The Ink Stain Read online

  ‘And what did Hallward say?’

  ‘He didn’t have a chance to say anything. Bancroft could see the way things were going too. Probably didn’t want to give me a chance to foment rebellion. He stepped forward and said honour had been satisfied.’

  ‘And that was enough for both of them?’

  ‘Well, Henry could never resist a parting shot – a rhetorical one, at least. When Duchamp refused to shake the hand he offered, Henry suggested a letter to the editor next time Duchamp was upset. He said he would publish it with minor corrections to spelling and grammar.’

  ‘He was certainly good at getting a rise.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Anyway, Duchamp decided to stay behind. Said he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Henry approached him. He said while Duchamp clearly believed Henry himself was the greatest threat to Duchamp’s good name, it was the governor’s actions, and those of others close to him, that would cause Duchamp’s downfall.’

  ‘I doubt Duchamp would have given that credence for a minute,’ Monsarrat said.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Donnelly. ‘But he said he intended to make sure that those who had laid traps on the road were no longer able to do so.’

  ‘Was that a threat?’ asked Monsarrat.

  ‘Duchamp was forever threatening Henry,’ said Donnelly. ‘Not to put anything past him, mind, but Henry would have been dead a lot earlier if Duchamp had made good on his promises.’

  ‘And why did he stay behind?’ asked Monsarrat. ‘He does not seem the kind of man who frequently indulges in reflection.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Donnelly. ‘Decent place for reflection, though. Nothing here but some irascible cockatoos, and a few balls in the ground.’

  ‘I fear I have been felled by a head cold – most inconvenient,’ the note read. ‘I wonder, my dear Mrs Mulrooney, might I prevail on you to attend to the girls at the School of Industry alone?’

  Hannah folded the scented paper with its fussy handwriting littered with almost too many loops and flourishes for legibility. The real art, she thought, was to make handwriting beautiful yet readable, like Mr Monsarrat’s. The legibility of her own hand was improving; the beauty was a long way off.

  She looked up at the footman who had delivered the note, and who was now standing to attention on the boarding house doorstep, waiting for a response.

  ‘Kindly tell Miss Duchamp I’d be delighted to help,’ she said, ‘after I run an errand which can’t be avoided.’

  The footman nodded and turned away.

  ‘Oh – before you go,’ she called, and he stopped. He said nothing, but he made no attempt to disguise his irritation at being called back. ‘Should I need to communicate with Miss Duchamp during the course of the day, I presume I could find her at home?’

  ‘The lady’s whereabouts are no concern of yours,’ he said, turning back to the gate.

  Hannah watched him go and then moved towards the door, unbuttoning her expensive jacket as she did so. Henrietta’s illness could not have been better timed. It would allow Hannah to interview Susanna’s cousin without interference, of course, but there was another benefit. With Henrietta absent, there was nothing to stop Hannah from changing out of these torturous clothes and into her black-patched armour, her preference for the morning’s first battle.

  ‘You’re all staring,’ Hannah said to the young women sitting in the classroom of the School of Industry. ‘I don’t mind, but many would. They like you to keep your eyes down. I suggest you practise now.’

  The girls bowed their heads. Hannah felt a little bad for berating them. ‘I am fully aware that I am not dressed as I was when you first saw me,’ she said. ‘This is deliberate. I have spent some time in service. And I can assure you that the right clothes, and the ability to look after them, will make your lives easier.’

  When the classroom door opened, the girls forgot all about looking down, snapping their heads around. It was as though a swan had landed in the middle of a flock of seagulls.

  The girl who tentatively peered around the door was not ostentatiously dressed – far from it. But her dress was a fine wool, her collar was intricate lace, and her cap was a translucent white linen. She was, very simply, the ideal servant. Or at least, she looked it.

  Susanna was smiling at the girl, and the girl was smiling back.

  ‘Susanna,’ said Hannah, ‘is this your cousin?’

  Susanna turned to meet Hannah’s eyes, before remembering herself and lowering her own. ‘Yes, missus.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to present her to the class, then.’

  ‘This is my cousin –’

  Hannah sighed. Her motives for being there had little to do with the training of servants, but she wanted to impart some knowledge on her way through. ‘Susanna, start by saying, “May I present –”’

  The girl clearly wasn’t sure if she should still be looking down, at the class, at her cousin or at Hannah, so she glanced around the room and mumbled her way through the introduction. ‘May I present my cousin, Emily.’

  ‘It is very nice to meet you, Emily,’ said Hannah, ‘and good of you to come. Your mistress was able to spare you today?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Emily bobbed a quick curtsey. ‘She gave me a few errands and then told me to have the rest of the day to myself, as she is intending to be out until late evening.’

  ‘A busy lady, then. Emily, please come up the front so that everyone can see you.’

  Emily walked over to Hannah, then turned and smiled at the girls with none of Susanna’s self-consciousness.

  Hannah had never expected to be extolling the values of a life in service. She knew that she would have been miserable as a servant in a large household, somewhere where bowing and scraping was required. It would have made her sick, after a while, continually debasing herself to someone who had the means to employ her simply because of an accident of birth.

  These girls in front of her, though … If they weren’t pouring someone’s tea or emptying someone’s chamber-pots, what would they be doing? She feared she knew the answer – if a local girl didn’t become a servant, there were very few ways she could feed herself apart from thieving, or transacting business on a street corner.

  ‘I wanted you all to see,’ Hannah told them, ‘what it means to work in a grand house. How you present yourself. How you carry yourself. And what to watch out for. Because I can guarantee to all of you that there will be surprises when you find employment.’ She looked at Emily expectantly.

  The girl nodded. ‘We did not use forks when I was growing up – mostly ate with our hands. At Government House they have three different forks at meals, and one especially for fish! And they only explain things to you once – which fork goes where. Have to make sure you listen.’

  Emily spoke for half an hour, with minimal prompting from Hannah, about everything from laying out dresses to lighting fires to putting a plate down from the correct side. Some of the girls were transfixed, some a little disbelieving – and some looked terrified.

  When Emily had finished, a girl towards the back raised her hand. ‘What if we can’t remember it all? What if we make a mistake and we’re dismissed?’

  ‘If that happens, this school has failed,’ said Hannah. ‘It exists to ensure you can remember everything, and that you make as few mistakes as possible.’

  As the rest of the girls filed out, Susanna and Emily remained, chatting quietly in the corner of the room.

  ‘Thank you, Emily,’ Hannah said when the room had emptied. ‘You’ve given them a lot to think about.’

  The girl smiled, bobbing again with such fluency that Hannah had no doubt the movement had been performed hundreds of times.

  ‘I wish we’d had more time to talk about your duties as a lady’s maid,’ Hannah said. ‘You serve the governor’s … wife, is it?’ Hannah was reasonably certain she knew who Emily worked for, but had no intention of showing any interest in Henrietta Duchamp to the girl who was most probably her maid.

&n
bsp; ‘No, not his wife,’ said Emily. ‘His private secretary’s sister, Miss Henrietta Duchamp. She keeps me busy. Everything has to match exactly, you see, and if I can’t tell the difference between the duck-egg blue parasol and the powder-blue one, I catch hell for it. Laying out her clothes is like doing a different puzzle each morning.’

  ‘That solves the mystery of how you found your way here so quickly,’ Hannah said. ‘Your mistress is patron of this school, is she not?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Earlier you mentioned running errands – I imagine they were for this very place.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but no. I wish they had been. She had me bring a message to someone in a far worse part of town. A house just opposite the gaol.’ Emily shivered. ‘And for a while I was bringing food to the same place. Almost too much to carry. I had to leave it on the porch, which was odd because it wouldn’t have lasted long in that part of town. I hate spending any time near the gaol.’

  Food, thought Hannah. Henrietta had been spending enough time there to need to eat. And if there was so much Emily could barely carry it, she probably wasn’t eating alone. It would have been more discreet not to use a servant, but Hannah could not imagine Henrietta procuring her own food.

  ‘Well, I can understand why, with that awful murder there recently. Must have been a shock for you and your mistress.’

  ‘Yes. She came home from her morning visits and took straight to her bed.’

  ‘Visits? She wasn’t working here?’

  ‘No,’ said Susanna. ‘She wasn’t here that day. She cancelled all the classes, said she was too busy with her visits. She asked me to get word to as many of the girls as I could.’

  ‘Oh, and who was she visiting?’ Hannah asked Emily.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, ma’am. She didn’t bring me along. She said true good works were best done in private.’

  Chapter 17

  Duchamp was sitting at his desk with his hands clasped. ‘I must say, Mr Monsarrat, I hoped you would come with more definitive news. I thought that as you and that aunt of yours had time to enquire after my marksmanship – yes, Bancroft told me everything – the official part of your duties must be more or less complete.’

  The colonel turned to Lieutenant Jardine, who was motionless behind him. ‘Have you ever heard such a thing, Lieutenant? Would you not think our recidivist friend here would have better things to do?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

  Monsarrat schooled his expression into a mask of servile neutrality. ‘I fear my enquiries have not yet reached a conclusion, sir,’ he said. ‘Not, that is, if you want me to submit a report that meets all the administrative requirements. Of course, I could simply find that Mr Hallward’s death was a result of a stray projectile. Perhaps one discharged during the course of a duel.’

  Duchamp narrowed his eyes, stood up from his desk and wandered over to the far wall, where a portrait of the governor hung. He stared at it. ‘Even without Hallward to accuse the administration of everything from satanic rituals to eating our young, undoubtedly trouble-makers like that dreadful Donnelly would use such a finding to foment an uprising.’

  ‘All the more reason, sir, to reach a conclusion quickly. An interview with the medical examiner who examined Hallward’s body would be extraordinarily illuminating, I feel.’

  ‘As I’ve told you before, Dr Merrick is essential to the functioning of the colony and is likely to be far too busy.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Jardine. ‘Perhaps if I accompany Mr Monsarrat to this interview, I can ensure he doesn’t take too much of the doctor’s time.’

  Duchamp shot Jardine a poisonous look, but the soldier had resumed his habit of standing ramrod straight and staring into the middle distance. He must realise, Monsarrat thought, that he had put his superior in a position that meant Duchamp had no choice but to agree.

  ‘Very well,’ Duchamp said, probably grasping for a way to save face. ‘I suppose it’ll look good in the report. Not too long, though, Jardine – I need you here.’

  ‘I would also like to revisit the gaol,’ said Monsarrat. Of course he could simply march up to it and bang on the gates, yelling out to speak to that odious Crowdy. But that approach would give Monsarrat nothing – not, at least, without the private secretary’s approval.

  ‘Absolutely not, Mr Monsarrat,’ said Duchamp. ‘If you forgot to ask some relevant questions when you were last there, that is hardly my concern.’

  ‘I asked all the questions I could have at the time. But the man I most need to talk to, Gleeson, wasn’t there – visiting his sister, apparently. He might have returned by now. People will pick holes in any investigation that doesn’t involve interviewing the last man to see Hallward alive.’

  ‘The head warden is not back, so I can save you a trip,’ Duchamp said.

  ‘Really? You’re an extraordinary administrator, sir, to know of the comings and goings of a warden.’

  Duchamp glared at him. ‘I consider it my duty to know everything about the colony. Including, Mr Monsarrat, the backgrounds of all former convicts who work for the administration. I heard you were a very good advocate – argued eloquently before the bench, for a range of clients who were delighted with you. Until you were revealed as a fraud.’

  It still rankled: his years working for lawyers half as bright as him, men who thought nothing of getting him to write their briefs and claim the work as their own. His short, blissful time as a respected member of the Exeter legal fraternity. The shame of capture, the terror of death, and the sentence that had sent him tumbling down to the other side of the world.

  He wondered what response Duchamp was hoping for. Embarrassment, perhaps. A shudder as his past clawed its way to the surface. But whatever the colonel was after, he would not get it. The shadow within Monsarrat wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘All the more reason for the investigation and its procedures to be above reproach, wouldn’t you say?’ he said. ‘You’ve known of my background since I got here. And as you know, others in the administration must know too. If they dislike the eventual outcome of this case, they won’t hesitate to use my past to throw suspicion on it.’

  Duchamp looked at the ceiling, let out a bitter laugh. ‘You are right, there may well be those who don’t like your eventual findings, both here and in England. And if they don’t, do not think for a moment that it will be me who bears the blame.’

  ‘Good of you to accompany me, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Some people were made for an office …’ He inclined his head towards Monsarrat. ‘But I am not one of them. I am grateful for the opportunity to use my legs for the purpose for which they were made.’

  ‘And to keep an eye on the twice-over felon,’ said Monsarrat.

  ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ said Jardine, ‘I will carry out all lawful commands, but I don’t happen to share my superior officer’s view that all convicts are a rotten branch. I do, however, subscribe to your view that this investigation needs to be untainted.’

  ‘That’s very … un-martial of you.’

  ‘We need to keep order. If there was any implication that the search for Mr Hallward’s killer had not been carried out with all due haste, that the government had not bent resources towards it, there would be unrest. Perhaps riots. I will shoot at a man across a battlefield, but I would prefer not to shoot at one who is unarmed in a crowd of protestors.’

  The hospital had nothing in common with the exterior splendour of its London counterparts, crenellated like palaces despite the horrors they concealed.

  On the verge of a nearby road sat small knots of Aboriginals. Groups of women, some nursing babies, others restraining toddlers from bolting out in front of coaches; a few men standing, talking or watching the women. One man was wearing a soldier’s old coat he’d got from God knows where.

  Jardine followed Monsarrat’s eyes. ‘They come here in hope of treatment,’ he said. ‘Including from diseases we gave them.’

  In Port M
acquarie, Monsarrat had enjoyed an easy friendship with Bangar, a Birpai tribesman. His people had treated the interlopers with far more kindness than they deserved. The Birpai had saved convicts from drowning and returned escapees who’d chanced the bush. They were rewarded with the gratitude of the commandant, slop canvas clothes and rum. The administration here would never know what benefits could be had from a relationship with the natives. In Sydney, as in Parramatta, those whose ancestors had owned this country had been moved off it.

  ‘Yet we believe we are the civilised ones,’ Monsarrat said, knowing as he spoke that the words would mark him out as an irredeemable heretic to many.

  ‘Well,’ Jardine said. ‘It’s necessary, the governor would say.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The governor does not seek my views on such matters.’

  ‘If I may say so, Lieutenant, you seem, well, perhaps a different sort of soldier from the colonel.’

  ‘There is only one sort of soldier, Mr Monsarrat. The sort who follows orders.’

  ‘Even dishonourable orders?’ asked Monsarrat.

  ‘Well. The field of battle can do odd things to a man’s character. But no, Mr Monsarrat, I have never received such an order. Should that ever occur, I will have a choice to make.’

  The building they were approaching had three sections, but the two wings were blank-windowed, and one was encased in a cocoon of scaffolding that seemed to be the only force holding it up. The central section, though, was still larger than the two-storey slab that passed for a hospital in Parramatta. Inside, the runner sent by the duty clerk to fetch Dr Merrick took some time to do so, returning without the doctor but with an invitation to the man’s office.

  ‘I’ll wait here, Mr Monsarrat,’ said Jardine.

  The office of Monsarrat’s friend in Parramatta, Dr Homer Preston, boasted a rough table, stacks of documents, grimy windows and a curmudgeonly feline. Dr Merrick’s office would probably be seen as an exemplar of colonial squalor by his colleagues on Harley Street, but compared to Homer’s it was positively refined. A polished desk bore rows of handsome ink pots and a bronze sculpture of a rearing horse. There were shelves full of books, all of which were standing to attention neatly rather than jostling one another like the medical texts that crammed Homer’s shelves. In the corner, hanging from a stand, were the bones of some indigent or pauper, transformed by death into a teaching aid.