jackson. I doubt you will have heard of him.’
‘If he phones in, do you want me to give him a message?’
The voice was cool but who could blame her? I hastened to mend my manners.
‘Perhaps you could ask him to contact me? Joanne? He has the number.’
I put down the phone. I walked across the room and out on to the terrace. I looked at the sun-shot sea but it gave no comfort. Brisbane. Why on earth would the personal secretary to the governor of Tasmania need to go to Brisbane? Without an explanation and in such a rush?
I had thought we had been as close as two people could be. I had thought…
Never mind what I had thought. Now I saw that we’d just met, that we’d shared almost nothing of our pasts, that we’d not defined our future. What future?
I walked, the wind tugging at my hair.
What was it the Yanks were supposed to have said when they were here in World War Two?
Wham, bang, thank you ma’am…
I shouted out loud at myself, the waves, at all the sun-bright day.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’
I went back. I stayed in all day. The phone did not ring. Sleep, that night, was a problem.
The next day was Monday, a normal working day. I phoned in, spoke to Helen and asked her to reschedule my lectures for the next three days. I then spoke to Dick Cottle.
‘I’m going away for a few days.’
The sigh of a masterful man much put upon by his subordinate. ‘What are you playing at now, Joanne?’
‘I’m playing at finding your crown for you,’ I said in my most disagreeable voice.
‘The crown? Oh I see. Have there been some developments? Anything you want to share with me?’
‘You’ll be the first to know.’
Where had I heard that before? With the directions safely in my overnight case I, like Colin, flew north. Further north than Colin. Of whom I had instructed myself to think no more.
* * *
Proserpine airport was little and hot. I rented a car and drove between paddocks of sugar cane into the shabby little town. I checked into the motel, changed my clothes and went out to reconnoitre, heading along the Airlie Beach road. The turning to Conway Beach wasn’t far. Timber and more sugar cane and the occasional house and, at the end of the winding, bumpy road, a little township of shacks with a thin line of trees and the beach beyond.
The tide was out. In the distance sand yachts were speeding over the beach’s flat surface. I set out to walk and battalions of tiny blue crabs marched with me. I came to the end of the beach and clambered over the rocks. The track went on. There were mangrove swamps and a low promontory pointing into the sea. In the distance an island lay close inshore. I had brought binoculars but in the heat haze could see nothing. Was the promontory Lambs Point? Was that the island where one hundred and fifty-seven years ago my ancestor had hidden the crown of Muar? No way to tell.
It was too late to explore properly. I went back to the motel and had a shower. I sat in the bar and knocked back several drinks, one of which was bought me by a personable man called Oscar who in the most charming way imaginable made it clear that he had designs on my virtue, such as it was. The drinks did nothing for me. Later Oscar knocked on my door. I told him as kindly as I could that I was not in the market. He was very nice about it. Later I rang my home voicemail to see if there were any messages. My hand was damp on the phone as I waited but there was nothing. Maybe I should have said yes to Oscar after all. For a few seconds I even thought of going to his room and saying I’d changed my mind but mercifully thinking about it was as far as it got. Frisky filly though she might be, Joanne was not ready to switch riders just yet.
The next day, very early, I set out. I had decided not to retrace Cat Haggard’s steps, given I was only guessing at them anyway. Instead I drove to Shute Harbour and caught the ferry to Hideaway Island. On the surface it had changed a lot since the nineteenth century, with the addition of a pub and shops designed to trap the tourists, but in its fundamentals it was the same. There were those unique hills, sharp against the sky. The article had also said the two tallest peaks were connected by a horizontal ridge that made them look like a throne. That was there too. One in the eye for Poxon the well-known Prince of Vile. Walls of Jerusalem? Give me a break! Only four thousand kilometres out.
I thought of my interpretation of Cat Haggard’s directions.
TREASURE HIDDEN IN RIGHT CAVE CLOSE TO CLOUDS
I walked past a couple of upmarket houses and began to climb towards the highest of the four peaks. There were gum trees and dust. It was a hard slog and soon I was sweating like the proverbial pig. Or maybe a wombat, if wombats sweated. I came out at the foot of a sandstone cliff. It looked so unstable that I thought a dirty look might set off a landslide. It wasn’t vertical but not far off it, its face deeply eroded by the tropical rains.
I told myself I was a lunatic even to think of climbing it. I was still telling myself so quarter of an hour later, when I was halfway up. There was no shortage of openings in the weathered face but none you could call a cave. A moment’s terror as my foot slipped. I went on, sweating more than ever. Another opening. Another blank. I was very near the summit now. Don’t say I’d done all this for nothing.
A second opening, narrow and dark. Oh God. Listen to my heart. I squeezed through the entrance. Darker than dark. Luckily I had brought a torch. The cave ran back into the mountain. At its far end was a ledge, on the ledge a box. My hands were trembling so much I had a battle to undo the clasp. The lid was stiff. Small wonder after so long a time. I wrestled but managed eventually to force it open. Lord Whatsit’s excitement at the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb had nothing on the way I was feeling now. I looked inside.
Oh God.
FORTY-NINE
Catherine
Catherine and Mungo had made love and now lay on the bed side by side, watching through the window of her bedroom as the dawn light came flowing through the trees that lined the river. It was a time of peace, of sleeping nerves and contentment. A time, too, for confidences.
‘I want you to meet a friend of mine,’ Mungo said.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Lady Harriet Duffield.’
‘I never heard of her,’ Catherine said.
‘She is a very old lady, the widow of Sir George Duffield.’
‘I never heard of him either.’
‘Sir George was one-time Lieutenant Governor of the colony. He died in office at the end of the forties. I called on her on my way to town yesterday and she expressed an interest in meeting you.’
‘You’re up to something,’ Catherine said. She turned on her elbow, her breast pressing against his arm, her eyes close to his. ‘Why would this Lady Pom-Dee-Pom want to meet me?’
‘Keep doing that and you may never find out,’ he said. While his free hand caressed her.
‘My dear life!’ She smacked his hand away. ‘Don’t you ever get enough?’
‘Are you complaining?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ But captured his hand in hers, all the same. ‘Tell me what you’re talking about. Please, Mungo. Why should this old lady want to meet me?’
‘Because she needs your help in running a charity she is anxious to set up. To assist orphan children,’ he added helpfully. ‘I thought it was a cause that would appeal to you.’
She thought she might have sulked, had it been her nature. ‘I declare you are the most aggravating man! Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about or not?’
‘All right, then.’ He sat up in bed while his left arm enfolded her, bringing her dark head to rest against his shoulder. ‘You said the other day you could have all the money in the world and that still wouldn’t get our society ladies to accept you as one of them.’<
br />
‘I remember.’
‘And I said in that case I would have to do something about it.’
Now Catherine was listening hard.
‘Lady Harriet is a formidable old lady but as widow of a former Lieutenant Governor she still has a huge influence on our society. As Lady Harriet’s protégée you would find the ladies’ reluctance to accept you would vanish overnight.’
It would be her greatest victory, to be accepted as their equal by those who had looked down on her. But Catherine kept a chain on her hopes. ‘Why should she be willing to make me her proto what you said?’
‘Her protégée? In a word, money.’
‘You bribed her?’
He laughed. ‘Nothing so crude. Lady Harriet is old. As I said. She had quarrelled with her family so when Sir Edward died she decided to remain here rather than return to England. But she has lived longer than she ever expected and now finds herself short of funds. The patron of the charity will receive a reasonable stipend but a lady who is over ninety years old cannot be expected to do the work involved in its administration.’
‘You want me to run things for her?’
‘Not alone. There would be a small committee. Yourself and one other. And a paid assistant to do the actual work.’
‘Who would be the other committee member?’
‘I thought Mrs Byfield.’
‘Mrs Byfield?’ Catherine reared up so tall on the bed that she might have done herself an injury had the ceiling been a little lower. ‘Why do you want to get her involved? She hates me!’
‘That is why. She is the wife of a senior official and social status is important to her. Lady Harriet Duffield ranks equally with the governor’s wife as doyenne of our colonial society. Believe me, Mrs Byfield would kill to serve on a committee under Lady Harriet’s patronage. Approving of you would be a small price for her to pay for such a privilege. And with Mrs Byfield supporting you, even Mrs Talbot would have to go along.’
Catherine twisted her neck to stare up at him. ‘You arranged all this for me?’
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