The Ink Stain Read online

  ‘I can’t fault his argument,’ Monsarrat had said at the time. Hannah had smiled. She suspected Monsarrat was thinking more of Grace’s eyes than Hallward’s rhetorical prowess. For Monsarrat, a man who planted the thoughts of others on paper but was not allowed to express his own, a man shunned by both the lags and the gentry, the paper had assumed all the significance of a talisman. ‘Not an easy thing to do: go against the common assumption that those of us with convictions on our records are cancers in the civic body,’ he had said as they set off for Sydney.

  ‘Hard enough to defend a creature such as yourself, Mr Monsarrat,’ Hannah had said.

  Hannah was also worried that the emphatic end to Hallward’s life would deter others from criticising the new governor, a man with all the power of a potentate, in an administration where a powerful few decided on lives and deaths. She felt the murder as keenly as Mr Monsarrat did, perhaps more. If Mr Monsarrat needed someone to speak for him, she – a woman, a former convict and, of course, one of those lawless Irish who couldn’t be trusted – might as well be mute.

  Now, though, she was not fretting about the death of a newspaperman. Twenty letters from Hannah to her son, Padraig, had been dispatched into the country’s arid interior, where as far as she knew he was droving. They had yet to provoke a response. Still she kept writing, trying not to scold him for his silence, while hoping it was for reasons which deserved scolding – the carelessness of a young man, the impulse to find something more entertaining to do than write to his mother. But she did not want to be away from home should a missive arrive as repayment for all her scribbling.

  Mr Monsarrat tossed the paper onto a side table and unfolded his long frame from the chair. ‘I should get ready,’ he said. ‘If I can make myself half as presentable as you, I’ll be delighted.’

  Monsarrat was obliged to solve all the crimes his superior chose to place in front of him. His freedom depended on his usefulness. He would have bent all of his efforts towards doing so, anyway – beguiled, perhaps, by the possibility of adding even a thin layer of justice to the strata of unfairness which characterised this place every bit as much as the striped sandstone of its cliffs.

  He didn’t know why Henry Hallward had been killed. But if it was for his writing, perhaps even for his opinions on ticket-of-leave convicts, Monsarrat felt he would fully deserve to be haunted by the man if he was unable to find his killer. Still, while Mrs Mulrooney waited for letters which never came, tried not to think about what her son’s silence might mean, Monsarrat was chasing his own shadow. He hoped, soon, he would be given time to do so. Ralph Eveleigh, the governor’s private secretary in Parramatta, had seemed sympathetic – though not sympathetic enough to allow Monsarrat time to unpack properly after his return from Van Diemen’s Land.

  ‘Embarrassing, really,’ Eveleigh had said, after fetching Monsarrat from the tiny clerk’s office and sitting him down in the private secretary’s more spacious rooms. ‘Shot from on high. Damn thing happened on government property – the shot was fired into the prison, no less, while the fellow was crossing the yard, being taken for trial. Place is supposed to protect the outside world from its inmates, but people tend to get nervous about its ability to do so when it can’t protect its inmates from the outside world.’ Eveleigh drew a newspaper from a stack on his desk and flicked it across the polished surface so that it landed in Monsarrat’s lap. The masthead, in impossibly ornate Gothic script, was the Sydney Chronicle. ‘Not my favourite, I have to say.’ Eveleigh glanced at Monsarrat. ‘Hallward does occasionally get things right – the utility of ticket-of-leave men, for example – but he is not very, well, measured.’

  For Eveleigh, who set great store by being measured, this was a tremendous indictment.

  ‘You are under no obligation to read it, I suppose,’ said Monsarrat.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, man, of course I am. Especially now. It might have escaped your attention in Van Diemen’s Land, but our new governor is not the most popular of men.’

  Monsarrat had read enough, heard enough over the past few months to know this was true. Ralph Darling’s two immediate predecessors had been progressives who seemed to believe convicts were not irreparably tarnished, that they still retained some humanity. Governor Darling thought those before him had been far too lenient, and he had set about a vigorous program of correction.

  ‘I need to know what people are saying, you see,’ Eveleigh said. ‘The weak-minded seem unable to distinguish facts from the opinions of a newspaper editor, so those opinions might as well be facts. At least I’ll have some blessed relief from the Chronicle, though.’

  ‘Oh? Is it shutting down?’

  ‘Not yet, although it’s not out of the question. At present there is no one to edit it. Because its editor found himself in the rather unfortunate position of lying in a prison yard with a lead ball in his brain.’

  Monsarrat knew, then, that any pleas for a delay in his dispatch to Sydney would be ignored. His value to Eveleigh lay in his discretion, and in the fact that an investigation by him was less likely to draw attention than if a constable was trampling around. It was why Eveleigh dispatched Monsarrat to deal with the more sensitive cases. And it was now obvious that this one was more sensitive than most.

  ‘You’re to assist the governor’s new private secretary in Sydney, Colonel Edward Duchamp,’ Eveleigh told Monsarrat.

  ‘Ah. Good. It will be helpful to have the support of such a highly placed official.’

  ‘I wouldn’t rely on it, Monsarrat. Fellow served with the governor – he’s a former colonel of engineers. Duchamp believes that because he and the governor perspired together in Mauritius, he owns the man.’

  ‘Still, if he has requested me, he can hardly obstruct me.’

  ‘The thing is, he hasn’t exactly requested you. A case of this nature … well, if it’s not handled well, I wouldn’t rule out a riot or two. It’s not really in my power to insist, but I did everything I could. Told him that London was watching. That the administration needed to be seen to pursue this particular killer. That failing to do so would see any unrest laid at his door.’

  Eveleigh riffled through the papers on his desk, extracted one and handed it to Monsarrat.

  ‘I have the honour to inform you …’ – it started, as most official letters did, even if the writer went on to inform the reader that they had the intelligence of a toadstool – ‘… that I will accept your subordinate, and given the praise you have heaped on him, I anticipate he will bring this matter to a speedy conclusion. As you know, Sydney contains many more capable men than Parramatta, some of whom will be disappointed they have not been given carriage of this matter. Should your man fail it will have serious consequences – for him and, more especially, for you.’

  Monsarrat handed back the letter. ‘Is he threatening you, sir?’

  ‘Oh, probably. He most certainly does not like me. I wrote to him when he first arrived a few months ago – you wouldn’t be aware of this, as I decided to do it personally rather than dictate it to you. I told him how things were done. Helpful information, I’d have thought.’

  ‘And he ignored you?’

  ‘Worse. Duchamp wrote back to tell me he’d be thankful if I could keep my opinions to myself. Said the governor wants to, what was the word … ah, yes, rejuvenate his staff. And he has some thoughts on what needs to be done.’

  ‘You don’t think –’

  ‘That if you fail, he will use it as a pretext to oust me? Yes, that’s precisely what I think, and he will probably throw every obstacle he can into your path. I may have been foolish, and will deny it should you ever remind me I spoke those words. But I believe Duchamp stopped resisting because he saw an opportunity to undermine me while claiming he had done everything he could to identify the murderer. So catch this rogue, will you, Monsarrat? There’s a good man.’

  Monsarrat had wanted to refuse, to beg for more time to search for Grace O’Leary, a woman who had nearly lost her life for a crime
she didn’t commit, who had made herself a target by helping those whom others believed did not deserve help. He missed her amber-flecked eyes, and he hoped her hair had grown back after the last time he’d seen her – her scalp raw from a punitive haircut, with just a few downy patches. She had been sent away to a mysterious location by the vindictive Reverend Bulmer while Monsarrat was in Van Diemen’s Land.

  He knew, though, that such a request would not only be refused but would also irritate Eveleigh. Not only, it seemed, did Eveleigh’s job depend on Monsarrat’s usefulness, but so did Monsarrat’s ticket of leave. If he failed to deprive this murderer of his freedom, Monsarrat could well lose his own.

  Chapter 2

  Mrs Mulrooney still seemed to be in a funk during their coach ride to Sydney’s Government House. ‘If I’m not your servant, how do we explain my presence?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps we say you’re my mother,’ said Monsarrat, a statement he would never have dared to make if she had access to her cleaning cloth.

  ‘Nonsense, who’d believe a word of that? I’m far too young.’

  ‘Very well, then – my aunt.’

  ‘Your young aunt, Mr Monsarrat. A good ten or fifteen years younger than your Irish mother who married a tall Englishman, God rest her.’

  ‘In that case, you had better get used to referring to me as Hugh.’

  He earned a sharp sidelong glance.

  A little over half a year ago, shortly after they had been tumbled into Parramatta after solving the murder of the commandant’s wife in Port Macquarie, Monsarrat had invited Mrs Mulrooney to call him by his first name. She had rejected the idea immediately – she could, she said, trust a Mr Monsarrat, but a Hugh might get up to all sorts of trouble. There was no reciprocal offer for him to call her Hannah.

  ‘And I suppose I shall have to refer to you as Auntie,’ he said, fighting to repress a small smile.

  ‘If you must, Mr Mon – Hugh. But I wish to note the sacrifice I am making in the service of this investigation.’

  ‘Dear lady, I have noted all of your sacrifices. There have been many, and far more consequential ones than calling me by my first name.’

  ‘Hmph. So, this fellow. Shot in a gaol that is supposed to be secure.’

  ‘Yes. And, of course, we’re to find out how and by whom.’

  ‘Eejit of a man, you’ve forgotten the most important question.’

  ‘Ah. Which is?’

  ‘The question that will lead us to the how and the who. You’ve forgotten the why.’

  It had fallen to the Colonial Flyer, now the only functioning newspaper in Sydney, to report on Hallward’s death, with none of the rhetorical flourish usually employed by the report’s subject. Monsarrat had read the story several times. He took it out of his breast pocket now, glanced at it as the carriage traversed the bumpy Sydney road.

  Henry Hallward, it said, was shot by ‘person or persons unknown’.

  ‘The motivation for the crime cannot be guessed at, and there exists the possibility that Mr Hallward was not the intended target.’

  Though in a yard populated by two obscure wardens and a man whose writing (or ranting, depending on one’s perspective) had angered some of the colony’s most powerful people, Monsarrat knew whom he would bet on as the target.

  Strange, he thought, that there were no post-mortem niceties, no praise for a man who, even if a competitor, was no longer a threat. His musings were interrupted by Mrs Mulrooney. ‘Get your long nose out of that thing,’ she said. ‘We’re here.’

  Monsarrat had imagined porticos and columns, and perhaps stone blocks more regal than the rendered brick of Parramatta’s Government House; it was painted with faint lines which only fooled the eye from a distance that the structure was made of sturdier stuff.

  No porticos, though, and no columns: the governor’s residence was a simple, if large, two-storey house in the middle of a green expanse. A red-coated guard on the door looked down over a sloping lawn past native cabbage trees and nostalgic roses, with luxuriant ferns hiding the muddy banks of the Tank Stream, which watered Sydney Cove.

  The windmills on a ridge to the east seemed set there not to provide flour, but as sentinels over the white-capped blue of the harbour, twins to the small stone fort that squatted on the cove’s eastern arm. Warehouses had claimed the foreshore with such confidence that one would think they had been there for centuries rather than a brace of decades; those belonging to merchant families of grand pedigree – traders in tea, skins and sandalwood – battled for space with those belonging to time-served convict traders. The ships that fed the warehouses carried everything from skins to silk into the harbour, and were being loaded with fleece, sandalwood, flax and seal hides for the return journey, while the rough men who had clubbed the seals had been absorbed into a variety of public houses and shebeens.

  The current occupant of Sydney’s Government House would never have frequented such establishments.

  The King’s most remote representative, the governor, was currently on Norfolk Island, in hopes of reopening one of the most brutal stations in the empire there. So Duchamp, his private secretary, was for the moment arguably the most powerful person in Sydney. Judging by the silks and jewels draped over the women at the garden party, the silver-topped canes and gold-threaded waistcoats of the men, Sydney’s elite knew it.

  They didn’t, though, know Monsarrat, so most of them chose to ignore him and his companion.

  A footman showed them across an empty reception room, its doors opening onto a broad terrace with steps spilling down to a meticulously trimmed lawn dotted with precise splashes of colour from symmetrical flowerbeds. The footman cleared his throat, then raised his voice. ‘Mr Hugh Monsarrat, and Mrs …’ He looked to Monsarrat for guidance.

  ‘Mrs Hannah Mulrooney,’ she said quickly.

  Monsarrat shot her a warning glance and berated himself for forgetting to give her a pseudonym. If former convicts were objects of suspicion, Irish ones were even more so.

  As the footman completed the introduction, most of the guests did not pause in their conversation. Some glanced quickly towards the newcomers and just as quickly away. In his black coat and plain waistcoat, Monsarrat realised he probably looked far more like a servant than his companion.

  There was one man dressed as soberly as him – black coat, black cravat, but with an incongruously fine silver horseshoe pin shining against it. He was standing to the side of a group, straight-backed and long-nosed, perhaps in his forties but with a sneering cast to his face which looked as though it had been in place since childhood. His eyes rested on Monsarrat for longer than was strictly polite.

  He stood on the fringes of a group which was being regaled by a much younger man – the kind of conversation with much hawing and backslapping. The younger fellow broke it off after a few moments and ambled up the steps towards Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney. He could have benefited from the parasols deployed by some of the women: although he was surely no older than Monsarrat, his wispy hair was thinning and the sun was reddening the bald patch on top of his head. The red coat that marked him as an officer must surely have been trapping enough heat to redden the rest of him. He had a glittering ceremonial sword at his waist, banging against his thigh as he walked, although Monsarrat couldn’t imagine what he’d need it for besides cutting cake.

  ‘You’re the fellow from upriver,’ the man said when he reached them. ‘Eveleigh’s pet convict.’

  A shadow was permanently crouched in a dark recess of Monsarrat’s mind, where he always tried to keep it. On the occasions when it unfolded itself, it urged him to acts that were satisfying and just – but, ultimately, dangerous. The man’s insult called the shadow to alertness; it whispered that Monsarrat might care to strike him with his best roundhouse.

  Monsarrat ignored it and bowed. ‘Indeed. And may I present my aunt.’

  ‘Ah, we weren’t expecting … but of course you are welcome, madam.’ The man took Mrs Mulrooney’s hand and bowed over
it. ‘We will find you a suitable diversion.’

  ‘I’m sorry for the intrusion, and none of the fault is with my nephew,’ Mrs Mulrooney said. Monsarrat noticed she was flattening out her Irish cadence. ‘I suffer from a nervous complaint, you see, and my physician felt a change of scenery might be beneficial. I do assure you my nephew has covered my travel expenses – we are not imposing on the Crown.’

  Monsarrat knew she would like to do a lot more to the Crown than impose on it. He risked a grateful glance in her direction, before turning attentively back to the man. ‘I presume I have the honour of addressing Colonel Edward Duchamp.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Duchamp, turning as a shadow fell across the back of his sunburned neck. It was cast by the tall man who had been staring at Monsarrat.

  ‘Ah,’ said Duchamp, clapping the man on the shoulder in a friendly gesture which was not returned. ‘May I introduce Albert Bancroft, one of the colony’s most successful pastoralists – not sure how: he’s more often here than on his property. Still, takes more assigned convicts off my hands than anyone else. Lord knows what he does with them.’

  ‘Work them. Flog them. What else is to be done? They are lower than the treacherous natives who make the life of the pastoral squatter such a trial,’ said Bancroft.