The Ink Stain

by Tom Keneally

  Hannah squinted at the cramped print. Why did it have to be so small? Why couldn’t they just add a few more pages, and then witter on as much as they liked about livestock prices and who had married whom?

  ‘Paper costs money,’ said Monsarrat, when she voiced her complaint.

  ‘So do rugs. And we will have to replace that one if you don’t stop pacing.’

  They had returned to their lodgings for a restorative pot of tea, of which both felt the need if they were to face the afternoon. Miss Douglas was out, so Hannah had the run of the kitchen. And as a guest, she felt justified in slicing off slivers of bread and cheese she had found in the pantry, wrapping them in oilcloth and handing them to Mr Monsarrat, with stern instructions to eat them over the rest of the day. As it was, the man was in danger of falling between the planks of a dock.

  After another dozen or so circuits around the room, Monsarrat stopped by the mantelpiece and slapped his palm on it. ‘What is he playing at?’

  ‘Duchamp? You don’t really need me to answer that, do you?’

  ‘No. No, it was rhetorical.’

  Hannah withdrew a little notebook from her pocket, with a pencil stub wedged between pages that were covered in lists of words. ‘Spell that, please.’

  ‘Dear lady, I admire your commitment to broadening your vocabulary, but I’m not sure we have time for it just now.’

  ‘You had better hurry up, then.’

  He sighed, stopped pacing and spelled the word. ‘It means I don’t want an answer. I was asking for effect.’

  ‘Ridiculous reason to ask a question. Mr Eveleigh did warn you the colonel would make it difficult.’

  ‘There’s a difference between difficult and impossible. Before you decide to whack me, yes, I am well aware my usefulness as an investigator would not be possible were it not for you. But that reputation will be shredded before too long if things keep going as they are, despite your perspicacity.’

  Hannah held the pencil up again, but a rare look of irritation from Monsarrat made her lower it.

  ‘You don’t think Duchamp’s involved in some way, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, he certainly has no reason to mourn Mr Hallward’s passing,’ said Monsarrat. ‘But if he was involved, surely he would have been better off ensuring that the investigation was given to someone he trusts – he could ultimately find a scapegoat or announce that it’s not possible to solve the crime.’

  ‘One of those wrinkles, isn’t it?’ said Hannah. She detested it when facts refused to fit neatly with one another, and there was always a reason why they didn’t.

  ‘It’s a wrinkle we will have to set aside, for now. Here, what do you think of this?’ He drew a folded letter from his breast pocket and handed it to her.

  She glanced at it, and looked up. ‘What can Eveleigh do, from this distance?’

  ‘In all honesty, I don’t know. But it’s the only thing I can think of.’

  She unfolded the paper. In Monsarrat’s elegant hand, it read:

  Sir,

  I have the honour to inform you that your fears have been realised and exceeded in relation to the behaviour of a certain person. I already find myself at a possible impasse in the matter of the murder of Mr Henry Hallward. There are certain permissions – access to sites and people and documents – which I have been denied. In my view, these are essential to the progress of the investigation.

  I am aware this was, to some degree, expected. However, due to the importance of my task, and the extreme nature of the obstacles placed in my path, I wonder if I may prevail upon you to remind Colonel Edward Duchamp of the need for his cooperation in reaching a speedy conclusion which is, after all, in the best interest of the colony, and in his best interests as one of its foremost leaders.

  I look forward to your response, and remain your most obedient servant,

  Hugh Monsarrat

  ‘I know what your value is to Eveleigh,’ she said. ‘He can send you into the bushes like a lord sending dogs into a hunt, and he trusts you will come back with a grouse – without having to trouble him.’

  ‘Oh, you’re comparing me to a dog now?’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat, this is not like you. You know I am not. I am simply saying, Eveleigh told you this would happen. What can he do?’

  ‘Eveleigh has been sitting in Parramatta like an owl on a roof for years. He knows a lot more than he lets on, I am certain of it, and he may know someone who can intercede on my behalf. In any case, I have a right to his support.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Not as far as he sees it,’ said Hannah. ‘You have a right to nothing, not even your freedom. Eveleigh could have you back in Port Macquarie with a pen stroke. As far as he is concerned, your job is to be useful.’ She flipped through her little notebook until she found the word she was looking for. ‘Unobtrusively useful.’

  Monsarrat stalked over to her and took back the letter. ‘I will become obtrusive soon enough if letters travel up the river from Duchamp, gleefully complaining about the time it is taking me to conclude the investigation.’

  ‘Send it, then. But do not be surprised, Mr Monsarrat, if the only letter that comes back is a rebuke to you rather than Duchamp.’

  Chapter 3

  The Colonial Flyer landed on Monsarrat’s desk in Parramatta every day. And really he would rather it didn’t. He had welcomed the arrival of Hallward’s paper, but had borne a grudge against the Flyer ever since it had thundered that Grace O’Leary should be executed for a crime she had not committed. Most in the press had been clamouring for her arrest for the murder of the Parramatta Female Factory’s odious superintendent, but Mobbs had been particularly vicious, calling her a soulless harpy whose removal from the colony and the world would immediately improve both. Monsarrat had certainly never expected to be standing outside the wooden-gated archway that led into the courtyard of the building where it was published.

  Monsarrat had walked here over rutted dirt streets without the neat borders of those near Government House, past low wooden houses in indifferent repair, piles of refuse rotting outside them. Women sat on porches feeding babies or playing with their children, or they stood on the corners touting a less innocent kind of fun. ‘Share a dram with a woman, would you?’ some called, raising a bottle like a temptation to Monsarrat and any other man who passed. There were no convict work gangs in The Rocks – perhaps the government did not feel the place worthy of a bonded workforce’s attention, with its jagged, inhospitable foreshore – but many of them would live here, or try to, once their sentences expired.

  Handcarts far outnumbered coaches, and they contained vegetables, rags or wood. Smallholders had set up stalls wherever they felt like it; such a practice was probably against colonial regulations, but no one here seemed to mind. One merchant, however, seemed unsure of what he was selling. The man had a rasping voice and the crooked nose of a boxer. His hair, which had long since deserted his head, might have been red judging by his grey-flecked beard and the remains of old sunburn blisters on his face. ‘Jewellery!’ he yelled. ‘Fine watches! Sidearms! Musket balls!’

  Monsarrat was sorely tempted to look at the weapons, perhaps ask a price. But acquiring a gun might lead to him firing it, and his freedom would race away with the shot. In any case, he didn’t know how the merchant had come by his odd collection of merchandise, but he probably hadn’t done so honestly.

  He had similar doubts about the honesty of the man he was about to see. He would very much have liked Mrs Mulrooney’s company, but she was otherwise engaged. As they had left Government House that morning, Duchamp’s sister had darted across the entrance hall. She had moved at such speed that her skirts, rustling against the marble floor, sounded as though they were urging the partygoers to silence. ‘You must walk with me in the new public gardens,’ she had said to Mrs Mulrooney. ‘They’re delightful. Shall we say this afternoon? I always enjoy a stroll after a garden party, especially if I’ve overindulged in the cakes.’ She had smiled, given Mrs Mulrooney’s hand
a last little pat, and disappeared back into the throng.

  So Monsarrat now had an unsavoury prospect ahead of him: meeting alone with the man who had argued for the need to impose state-sanctioned strangulation on the woman Monsarrat hoped to marry.

  Through the wooden gates, the courtyard was littered with the usual detritus of industry: carts, buckets, coalscuttles, hay for the horses that delivered the Flyer’s brand of morality throughout the colony, and more paper than Monsarrat had ever seen in one place, rolls and rolls of it. He was struck, for a moment, by the power wielded by Gerald Mobbs – the power to decide what truths or lies the blank paper would reflect by tomorrow.

  Monsarrat lifted his fist and hammered, a little too loudly, on a small wooden door set into a stone wall. It was opened by a hulking man in shirtsleeves, his index finger stained black. ‘Most people know not to knock in the afternoon. Not when we’re trying to get the edition together.’

  ‘I won’t keep you, then,’ said Monsarrat. ‘It’s been suggested I seek out Gerald Mobbs.’

  ‘Suggested by whom?’

  Already irritated by his peremptory treatment at Government House, Monsarrat was stung by this challenge. He drew himself up, staring at the man for a moment in silence. ‘Colonel Edward Duchamp, as it happens.’

  The name did not inspire the awe he had hoped for, but it did make the man open the door a little wider. ‘Mobbs’s upstairs – just back from a job, so he says – with cake crumbs on his waistcoat,’ the man said, inclining his head towards a rickety set of steps near the corner of the room. ‘Don’t touch anything on your way through.’

  The cavernous room was filled with rows of large, slanted tables, where men were selecting tiny blocks carved with letters and dropping them into frames. Monsarrat leaned over to see if he could discern the story that was being composed for printing, but the man who had opened the door called out, ‘You distract these lads, you’ll pay for any delays. And it costs.’

  An iron press crouched in a corner, silent for now, waiting to be fed.

  ‘An impressive machine,’ Monsarrat said.

  ‘Two hundred pages an hour,’ the man said proudly. ‘Chronicle can’t match it.’

  Certainly not now, Monsarrat thought. ‘May I ask,’ he said to the man, ‘after the shooting of Hallward, how were spirits round here?’

  ‘Not much love between those two, but none of us felt any joy at it. No one likes the thought of someone going around shooting newspapermen. Mr Mobbs was very affected by it. Led us in a little prayer, and he’s not a praying man.’

  Monsarrat made his way through the room towards the stairs to the first storey. They didn’t seem as though they’d be up to supporting the weight of a man like the one at the door, but they supported Monsarrat well enough, delivering him into a room full of men scratching at pieces of paper. The air was thick with pipe smoke, and with the noise of men raising their voices to be heard over their work. One of them stopped mid-yell to nod towards the wooden door behind which sat Sydney’s only remaining newspaper editor. There was no answer to Monsarrat’s knock, so he nudged the door gently with the toe of his shoe, and it opened halfway.

  ‘If you go to the trouble of opening a ruddy door, at least have the sense to open it all the way,’ said a rasping voice with a flat, northern English accent.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Monsarrat, doing as he was told. ‘I’ve been sent by –’

  The man held up his finger for silence, hastily scribbled something on a piece of paper, then looked up and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Edward Duchamp sent me. Well, his office did, anyhow. On the matter of the murder of Mr Hallward.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I saw you this morning. Duchamp must have whisked you away so quickly we didn’t meet. Better come in then, eh.’ The man gestured to a rickety chair in front of his desk. Like his staff, he was dressed in shirtsleeves. Unlike them, he wore a neatly tied silk cravat under his topiary of a moustache – a far different proposition than a convict beard that grew through lack of intervention, it spoke of intent and precision, the imposition of will. The rasp in his voice was, in all likelihood, due to the pipe smoke that seemed thicker in this office than in the area outside. ‘So what have you to do with Hallward’s death?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m looking into the matter.’

  ‘You’re not a constable.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So a yard of pump water, dressed as – what, a clerk or a cleric? – walks into my office and tells me he is investigating a murder, in place of the police. At the request of the governor’s office. What is to be made of that?’

  ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say,’ said Monsarrat. Behind the words, he could sense tomorrow’s editorial being composed in Mobbs’s head.

  ‘You could, though. Does the government not trust the constabulary? Is this something a little sensitive, shall we say, that they’d rather be handled discreetly?’

  ‘As far as I’m aware, sir, they simply want to find out who killed him.’

  ‘I’m not that desperate for readers, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ Mobbs said with a smile, perhaps expecting an answering chuckle, which did not come.

  ‘Yet the Chronicle has not published an edition since the day of Mr Hallward’s murder,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Whether or not you are desperate for more readers, you must certainly have them now.’

  ‘Not worth it at this cost. No matter how much I disliked the man.’

  ‘Oh really? Professional jealousy?’

  Mobbs shook his head, his jaw clenching. ‘He was going to bring me down with him!’

  ‘How would he have managed that?’

  ‘He loved stirring hornets’ nests. It was a sport to him. And he most enjoyed stirring the governor. Every day he attacked the man – treatment of convicts, land grants, appointment of magistrates. If it rained, it was the governor’s fault, and also if it didn’t.’

  ‘And how did that make you a target?’

  ‘News must travel slowly up the river,’ said Mobbs. ‘You’ve not heard about the licensing, then, in that scab of a town you come from?’

  This disdain from a man who had tried to meddle in the affairs of that town – to bring death down on a woman he had never met – sent a pulse of anger through Monsarrat. The shadow in his mind opened an eye. He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to tamp it down.

  ‘Yes, news can occasionally get stranded on the riverbank before it makes its way into Parramatta. Licensing, you say?’

  ‘Governor Darling wants all newspapers to be licensed by the state. It would make us little more than pamphlets, tracts proclaiming the glory of the Crown and its representative here, interspersed with the occasional notification on changes to regulations and so forth. Not that it would matter – no one will buy newspapers anyway if the governor gets his way.’

  ‘Why not? If you’re all struggling under the same conditions.’

  ‘Because the governor also wants to charge four pence duty. You really think someone is going to pay a day’s wages for a propaganda sheet?’

  ‘I see.’

  Mobbs let out a bitter laugh, stood up and moved over to a grimy window. ‘Within half a year. And all because Hallward couldn’t help himself. I will never – never – understand why he came all this way to wreck, not to build. I chose this place, Mr Monsarrat. Wanted a chance to be in at the start. God saw I was the man for it. But Hallward collected enemies as easily as this window collects dust – practically anyone with any influence. He worked on the jealous assumption that all wealth and power are ill-gotten, conferred in clandestine meetings, obliging the recipients to favours that work against the good of the people.’

  ‘He believed there was a degree of corruption, then,’ Monsarrat said.

  ‘With the fervour of a zealot. He saw it wherever he looked, whether it was there or not.’

  ‘And do you think, on occasion, he was right?’

  ‘Who’s to say? But he certainly spent a decent amount of time in prison. O
n the past few occasions, the jury was dismissed. Couldn’t come to an agreement. Odd, given that they were military men, and that the injured party was the governor.’

  ‘The governor?’

  ‘Oh yes. Governor Darling has had a busy few months since he arrived, that fellow. Arrested Hallward over a story on the mistreatment of some soldiers. I was surprised by that, actually, because I’d also criticised Darling for it, just with less poison than Hallward applied.’

  ‘And this last time?’

  ‘Was for an editorial on licensing. The governor doesn’t appreciate being called ignorant. No, Hallward was his own worst enemy.’

  ‘Well, that’s clearly not the case, as he didn’t shoot himself in the head.’

  ‘No, and I wish you the best of luck in trying to identify the gunmen in such a crowded field. I’ve been going over my own editorials, trying to ascertain whether someone might wish to plant a ball in my own head.’ Mobbs shivered, moved quickly away from the window.

  ‘If you fear Hallward may not have been the only editor to anger someone to the point of murder, the news of his death must have been disturbing. May I ask, where were you when it happened?’

  ‘It was – when – around ten in the morning, yes? That morning I was at the Colonial Secretary’s Office, talking to a clerk. Boring fellow. Wanted to show me his new file room. I took notes, no intention of doing a story, but couldn’t hurt to keep the man on-side. That’s where I found out about it. News travels fast in administrative circles. A messenger arrived, blurted the news out to the chief clerk. Well, I raced back here quick as I could.

  ‘If you want me to name the chief targets for the bile that came from the tip of Hallward’s pen, half of them were at the garden party: businessmen, pastoralists. Hallward had written that the governor’s toadies were being elevated over the competent, and that the colony would ultimately die as a result, murdered by cronyism. Perhaps, Mr Monsarrat, that cronyism began its murder spree with Hallward.’