The Ink Stain Read online

  ‘He seems to have been. But he was reviewing the troops.’

  Mrs Mulrooney reached into a pocket, extracted a small, ornate fan, and rapped Mr Monsarrat over the knuckles. ‘And how do we know he didn’t have help?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ said Monsarrat, rubbing his hand. ‘You couldn’t have purchased a handkerchief?’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat, Colonel Duchamp is controlling the information you receive. You might want to ask yourself again whether you are willing to let him continue to do that.’

  ‘I’ve sent a note to Jardine on that score, as it happens,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Duchamp’s assistant, you remember. Seems a more reasonable sort. Told him I intend to go to the gaol with or without Duchamp’s say-so. Might convince them they’re better off helping me than having me haring around unchecked.’

  ‘Perhaps haring around is precisely what you should be doing, Mr Monsarrat. I just hope you make more progress with Duchamp tomorrow. Refusing once to let you meet the warden … Well, I suppose it can be explained away. If he comes up with another excuse, that will say more than any warden could.’

  There was no music at Government House the following morning; no rustling silks or glinting jewels. The footman who had admitted Monsarrat yesterday seemed not to remember him and asked for his name again. The man led him to the arched doorway of Duchamp’s study, knocked, and stepped back.

  ‘Come in,’ Duchamp called. ‘We’re ready.’

  A man was perched on the edge of the seat Monsarrat had occupied the day before. Small and lean, he had thinning hair and wore clothes of the type that would normally only enter Government House on the body of a labourer. For all that, the man sat correctly, shoulders back, gazing past Duchamp towards the portrait of the glowering King.

  Duchamp gestured Monsarrat to a small chaise nearby. ‘Good of you to come, Mr Monsarrat,’ he said, in a tone that suggested he felt it was the least Monsarrat could do. ‘May I present David Crowdy. Of the Sydney gaol. You asked for a warden. Here he is.’

  Monsarrat hoped the recognition did not show on his face. This was the same fellow who had paid the two women to clean the gaol. He nodded towards the man, who stared steadily back at him. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said to Duchamp, ‘but I had rather hoped we would be visiting the gaol. Being at the place itself – measuring footsteps, looking for secret entrances, that sort of thing – can often prove most illuminating.’

  ‘I’m sure it can, Mr Monsarrat,’ said Duchamp. ‘However, in this case, you will have to rely on Mr Crowdy’s observations. There will soon be protesters at the gates of the gaol, you see. We’d hate to have you stuck inside – even though it’s a situation with which I understand you’re familiar.’

  Monsarrat cursed himself. After being forced to pretend to be a free settler during his previous case on Maria Island, he had asked Ralph Eveleigh not to conceal his background again, as the subterfuge had been too draining. Now he wished he hadn’t made the request. Duchamp was not the type to approve of former convicts – although he would have had trouble staffing his house and offices without them – and the sudden straightening of Crowdy’s spine let Monsarrat know that the warden shared the private secretary’s views.

  ‘Very well,’ Monsarrat said. ‘I will, of course, be permitted to visit at some stage?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ said Duchamp. ‘Just a matter of finding the right time.’

  ‘And where should Mr Crowdy and I go for our interview?’

  ‘Here is fine,’ said Duchamp.

  ‘You will be present? Pardon me, sir, but isn’t that irregular?’

  ‘I’ll thank you, Mr Monsarrat, not to tell me what is regular. It will come as no surprise to you that bringing order to the colony is one of the governor’s priorities, and therefore mine. Why on earth would I not want to hear what Mr Crowdy has to say?’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Monsarrat. ‘So, Mr Crowdy. You are the head warden?’

  ‘No. That’s Mr Gleeson. He’s not here,’ said Crowdy.

  ‘Well, I can see that.’

  ‘Visiting his sister. Somewhere out west,’ said Duchamp.

  Monsarrat tried to hide his irritation. ‘Were you in daily contact with the victim in the lead-up to his trial?’

  ‘Of course,’ Crowdy said. ‘We don’t tend to leave the prisoners unsupervised. Might have been how it worked in your time, wherever you were. But not now, not here. Oversight is everything.’

  ‘I am glad to hear you say that,’ said Monsarrat, ‘because there is a point on which I’m hoping to enlighten myself with a visit to the prison. As that’s not yet possible, perhaps you can assist me. Where exactly did the shot come from?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. I was rather preoccupied with trying to get the prisoner into the cart, to take him to justice.’

  ‘You mean to his trial.’

  ‘Yes. Hard to see how they could have avoided convicting, though. Not this time.’

  ‘You didn’t see anyone fleeing the yard?’

  Crowdy looked at Monsarrat as if he had lost his wits. ‘Had I done so, I would of course have immediately arrested them, despite the fact that there would be some who’d want to congratulate them.’

  ‘And who might they be?’

  ‘Anyone he wrote about.’

  ‘And that wouldn’t have included you, of course.’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat,’ said Duchamp, ‘I will take offence at any attempt to impugn the integrity of an official. Everyone who works for this administration has proven themselves above reproach.’

  Monsarrat was not at all sure that was true, but inclined his head in polite apology. Crowdy gave him an unpleasant smirk, showing that the state of the man’s teeth likely matched that of many inmates.

  ‘Did you find anything, afterwards,’ said Monsarrat, ‘on Mr Hallward’s person or in his cell? Anything which might illuminate a motive?’

  ‘If I had, I would certainly have produced it. He did leave some papers in his desk, but when I looked later they were gone. I couldn’t say where.’

  ‘What papers would those be?’

  ‘Letters, he said. Invoices. His office may’ve collected them. I heard something about a boy being sent. Whether he arrived or not, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be able to say much, Mr Crowdy,’ Monsarrat said. ‘Very well. I don’t suppose you have any questions of your own, Colonel?’

  ‘I have no intention of doing your work for you, Mr Monsarrat.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Monsarrat, ‘perhaps you could help me do it for myself. Can I speak with the doctor who examined Hallward’s body?’

  ‘He is still unavailable, sadly.’

  Monsarrat nodded slowly. ‘Well, sir, you clearly have your own work to do, and Mr Crowdy has prisoners to guard. I thank you both for your time.’ He rose and bowed stiffly – the growing shadow within would not allow him to make any deeper obeisance – and headed for the door, stopping as he reached it. ‘One more thing, Mr Crowdy. Who else was working with you that day?’

  ‘Well, the head warden. Gleeson. I run the prison. He takes the credit. Scares too easily to be in this line of work if I’m honest. Since he trotted off to visit his sister straight after the shooting, there’s no one who can tell you more than me about what happened that day. No one at all.’

  Two newsrooms in two days – this was not how Monsarrat had intended to start his investigation. By now, he would have liked to have spoken to the doctor who had examined Hallward’s body, paced his way around the prison yard. It did not look as though he would be able to do either this afternoon. But he needed to do something – Duchamp’s jab had stung, and any movement was better than none.

  This visit could, he hoped, be a great deal better than nothing. He might at least learn who Hallward’s true enemies were – he was disinclined to trust entirely the whispers of Duchamp and Mobbs. And he would very much like to know whom Hallward had written about. More to the point, whom he had intended to write about next.

 
He was also willing to admit to a rising excitement at the prospect of entering the building from which Hallward had praised him, defended Grace O’Leary and chastised the governor as no one else was willing to.

  Anyone expecting the Chronicle’s offices to look like a palace of free speech, though, would have been disappointed. Hallward’s newspaper occupied both floors of a small-windowed building of naked clay brick, not far from the offices of the Colonial Flyer. Why newspaper headquarters insisted on always clumping themselves together, Monsarrat would never understand.

  The door was opened by a former convict – the scars on the man’s wrists told of manacles that had been left on too long, slowly digging furrows into the flesh.

  ‘You a creditor?’ he asked, slowly closing the door. ‘Can’t help you.’

  Monsarrat put his hand on the rough wood. ‘The governor’s office, actually.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, I’m not responsible for anything in the paper,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m not here to arrest anyone. Well, not yet. I’m the investigator who’s been asked to find out why someone felt it necessary to put a ball in your employer’s head.’

  ‘You’d be better off at the gaol, then.’

  ‘Indeed. Off limits today, though.’

  ‘Poke around here if you want to. You probably won’t find much – place was looted a few days ago.’

  ‘Looted? What did they take?’

  ‘Nothing much of value to take. Some lead type, maybe to melt down for musket balls. And they caused a fair amount of destruction.’

  ‘Do you think they were looking for something?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. Perhaps. Or maybe they just knew the place was empty and thought they’d try their luck.’

  The man opened the door and stood aside. Monsarrat stepped into a high-ceilinged composing room similar to the one he had visited the day before, with the same angled tables and frames. Most of the frames were smashed, and the blocks of type were gone. Only one frame remained sufficiently intact to hold blocks, some of which were laid out beside it in no decipherable order.

  ‘I doubt another paper will ever come out of here,’ the man said.

  ‘That would be a pity, Mr …?’

  ‘Cullen. And not everyone would agree with you.’

  ‘You must have had a fair amount of affection for the place, though. To still be here guarding it.’

  ‘Was paid to the end of the month,’ said Cullen.

  He has an unusual face, thought Monsarrat. It was grooved by sun and salt water but still open, as though Cullen was forgetting to scowl as most men with similar trenches in their skin did. He had the kind of probing blue eyes Monsarrat saw each day in the head of Mrs Mulrooney. Judging by his accent, he might have come from the same village.

  ‘I do the work I was paid for, no matter how pointless it is,’ Cullen said.

  ‘Perhaps less pointless than you thought, if I’m able to find something of use. Where is Hallward’s office?’

  Cullen showed him to an alcove at the back of the room. Unlike Mobbs’s office, it was not cut off from the compositing floor. Its door was useless, as there was no glass in its large frames.

  ‘The journalists sat upstairs, but Mr Hallward always preferred it down here,’ said Cullen. ‘He liked the sounds, the blocks of type clinking into one another. Said it helped him work.’

  Monsarrat stepped through the door, looking at the desk in front of him. Had it not been for the mould growing in a teacup, he could have believed that Hallward had just stepped out for a moment. The desk was utilitarian, the opposite of the ornate one at which Duchamp sat, but handsome all the same. Its inlaid panel of green leather was gouged with indentations where Hallward had pressed his pen too hard. To the side, a rack held past editions of the newspaper, the Gothic lettering of the masthead over the motto: omnia vincit veritas – truth conquers all, as Monsarrat knew from his school Latin.

  Monsarrat was about to try a drawer when he realised that it did not have a handle.

  ‘Looters were in here, too,’ said Cullen. ‘Maybe they thought he kept money in his desk. They would have been disappointed – it was just papers. Stories he was working on, that sort of thing. They took them anyway.’

  ‘Did you call the authorities?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  You wouldn’t, thought Monsarrat. Not if you suspected it was the authorities doing the looting.

  ‘Was Hallward arrested here?’ he asked, and Cullen nodded. ‘Quite upsetting for the staff, I imagine.’

  ‘We were used to it,’ said Cullen. ‘He came to the door to meet the constables, said good morning, asked if they’d like tea before heading to the prison.’

  ‘I see. And the story he was arrested for – it was published that morning?’

  Cullen moved over to the rack, extracted a paper and laid it on the green leather, smoothing it out almost affectionately. ‘Third last edition, did we but know it. Two days before he died.’ Cullen tapped a fingernail on a story near the top of the page. ‘Those are the words that did for him.’

  The headline, ‘Assault on Liberty’, told Monsarrat that the story would be a headlong race to condemnation rather than a gentle rhetorical stroll. It attacked the governor’s plan to license and tax newspapers out of existence, predicting the rise of autocracy when the only source of information was owned by the administration. It also listed what Hallward saw as the governor’s other failings.

  As readers will know, Governor Darling views the colony as his personal fiefdom. The convicts are his to treat like cattle, the land is his to distribute to his cronies, the plum posts are his in which to install his favourite toadies, while the colony is robbed of the benefit of the skills of more able and progressive men and the energy of smaller, robust landholders. The articles and letters patent of his appointment give the governor unlimited power, but wiser governors, aware of the growing democratic temper of the colony, have not used the full extent of that power. This governor uses every inch of his. This is an oppressive and tyrannical government which has paralysed the energies of the colony, and readers may soon look forward to the emergence of more evidence of its wrongdoing.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Monsarrat, ‘can’t imagine Darling being thrilled by that.’

  ‘No,’ said Cullen. ‘Mr Hallward brought a packed bag in with him that day. He knew what would happen.’

  ‘Ah. A brave man, then.’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t mind being arrested. Sometimes he seemed almost to enjoy it. He said it gave him thinking time. And helped him show the governor for what he was. When he wrote a story from gaol, he used the byline Captivus.’

  ‘The prisoner,’ said Monsarrat. The pseudonyms, it seemed, were piling up. ‘Tell me, are you aware of anyone else with a fondness for Latin names?’

  ‘No one else was in prison as much as Hallward was.’

  ‘Do you know if he was working on anything while awaiting his trial? He mentions further evidence.’

  ‘He did that a lot,’ said Cullen. ‘Liked to tease people. Sometimes he’d publish more stories on it, sometimes not. I wouldn’t read too much into it.’

  ‘But if he published from gaol so often, surely during his last two days there he might have worked something up.’

  ‘He did not share his plans with me, sir,’ Cullen said, in a cooler tone. ‘Now, I’m in the middle of setting to rights the damage from the looting, so if there’s nothing else?’

  ‘No, nothing for now, thank you. I may need to come back, though.’

  ‘As you wish, of course,’ said Cullen, opening the door.

  But when Monsarrat tried to step through it, he found his way blocked by a boy.

  He could have been anywhere between eight and twelve: a younger child of the upper classes was often the same size as an older child of the streets. This lad, with his grimy face, seemed to fit into the latter category, so despite his small stature he was probably at the higher end of the range.

  The boy o
pened his mouth to speak, and then closed it, stepping back.

  Cullen appeared behind Monsarrat. ‘I’ve told you, we’ve no bread!’ he yelled. ‘Never listen, do you? Clear out.’

  The boy frowned, as though he hadn’t expected this response. Again he looked on the verge of speaking – and decided against it, turned and ran off.

  ‘I am sorry, sir,’ said Cullen. ‘We get the street lads sniffing around from time to time. Some of them take longer to get the message than others.’

  ‘No apology necessary,’ said Monsarrat, wondering if he could prevail upon Mrs Mulrooney to make some shortbread that he could bring for the lad, if Monsarrat was able to find him again. He’d probably disappeared into the crumbling, refuse-hemmed huts of the western shore, unlikely to revisit a place where no bread was to be had.

  Monsarrat had just turned a corner when he heard footsteps behind him. Peering back around the corner, he saw that the boy had returned to the newspaper building. He was standing with his head bowed as Cullen ruffled his hair affectionately and handed him a piece of bread.

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing. Everyone seems to be concealing something.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Monsarrat, if you expect the majority of people to tell you the truth, you’ll be disappointed. Far better to expect everyone to lie and be pleasantly surprised from time to time.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Monsarrat. He was settled in a chair beside the extinct fire in the boarding house’s parlour, a small brandy at his elbow. ‘The Duchamps, Mobbs, all accounted for, though, at the time of the murder.’

  ‘If they’re to be believed, Mr Monsarrat.’

  Mrs Mulrooney sat in the companion chair. A woman dressed like her, a woman of means as she was now, might have been expected to have a sherry on the small polished wooden table beside her, but Mrs Mulrooney had never touched alcohol and said she never would.

  ‘I simply can’t credit that Hallward wasn’t writing a story while in gaol,’ Monsarrat said. ‘Crowdy, the warden, said Hallward was working on the accounts. But if the man enjoyed the notoriety of publishing from prison, and with his own livelihood under threat, you’d expect him to be louder than ever.’