Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “Maybe,” Tommy offered, for what else could he say? “He thinks the world of you, Dee, honestly, but the bush is all he knows.”

  There were other things he would have liked to tell her. That she was as close to a partner as a man like Jack had, that he didn’t see other women anymore, not even a brothel these days. From summer to summer he lived chaste as a monk then was hers for a couple of months. But to imagine him in the city, a house, a regular job . . . Jack would rather find cattle work somewhere, anywhere, Dee or no Dee, than confine himself here. Of course, he couldn’t tell her any of it. None of this was his to say. Dee stirred her soup thoughtfully, a rueful smile. She asked after his own plans, he lied and said he had none, and she seemed to understand it was better for both of them if she didn’t know.

  At the bank, like a parent visiting a sick child in the hospital, he demanded to see his money, as if to check it was still alive. The bemused clerk tried explaining that it didn’t work that way, then relented for fear of Tommy causing a scene. He was shown into a side room, where they brought out his balance in cash—not the same crumpled banknotes he’d deposited but cleaner, newer bills. This pacified him a little. Like it was worth more, somehow. He began stuffing it all into his holdall as the flustered clerk jabbered about a letter of credit being more usual for such a large sum, but Tommy wasn’t having any of that. He’d take his chances with cash. If anyone tried robbing him they’d have to kill him first, and what use would his money be then? He’d always been uneasy trusting the banks as it was, never mind walking out of here with a bloody promissory note. Up north he’d seen shinplasters that dissolved no sooner than they’d been written, men left howling over how much they were owed. So no, he was taking all his money with him, in cash, he told the bemused bank clerk.

  If his plan was going to work, he would need every last penny he’d ever earned.

  Chapter 23

  Inquest

  From across the district they came in their buggies and carriages, in the saddle and crammed into drays, a blockade of horses and vehicles choking Bewley’s main street and spilling out into the scrubland beyond. A crowd jostled outside the courthouse. There wasn’t room for everyone inside. Revolver in hand, Donnaghy stood guard in the doorway, ordering them all back. A decent bribe got you past him. Or if you had the right name. Reddened faces shouting, spittle flying, while throughout town people milled in the midday sunshine as if at a summer fair. There’d been a carnival atmosphere all morning: a quartet of singers, an accordion player, refreshment stalls and bunting, men let off work, children at their games. Beneath the tasseled parasols, sipping cups of flat lemonade, they mingled and swapped gossip about the proceedings, who they’d seen going in there, who looked nervous or scared, while at the very back of the crowd a small group of native men, unwelcome in the courthouse—“No blacks allowed!” Donnaghy had yelled—huddled at the mouth of an alleyway, not talking at all, their steady gazes pinned on the building’s white facade.

  It was shoulder to shoulder in the flagstone lobby, people squeezed in like battery hens. Some had brought crates to stand on, others climbed onto ledges or the clerk’s desk, all craning for a view of the courtroom through the open doors. Whispers were passed back from those in the gallery, through the lobby, and out into the crowd, embellished rumors that the parasol-carriers swallowed with their boiled sweets and lemonade.

  Seats had been reserved for the witnesses and local dignitaries, such as they were in these parts, as well as for a pair of newspaper reporters who’d got wind of the inquest. One was local but the other was from the Brisbane Post, which when Henry Wells noticed, took him by surprise. Twisting in his chair at the front of the room—the table across from the empty jury box, the prosecutor’s side—anxiously scanning the faces behind, Henry vaguely recognized him, perhaps from the courts back home. He caught the man’s eye and nodded; the reporter returned the nod with a knowing smile. Too distant for conversation—Henry would have liked to know who’d tipped him off. Still, he was glad to have him. He’d hoped to stir up some press interest once the inquest was over, but here they already were. Which could only be a good thing. The scrutiny of public opinion, a dose of outrage on the coast, all welcome grist to his crumbling mill. Because Henry was going to need all the help he could get: Reverend Bean had disappeared.

  He wasn’t there this morning when Henry had unlocked the door onto an empty bedroom, and he wasn’t at the bar or in the restaurant downstairs. Horace hadn’t seen him. His bed was made, his suit hung on the wall hook, nothing was out of place in the room. The window was his only escape route. Closed but unlocked, and a good twenty-foot drop to the ground. Like a madman Henry scoured the town, but there was no sign of him anywhere: panting, he asked the townsfolk, and dumbly they shook their heads. He ran to the church, imagined finding him on the front pew deep in prayer. Of course, he wasn’t. The benches were deserted, the altar was bare, nothing moving save flies and dust. Forlornly Henry checked his pocket watch. Only a couple of hours to go. So back to the hotel he trudged, through the gathering crowds, whispers trailing him along the street, and for the next hour he sat at a table, waiting, before giving it up and heading to his room to change.

  Across the aisle from Henry, seated in the very front row, were Billy and Katherine McBride: Billy in a charcoal three-piece with a gold watch chain and a fine white pinstripe running through the suit; Katherine wearing a white pleated skirt, navy suit jacket, and matching navy hat. They were not talking. Billy with his arms folded and jaw set, Katherine’s hands clasped together in her lap, both stoic and silent in the bustling courtroom. When they’d entered, the crowd had hushed and parted and allowed them to pass. Billy’s hand was shaken. Consoling touches on Katherine’s arms and back. They’d taken their seats and there’d been a glance between Billy and Henry Wells, until Billy fixed his gaze forward and didn’t look at the lawyer again.

  At the stroke of two o’clock the clerk rose from his table and called the room to order and a frisson of excitement washed from the gallery to the lobby and on to those waiting outside. A pregnant silence fell. Strains of the accordion player, and of children squealing, until word reached them too and all was still. From the judge’s antechamber came a burst of mirthful laughter, then the door opened and a tall figure ducked under the frame. Dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and white handkerchief, his hair meticulously parted, his mustache lifting in a smile, Chief Inspector Edmund Noone strode through the courtroom and took the aisle seat alongside Katherine, who stiffened and clenched her hands together so hard the knuckles turned white.

  Noone greeted her and Billy cordially. Politely, they both replied. His name hissing like a chant through the courtroom—Noone, Noone, Noone—as he popped a button on his jacket and crossed his long legs at the knee.

  From the same antechamber, Magistrate MacIntyre arrived, shuffling in his crumpled robes up the steps to the bench and flopping down with a sigh. The valise, Henry realized; the valise in his front hall. EJN were the initials. Noone was the judge’s house guest. Well of course he was.

  MacIntyre stacked his papers, glanced up at the crowd, perched a pair of reading spectacles on the tip of his nose. “Never been so popular,” he mumbled, prompting laughter from the crowd. He peered over the rims of his spectacles at Billy, Katherine, and Noone, then his gaze slid across to Henry, sitting forward of the gallery, and far closer than he ought to have been.

  “I told you yesterday, Mr. Wells, you’re only an observer in my court.”

  Henry cleared his throat and made as if to rise, but MacIntyre waved irritably for him to keep his seat. Henry stood anyway. “Your Honor, I’d be grateful for the indulgence of a table. For my papers, you understand.”

  “Sir, or Magistrate, is fine here, you’re not in the Supreme Court now. Very well, keep the table, but remember your place.” He took a breath. “All right then, let’s begin.”

  “Sir, if I may?”

  “Did I not just make myself clear, Mr. We
lls?”

  “There is an urgent matter that I must bring to your attention at the outset.”

  “Hell, son, I’ve not even got the bloody thing started yet.”

  Henry glanced once behind him, turned dejectedly back around. “Sir, it’s the witness. Reverend Bean. He’s . . . not here.”

  Pantomime gasps in the courtroom. Billy and Katherine exchanged a frown. Beside them, his legs still crossed, Noone swiveled to the crowd, highly amused.

  “What do you mean, he’s not here? Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, when did you last see him?”

  “Last night. I even locked him in his room. But this morning . . . he was gone.”

  “Sink a few too many in the bar, did he? Get a little carried away?”

  Sniggers from the gallery. Henry said, “On the contrary. I have kept him dry as a stone.”

  “Poor bastard. Well then, it seems we’re somewhat buggered, since it’s on his evidence this whole thing stands.”

  “Perhaps a brief adjournment, sir, until we can track him down?”

  “And how exactly do you plan to do that, if you don’t know where he went?”

  “He can’t have gone too far. He hasn’t even a horse.”

  “You’d be surprised, Mr. Wells, how far a man can travel when he’s running from the law. The witness was your responsibility. He’s the very reason any of us is here. Why would he run if he didn’t have something to hide?”

  “Sir, I locked him in his bedroom, there was really nothing more I could—”

  “There won’t be any adjournments. I’ve got half the bloody district in my courtroom, men who should be working, a police chief inspector for God’s sake. Poor Billy McBride is sitting there now looking pale as a bloody bedsheet and all because this reverend of yours took twelve years to pipe up about something he might or might not have seen. Wherever he is, it really makes no difference to me. We are here at the instigation of the colonial secretary, who has charged me to investigate the deaths of Edward, Elizabeth, and Mary McBride in the December of 1885, and any actions later taken against the suspected culprits and the wider Kurrong tribe by the Native Police and the officer in charge, Chief Inspector Edmund Noone. That is my duty, Mr. Wells, and I shall carry it out faithfully based on the evidence before me today. If Reverend Bean bothers to show his face I will hear him, otherwise we proceed without.”

  Grumbles of assent from the gallery. “You have his testimony,” Henry said.

  “Yes, but I don’t have the man to swear to it, or to be questioned under oath.” He waved a thin sheaf of papers. “This document could have been written by anybody. It’s as good as worthless as far as I’m concerned.”

  “That is my name at the bottom, sir. He swore it in front of me.”

  “And what difference is that supposed to make?”

  “Well, I can vouch for its veracity.”

  “Aye, but not its contents. Whatever he told you, whatever you think you know, or he knows, is hearsay, irrelevant, inadmissible, as you are well aware.”

  Henry floundered hopelessly. He went to retake his seat, then straightened with the sudden prick of an idea. “Sir, if I may—Reverend Bean told me that he once visited with you personally. That in the aftermath of these events he came to Bewley and attempted to tell you what he had seen. Now, he might have been in shock at the time, and perhaps less coherent than in his written record—”

  “Or drunk!” someone yelled, to laughter.

  “—but insofar as the contents tally with what he told you face-to-face, surely his evidence can still stand. He is simply now trying to formalize what he first reported to this court all those years ago.”

  MacIntyre frowned heavily. “What meeting are you referring to?”

  “He came here, sir. December of 1885, around the turn of the year.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall, Mr. Wells.”

  “Sir, I can assure you—”

  MacIntyre raised a hand. “Because, of course, if he had reported something as heinous back then, it would have behooved me to investigate, to have kept records, to have liaised with the parties involved. Which I did not. There are no records of any such meeting, because no meeting ever took place. I fear the reverend is proving himself most unreliable without even being here.”

  “And what about this time around?” Henry asked him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Has this second report been taken more seriously, I wonder. Have you investigated, spoken with witnesses, visited the crater, dug in the dust for the bodies? There is plenty of other evidence available, Magistrate MacIntyre—this case does not stand or fall on Reverend Bean alone.”

  MacIntyre glared at him over his spectacles. His lips were puckered, his breathing rushed, his face the color of beets. “Now you listen to me, young man,” he said, pointing. “You are here as a courtesy, but one that I will not hesitate to revoke. You speak to me like that again—you dare to question my integrity in my own fucking courtroom—and I will lock you up for contempt and throw away the damn key. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Then sit your fat arse down and keep your mouth shut.”

  To jeers from the gallery, Henry did as he was told. He’d never heard language like it in a courtroom, at least not from the judge. Already he could feel the hearing slipping away and there seemed no obvious way to get it back.

  “All right,” MacIntyre said, taking a deep breath, lifting his eyes to the room, “unless anyone else fancies a stint in my cells, we’ll proceed in whatever manner I see fit. As I have said, we are here for one reason only, which is to find out for certain what went on at the McBride place and then afterward with the Kurrong, and since there are only two men in this courtroom who can tell us about it firsthand, we might as well start with them. Chief Inspector Noone—if you would be so kind as to take the witness stand.”

  A hush fell over the crowd. Noone uncrossed his legs and rose to his feet and strode smoothly to the wooden witness box. The clerk brought the Bible and held it and Noone placed his hand on top, a flicker of a smirk as he gave his solemn oath. He hitched his trousers and sat down on the chair and the clerk returned to his desk.

  “Chief Inspector,” MacIntyre began, “may I first thank you most sincerely for your time. It is an arduous journey out from Brisbane and I’m sure you’re a very busy man, but on behalf of this court and the district, we are grateful.”

  “You are welcome, of course. A terrible business, but I understand the need. We must do what we can to put the matter to bed and allow those affected, indeed the entire community, to move on. Such concerns are far more important than one’s own personal convenience. I only wish everyone felt the same.”

  Noone arched an eyebrow playfully in the direction of Henry Wells. The gallery caught it, and sniggered.

  “Quite,” MacIntyre said, suppressing a smile. “Now, I have here your original police report from the time, which I have read again. I believe you have also had the opportunity to refresh your mind as to its contents, have you not?”

  “I have.”

  “And are those events still familiar to you? Do you remember them well?”

  “Sir, I will carry the memory of the McBride killings with me to the grave.”

  Katherine felt Billy jolt beside her, a sudden and violent twitch. He looked ill. Veins stood at his temples, sweat glistened his brow. She reached for his hand and he gave it, slowly unclenching his fist. He blinked and turned toward her, a pleading in his eyes, and she realized he wasn’t angry but absolutely terrified.

  “In that case, Chief Inspector, could I ask you to recount, in your own words, as best as you can, what you recall from that time, beginning perhaps with what you witnessed when you first arrived at the McBride murder scene.”

  Noone coughed and readied himself. Dead silence in the room. “It was a couple of days afterward that I got to the house. As I recall, we were up near Jericho at t
he time, meaning the bodies had already been buried before I arrived. John Sullivan gave use of his men. However, the scene was still sufficiently intact to discern what had occurred: there were bloodstains on the porch and in the two bedrooms, and footprints leading out into the bush.”

  Billy first onto the verandah, down to his knees beside Father, sitting propped between the bench and the door. Three holes in him. Blood all over the boards. Billy’s hand touches it, sticky and warm, and when he prods Father’s shoulder the head rolls.

  “All of which tallied with the account the brothers later gave when I met them at the Sullivan homestead. They had found their old blackboy’s revolver discarded at the scene—Joseph, there had been a falling-out—and when they’d first arrived back at the property had seen a sizable group of natives fleeing west. Hence the footprints.” Noone glanced at Billy. “They were remarkably clear in their recollections, given their ages and what they’d just been through.”

  Mother in the bedroom, half her head gone; Billy begs Tommy not to look. Trying to protect him, to somehow shoulder this all himself, though the weight is already too much to bear. He finds Mary bleeding out under the bed in their room, tries to lift her but he can’t, his hands slick with blood, all his strength gone. He calls for Tommy to help him, they carry her outside, Billy’s mind swirling with what to do next. His decision, his responsibility; he’s head of the family now.